Vitamin C
Vitamin C is the vitamin most people reach for at the first sniffle. Here's what it actually does in your body, which foods cover your needs, what the cold research really shows, and when "more" stops helping.
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Yellow Dock
Yellow dock was one of the classic "blood purifiers" of 19th-century herbal medicine, and it still turns up in liver and lymph cleanse blends and folk iron tonics. Members get the full entry: its history around the world, what the research does and doesn't show, traditional amounts, and why its safety section is longer than its benefits.
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Bacopa (Brahmi)
Bacopa is the creeping wetland herb Ayurveda has prized for centuries as a "medhya" tonic for memory and the mind, and one of the most-studied memory herbs today. Members get the full profile: every traditional use, what the trials really showed, the official amounts, and the side effects and drug interactions to know first.
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Pumpkin Seed
Pumpkin seed is one of the few everyday foods with an official European herbal monograph, for men's night-time bathroom trips and an overactive bladder. Members get the full profile: every traditional use, the large prostate trial and what it really showed, the official amounts, and who should check first.
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Flaxseed
The small brown or golden seed behind linseed tea, old-fashioned linseed poultices and today's breakfast sprinkle. Flax has been a food, fibre and folk remedy for thousands of years and is now one of the better-studied seeds for the bowels and blood pressure.
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Thyme
The kitchen herb behind many old-fashioned cough syrups and mouthwashes. Thyme has been used for chesty coughs, sore throats and digestion since ancient Greece, and it's still an approved traditional cough remedy in Europe.
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Calendula
The bright orange "pot marigold" of cottage gardens, used for centuries to soothe sore skin and dress wounds. Today it's one of the best-known herbs in creams, salves and baby balms.
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Green Tea
The tea plant was first grown in China thousands of years ago, and a Japanese monk wrote in 1211 that tea was a medicine for long life. Today green tea is one of the world's most-loved daily drinks, and its leaf and extracts are some of the most-studied plant compounds there are.
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Bitter Melon
A knobbly green gourd that is everyday food from India and China to the Philippines, and the famously bitter "cerasee" bush tea of Jamaica and the Caribbean. Few plants are used in as many traditional kitchens and medicine systems at once.
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Fenugreek
A small golden seed that has flavoured curries and fed nursing mothers for thousands of years, from ancient Egypt to India. Its maple-syrup aroma is the same one that famously lingers on the skin of people who take it.
