The Acyclovir versus lemon balm debate: Cold sores vanquished

Our local doctor and I didn't get off to an easy start. He said he'd seen far too many "enthusiasts" who thought they could do without medicine and "just use herbs." He was besieged by middle-class mothers balking at immunizations.

And then there was the fact that I was about the strangest parent he'd met--legally blind, a foreigner and with two adopted kids of a background he considered at best "suspicious." He told me at one of our first meetings that I was the kind of person who would get reported to child protective services at the slightest provocation. But the only other local pediatrician had already thrown us out on even flimsier grounds, so I stuck it out.

But eight  years on, after many bumps and jolts we now have an exemplary relationship in which, if I need help, I call and he trusts my descriptions of symptoms over the phone, asks me to bring a child in or helps come up with a home solution. We brainstorm herbal medicines together when we can and I trust his recommendations when we have to use potentially harmful antibiotics.

Creative Commons image by Tristan Ferne of Flickr.com

This past spring there was a major outbreak of chicken pox in the local school. Czech doctors are not as quick to vaccinate against the disease as those in the US are now, claiming that the vaccine is low on effectiveness and high on unintended consequences. So, I set about researching chicken pox symptoms and discovered that one of my favorite herbs--lemon balm--can help to mitigate the symptoms.

When I was sure that my children had been exposed to chicken pox by paying sympathy visits to the sick, I started giving them lemon balm syrup in hopes that they would not have to suffer with too many blisters. And then my kids were the only ones in their classes who didn't get chicken pox.

The next time I talked to the doctor, I thought back on our first meetings and had to smile. He leaned eagerly across the desk, swapping information about medical trials with lemon balm. He was as curious as I was. 

Did we actually fight off chicken pox with lemon balm syrup? Given the research, it seems at least possible. But there are plenty of other possibilities. The children may already be immune one way or another. And sometimes you just get lucky--or unlucky if you actually wanted your children to get chicken pox over with in cool weather.

I told the doc how I have used lemon balm salve to deal with herpes cold sores for years and found that it is just as effective as the antiviral drug Acyclovir.

"I've concluded that it is actually more effective," he said. "And Acyclovir has so many side effects. If you know how to use lemon balm correctly, that's superior."

Lemon balm was long thought to be a very mild herb, used as an anti-anxiety tea. But then a German medical trial in 1999 showed that a cream made with dried lemon balm extract could significantly improve cold-sore symptoms and increase blister-free intervals.

Dried extract may be more easily quantified, stored and sold commercially, but it is far less effective than fresh and otherwise minimally processed plants. I have found that lemon balm salve made with fresh leaves and olive oil doesn't just improve cold-sore symptoms, it can essentially vanquish them, driving the herpes virus into a decade or more retreat. After suffering from many cold sores in my twenties, I haven't had a full blown one in ten years and only even had the mild beginnings of a sore, when I neglected to use lemon balm salve at the first sign of a potential flare up. 

Over the past two decades new research has confirmed and expanded upon the original studies, showing lemon balm to be an exceptionally powerful antiviral medicine. When even my conservative local doctor, who didn't used to like "herbal frippery," sings its praises and denigrates Acyclovir, I'd say the jury is in. 

For a salve recipe that can be used to make lemon balm salve for cold sores and chicken pox blisters click here.

For a more detailed discussion of lemon balm's herpes-fighting capabilities click here.

For more lemon balm recipes (including delicious popsicles) and uses in treating strep throat, anxiety and insomnia click here.

Feverfew: A tenacious friend to guard against migraines

The first thing I noticed about feverfew is that it is one tough plant. I planted feverfew in a pot early on in my gardening adventures, partly because the flowers are known to repel wasps and we were having a problem with wasps invading the back veranda where we like to sit. 

Unfortunately for the feverfew, I was not a very good gardener all those years ago and because this pot was by the picnic table, away from all the other beds and plants, I often forgot to water it for weeks at a time. It was under the veranda roof, so this was really a problem. It lookedcompletely dried up several times, and I thought it was dead. Then my toddler children over-watered it on many other occasions, drowned it in mud, dug its roots out and tipped it over. 

Creative Commons image by  Swallowtail Garden Seeds

Twelve years on, the feverfew is still alive. 

It does have some ability to dissuade wasps from congregating, but only if you take care of it well enough to allow it to make flowers. The more flowers the better, when it comes to repelling wasps. They have a bitter smell. 

Relief for those suffering from migraines

However, the real gold in feverfew is in its ability to prevent and subdue migraine headaches. While the name of the plant suggests it as a treatment for fevers and it has been used that way historically, modern medical studies have proven its worth specifically in treating migraines. In Canada, the use of feverfew to treat migraines has been legally recognized. 

The flowers and leaves of feverfew can be collected and dried, powdered and put into gel capsules for natural headache pills or the fresh leaves and flowers can be tinctured in 40 percent alcohol. The dried-leaf capsules will only have full potency for a few months, so if you can tolerate a small amount of alcohol, tincture may be the better option. 

The short shelf-life is also a good reason to grow your own or find feverfew locally. It will not stand up well to industrial processing or the length of time necessary to distribute commercial capsules, so supplements with feverfew may not be as effective.

Creative Commons image by Graibeard of flickr.com

Warnings

There is one consistent warning given about feverfew. Chewing the fresh unprocessed leaves may result in mouth sores or loss of taste. It has a pungent and bitter taste that is not particularly pleasant, so I don't really recommend it. I did once chew a leaf as a test and suffered no strange effects, but people with greater sensitivity may well suffer from sores and the taste doesn't help matters.

I have found no report that tea from feverfew leaves or syrup made from an infusion would be likely to cause sores, but the taste is so repulsive that I doubt either would be a popular remedy. 

Other uses

Feverfew is also still used to treat fevers, irregular menstruation, colds and sometimes infertility, but these uses have not been studied in modern times and documentation of their traditional use is sparse. Given that there are usually more well-known herbal alternatives for these issues, I generally use feverfew only for headaches. 

Standard dosages

Studies have shown feverfew to be safe if 50-150 mg of leaf powder is taken daily for less than four months. Longer use has not been studied. These dosages are standard and individual reaction and individual plants may vary widely. This isn't specific medical advice and consultation with professionals as well as careful self-observation is recommended.

Feverfew is a tenacious herb and a steadfast friend when you the world is too much for you.

Linden: Golden comfort in myth and medicine

As a child my heart was captured by the songs and poems in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Creative Commons image by Bixentro of Flickr. com

I learned by heart the song Legolas sings of Nimrodel and I wondered over the light leaves of linden, which I imagined to be a mythical tree of Middle Earth, since there were no such trees in the semi-desert where I grew up.

When Galadriel sings of an eternal golden tree in the land across the sea, I thought this too must be the linden, so often referred to as golden by Tolkien. 

As a young adult, I was delighted to find that linden trees are real, though sometimes called lime trees in the US. They don't bear limes and I assume there are also lime trees of a completely different sort that do. And while linden trees have a stately and magical beauty to them, they are not usually golden. They turn bright yellow in the fall.

Creative Commons image by  Alexis Lê-Quôc

Yet they also turn gold for a brief moment in the late spring, or early summer. The tree gives an impression of burnished gold for the week or so when the blossoms are in full bloom and the tree is surrounded by an ecstatic cloud of honey bees--and often as not an herbalist or two.

Tea made from linden flowers and leaves is so widely accepted as a cold and cough remedy in Central Europe that even the most medical-model doctors may suggest it. Linden tea is very pleasant and a light, pretty yellow in color. It can be a great comfort for anyone with an upper respiratory infection. It loosens phlegm so that it is easier to expel. 

The tea can also be used to help with insomnia and migraines. In some situations it has been used to help with certain circulatory problems, including high blood pressure and rapid heartbeat, but it should be noted that there is an unconfirmed suspicion that it may exacerbate preexisting heart disease if drunk too often. 

Creative Commons image by CameliaTWU of Flickr.com

Linden is said to ward off bad luck and it is holy to Slavic peoples. It was often planted in town centers centuries ago in western Slavic countries and even in Germany. It's a national symbol of the Czech Republic as well as of Slovakia and Slovenia.

The wood of the linden tree is very fine grained so it can be sanded exceptionally smooth. It also resists warping once cured and it is relatively soft for a hardwood. This has led to its use as a carving wood for statues, musical instruments and barrels throughout the centuries.

In Lithuania women prayed to a goddess of the linden tree called Laima. Even the seeds of the tree are treated with respect and once they were spoken to as if they were human.

For me linden symbolizes my new land across the sea and the changes that have made me part of this country. It does not grow in the dry land of harsh and expansive beauty that I left behind. I have planted a linden tree at the top of my property here in this softer, smaller land. Now I wait for the day when it will bear flowers. It can take as long as fifteen years for the tree's first flowers. No wonder it is a tree marking the deep roots of people in a place. These things take time.

A faith I can see and touch

My new ESL student walks in and he's gigantic, even taller than my 6'6'' dad. He's a Czech military medical doctor and an expert on Ebola and other nasty stuff. His desire for absolutely perfect English is rivaled by few.

He's usually both tough and cheery, but on his second visit, he admitted that he had a bit of a toothache. It was making it difficult to concentrate, but he said he didn't want painkillers.

So, I cautiously mentioned my work with herbs. We had a surprisingly frank conversation about the doctor-herbalist divide. He said he resents herbal hype by supplement advertisers. I agreed that the hype is problematic and that most "supplements" are of poor quality and ineffective, explaining that fresh, local and minimally processed herbs are much more useful. 

Creative Commons image by Latisha of Flickr.com

"The important thing to me is that we see modern medicine as the primary health care and herbs and other alternatives as secondary," he said. We discussed the placement of the English article in that sentence--which is surprisingly complicated, if you get right down to it.

Then I went so far as to agree that while I use homegrown herbs for 90 percent of my family's health needs, I'm very glad for modern medicine when we really need it, such as the occasional lifesaving antibiotic or surgery.

He laughed and agreed to drink some herbal tea for his toothache. Every lesson since then he has wanted more herbal tea, even though his toothache is gone.

That discussion ended well, but his statement about primary and secondary health care stuck with me. I mulled it over for a few days, and realized that I actually disagree with that premise.

Homegrown herbs are definitely our first line of defense in health issues. Our doctor and pediatrician almost never see us and that is a good thing. It shows that we're doing something right.

During the late winter this year a series of particularly nasty viral infections swept through the local schools. Every family we know succumbed--whole groups of friends usually taking ill at once.

With a feeling of grim resignation, I dosed my children with a syrup made out of sweet glycerin, echinacea flowers and lemon balm leaves from our garden--a non-alcoholic substitute for antiviral tincture. I figured that with some advance preparation, our symptoms might at least be somewhat mitigated. 

I never thought we would escape the epidemic entirely, while everyone else I spoke with was in bed for at least ten days and two of my friends' children had to be hospitalized with opportunistic pneumonia. But the frigid, gray end of winter finally gave way to a wet and chilly spring and now the sun has come in earnest, drying out the sickness and leaving us unscathed. 

When this sort of thing happens, we never know for sure if our herbal concoctions have saved us or if it is more a combination of luck and eating vastly more vegetables than the rest of the town.

This was the first year in four that we didn't fall to the viral epidemic of the winter and also the first year I had been able to make the antiviral glycerate. Cake-decorator's glycerin is a strangely controlled substance by local pharmaceutical regulations.

So I don't exactly have proof that my herbal antiviral concoction was what saved us, but I have enough evidence to enthusiastically try it again. 

In many other situations the results are so obvious that denying them is ridiculous. Even my children know that a paste of plantain leaf will almost instantly relieve the pain of bee and wasp stings, nettle tea will immediately wash away the burning of an allergic reaction to nettles and a cough syrup of honey, plantain, thyme and mullein will quiet relentless hacking. They've seen it happen again and again.

Sometimes the same results can be had with a white, pink or colorless substance from the pharmacy in town. But too often for comfort, those substances are ineffective or cause nasty side effects.  

I take yarrow tincture just as any woman would take pain-killers for particularly bad cramps. It is as easy as popping a pill and results in no follow-up headaches. 

When my daughter caught a very unpleasant skin parasite from dangling her arms in a murky pond last summer, the local pediatrician spent six weeks proscribing medicated creams and harsh disinfectants. I am not used to skin ailments that don't quickly bow to my herbal salves, so I carefully followed the doctor's instructions. 

Finally, in despair because the weeping sores on my first-grader's arms showed no improvement either with herbal salves or the latest in pharmaceuticals, I cut large slabs of goo off of the aloe vera plant that sat mostly forgotten in our living room and mercilessly taped them on every single sore.

Then I covered the child's entire arms with bandages each night. After a week, the infection was gone. And though the aloe vera plant had been reduced to a nub, it has now rebounded to three times its former glory in time for another summer of wild children. 

The military doctor is unimpressed and calls my observations, "anecdotal." I agree that I love scientific studies--like those that have greatly advanced the use of lemon balm as an antiviral in recent years. 

"You just have faith in herbs?" he asks in what appears to be genuine curiosity.

If you want to call it that. My faith doesn't have to be "pure" and unquestioning.  I do have trust. It's a faith I can see and touch. 

A candle in the frost

Most evenings I teach English as a second language in order to stretch the family budget a bit. The lessons are based on the same principle as my blogs and newsletter. A cup of tea and some food for the soul are crucial. 

One class has been going on for seven years at a local community center. It's a small group of women who meet every week for tea and conversation with my interjections on grammar for spice. And this is by no means a group of only  young ambitious women. Our elder is seventy-three and she's the only one who consistently does her homework. 

A couple of weeks ago a hard frost came through in mid-April and killed just about everyone's tomato and cucumber starts. Only the eldest was spared.

She hunkered over her notebook filled with carefully noted English sentences and fairly cackled with delight, "Too early for seedlings last week. Now I'll put them out and then when the last frost comes with the three frozen men, I put a candle in the greenhouse. That will keep them snug. Just a little candle."

I had fared better than most because I hadn't had time to put out all of my seedlings yet. But by the first week in May I had to plant them. And I thought they would be fine. The weather had obviously turned to late spring with grass shooting up and everything starting to bloom.

But then out of the north it came--a huge storm of rain and sleet. We were on a bike ride with friends at the time and expected only a little spring shower. We stashed our bikes beneath an awning and took shelter in a restaurant for soup and hot chocolate. But then we watched with trepidation as a deluge flooded the road. Sleet fell white amid the pouring rain.

And the air behind the cloud bank was ice cold. For three days it stayed and I learned this is what the old-timers here call "the three frozen men." There are always three days in May when a wall of Arctic air comes down to destroy crops and cripple orchards in Central Europe. It often falls on the days named after the Czech saints Pankrác, Servác and Bonifác--three grim old men with severe faces.

I hurried to cover my tender squash seedlings that evening. But my greatest fear was for the tomatoes and peppers in a small greenhouse. It isn't just frost they won't tolerate but anything close to it. 

Feeling a bit like I was reenacting a folk superstition, I took a candle and a prayer to the greenhouse late in the evening under the light of the full moon--now shining in a clear, frosty sky. My breath froze in silver clouds as I stepped inside. The frost was already creeping in.

The next morning I woke up to a world gone unseasonably white. The blossoming plum trees were coated in ice. The grass was crunchy under foot. Even the soil had frozen half an inch deep. According to local measurements, the frost had lasted at least 6 hours throughout the night. It was much harder than I'd expected.

Some of the covered plants suffered frostbite. Anything vulnerable that wasn't covered was entirely gone. But the peppers and tomatoes were fine with the candle still burning in the dawn--a tiny flame but just enough to keep the frost at bay.

I look forward to going back to the tea-and-chat circle next week to compare notes and tell how it really is the case that we need the wisdom of old-timers.

In hunter-gatherer societies and even in the days when most people lived through farming, elders and their experience had a crucial place for precisely this reason. But today with chemicals and technology so much has changed that it's hard to remember to listen.

Yet these are the days when a frost of another kind is coming down--the chill of authoritarianism and xenophobia. There are signs from all sides that times will be hard. 

For me this is a timely reminder to pay attention to those with long experience. And to simply listen to long-burning candles in the frost.