Steven Horne's Newsletter Articles

February 9, 2021

Rose: Opening the Wounded Heart to Love

Millions of roses are given to loved ones on Valentine's day which is why I feel it is a good time to talk about how roses can be used medicinally. Rose is used as an essential oil, flower essence or as rose hips (fruits). In any of these forms, rose is a remedy that opens and softens the heart, both emotionally and physically.When it comes to remedies for the heart, I don’t think you can separate the physical heart from the emotional heart. I believe that most, if not all, heart conditions have…

February 2, 2021

Hawthorn: Heart Health and Beyond

It’s February and soon lovers everywhere will be exchanging Valentines and presents. We rightfully associate love with the heart, so I decided to devote the month to discuss remedies for the heart and circulation, starting with one of the most popular and widely used herbs for the heart—hawthorn. The red fruits of hawthorn have long been associated with the heart and circulation in Western herbalism and modern scientific research has confirmed their benefits. Many compounds have been identified…

January 26, 2021

Stevia: Nature's Natural Sugar Substitute

A couple of years ago I planted a stevia plant in my yard. Being a native of South America, it didn't survive the frost in the fall. Fortunately, I'd gathered the pale green, naturally sweet leaves before that happened. The leaves are about 30 times sweeter than table sugar, so adding just a small amount of the leaf to a cup of herbal tea sweetens the tea naturally. However, adding stevia to something to sweeten it, isn't like adding sugar. Like the naturally sweet licorice we discussed last week,…

January 18, 2021

Balancing Blood Sugar and Energy Levels with Licorice Root

When I was a child there was an ice cream parlor a half-block away from where I lived. The ice cream there was just ten cents a scoop, so you could get a triple scoop ice cream cone for thirty cents. Those days are long gone and it’s hard to find one of the ice cream flavors I liked most back then, licorice. Licorice root is a naturally sweet herb from the pea family that has been used in both Western and Eastern herbalism for thousands of years. The sweetness of licorice is primarily due to a…

January 12, 2021

Gymnema: The Sugar Destroyer

I don’t know about you, but during the holidays with everybody around me indulging in sweets, I've always been tempted to indulge as well. If you overindulged in sugar during the holidays here’s an herb for you. It’s an herb from India by the Hindu name of gurmar, which means sugar destroyer. In America, it’s known by its Latin name gymnema sylvestre or just gymnema. What makes this woody, vine-like plant in the milkweed family remarkable is that chewing on it totally blocks the taste of…

January 5, 2021

The Medicinal Value of Chocolate

Last week I shared some of the the medicinal properties of vanilla. This week, I'm going to talk about vanilla’s darker counterpart, chocolate. Back in the 1970s when I was first getting interested in natural healing, all the health experts were saying you should use carob instead of chocolate. I rebelled against this idea. Carob, a member of the pea or legume family was considered a pig food in Hebrew culture. Cacao, on the other hand, was considered the food of the gods by the ancient Aztecs.…

December 29, 2020

The Medicinal Value of Vanilla

Many years ago, I read the book Indian Givers, which tells of the many gifts the Native Peoples of North and South America brought to the rest of the world. One of these gifts was the many food plants they had developed, including all varieties of potatoes, tomatoes and peppers, as well as many forms of squash and beans. There are many other foods that originated in the Americas; two very notable ones I'd like to talk about are chocolate and vanilla. Vanilla and chocolate are staples in many beloved…

December 22, 2020

Myrrh: A Bitter Perfume for the Darkest Time of the Year

The the winter solstice is December 21st and, in the Northern Hemisphere, this is the darkest time of the year. It is the day when the night is the longest and the day is the shortest. And the days only start to get noticeably longer and the nights shorter after the 24. The many cultural holidays that cluster around this time of year are all festive celebrations of this passage from darkness to light. Although Christians celebrate the birth of Christ at this time, it's unlikely this was actually…

Rose: Opening the Wounded Heart to Love

Hawthorn: Heart Health and Beyond

Stevia: Nature's Natural Sugar Substitute

Balancing Blood Sugar and Energy Levels with Licorice Root

Gymnema: The Sugar Destroyer

The Medicinal Value of Chocolate

The Medicinal Value of Vanilla

Myrrh: A Bitter Perfume for the Darkest Time of the Year

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