THE KITCHEN PHYSICIAN: Medicinal Foods

Medicinal Foods
by Carolyn Swicegood
"Let your food be your medicine" said Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, who compiled a list of over four hundred herbs and their uses. Herbs, spices and other nutritional substances are the oldest form of medicine known to man. While modern or "allopathic" medicine is barely a century old, the practice of natural medicine using nature as a pharmacy can be traced back through all of the ancient civilizations. Over many centuries, man's experiment with plants has yielded a vast stock of natural medicines to help us heal many ailments, and almost always without harmful side effects. Many pharmaceuticals are still derived from the extracts of wild plants, such as digitalis from the purple foxglove flower. Amazingly enough, less than one percent of the over two hundred and fifty thousand plant species on earth have even been studied for their medicinal properties!

Many of the herbs, spices and foods that our grandmothers used as preventative and curative measures can be used for the same purpose in the care of our parrots. Through the years, numerous aviculturists have quietly employed these natural means of keeping their birds healthy. Unfortunately, there are no avian books to guide us in this usage, and of course, dosages and amounts are always the key issue. Although I have studied the use of herbs for over twenty years, I am not a veterinarian and cannot recommend medical treatments for parrots. However, you can find many excellent books on this subject to guide you. Again, the proper dosage is of paramount importance even when using natural substances. One method of judging the correct amount of an herb for a parrot is to determine the appropriate dosage for a human infant and then calculate the dosage for the bird by percentage of weight. For example, a parrot weighing one pound would need approximately one tenth of the amount given a human infant weighing ten times that (ten pounds). Most herbs do not have the toxic side effects of pharmaceutical compounds, so even if the dosage administered is not precise, the consequences are not likely to be as serious. Continue Reading >>