Shelves filled with local herbs from the Southern Arizona desert. Photo by Ashley Guttuso

You won’t find white lab coats, prescription pads, or even a pharmacy sign here.  Just shelves holding old mason jars filled with Siberian Ginseng, Sarsaparilla, Sassafras, Wild Cherry Bark, among an abundance of other herbs.

Tucson Herb Store owner Amanda Brown mixes up oils, herbs, and other native Southern Arizona plants for customers seeking an alternative to traditional, over-the-counter, and prescription medications.

“Some people are skeptical at first,” said Brown after she retold a story about a New Jersey couple that recently visited her shop.  Unaccustomed to natural healing methods from Southern Arizona’s local desert plants and flowers, the couple chose a few items to implement into their health care routine, a routine Brown said is a natural approach to health that treats what western medicine sometimes cannot.

“It’s a totally different lifestyle for some people who haven’t used herbal medicine before,” Brown said about the ancient tradition of herbalism, the study and use of medicinal properties of plants.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 48 percent of Americans use at least one prescription while 31 percent use two or more prescribed medications monthly.  These numbers have continued to rise steadily throughout the past ten years, according to the CDC.

With prescription drug use steadily rising along with costly health care, it’s no wonder more people are turning to alternative medical practices.

Arizona became the 48th state on Feb. 14, 1912, and is home to approximately 6,553,255 Southwest dwellers as of 2012. The Grand Canyon State lags behind the United States in many health indicators, most notably in high rates of childhood obesity and teen birth rates. Click on links and roll over the graphs below to…

April 22 was Earth Day. For some, this conjures fears of global warming, oil shortages and rising gas prices, threats that signal the impeding and almost certain death to gasoline-powered vehicles.

Automotive enthusiasts and consumers alike are shifting their priorities when shopping for cars, as demonstrated by the growing popularity of efficient and smaller models, alternative fuel and electric vehicles.

However, EV’s are not an easy sell. They carry a stigma of being slow with short ranges and limited practicality. To many, the idea of driving an EV has only ever been mildly appealing.

Coupled with arguments that EV’s take too long to charge, it is unlikely that the U.S. will reach the DOE’s goal of 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015.

There is hope for Arizonans, though.

Kari Schlachtenhaufen shows her new Model S to a curious bystander