Herbs to help you breeze through cold season: Home Medicine Cycle 28

In many places winter is already coming on. The weather is wet, cold and grayish. The season brings plenty of physical problems - from driving conditions to cutting wood - and then there is the chaos around family holidays. The last thing you need is a cold. 

It may not be the worst illness to have, but unlike a lot of illnesses you usually don't get to stay home in bed and watch reruns when you have a cold. You just feel worse, have less energy and have to deal with a runny nose, headaches, a sore throat and some coughing, while doing all the other things you normally do.  That make colds highly unpleasant and the lack of rest makes them hang on for weeks sometimes. 

One of the first things to do in cold season is to make sure you're getting enough rest and fresh air. Both will help to prevent and cure colds. Rest is the most important component of any strategy to boost your immune system and fresh outside air doesn't carry viruses as well as the air in buildings full of people. If the weather is actually freezing, your risk of catching a cold can go way down if you bundle up warmly and spend at least an hour outside each day. Viruses don't do well with frost. 

That said many of us live in climates where several months out of the year are more dank, cold and rainy than frosty and viruses love this weather. Beyond that, if you work or study in a crowded environment, your immune system would have to be spectacular to avoid the latest cold virus going around. So the chances are that most of us will get a cold at some point. 

Image by Arie Farnam

If you use pharmaceuticals to beat back the symptoms you will often prolong the cold and while your nose may not run, you will still have less energy. That will often cause you to drink more caffeinated drinks and that will disturb your sleep. And less sleep will mean more colds.

Beyond that, synthetic medicines often suppress the immune system over the long term and have other systemic side effects that aren't listed officially because they are caused by the overall intake of pharmaceuticals rather than by one specific drug. Colds are one area in which you can use herbs very effectively and thus reduce the need for harmful pharmaceuticals. 

Here are the basic steps to using herbs to deal with colds:

Prevention

The primary preventative herb today is still Echinacea. It stimulates white blood cells, which make up the best-understood part of the immune system. It also includes virus-fighting substances and boosts the ability of immune cells to engulf and destroy invaders. 

There is controversy in medical circles about Echinacea largely because there have been some studies conducted using commercially available pellets of freeze-dried Echinacea juice, which showed that the pellets were not very effective in preventing colds. There are studies showing the effectiveness of Echinacea in other forms, however. I took those freeze-dried pellets for a few years because I was traveling and I hoped to get some herbal medicine even when I couldn't grow my own or brew concoctions. And I have to say that I didn't notice any dramatic effect by taking the expensive Echinacea pills. Combine that with the problem that many commercially available Echinacea "supplements" contain only a tiny percentage of actual Echinacea (and sometimes none at all) when they are subjected to lab tests and you could become very skeptical about this herb.

However, none of these facts have any real bearing on the herb itself. Poor use of an herb doesn't make the herb itself ineffective. 

Image by Arie Farnam

The best way to use Echinacea is to grow your own or find a local supplier of fresh or freshly dried herbs. Then use dried Echinacea flowers (stored in an air-tight, non-metallic container) as a cold prevention tea for children and adults. It has a very pleasant, almost spicy taste reminiscent of the smell of bee hives.

For adults, Echinacea tincture is also excellent. It's best taken as needed the moment you notice a tingling of a cold in your throat or nose. I personally prefer Echinacea flower tincture and have found it most effective in cold prevention. If I can take a large spoonful of Echinacea flower tincture within an hour or two of the first signs of a cold or when other people around me have colds, I almost never end up with a real cold and if I don't take it my immunity to colds is not very good.  Here is a basic recipe for tincture.

I have read that many herbalists prefer Echinacea root tincture. However, in order to make a tincture with enough potency they must use several batches of Echinacea root for each batch of alcohol. This means soaking finely chopped roots in alcohol, then straining the alcohol after a few weeks and pouring it over another bunch of roots for several more weeks and repeating the process at least three times. The process is complicated but the results may be even better than Echinacea flower tincture. 

Echinacea works best if taken at specific times when immune support is needed. The immune system may become too accustomed to that support if it' s taken constantly. I use Echinacea flower tea when flu and cold season is in full swing on a regular basis and take Echinacea tincture as needed within hours when I can feel something coming on.

Treatment 

Even herbs don't provide an actual cure for colds. Once you have a cold, rest is the closest thing to a cure and often rest is hard to come by. Most herbs for colds treat specific symptoms and you can choose the best ones based on the symptoms you have. Treating symptoms is far from useless when it comes to curing a cold because many cold systems will interrupt your sleep and sleep is key.

Image by Arie Farnam

One general anti-viral herb to take after a cold has set in is St. John's wart. St. John's wart helps to fight a wide range of viruses and it gives the body energy needed in fighting an infection.

There is a myth that one should stop taking Echinacea once a cold has set in. I have found that this is bad advice. First of all your immune system doesn't just prevent infections, it also fights ongoing infections. So, the need for the immune support of Echinacea doesn't end simply because the cold temporarily got the upper hand. I have also experienced long-term colds and coughs that hung on tenaciously and would only recede when i took Echinacea tincture each day and for several days AFTER the symptoms disappeared. I stopped several times once the symptoms had disappeared and the infection returned, until I had the discipline to continue taking Echinacea tincture daily until about a week after the symptoms had cleared up. This has happened to me enough times that I consider it to be a pattern.

Herbs high in vitamin C are also good for general treatment. Rose hip tea and even more so buck thorn syrup  contain vitamin C (as does homemade sauerkraut).

Treating congestion

Now we get into the nitty gritty of treating specific symptoms.

One of the best herbs for treating the congestion that comes with a common cold is elder, particularly the flowers. My family uses dried elder flowers for tea (which is quite pleasant). And the adults use elder flower tincture as a powerful decongestant. If you do have to continue working when you have a cold, elder flower tincture is essential. It will clear out congestion as effectively as many pharmaceutical cold medicines but without the negative health effects associated with those. 

If you don't pick all the elder flowers off of your local elder bushes in June, you can also make a syrup from the elder berries themselves. This contains many of the properties of the flowers plus vitamins that are helpful for recovering from colds.

Another way to deal with stubborn congestion is to put a drop of thyme or eucalyptus essential oil and a few table spoons of salt into a bowl of hot water and breathe in the steam from it. You can put a towel over your head to catch the steam and clear out built up congestion that keeps the infection inside and interferes with rest.

Treating sore throats 

Lemon balm leaves and linden flowers are both excellent for treating sore throats. Lemon balm has been recently found to specifically fight the bacteria that cause strep throat. This is essential when you have a cold because while a cold is minor by itself it will often weaken the body and allow a bacterial infection to set in. I drink lemon balm even if I don't have a sore throat with a cold in order to prevent strep. Making lemon balm syrup (with this recipe) is one excellent way to combat sore throats.

Raw honey is also good for a sore throat. Gargling with salt water or a bit of propolis tincture diluted in water are also useful methods. You can even chew a piece of propolis if you don't have propolis tincture although it will temporarily stain your teeth bright yellow. 

Treating coughs

I covered the treatment of coughs in another post which you can find here. In brief, the best herbs I have found for coughs are thyme, mullein, marshmallow, longwort and plantain. 

I love hearing about your experiences with herbs. Let's have some discussion on what really works in the comments section below.

If it works it works - the controversy over Echinacea: Home Medicine Cycle 21

I had a fight with a doctor friend about Echinacea.  My family has used  Echinacea for cold and flu prevention and early treatment for decades. I now grow it in my garden. (It was very hard to start but it's pretty and stalwart once started.) But my friend who's a doctor insisted that clinical trials have shown it to be ineffective medicinally.

Creative Commons image by Arie Farnam

I looked into the studies on Echinacea and it is true that the more widely publicized studies on the plant are disappointing. If they show any medicinal benefit it is minimal. I was confused because I've had good results with Echinacea tincture. So I looked closer. What I found was that all eight of the studies cited in my friend's medical database were run exactly the same way. They all used  freeze-dried echinacea juice to treat acute upper respiratory infections (essentially colds). The age and processing of the Echinacea was not specified beyond that description. It occurred to me that it was odd that the medical establishment had not considered using Echinacea the way herbalists do--as either tea or tincture.

I can't run a large study myself but I pay close attention to the effects of medicinals I use for my family. And over the years I have seen that Echinacea tincture usually reduces the symptoms of coughs and colds within twenty-four hours. The past few years have brought some terrible flus and coughs that had us and our neighbors hacking away for weeks or even months. I am not particularly susceptible to coughs, but even I succumbed several times. Each time I started taking large doses of Echinacea tincture and the cough improved for several days, at which point I forgot to take the tincture, because I thought the infection had passed. Then the cough invariably came back. It only stayed away if I took Echinacea for four to five days after the symptoms had cleared as well as during the illness. 

It was a hard lesson but over three winters, I have learned. Homemade Echinacea tincture will work for some stubborn upper respiratory infections (both viral and bacterial), but you have to take it and keep taking it for several days after symptoms have disappeared. I have yet to find another herb or medicine that works as reliably when it comes to acute respiratory infections. It also appears to help in prevention of colds or in mitigation of the symptoms if you take it when you are surrounded by people with colds or just feel the first signs that you may have caught something.

Through further research, I have found that there are actually more studies that show that what I observe with Echinacea is clinically proven. But for whatever reason, these positive studies are not as well publicized. A meta-analysis of many studies shows that most studies do in fact show a benefit from consuming Echinacea for prevention and treatment of upper respiratory illnesses. Another study showed that Echinacea is effective in mitigating chronic autoimmune disease in mice and other trials showed that Echinacea improves the modulation of the human immune system by affecting gene expression.

Some studies use air-dried Echinacea tea for treating upper respiratory illnesses, instead of tincture and their results are okay but not spectacular. One trial used Echinacea tincture and had better results, but it was in an vitro trial, rather than one using actual people, which makes it more difficult to gauge exact results in practice. 

My thoughts looking at all of these results are that Echinacea is sensitive to processing, storage, heat and light. The best way to preserve Echinacea is in the form of an alcoholic tincture. Recovering alcoholics and children should not use such tinctures and can either use a tea or an extract in edible glycerin.

Tincture made from fresh Echinacea flowers has a good effect in boosting the immune system and in fighting both viral and bacterial infections. Tincture made from Echinacea roots can be made to be even stronger, but it requires several batches of root to be soaked in the same alcohol. Most purchased Echinacea tincture is made from a single soaking of roots and it is too weak. Homemade tinctures made with fresh flowers or roots and kept strictly away from light and heat will work best.

Dried Echinacea flowers make a nice tea for children to prevent colds and coughs in the winter, but this is also best made with local or homegrown flowers because after about nine months the flowers will lose potency. The tea has to be sealed in an airtight container, preferably ceramic or glass and kept away from light. Teas bought in stores are often in light plastic that isn't really airtight and they sit out in the light for days or weeks before sale.

The capsules of freeze-dried Echinacea juice sold in just about every health food and herbal shop in the western hemisphere are largely ineffective. Some consumer studies have shown that many "health food" products that claim to be made from Echinacea don't actually contain any molecules of the plant. (This was a fact helpfully pointed out and documented by my friend the doctor.) 

The bottom line: Echinacea is a beneficial but sensitive herb for immune support and fighting respiratory illness, which needs to be processed locally, grown at home or obtained from trusted sources. 

I will continue to use Echinacea for my family. Safety trials have shown that it is safe, even during pregnancy and breastfeeding .

The controversy over the effectiveness of Echinacea in treating the common cold is much more indicative of the difficulty of studying colds than any problem with Echinacea. Colds are usually short-term and difficult to pinpoint in source, type and length. That has always made studying these illnesses difficult. It is even relatively difficult to observe individual cases. Many pharmaceutical cold medicines have similarly mixed results in clinical trials. So, the results aren't as dramatic here as with some of the other herbal remedies I use, but Echinacea is at least as effective as pharmaceutical medicines for colds and it's probably safer. Rest and warmth also remain crucial treatments for the common cold.

Feel free to add your comments below. Ask questions and discuss. Also please keep in mind that this doesn't constitute medical advice for a specific person and I'm not your doctor. Home medicine information is intended to be used with common sense and in consultation with doctors and professional herbalists who can see you personally.

Time to harvest a power herb to fight coughs: Home Medicine Cycle 14

My husband grew up with two chain smokers in the house, and then he lived in a Eastern European metropolis heated by coal in a particularly smoggy hollow for another ten years. He drives a lot on clogged freeways for his job as a surveyor. Of course, he has a chronic cough.

Common Thyme flowers - Creative Commons image by Magnus Manske

He's been to a string of specialists. He's had his share of infections and sometimes it takes antibiotics to clear up the infections, but for the first six or seven years we lived together he always had a chronic cough from October to April. He'd get tested and often as not he was told that there was no infection detected.

"You're airways are just oversensitive," the specialists said. They gave him synthetic pharmaceuticals and none of them helped appreciably. 

Yes, this is another one of those stories. It is worth noting how many times herbal medicinals work in precisely those areas where modern pharmaceutical medicine is weakest - immunological issues, chronic disease and systemic health problems. It is not so much a question of which type of medicine is "better," but a question of informed choice and using both pharmaceutical and herbal medicine to compliment each other. 

In this case, I didn't immediately try my own home herbs. I was a beginning herbalist at that time (about ten years ago) and I didn't have enough confidence in my own local herbs. I assumed that cures to big problems had to come from rare and powerful sources. So, after we had been through the wringer of mainstream medicine, we went to a professional herbalist. He suggested one extremely expensive herbal product and then another. The second one was the magic bullet.

It was an Ayurvedic mix of exotic herbs in capsule form from a foreign company. It had a hefty price tag, but it worked. If he took it for several weeks, the cough subsided. When he stopped taking it, the cough returned. It wasn't coincidence. For two winters my husband kept his chronic cough at bay with this mixture... and then the company stopped exporting to our country. 

I spent a small fortune finding and ordering the product abroad one year, but by then I had become a bit more skilled in herbs and I started to wonder if I might be able to come up with a formula of local herbs that would work. I had noticed that my husband's cough responded a bit to thyme tea, so I started giving him doses of thyme tincture every day. I added various other herbs to this (including plantain, ground ivy, marshmallow and mullein). After a few months, I hit on something that worked in his particular case - a combination of thyme and mullein tinctures. 

Wild Thyme flowers - image by Summi of German Wikipedia with GNU Free Documentation License

The lesson in this experiment is much bigger than the fact that thyme and mullein are generally good for chronic coughs. Every individual is different and the underlying causes are varied. So, it may not always work the same. The greater lesson is that you can often find a local source of herbs that are much fresher, safer and less expensive than the herbs sold in shops. A good professional herbalist can also help with this. I don't trust "professional herbalists" who will only sell you expensive formulas rather than consult with you and help you figure out which herbs you can grow yourself.

You do need time and patience to test out various combinations like this. And in most cases, you need to remember to take herbal medicinals consistently, according to the schedule for that particular herb. My husband's chronic cough has come back at times - always when he neglected to take the tinctures. And once started it takes as long as a month to go away again after he resumes taking the herbs. 

Still, this was also the case that has proved the extraordinary power of thyme to us. GreenMed Info reports 25 studies indicating the therapeutic value of thyme in treating bronchitis. We use thyme for other things as well - in tinctures, salves and teas.

Thyme is one of the herbs most widely used in pharmaceuticals in Europe, so here at least there is a blurred line between synthetic and herbal medicine. I am still convinced that fresh, homegrown thyme is far superior for medicinal use.

In the Czech language the common name for wild thyme translates as "mother's soul." Some people find the smell of thyme unpleasant or even just too intense, but my family loves it, especially the purple wild thyme. Thyme is one of my favorite teas and we rarely have enough to be able to just drink it for the enjoyment of it. I have to save it for my husband, so I only drink thyme tea when I'm truly sick and then I really enjoy it. Thyme tea is good for coughs, sniffles and sore throats as well as aches and pains.

Thyme makes a good tincture (see the recipe here), which is useful for:

• Chronic coughs and bronchitis
• A pain killer for menstrual cramps (Here's a study on this one. It appears to mention consuming highly diluted essential oil internally. But that is never a good idea outside of a doctor's supervision. Essential oils, particularly those of intense herbs like thyme, can be very dangerous and even fatal when taken internally. I suggest using tincture instead.)

Bundle of thyme - public domain image

Thyme infused oil (recipe here) is one of the best oils to use in making a salve for cuts and scrapes because it is mildly disinfectant. There are studies showing the antibiotic action of thyme and its constituents in laboratory tests, which may account for how helpful thyme is in salve. 

It is useful to note that when gathering thyme the most potent part of the upper plant is the flower. We always gather our thyme when it is flowering. Sometimes we get two cuttings. My favorite type of thyme is the creeping wild variety with purple flowers. Some herbalists believe the common white-flowered variety is stronger and I haven't had enough experience to compare directly. The common thyme tends to have a somewhat less inviting smell for tea, but may be actually somewhat more effective in disinfectant salve.

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Note: This does not constitute medical advice for a specific person with a specific problem. We are all individuals and I'm not a doctor who can prescribe treatments for you personally. 

Amid the glory of early summer, have a care for the winter cold: Home Medicine Cycle 11

The Home Medicine Cycle isn't just a collection of herbal remedies. And it certainly isn't a shopping list. I started with and continually find myself returning to the key element in this practice of "taking back your health." That is growing or gathering and making your own herbal medicines. 

Why grow or gather your own?

1. The fresher the herbs the more medicinally potent they are.
2. You know where you got them and have at least a chance to ensure they aren't full of pesticides or heavy metals pollution. 
3. You can keep processing to a minimum to preserve the medicinal potency.
4. You know every ingredient and screen out allergens. 
5. The process of growing and making your own medicinals is a powerful way to connect you to natural rhythms and the earth.
6. Some herbal medicinals are specifically more effective if they are locally grown.
7. You can be a part of local, sustainable habitat and community development.

Elderflower - Creative commons image by J. M. Garg

This week I have an herbal tip that is often easy to gather and you may not need to grow it. It is also a perfect example of an herb that will root you in natural rhythms and cycles of the earth and sun. That's elder flowers.

I know you can make elderberry wine and syrup later in the season and these have their own medicinal qualities and significant vitamin content. But I want to spotlight elder flowers because they bloom for only two or three short weeks each year in May or June, depending on where you live. And they are so essential to the home medicine cabinet.

The primary way we use elder flowers is in tinctures and teas to treat colds, sniffles and sinus problems. Elder flower is the single most effective herbal cold medicine I know of and it often works almost uncannily well, drying up serious congestion in a couple of hours with the rapidity usually reserved for unhealthy pharmaceuticals that block the body's production of mucus. Elder flower has a much gentler mechanism with better long-term effects. Sometimes it isn't as dramatic but it should be helpful with colds and sinus problems unless you are actually allergic to elder flower pollen.

Elder flower - Creative commons image by Kurt Stuber

Some people are allergic, so I recommend caution if you suffer from pollen allergies. I do know people who actually treat pollen allergies with elder flower tincture effectively, but due to their allergies they have to have a friend or family member process the elder flower for them and make it into a tincture with all the pollen and petals filtered out. This is likely to be one case in which the local origin of the herb will be an aid in allergy mitigation. 

Here is a link to the instructions on tincture making. You can use that recipe to make elder flower tincture and bottle a little bit of the June sunshine for next fall and winter when the inevitable sniffles will come around. 

I also recommend drying some elder flower blossoms for tea. The flower can be very effective for children too, but it can be difficult to give children tincture without exposing them to alcohol. 

Elder flower - Creative commons image by Hardyplants at Wikipedia

It may be difficult to get motivated to go out and search for elder flower to treat colds that are unlikely to strike for another six months. This is why it's such a good herb to connect us with natural rhythms and remind us that we are in the cycle of the earth's seasons. Now is the time for gathering and producing food and herbs. The time of need will come soon enough.

Wild elder trees often  grow in empty lots and on the edges of towns in thick bushy clumps, Look for elder flowers in areas that aren't sprayed with pesticides on vacant land or along the edges of forests.

However, if you need a little added motivation, there are ways to make elder flower into a delicious and healthy summer drink, in fact an excellent replacement for pop and other over-sweetened drinks. I posted this recipe last year. Look here for the post on how to make a delicious drink concentrate with elder flowers.