Steven Horne's Newsletter Articles

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…

December 15, 2020

The Healing and Purifying Gifts of Frankincense

In keeping with the season, I thought I’d talk about frankincense, one of the gifts that the wise men brought to the child Jesus. They also brought gold and myrrh. All very expensive gifts, out of the reach of ordinary people. Fortunately, while gold is still expensive, both of these herbs are relatively affordable and readily available in this modern age. Frankincense and myrrh are both resins, similar to the pine resin (gum) we discussed last week. These resins are produced to heal damaged bark…

December 12, 2020

Now is the Time to Be Prepared

Who would have thought one year ago that we'd all be wearing masks to go shopping, experiencing lockdowns and curfews in any areas, shortages of toilet paper and other necessities, and the widespread civil unrest this country has experienced? Do you think all of this is really over? I don't. While I'm not going to claim prophetic insight, take it from a person who has always thought in terms of emergency preparedness, if you've thought through some of the negative things that could happen…

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

The Healing and Purifying Gifts of Frankincense

Now is the Time to Be Prepared

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