Hmm ok where do we start with this?
I'm a big supporter of using natural herbs/plants for remedies as this is clearly what nature intended.
There are lot's of books you can buy of course, just search for herbal remedies on Amazon. The problem we have however is that the process of turning a herb or plant into a real medicine isn't always straightforward. It often needs processing to produce the right concentration and so on.
Nevertheless here are a few simple things we can do for ourselves.
Garlic is obviously hugely beneficial and has been used medicinally for 1000s years. It has over 300 active ingredients compared to our rather feeble conventional medicines like paracetamol which has only 1 or 2. Eat garlic as often as you can.
If you are surrounded by people at work with flu and colds, and you can feel you have a sore throat coming on then take action quickly. Whatever you're planning to eat, add plenty of ginger, garlic and chilli. All of these have anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties that will wipe out the nasty bugs in your throat provided they haven't been allowed to multiply too much.
Alternatively you can achieve the same result by whizzing a little chopped onion with a little bit of chilli aand water to make a throat gargle mixture. Not the most pleasant taste of course but the bugs won't know what hit them! Besides we all know medicine generally has to taste bad if it's good.
Parsley is an amazingly healthy herb. I never knew this until recently. How many times have we discarded that annoying little sprig that restaurants put on the top of every dish ?! Chewing real raw parsley is very beneficial. For women especially, it is very good for helping bring on your monthly cycle if it's late or you've become irregular.
This is a really big subject to be honest and I can't do justice to it here. I can however testify to the immense benefits of liquorice root (which I take in capsule form) which has amazing healing effects against tooth ache and dental abcess. Ginger is brilliant for stomach nausea and sea/motion sickness. In addition I can't praise enough something called Grapefruit Seed Extract, obviously made from graprefruits (not to be confused with Grape Seed Extract). It's more commonly known just by it's initials GSE or by it's active ingrediant Citricidal. Best bought in liquid form where the GSE is mixed with glycerine and water. GSE is THE strongest natural anti-biotic there is and is very powerful against infections (both internal and external) but it has 101 other uses both internal and external. Some hospitals use it to wipe down surfaces to disinfect them. It kills bacteria in seconds and is also anti-viral. There's one supplier of GSE in the UK whose website I will happily provide if you PM me (I presume it's not right to advertise directly here). To read about GSE's 100s of uses visit
Grapefruit Seed Extract.
Herbs and plants are wonderful things. They are freely given to us by nature and don't need massive multi-million dollar conglomorates to package them up and sell them to us for big profits. We should always seek the advice of our GPs for our ailments but many can be prevented in the first place by keeping herbs and herbal remedies in our pantry.