Tea made from comfrey has many health benefits and it is accepted worldwide as a herbal medicine.
About Comfrey Tea
Native to Europe, Comfrey is a perennial herb, having a root system with broad hairy leaves and multicolor flowers, ranging from pink, light purple, white and cream. The scientific name of comfrey is Symphytum officinale and it is also used in herbal organic gardening and as a fertilizer.
The constituents of comfrey tea are: tannins, rosmarinic acid, allantoin, steroidal saponins, mucilage, inulin, pyrrolizidine alkaloids, gum, carotene, glycosides, sugars, beta-sitosterol, triterpenoids, vitamin b-12, protein, zinc. Many healing effects of comfrey are attributed to allantoin, a compound shown to speed cell production both inside and outside the body.
However, the pyrrolizidine alkaloids are still a subject of many debates because of their toxicity.
How to brew Comfrey Tea
The leaves and roots, dried or fresh, are mainly used in the comfrey tea recipe. If you use dry leaves, add 2 teaspoons of the plant and let is infuse for 5 minutes in a cup of water, or you can simply pour boiling water over it and wait for 10 minutes before drinking. You can also add a sweetener, honey or lemon juice, for a pleasent taste. You can use the plant afterwards as a fertilizer in your garden.
Benefits of Comfrey Tea
Take a glance of the medicinal uses of comfrey tea.
It helps in the treatment of health disorders like sprains, arthritis, gastric ulcers, bronchitis, broken bones, asthma, athlete’s foot etc.
Comfrey tea is very helpful in healing burns, bed sores, insect bites and rashes or in other associated skin conditions due to the allantoin contained, that stimulates the growth of new skin cells.
The tannins contained in the comfrey tea are responsible for bleeding control.
Comfrey tea may sooth the digestive tract, preventing abdominal discomfort and heartburn.
Comfrey tea or comfrey juice provides a good remedy for hemorrhoids, diarrhea, stomach and intestinal disorders.
Comfrey Tea may also be used as an organic fertilizer.
Side effects of Comfrey Tea
The side effects of comfrey tea are mostly associated with pyrrolizidine alkaloids which are considered to be hepatoxic. They may also contribute to hepatic veno-occlusive disease, a condition characterized by a narrowing of blood vessels in your liver - this condition can impair liver function.
Comfrey tea is also not suggested to patients under dietary potassium restrictions. Comfrey tea should not be taken by infants or during pregnancy.
Although there are side effects associated with the consumption of comfrey tea, you can use it with precaution and also, not for a long period of time.... comfrey tea
n. absence of vital functions. Death is diagnosed by permanent cessation of the heartbeat. Brain death is defined as permanent functional death of the centres in the brainstem that control breathing, heart rate, and other vital reflexes (including pupillary responses). Many decisions in medicine depend on death being clearly defined and objectively observed. Particular problems arise when a potential organ donor is being kept artificially alive. Legally, two independent medical opinions are required before brain death is agreed and organs can be removed for transplantation. In medical ethics, death is of crucial interest because it elucidates debates about *personhood and prompts consideration of the duties owed to the living and the deceased. Religious perspectives on death may inform the ways in which people perceive the withdrawal of medical treatment and organ donation. See dying.... death
a measure of a person’s wellbeing that is relevant in two ways in medical ethics. (1) The experience, burden, and effects of disease as opposed to its duration are often invoked in debates about *abortion, *assisted suicide, *euthanasia, and the withholding or withdrawal of medical treatment. The criteria for determining another person’s wellbeing are complex and contested, and some argue that competent adults are the best judges of their own quality of life. (2) The formal evaluation of losses and gains is employed to determine who will benefit most from a treatment and, on this basis, who should receive priority where resources are scarce. In such cases a calculation of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) is made, rather than a simpler estimate of how long a successfully treated patient can expect to live. Each expected year of full health is scored 1, each expected year with various degrees of illness or disability less than 1, and death 0. Research priorities are often made on the basis of a related metric, *disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), which seeks to minimize the burden of disease. Both metrics have been criticized for discriminating against those with prior medical conditions, which lower their baseline score, and the elderly, whose longevity is short. See also need.... quality of life
the claim that a relatively innocuous or small first step will result in seriously harmful or otherwise undesirable consequences that will be difficult, if not impossible, to prevent. When or whether such slippery slopes exist is much argued over in medical ethics, especially in debates about *euthanasia. See also consequentialism.... slippery slope argument
Community care is intended to enable people to lead independent lives at home or in local residential units for as long as they are able to do so. For many years there has been a trend in Britain for care of elderly people and those with mental or physical problems to be shifted from hospitals and into community settings. In 1988 Sir Roy Gri?ths’s report to the Secretaries of State for Social Services, Community Care: Agenda for Action, advised on the best use of public funds to provide e?ective community care. The White Paper Caring for People, published in 1989, outlined the government’s ideas for developing these proposals further. The plans were then enshrined in law with the National Health Service and Community Care Act of 1990.
Since April 1993, local social-services departments have been responsible for assessing what help people need from community-care services: these can include home helps, meals on wheels, sheltered housing, etc. Recipients of such services are means-tested and make variable contributions towards the costs. Policies on charging vary from one area to another and there are wide geographical variations in the range of services provided free and the charges levied for others.
People with complex needs may be assigned a case manager to coordinate the care package and ensure that appropriate responses are made to changing circumstances. The success of community care hinges on e?ective coordination of the services of an often large number of providers from the health and social-services sectors. Poor communication between sectors and inadequate coordination of services have been among the most common complaints about the community-care reforms.
Health care for people being cared for in the community remains largely free under the NHS arrangements, although there are regular debates about where the boundaries should be drawn between free health services and means-tested social care. A distinction has been made between necessary nursing care (funded by the state) and normal personal care (the responsibility of the patient), but the dividing line often proves hard to de?ne.
As care has shifted increasingly into the community, previous hospital facilities have become redundant. Vast numbers of beds in long-stay geriatric hospitals and in-patient psychiatric wards have been closed. There is now concern that too few beds remain to provide essential emergency and respite services. In some areas, patients ?t for discharge are kept in hospital because of delay in setting up community services for the elderly, or because of the inability of the local authority to fund appropriate care in a nursing home or at home with community-care support for other patients; the resulting BED-BLOCKING has an adverse e?ect on acutely ill patients needing hospital admission.
Community care, if correctly funded and coordinated, is an excellent way of caring for people with long-term needs, but considerable work is still needed in Britain to ensure that all patients have access to high-quality community care when they need it. Problems in providing such are are not con?ned to the UK.... community care
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