What is White Willow Bark?
White willow bark is used in the same manner as is aspirin. In fact, aspirin was originally created from research into White willow bark. As nature's aspirin, White willow continues to be an important herb to be kept in our awareness if not in the medicine chest (aspirin is just too easy to keep and use).
White willow bark reduces fever, relieves pain, prevents migraine headaches, aids in reducing the onset of some cancers, reduces the frequency of heart attack and stroke, relieves inflammation, and tastes simply awful. The active chemical in White willow is called salicin.
Chinese physicians used willow to reduce pain and inflammation from before the time of Christ. It was not until about 1750 that Rev. Edmund Stone md. of Oxfordshire, England experimented with White willow in an attempt to treat malaria with a local source rather than the expensive and difficult to obtain cinchona bark which contains quinine, an effective antimalarial drug.
The good Reverend used the bark from White willow because it tasted similar to the bitter cinchona bark. When he gave it to the local patients, their pain and fever were reduced even though it did not control the malaria. Medicinal applications of the herb caught on quickly and word spread of its effectiveness against pain, inflammation, and fever.
White willow trees began to be transported throughout Europe and the Americas for medical purposes. Today, the willow goes largely unidentified because of the introduction of aspirin in readily useable form in 1899.
White willow bark still has a usefulness that should not be ignored. Aspirin upsets some people's stomachs, but white willow bark seems to be free of this problem. Experts point out that white willow bark will work on almost anything you take aspirin for. The dosage is just more difficult to control from bark than from the pharmaceutical company's brewed up standards.
It will likely require several cups of white willow bark tea to give the effectiveness of two standard aspirin tablets. If your willow bark reduces pain and fever, the same dose will act to produce the preventive benefits of aspirin which include warding off stroke and heart attack, combating certain types of cancer (digestive tract), preventing migraine headaches, reducing the frequency of internal blood clots, and reducing toothache.
The benefits of White Willow Bark today are that it is an anti-inflammatory, a fever reducer, an analgesic, an anti-rheumatic, and an astringent. Specifically, it helps to relieve headaches; helps to ease pain associated with inflammatory conditions like rheumatism, arthritis, and carpal tunnel syndrome; and helps to control fevers. Studies have shown that if you feel better, you are more likely to want to stick to your weight loss plan and because of that, White Willow Bark can aid in your diet goals.
Nature's Herbs White Willow
Nature's Way's White Willow Bark