Whenever a woman is considering some form of contraception, her doctor will immediately offer her a smorgasbord of options. Of course, the Birth Control Pill made with a combination of estrogen and progestins will usually be the first recommendation. But, she could also choose an implant called Nexplanon®, a tiny, thin rod about the size of a matchstick that is surgically implanted under the skin of the upper arm, releasing progestin for up to four years. Or, perhaps, she would prefer the NuvaRing®, a small, flexible ring containing estrogen and progestin inserted into the vagina and removed after three weeks and a new ring inserted one week later.

The choices keep coming. There is always the Depo shot (AKA Depo-Provera), an injection of progestin that prevents ovulation for up to three months. For women who prefer something other than the Pill or inserted devices, there is the Xulane® Patch (which replaced the Ortho Evra birth control patch now only available in Europe and Canada). The transdermal patch sticks to the body and releases synthetic estrogen and progestin hormones directly through the skin. It works mainly by preventing the release of an egg (ovulation) during your menstrual cycle. A new patch is used each week for three weeks and a week with no patch (during your period).

A Little Secret About All Hormonal Contraceptives
The two main ingredients in hormonal contraceptives are either a combination of estrogen and progestin (a synthetic form of the natural hormone progesterone) or progestin-only contraceptives. There are well-noted "minor" side-effects experienced by many women that include breast tenderness, weight gain, skin and acne issues, hair loss, increased facial hair growth, nausea, nutrient depletion, mood swings, vaginitis, varicose veins and decreased libido.

Major mood changes including depression, anxiety, irritation, and angry outbursts are commonly experienced. A study published in JAMA Psychiatry found that women using hormonal contraception faced a 23 percent greater incidence of developing depression and greater use of antidepressants than women who did not use the drugs. Among teens using these contraceptives, that rate nearly doubled.

However, there are even more serious problems. The hormonal combinations increase the risk of blood clots, strokes, heart attacks, migraines, high blood pressure, gall bladder disease, benign liver tumors, decreased bone density, infertility and yeast overgrowth. They alter the vaginal environment making it more hospitable to sexually transmitted diseases. Birth control pills adversely affect the beneficial microbiome in the intestines, which means a women is more susceptible to yeast overgrowth, has lower immunity and more frequent infections.

Using hormonal contraceptives is playing Russian roulette with your health. These hormone combinations increase the levels of clotting factors and are responsible for a three-to four-fold increase in the incidence of blood clots. The FDA warns that the patch version poses an even greater risk because the level of estrogen absorbed from the patch is 60 percent more than the amount delivered by the pills. A blood clot can occur in a leg (deep vein thrombosis) or in the lung (pulmonary embolism) and can lead to death.

The most alarming, yet least known, problem is the fact that estrogen and progestin can cause cancer. Both the World Health Organization's cancer agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the National Toxicology Program have listed estrogens and progestins as known human carcinogens. What this means is that taking any of the hormonal contraceptive choices will increase the risk of developing breast, cervical, uterine, ovarian, or liver cancers. And, the younger the age of a woman when she begins using them, the greater her lifetime risk.

Modern women are caught in a terrible dilemma. While they want to control their fertility, they don't want to have to gamble with their health.

Smart Women's Choice Vaginal Gel—A Revolution In Totally Effective, Totally Safe Contraceptives.

There is really good news for women! Thanks to the passion and dedication of one woman to save women's lives, there is now an alternative to the dangerous hormonal contraceptives: Smart Women's Choice. SWC is a vaginal gel that contains no hormones and no spermicides; it is proven 100 percent effective, completely safe and causes no harmful side effects whatsoever.

Françoise Farron, PhD, an outstanding biochemist, earned her degree from New Your University Medical School and went on to work at Harvard Medical School, studying control mechanisms of cell growth, as part of a larger program designed to understand the phenomenon of uncontrolled growth in cancer cells.

Francoise knew of the contraceptive formula since her own reproductive years; she used it and it worked for her. But she was not going to abandon her fascinating and successful studies at Harvard to go into the birth control business—until tragedy struck. Her friend's daughter suddenly died from a blood clot while using the NuvaRing®. At that juncture, Francoise felt a personal obligation to bring her discovery of a safe contraceptive to market, to make it available to all women who wanted to avail themselves of its unique advantages.

Smart Women's Choice, is a novel approach to effective protection from unwanted pregnancies and works in an entirely different way from hormone-based birth control methods.

In order for fertilization to occur, the sperm must travel from the vagina, were it is deposited during intercourse, up the fallopian tubes to merge with an egg that has been released by the ovaries. But Smart Women's Choice completely immobilizes the sperm in the vagina, within seconds; therefore the sperm cannot make the journey from the vagina into the fallopian tubes and thus, never encounters the egg; so fertilization cannot and does not take place.

No fertilization = No pregnancy

Since SWC does not alter or affect a woman's hormonal system, there are no harmful side-effects. Smart Women's Choice is a simple solution to prevent fertilization; it's amazing that no one has thought of it before. It is unique and effective; a patent has been filed and is pending.

Where's the proof? Dr. Martin Bastuba, Medical Director at Male Fertility Specialists and head of one of the foremost fertility clinics in Southern California, performed a motility test on sperm samples to study the effectiveness of Smart Women's Choice on the motility of spermatozoa.

The results presented in the accompanying table show unequivocally that SWC vaginal gel immobilizes sperm completely at all dilutions. If spermatozoa are totally immobilized in the vagina and, thus, unable to travel up the fallopian tubes fertilization cannot and does not occur.

Conclusion: The results presented in the table above show unequivocally that SWC does agglutinate sperm to varying degrees, and immobilizes sperm completely at all dilutions. If sperm is immobilized and thus cannot travel up the fallopian tubes fertilization cannot occur.

Women around the world who have decided to use Smart Women's Choice are delighted with its effectiveness in preventing unwanted pregnancies and a total absence of ill side effects.

Smart Women's Choice has been selling for over three years with a terrific track record. More than 1,500 women have been using SWC with no pregnancies reported so far.

Pharmacist, nutritionist and author, Ross Pelton, RPh, CCN recommends Smart Women's Choice. "I have been a long-time supporter of women's health issues. One of my concerns is the side effects caused by birth control pills. Consequently, I authored 'The Pill Problem,' which teaches women how to prevent the side effects from birth control pills. A safe form of contraception for women would be of tremendous worldwide health benefit to women (and their spouses if women are avoiding the side effects of BC pills & IUDs). I am happy to report that a safe form of contraception for women has been developed. It is named Smart Women's Choice. It works by causing the entire ejaculate to coagulate. Thus, the sperm are prevented from traveling up the fallopian tubes where fertilization takes place. The coagulate exits the vagina at the end of the intercourse and then rinse with water. It is easy and pleasant to use."

How To Use Smart Women's Choice
Using it is as simple as one, two, three!

Step 1: Squeeze approximately one inch of Smart Women's Choice birth control gel onto your middle finger.

Step 2: Insert into the vagina immediately before having sex. It helps lubricate for comfort, too. If you have sex repeatedly in short succession, you have to reapply SWC every time.

Step 3: After completion, just rinse with water to restore the vagina to its normal acidity.

Women Deserve a Safe, Non-Hormonal Alternative!
Ever since the Pill was first released in 1960, it has been fraught with serious side effects. Some of them have even been fatal. Women were forced to make the difficult decision, Use the Pill or some other hormone-based contraception and take your chances with the many uncomfortable side-effects and potentially dangerous consequences or risk an unwanted pregnancy. It has taken almost 60 years to find a truly safe natural contraceptive. Dr. Francoise Farron, a fiercely determined woman, has been passionate about her mission to save the lives of women worldwide. After years of research, she has succeeded in bringing her vision of a truly safe and effective, non-hormonal contraceptive solution, called Smart Women's Choice, into the world. As usual, it takes a woman! To learn more go to smartwomenschoice.com.

As a medicine hunter, I seek natural, plant-based remedies of high value to health and help to make them more widely distributed and better known. My research generally takes place in faraway locales, ranging from Siberia to the South Pacific. In those areas I gain an understanding of traditional medicines, thanks to generous sharing of time and expertise on the part of local experts. Indigenous natives, harvesters, cultivators, herbal healers, traders, processors, botanists, chemists and physicians contribute to my understanding of a plant, its place in culture and its known health benefits. I have chronicled some of my work in various books, including Kava, Medicine Hunting In Paradise(Park Street Press), Tales From The Medicine Trail (Rodale) and Psyche Delicacies (Rodale). My book, Hot Plants (St. Martin's Press), focuses on my work with effective sex-enhancing botanicals around the world.

I envision a future era of health care, in which people come before profits and in which the U.S. embraces WHO's recommendation that each nation will create a category called traditional medicines. I envision a time when U.S. health officials will acknowledge the five billion people in the world who utilize plants as primary medicines. I imagine a future when the environment will be better preserved for its importance to planetary and human health, and as a source of as yet undiscovered medicines. And I imagine a time when the indigenous people who cultivate, harvest, collect and prepare the herbs we use will be paid fairly, and will share in the profits and technologies that arise with botanical success. I am committed to those outcomes.

In this article, I could tell you stories of various countries and plants. But I am choosing instead to focus an exciting new discovery, a plant whose folk name is LifeFlower, a true lifesaving botanical.

In the spring of 2003, I met a woman named Joy Pan, whose company Farlong holds the U.S. distribution rights for an extract of Lifeflower, Erigeron breviscapus, which is used in China to treat stroke patients. Joy provided me with a toxicity report, a positive mouse memory study, a positive human memory study, a group of study abstracts and results of an 18,000 patient study conducted in 21 Chinese hospitals showing that LifeFlower helps to restore muscular control and overall function in a high percentage of stroke patients.

The intriguing information suggested that LifeFlower might be one of those few Holy Grail plants, a true lifesaving remedy, of potential value to vast millions of people. In the U.S. alone, an estimated half million people suffer strokes annually, 30 percent of which result in death. If a plant demonstrated significant benefits against this killer, it would be a miracle medicine.

In the 1960s Chairman Mao Tse Tung made an appeal to the Chinese people to share any information they had on traditional medicines. An old traditional medicinal text entitled Dian Nong Ben Cao, published in the Han language, listed the use of Erigeron breviscapusfor stroke. Subsequent pharmacological investigation of the plant confirmed its uses in cerebrovascular therapy.

A Remarkable Plant
On July 4, 2002, the U.S. Patent Office granted a patent to Farlong International in California for a proprietary extract of Erigeron breviscapus and an active compound called breviscapinum. The patent cited the following findings: ". . .breviscapinum increases cerebral blood flow for significantly decreasing cerebrovascular resistance; raises permeability of blood brain barrier, increases nutritional blood flow of myocardium; raises immune function of body macrophage cell and counteraction against blood and oxygen depletion induced by hypophyseal pituitrin and thrombocyte agglutination induced by adenosine diphespate inhibiting internal thrombosis and promoting activity of cellulose dissolution; increases peripheral and coronary blood flow, effective for sequelas induced by cerebrovascular accident: palsy, coronary heart disease and angina pectoris."

Believing that LifeFlower warranted more investigation, I spoke with Joy, who arranged a trip to Yunnan, China, for me to see the LifeFlower situation for myself.

When I arrived in Kunming, the provincial capitol of Yunnan, I met with Joy and several other people who would be part of our group for the entire project. In the city of Gejiu we toured SuperTrack Bio-Pharmaceutical. Company executives showed us their manufacturing facility, where LifeFlower is transformed from a plant to an injectable dosage form designed to save lives. Each injectable ampule contains 10 milligrams of extract. The extraction and manufacturing are conducted under sterile pharmaceutical conditions, using highly sophisticated processing technology. The LifeFlower ampules are used in hospitals throughout the country to treat stroke patients. According to the leaders at SuperTrack, the plant is restoring many thousands of stroke patients back to healthy function.

SuperTrack also manufactures tablets of LifeFlower, each of which contains 20 milligrams of extract. The daily recommended dose is six tablets. A Mr. Jin told us, "The injection is for acute cases, but the tablet form is also highly beneficial to the brain."

LifeFlower Cultivation
Outside of Gejiu in Mile, we traveled roads that led us up into rough terrain and into progressively higher mountains. There our group toured a remarkably well-tended 3,000-acre LifeFlower plantation. Vast rows of the plant grew at the 2000-meter altitude, and the combination of altitude, moisture and just the right amount of sun kept them healthy. Most were without flowers, but in one section, a great many plants were in bloom. Thus we were able to see the plant, from the smallest specimens, to fully grown and in flower. Mr. Yu, a botanical specialist, told us that the plantation would be greatly expanded in that area. "We have worked very hard with LifeFlower. We know the conditions to grow the plant and what is needed to produce a healthy crop. This is going to be a very large agricultural product in this area."

LifeFlower is a small perennial plant with oval leaves about six inches in diameter, that lie close to the ground, with slender stalks and purple flowers. The plant grows wild in various regions of Yunnan. LifeFlower can grow between 1100-3500 meters, but grows best between 1700-2500 meters. The plant is sparse and over picking would surely endanger it.

"There are plans to grow 50,000 to 100,000 acres of LifeFlower in this region," Mr. Guan of SuperTrack explained. "And still, that will not be enough to meet the needs of all people who could benefit from this medicine." The plant is started from seed. After three months, seedlings are transplanted from shaded nurseries to larger fields. LifeFlower takes one year to mature. It is then harvested, dried and cleaned. After that, the plant undergoes a patented extraction process which yields breviscapinum, the agent believed to be responsible for its protective and healing activity. According to Mr. Guan, one acre of LifeFlower yields 150 kilograms of the dried plant. One hundred kilograms of the dried plant will yield only one kilogram of the final extract. One kilogram of extract will yield 100,000 injectable doses.

The Center of LifeFlower Research
In Kunming we made our way to the state-of-the-art Kunming Institute of Botany. There a large and dedicated team of scientists investigates the properties and uses of a plethora of beneficial plants. At the forefront of much of this research is Professor Han Dong Sun. Along with Deputy Director Li De Zhu, Professor Sun explained to us some of the Institute's findings on Erigeron breviscapus.

"This is a very important medicine," Professor Sun explained. "Erigeron breviscapus is highly beneficial in the treatment of cerebrovascular disease. The whole herb is used to treat a variety of paralysis and the problems that arise from that condition." Having worked on Erigeron breviscapus for over 10 years, Professor Sun is one of the best-informed people about the plant. He believes that though the agent breviscapinum may play a major role in the plant's activity, other synergistic compounds are highly important for maximum efficacy.

Professor Sun informed us that there is more science on the oral use of Erigeron breviscapus than on the injectable form. "Both forms of the plant extract are used in clinical settings," he explained. Professor Sun agreed that translation of Chinese findings is an essential next step to bring more complete information on this medicinal plant to the international research community.

Summing Up the Knowledge
In China, thousands of stroke patients each year are treated with LifeFlower, either in tablet or injectable form. According to the studies I have seen so far, treatment of paralysis due to stroke is at least somewhat successful in over 80 percent of cases. Even if positive results were half that, LifeFlower would still be a medical miracle.

The science on LifeFlower shows that the plant improves circulation in the brain and enhances cerebral function. Studies reveal that LifeFlower is a unique plant possessing protective and restorative properties. Considering the great number of people who need brain enhancement of these kinds, LifeFlower has the potential to become one of the most important and widely used plant-derived medicines of all time. Translation of existing science, plus expanding availability of this plant, may help to save many lives.