ALOE VERA:
great for skin care, acne, insect bites, sooths burns (sunburn, etc), hydrates skin.

i was wondering in your past experience what plants have been medicaly helpful to yourself, plants that can de-toxify the body, help improve vision, immunity, skin, healing. maybe instead youve heard of these plants and would like to share, heres a few more to try and get the conversation going...

FOR THE EYES:
ive heard carrots, and green belle peppers are supposed to be good for the eyes

BURDOCK:
Helps with digestive system, skin care, immunity, slightly lowers blood sugar, for a weed i thought that was pretty interesting, usage of leaves roots and seeds.

GREEN TEA:
We should all know of the green tea, it lowers chances of cancer, infection, increases immunity, full of antioxidants

GARLIC:
is another great herb, the use of garlic helps with asthma, the cold and flu, tumors, skin care, and more

ive personally only used aloe for acne, and the other i just use without knowing, i googled the last few, never knew most of what they do, like i knew carrots helped with eyes but did you know horsetail plant, helps the with osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, and brittle nails? Can anyone put up recipies they've used?, like a mix of aloe and idk, avocado to create a face cleaning mask? Just a guess but id like to hear what you use. Any medical success in home recipies straight from the garden?

The research I have read was by a research doctor who said he used it on his sister who had Multiple Sclorosis MS and she went into remission. It seems to be better than flax seed & salmon oil in one seed.

Echium Oil by Ray Sahelian, M.D. Health benefit of echium oil

Echium oil is obtained by refining oil extracted from the seeds of Echium plantagineum. Members of the genus Echium from Macaronesia have a very high amount of gamma-linolenic acid. See oil for a full discussion of various oils. Echium oil use may provide healthy long chained fatty acids.

Composition of echium oil

Echium oil is a vegetable oil rich in omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Food Uses of echium oil
Croda Chemicals wants to use its refined echium oil as an ingredient in a range of food products (including milk and yoghurt based drinks, breakfast cereals and nutrition bars) and in food supplements.

Echium oil and blood lipids
It appears that echium oil could be beneficial in reducing certain blood lipids.

Dietary echium oil increases plasma and neutrophil long-chain (n-3) fatty acids and lowers serum triacylglycerols in hypertriglyceridemic humans.
J Nutr. 2004. Surette ME, Edens M, Chilton FH, Tramposch KM. Pilot Therapeutics Incorporated, Charleston, SC
The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of dietary echium oil, a plant oil containing the 18-carbon (n-3) PUFA stearidonic acid, on tissue fatty acid content and serum triacylglycerol concentrations in hypertriglyceridemic humans. Asymptomatic subjects with mild-to-moderate hypertriglyceridemia were enrolled in an open-labeled study. Subjects underwent a 4-wk lead-in period and were then instructed to follow the National Cholesterol Education Program Step 1 diet. Subjects whose serum triacylglycerol concentrations remained between 300 and 450 mg/dL were instructed to consume 15 g of echium oil daily for 4 wk. During the treatment period, serum triacylglycerol concentrations decreased by 21% compared with baseline. There were no significant changes in any other clinical laboratory variables. Concentrations of long-chain (n-3) PUFA, including EPA, increased in plasma and neutrophils when subjects consumed echium oil. In conclusion, dietary plant oils rich in stearidonic acid are metabolized to longer-chain, more unsaturated (n-3) PUFA. These oils appear to possess hypotriglyceridemic properties typically associated with fish oils.

Echium oil reduces plasma lipids and hepatic lipogenic gene expression in apoB100-only LDL receptor knockout mice.
J Nutr Biochem. 2007. Section on Lipid Sciences, Department of Pathology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, USA.
We tested the hypothesis that dietary supplementation with echium oil, which is enriched in stearidonic acid (SDA; 18:4 n-3), will decrease plasma triglyceride (TG) concentrations and result in conversion of SDA to eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) in the liver. Mildly hypertriglyceridemic mice were fed a basal diet containing 10% calories as palm oil (PO) and 0.2% cholesterol for 4 weeks, after which they were randomly assigned to experimental diets consisting of the basal diet plus supplementation of 10% of calories as PO, echium oil or fish oil (FO) for 8 weeks. The echium oil and FO experimental diets decreased plasma TG and VLDL lipid concentration, and hepatic TG content compared to PO. Echium oil fed mice had plasma and liver lipid EPA enrichment that was greater than PO-fed mice but less than FO-fed mice. In conclusion, echium oil may provide a botanical alternative to fish oil for reduction of plasma TG concentrations.

Echium Oil Research

Occurrence and characterization of oils rich in gamma-linolenic acid Part I: Echium seeds from Macaronesia.
Phytochemistry. 2000 Feb;53(4):451-6. Departamento de Ingenieria Quimica, Universidad de Almeria, Spain
Nineteen species of the genus Echium (Fam. Boraginaceae) collected in Macaronesia were surveyed in a search for new sources of gamma-linolenic acid (GLA, 18:3omega6). High amounts of this acid were found in all of them, ranging from 9% (Echium plantagineum) to 26% (Echium callithyrsum) of total seed fatty acids. The amounts of GLA related to total seed weight were also significant, ranging from 1.7% (Echium sventenii) to 5% (Echium nervosum). In addition, considerable amounts of stearidonic acid (SA, 18:4omega3) were detected, ranging from 3% (Echium auberianum) to 13% (Echium plantagineum) of total fatty acids.

Echium oil emails
Q. I have just been reading your web page on echium oil and was interested in your comments about "pyrrolizidine alkaloids and their N-oxides." being present in the refined oil. Now, like most members of the Boraginaceae (including borage), echium contains these alkaloids in the plant parts but I wasn't aware that they were present in the oil, and I would anticipate that, even if they were, they would be removed by even a simple refining process. In their Novel Foods application in 2000, Kings wrote: "Pyrrolizidine alkaloids are not lipophillic and, therefore, would not
be expected to be present in any substantial quantity in the oil. Tests carried out on several samples of both Super Refined and unrefined Echium oil shows that levels of Pyrrolizidine Alkaloids were either extremely low (<15ng/g) or below the lowest detectable level of 4ng/gram. The product specification stipulates that pyrrolizidine alkaloids should not be greater than 15ng/gram which is considered to be well below levels that would cause harm. There are other plants that are known to contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids in their foliage, one such example being Borago officinalis. Borage oil is currently widely used as a health supplement." The Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes which assessed the application raised no concerns about the level of alkaloids (although they had other concerns). Do you have any literature references to a problem with these alkaloids in echium oil, or any personal experience which could shed some light on it?
A. Thanks, we removed the reference to pyrrolizidine alkaloids in the section on composition of echium oil. Is it okay to use your name as the person who let us know about this?
Q. I'm happy for you to use my name Dr. Peter Lapinskas, www.lapinskas.com