Home remedies are the treatment of choice for the vast majority of Americans. In a poll of people in the waiting rooms of family practitioners and general internists across the United States, 9 of every 10 said that they had tried to treat their ailments with home care flfst. They had scheduled appointments with their doctors only when they couldn't get sufficient relief from their symptoms.

A similar survey conducted in England produced nearly identical results: 88 percent of the respondents reported that they had practiced home care before seeing their doctors. In many cases, they had asked relatives or friends what to do for their health problems. And 16 percent said that they had consulted some sort of home medical guide for advice.

Medicine with a Personal Touch

At first, the notion of health-care professionals as last resorts may seem odd. After all, aren't family doctors, chiropractors, naturopaths, and their colleagues the first people we turn to when we need health care? They may be the first professionals whom we consult. But before calling them, the vast majority of us try to heal ourselves. And quite often we're successful, using some combination of home remedies. These remedies run the gamut from rest, ice packs, and heating pads to "kitchen cures" such as baking soda and vinegar to lifestyle changes such as quitting smoking and limiting alcohol consumption.

In the broadest sense, home remedies are any treatments that you can use on your own, without professional intervention. Many of the therapies presented in this book-including nutrition, supplements, herbs, and exercise-qualify. But often people think of home remedies as folk remedies, those often quirky treatments that wouldn't seem to have medicinal value but do.

Some of these remedies have been around for centuries. For instance, the idea of eating chicken soup for a cold is attributed to the Egyptian physician Moses Maimonides, who lived some 800 years ago. Others seem to have backed into home remedy status after first being proven scientifically. Probably no one took vitamin C for a cold before Linus Pauling, Ph.D., recommended it in his 1970 book Vitamin C and a the Common Cold. Now it's among the nation's most popular cold treatments. Millions of people take vitamin C supplements and drink C-rich orange juice at the first sign of a sore throat.

But the vast majority of home remedies have untraceable histories. Often they've been handed down by moms, who learned them from their moms or grandmothers. And they work, though scientists can't always explain why.

Be Your Own Best "Doctor"

While much about their origin and evolution remains unknown, home remedies were long used not by choice but by necessity. For centuries, physicians served only royalty and the very rich. Common people didn't have access to professional care. They were forced to rely almost exclusively on home care.

Today, the trend toward home care is likely to continue, and perhaps even accelerate, as health information becomes more widely available. These days, many people search the Internet to find out what they can do to treat various ills. But long before anyone ever heard of the World Wide Web, books as well as newspapers, magazines, and television were educating the public about healthcare issues and break­throughs. And people used what they learned to take charge of their health and to expand their homecare options.

Another likely reason for the continued popularity of home care is the rise of managed care. To control costs, managed-care programs usually restrict access to specialists as well as to certain treatment and diagnostic procedures. They do this by requiring that all aspects of a patient's treatment be overseen and approved by a primarycare practitioner. Rather than go through that hassle, many people try to treat themselves first.

The line between home care and professional care isn't as clear as it once was. If you read in a magazine that garlic helps control cholesterol, that probably qualilles as a home remedy. But if your doctor suggests that you take garlic, what is it? A prescription or a home remedy?

Actually, it's a little of both. In its own way, it's blended medicine.