Herbal Remedies - Assignment Example

Herbal medicine Lecturer The use of herbal medicine among African Americans and Italian Americans has become increasingly popular in the United States. However, the prevalence of herbal use among these two groups varies in different previous studies. There have been wide studies on the pattern of herbal use among racially diverse patients. This paper therefore seeks to describe the herbal use among African Americans and Italian Americans as well as their perceptions concerning the pattern of using herbal medicine.

There are racial differences in the use of herbal among the African Americans and Italian Americans. Some of the factors that influence herbal use in America include ethnicity, history of family, immigrant, and herbal use among members of the family. There is a reported high use of herbal medicine among Italian Americans from recent studies on ethnicity and racial lines.There are many illnesses treated using herbal medicine. These vary from patient to patient due to varying responses to the medicine.

Some of the illnesses that are treated using herbal medicine among the African Americans and Italian Americans include: varicose veins, indigestion, obesity and weight loss among other medical conditions. The African Americans and Italian Americans use varying herbs to treat these illnesses. However, there are commonly used herbs among the two cultural groups such as bitter orange for treating indigestion, chaparral for treating hypertension, and ginger and germander for obesity and other liver related illnesses.

The medical herbs are purchased from herbs clinics and traditional doctors that treat chronic conditions among the communities. The side effects associated with the use of herbal medicine are as mentioned: heart attack and fainting resulting from use of bitter orange; chaparral which may lead to damage of the liver, hypertension suffered by patients with cancer as well as problems with kidney; ginger may lead to an alteration in bleeding time among females while germander may damage the liver of the patients.

When a patient uses herbal medicine after using allopathic medicines, there could be adverse effects on the condition, however, there are no particular complications identified by name, however, the patient medical condition may worsen resulting from a mix of reaction between the two medicines.ReferencesSpector, R.E. (2009). Cultural diversity in health and illness (7th Ed.). Upper Saddle River:Pearson