Ginger - the great protector and comforter: Home Medicine Cycle 30

It can feel like a hostile world out there. It seems like every other day that I read about a new substance, product or pollutant that threatens my family with cancer, toxicity or liver damage. Gone are the days when I drank water from free-flowing streams as a child and ate wilderness snow without fear. From packaged foods to pharmaceutical (some of them very necessary) to  the very air we can't help but breathe, carcinogens and toxins are everywhere. 

Ginger root - Creative Commons image by  Andrés Monroy-Hernández 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you had a strong and comforting defender that could protect you and your family from many of these hazards. Research is showing that you might have just such a friend, and unlike so many herbs I feature here, this is one you can buy fresh at most grocery stores. 

Ginger.

That's right. The knobbly root that you may have overlooked as a nice spice, tea or at most an addition to Tai soup has some serious defending and comforting powers. Not all of the uses are fully understood yet and the research is ongoing. But there are a couple of things you can be sure of.

Ginger's easy and proven home remedies extend to: 

Fresh ginger and lemon tea - Creative Commons image by Jacqueline of Flickr.com

• Ginger tea for coughs, colds and flu: I used to think I just loved the taste and warming feel of ginger when I had a cold or the flu. As it turns out ginger also eases coughs and fights many respiratory viruses. Not only is ginger tea (made by grating fresh ginger root into a cup of hot water) a good idea (and delicious) for coughs and colds, ginger syrup and even tincture can help too.
• Ginger syrup, ginger candy or fresh ginger root as a food for stomach troubles and nausea: Ginger is most famous among herbalists for being a nausea calmer.As the results of scientific studies come in, we are finding out that it isn't just nausea it helps with. It helps to heal difficult-to-treat-stomach ulcers through antimicrobial activity. It is specifically helpful for nausea during pregnancy and for post-operative and chemotherapy-induced nausea. Of course, it also helps many children with motion sickness, though not all children can handle enough of the spicy taste.
• Ginger tea or powdered ginger root for  menstrual cramps: Ginger tea  (made with grated fresh ginger root) can be a great help with menstrual cramps of the inflammatory variety. I've read that some preparations of powdered ginger root are as powerful as Ibuprofen in mitigating cramps, but I always take any preparation I can't make myself at home with a large grain of salt, because buying herbal preparations from non-local sources is always a gamble. You might get lucky and find ginger root powder that is fresh enough and as effective as the studies show it can be, but you could easily buy over-processed and aged preparations and have nothing. For now, I stick to a combination of yarrow tincture and ginger tea for cramps.
• Ginger essential oil aroma therapy for post-operative and chemotherapy induced nausea: Several studies have shown that women who underwent chemotherapy for the treatment of breast cancer used ginger aromatherapy effectively to curb resulting nausea. Another study has found similarly beneficial effects for patients experiencing nausea after operations.
• Ginger tea or powder for migraine headaches: Ginger tea can be a great comfort for migraines. A study has found that ginger root powder (if properly stored and kept fresh) can be as powerful as pharmaceutical migraine medications.
• Ginger tincture for muscle soreness and inflammation: Ginger is strongly anti-inflammatory and it has been taken by competitive athletes in many countries to reduce the wear and tear of training. It can also help with joint and muscle inflammations and strain.

Detail of ginger - Creative Commons image by Miran Rijavec

There is exciting research showing new areas where ginger shows great potential, but it is less clear in these areas how a homecrafting herbalist could make the right kind of herbal extract from ginger to achieve these effects. It is very likely that with some experimentation and work we will soon be able to tap into the amazing protective qualities of ginger.

• Ginger treating diabetes: Ginger extracts are being used in trials to treat type 2 diabetes in people and type 1 diabetes in animals. Ginger powder and extracts have been studied in several trails and found to be effective against type 2 diabetes and found to be an "effective treatment." Considering the number of studies in this area, it is too bad that there isn't more information on the use of dietary ginger or ginger tea to treat diabetes.
• Ginger fighting cancer: Ginger extracts have been shown to be effective in treating many types of cancer, particularly in animal studies. Some of the specific types treated by ginger are liver, pancreatic, gastrointestinal, skin, lung, prostate and breast cancers. Ginger has been shown to stunt the growth of cancer sells and prevent the spreading of cancers to other areas of the body. Ginger has been found to assist in treating cancers that are chemo-resistant or inoperable. It is particularly interesting, given that almost all studies are done with powdered ginger root, that some of the compounds  most helpful in treating cancer in ginger are best accessed when the root is steamed (i.e. made into tea rather than dried and powdered). And yet, we don't know exactly what does are needed in these treatments because studying a simple tea wouldn't make for an expensive drug and high profits. 
• Ginger helping with chemotherapy: In addition to the aromatherapy studies, ginger extracts have been found to significantly reduce post-chemo nausea. 
• Ginger protecting against radiation: Several studies have shown treatment with ginger extracts before exposure to radiation helped reduce the risks to animals (including severe radiation sickness and death) of the exposure. 
• Ginger helping the brains of middle-aged women: Due to its amazing antioxidant qualities ginger extracts have been used in studies to protect against oxidative stress that causes mild cognitive impairment in many healthy women. The medical industry isn't particularly interested in studying how fresh ginger tea compares to the expensive ginger extracts used in such studies, but the amounts of the compounds involved suggest tea may work just as well.
• Ginger preventing Alzheimer's:  Ginger root extract has been used to prevent Alzheimer's symptoms in animals. More study is needed but the right compounds are present in ginger and it clearly would make a good supplemental treatment at the very least.
• Ginger wiping out microbes:  Ginger extracts have been shown to have a lot of antimicrobial power in test tubes. It's not entirely clear how it can be applied to daily use in the right concentrations.
• Ginger battling HIV and other dangerous human viruses: Some studies have shown ginger to be effective in the fight against difficult-to-treat viruses that infect humans. However, these studies have mainly been done on animals or in test tubes. So, it isn't clear how to replicate these results at home.

It's great to see so much scientific research being done with a medicinal herb. On the other hand, one of the significant problems with medical studies in this day and age is the bias of profit margins. Even if a simple herbal tea has fantastic and easily demonstrable effects, you aren't likely to find a study proving that it does because that would cut into the profits of the pharmaceutical companies that finance such studies..Many of the studies show that a small amount of ginger powder has a great effect, but there is no study on using fresh ginger or ginger tincture, which are much more easily obtained by individuals and less easily marketed as an expensive "dietary supplement" or pharmaceutical. At the same time, some of the best medicinal compounds in ginger are best accessed when the root is steamed, rather than dried. It is possible that ginger tea is actually more effective, despite the lack of studies looking into it. It is important to remember that while the presence of favorable scientific studies is a good sign, the absence of scientific studies isn't proof of a lack of usefulness. It is often a sign that a medicinal is too easy to use at home and thus not a good bet for marketing.

I love to hear from you. Drop a comment below and share your experience.

Superhero of the natural healing, propolis takes down viruses, bacteria and possibly cancer: Home Medicine Cycle 29

It isn't an herb but it comes from the sap of conifers and poplar trees. It's so effective that the name essentially meant "defense of the city" in ancient Greek. And unlike many natural healing substances it was specifically designed for the purposes we use it for. It just wasn't designed by humans.

That's propolis, the superhero of natural healing.

Public domain image of propolis in a hive

It's concocted by bees specifically to be antimicrobial and anti-fungal. To them it's literally the "defense of the city." They form a kind of gunk from sap and other specially selected plant materials and use it to patch their hives and cover up anything gross or infectious in the hive. Sometimes called "bee glue," it's sticky and eminently unwashable but for all that it can be used for serious medicinal power.

There are two words of caution about propolis. First of all, it can be an issue for people with allergies,. particularly bee allergies. It is never entirely free of bee products and enzymes, no matter how purified it is. So, be cautious with it if you have any sort of bee allergies or other serious allergies. 

The second issue is simply the practical considerations of use. Propolis doesn't dissolve in water much at all. It dissolves reasonably well in alcohol and some in glycerin. As such, it's most effective when used as a tincture. Some people also just chew a piece for mouth infections and colds. But tincture is the most common form and the resulting mixture is very potent and usually bright yellow. It will coat anything it touches with an unwashable layer of bright yellow, including your teeth.

Mind you, it's very good for your teeth and would be great for preventing cavities, but your teeth would look horrible for a couple of days. So, most people try to knock it back to the back of the throat and swallow it without letting it touch their teeth. This is tricky and even the glass you use will be impossible to clean with anything but strong alcohol. (Paper cups are a good option with proplis.)

Yes, there are sanitized versions of propolis you can buy that aren't sticky and don't turn everything they touch bright yellow. But I suspect those preparations have so little propolis in them that they don't contain enough of the medicinal qualities. I have a toothpaste that supposedly contains propolis and it's okay but nothing spectacular. It also is only very mildly yellow. 

I like the taste of many bitter herbal remedies but I'm not personally fond of propolis, even though many people describe the taste as pleasant. I do take it, however, because there is nothing that will deal with fungal infections or a sore throat like propolis. It can compete well with many synthetic antibiotics and fungicides and is far better for you. 

You can usually obtain propolis from bee keepers. The best way to process it is:

Propolis chunks - Creative Commons image by Rade Nagraislovic

1. Freeze the pieces.
2. Then crush them with a hammer or mortar and pestle while they're still frozen and brittle. 
3. Put the resulting powder into a jar you are prepared to devote to propolis tincture forever.
4. Pour 80 to 100 percent alcohol over it. About one part propolis to two parts alcohol is recommended.
5. Shake well and let it sit for a couple of weeks.
6. I've been told that some people strain the stuff but I have never found anything that will strain the liquid without becoming immediately plugged by the propolis itself. Instead, I let it settle and skim the more liquid tincture off the top of the jar for use. 

Here are some of the ways natural healers are using propolis extracts, according to the latest research.

• Gargle with propolis tincture diluted in water for sore throats, thrus, cancer sores and other mouth infections. The tincture applied topically in the mouth and throat is very effective. Swallowing it also has systemic immune boosting and antimicrobial results.
• A study found that propolis is superior to the drug acyclovir in fighting genital herpes. It is also used for cold sores around the mouth for the same reason.
• Propolis shows significant antimicrobial activity in the treatment of peridontitis, a stubborn mouth infection.
• Propolis is used for sores and bacterial infections (including tuberculosis). It is also active against many viruses (including influenza, H1N1 swine flue and common colds)
• Propolis fights fungus and infections of single-celled organisms called protozoans. 
• People sometimes apply propolis directly to the skin for wound cleansing abd as an oral rinse for speeding healing following surgery around the mouth, nose and throat.
• Propolis is used to treat chronic ear infections in children with a history of ear infections and no known cure.
• A study from the 1990s showed the usefulness of propolis extracts in preventing viral respiratory infections or colds in children in preschools and schools.
• Studies are ongoing with exciting findings about how propolis and its flavonoid constituents protect human white blood cells from radiation sicknesses.
• New research is showing incredible anti-cancer potential in propolis compounds. It is already being used to treat cancers of the nose and throat; for boosting the immune system; and for treating gastrointestinal problems. 
• Caffeic Acid phenethyl ester (or CAPE) is a molecular compound found in propolis and almost nowhere else. CAPE has grabbed the interest of researchers for its medicinal properties, but its anti-cancer capacity is the most stunning. A study from the "Journal of Radiation Research" shows that only two days after being exposed to a medicinal compound with CAPE, "46% of lung cancer cells had been destroyed and the cancer growth was reduced by 60%. Three days after the treatment 67% of cancer cells were dead." Other studies have found that CAPE prevents the growth of colon cancer cells and induces cell death of the malignant cells without harming healthy cells. Other types of cancer cells also respond to treatment with the CAPE in propolis, including breast, gastric, skin and pancreatic cancer and glioma cells, a form of inoperable brain cancer. When propolis is used as a whole the effects are even better than with isolated CAPE compounds.

Propolis is one of the more advanced medicinals I have featured here. I do so simply because of the fantastic results, though I do caution that it is more difficult to use than many herbs and it's good to get a licensed herbalist's or doctor's individualized advice with a lot of these health concerns. 

I love to hear from you and I'd especially like to hear of the experience of other homecrafting herbalists with propolis. Drop a note and be sure to share this post in order to spread up-to-date information. 

Magical healing with comfrey: Home medicine cycle 19

The heroine lies wounded by a sword strike, while her friend the ranger frantically searches for the herb that will save her life. He finds the precious leaves and rushes to her side, pressing the magical green stuff into the wound. The bleeding stops and the wound closes before his eyes. She blinks her eyes and sits up. 

This is what I grew up on. Fantasy books... often with an herbalist in them. In those stories, skin knits itself back together in moments with the touch of a miraculous plant. Or a dab of a potion on the tongue can bring characters back from the brink of death.

I knew this wasn't real. It was just fantasy. In real life, herbs are mild--a less-effective but natural alternative to pharmaceutical drugs for times when your medical problem is minor and you have plenty of time to wait for their slow action to kick in. Right?

Not exactly.

That is what I believed about herbs when I reached adulthood and what most people still  believe today. But I've seen a few things that are very hard to explain on the theory that herbs are less-effective and slow-acting. 

Comfrey - Creative Commons image by Finchj of Wikipedia

One incident stands out sharply in my mind. My husband had tried everything that modern medicine had to offer to deal with his painful and exhausting chronic cough. Finally, we found an herbal mix that helped, after years of trying antibiotics and various drugs. He was slowly coming around to believe that my interest in herbs was a bit more than a foolish hobby.

So, one evening when we were visiting his parent's farm he went out with me to gather herbs. He brought along a pair of sharp branch clippers and he was using them to cut yarrow stalks, when he somehow managed to clip his finger. It was a significant enough cut that many people would have gone to the emergency room to get stitches. It bled profusely and when he flexed his fingers it looked like a gaping mouth of muscle. 

But my husband strongly dislikes trips to the emergency room and he would have had to drive himself there, given that I can't drive. His fingers still moved fine if painfully, so I was reasonably sure the clippers had not cut anything crucial. I told him to press one of the yarrow blooms against the wound to help stop the bleeding. Then I went for some strongly alcoholic tincture to disinfect the wound. Once the bleeding had slowed and the cut was very clean, I took comfrey leaves, softened them a bit with a mallet and wrapped them around the wounded finger. Then I bandaged the leaves in place.

We had small children and two elderly people to take care of and the rest of the evening was moderate chaos. It wasn't until the next morning that I managed to persuade my husband to let me look at his hand again. When we unwrapped the bandage and makeshift comfrey poultice we both stared in confusion. There was no cut. 

Had I been alone I would have doubted my own memory of how deep the cut was. But my husband was equally astonished. All that was left on his finger was a fine pink line, like that of a cut that healed well several days or a week previously. I probed at the scar and it was only the tiniest bit painful. There was no redness around it and my husband could move his hand freely without the bandage. 

Growing up on a homestead in the mountains and having a father and a brother who build houses and work with wood for a living, I have seen my share of cuts and lacerations. I have cut my own hands in the kitchen and dealt with the resulting sliver of pain for a week or two afterwards. I know how fast cuts usually heal, even with the help of antibiotic ointments from a pharmacy. And this was ridiculously fast--on the level of those fantasy epics I used to read. How can a deep cut heal in twelve hours?

A coloured etching by M. Bouchard, 1774 - Comfrey has been used by herbalists for centuries

I started researching comfrey in greater detail and what I found is truly amazing. Comfrey has been called knitbone historically, because it was used to treat sprains and broken bones. (It's also called boneset but that's misleading because there is another herb called boneset which is different.) 

Comfrey has an amazing capacity to soak through skin and muscle and affect bones, if applied with a generous fresh poultice. In addition, a recent clinical trial has shown comfrey root ointment to be more effective than some pharmaceutical ointments in healing sprains. Another double-blind study has found comfrey to be effective in treating osteoarthritis of the knee. 

It's ability to heal cuts is nothing short of stunning. And in fact sometimes comfrey heals cuts too fast. The first warning herbalists usually give about comfrey is that it can heal the skin over cuts and wounds so quickly that the body's natural function of expelling small bits of foreign matter (dirt, sand, bits of plants or cloth and so forth) from an open wound doesn't have time to work well. Some people have developed blood poisoning because comfrey's rapid-action healing sealed debris inside of a cut.

So, my story about speed healing my husband's finger comes with a caveat. Had i not flushed the wound out well enough or had it not bled so profusely, I could have made the situation worse by applying comfrey immediately. Generally, I now apply comfrey only after a cut is a few days old, just to be on the safe side. But that doesn't apply to sprains, arthritis, bruises and other injuries where the skin isn't broken. 

The primary reason for comfrey's healing power is a delicate combination of chemical compounds in the plant that promote rapid cell growth. 

Herbalists have experimented with using comfrey to treat certain types of cancer and there are several cases in which a patient with terminal cancer consumed large amounts of comfrey root powder and later miraculously recovered from the cancer. This briefly led to enthusiasm among herbalists for comfrey as a miracle herb. But then a study in Japan found that consumption of a large percentage of comfrey in the diets of rats was linked to liver cancer. And so the enthusiasm of herbalists has turned to caution and comfrey is usually not recommended for internal consumption. 

My mother had a comfrey plant by her garden water faucet when I was a child and I ate quite a few of its leaves. They were juicy and mild. The plant isn't poisonous in the conventional sense. However, there is a chemical found in most parts of the comfrey plant (less in young leaves) that is linked to liver damage if consumed in large doses. You would most likely have to eat a huge amount of comfrey for it to be a problem, but it's good to remember that  there is a warning against it.

Here is my homegrown and wildcrafting approach to comfrey:

• I haven't used the root because the leaves provide a ready source when the plant is local and you can control the amount of processing, although I think the use of comfrey root in commercial ointments may be a good choice for those who can't grow it. (Some people find that the bristles on comfrey leaves irritate sensitive skin. If you want to use fresh comfrey leaves instead of ointment, you can wrap a poultice in a light cloth.)
• Whenever possible I use a poultice of fresh comfrey leaves on sprains, strained muscles, bruises and the like. (Just take fresh leaves and mash them up with a bit of water. You can apply them directly to the skin or wrap them in cheese cloth. You can lightly heat the poultice to sooth muscles and bruises.)
• I use softened comfrey leaves to bandage cuts after they have been well cleaned and had a day or two to heal with disinfectant salves.
• I dry some comfrey leaves for making rehydrated poultices in the winter and for making comfrey infusions to soak sprains in the winter.
• I make comfrey infused oil to make salve (with this recipe) for older cuts and scrapes that are healing slowly.

Use the comment icon below to leave a message and share some of your stories of herbalist adventures, questions or experiences. I love your comments on these posts. Please remember that this doesn't constitute medical advice for a specific person with a specific medical condition.