EphedraBefore you start on Ephedra,
Also known in Chinese as ma huang, Ephedra may be the world's oldest herb cultivated for medicinal purposes, dating back nearly 5,000 years, says Amanda McQuade-Crawford. It's commonly used in cold formulas as a decongestant. 
"It is a great bronchial dilator," McQuade-Crawford says. It helps asthma sufferers by opening the sinus passages and has an antihistamine effect which aids chronic and acute allergies. It also acts as a circulatory stimulant to blood pressure and heart function; it elevates blood pressure. Its main constituent is ephedrine, which increases adrenaline secretion in our bodies. The boost you get from the herb stimulates certain glands, muscles and tissue functions, while it suppresses others.“In the long term, ephedra's adrenaline overdrive can lead to chronic stress and even to degenerative disease,” warns McQuade-Crawford. She notes this is important for people using it for dietary weight loss or “pep pill” purposes because the effects of the herb linger in the body long after the herb itself is gone. “Ephedra shouldn't be used with drugs for the heart or for the lungs and never with antidepressant drugs. It's not for use with the weak or the ill and when used long term, dosages should be conservative,” McQuade-Crawford cautions. This herb obviously should be used with much restraint and only under the care of a trained practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine or a trained herbalist and with the knowledge of your physician. The excitement raised over the inappropriate use of this herb some years ago has a component which most people have not taken the time to research. Our science has allowed us to break apart things which were not necessarily meant to be broken apart. That is what happened with ephedra. A component of the herb known as L-ephedrine was isolated from the whole herb and was then used inappropriately in conjunction with other adrenal stimulating substances for the purpose of stimulating the metabolism of the user. And this inappropriate use of a single component of the herb combined with other substances caused distress to some of its users. This is simply another case of the exploitation of one of the great gifts of Mother Nature and how something like this can backfire on the perpetrators of the exploitation. Unfortunately, it was the herb herself who got the bad rap and not the people who manipulated her instead of using her as she was meant to be used.
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