[feather]

Hello everyone - after stalking this forum for months, I finally joined today to post this thread because after meticulous searching I found nothing similar, and I am desperate for your help.

What is more effective within the herbal realm - topical / external application OR oral / internal treatment ???
What are the pros and cons of each in general? Please share input or at least vote above!


I am seeing A LOT of conflicting information:
"oral is processed through the digestive system and loses potency"
"topical doesn't reach through the layers of the skin"
"topical is better because it's area specific"
"oral is better because it's best to change from the inside out"
So which is it?? I covet your thoughts on this with informative reasoning and/or personal experience.

I don't want to get off-track and go into details about my program in this thread, but the back ground of my question is coming from the fact that my program is a homemade mixture of various liquid herbal extracts and I am unsure whether to use it orally or topically.

Let's make this a go-to thread for quick, helpful points of view on this matter!!

Thank you so much.

[feather]

Hi Lotus,
Thank you so much for taking the time to paste all of that!! I really really appreciate it. I read through it -- am I correct in the assumption that basically both are equally successful, and I can go either way with my liquid herbal extract? (I know that they are usually taken orally, but I see that also topical is effective. Creams, after all, have extracts blended into them. So essentially I am just putting the extracts directly without any carrier oils & aloes from a cream.)
That was a lot of info and I am a bit overloaded, (but grateful) so please let me know if my conclusion is correct...

(p.s. I did try using the search but I couldn't find the helpful threads you shared. I guess I used the wrong terms when searching)