MyHerbCorner

Posts Tagged ‘St. John’s wort’

Lately I was thinking about herbs to calm down my temper since I was jumpy and snappy and pretty nervous.
Normally lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) always helped me so I tried it… without success.
Then I switched to mood lifting St John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) but I didn’t took it regularly (which you should over a long period of time) and… I was still unhappy with myself.

This led me to the right path because, just lets face it, coping with stress can be supported by herbs which are called adaptogens (adapt to stress) but constant stress calls for a lifestyle change!

So since I took all this good remedies which help our nervous system (lemon balm tincture or St john’s wort tincture first thing on empty stomach in the morning, then calming oat muesli, nettle infusion over the day and short breaks with deep breathing) I was still pretty jumpy.

Now I made what our body is calling for, I sat me down (actually I lay down) and thought about the reason why I am so stressed.
Ha, that was great because I found sooooooooo many reasons and then I thought if it is really worth to be so active.
If I would take a rest I could finish much more in a shorter period of time (and with a clearer mind…)
And, do I really have to do all that stuff when the kids have holidays which is stressful enough

So if you are under stress just take a moment and find out what the cause is.
If you can do something against it (lifestyle change) do it.
If you are a mum with only one or more kids get help (yes we all need help and a break in such an important job! A mother is teacher, nurse, cook, day and night care… you deserve a break!)
If it is because of emotional stress (break up, lost a loved one…) take adaptogenes like

• St John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) tincture more times a day
• Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) tincture and tea more times a day
• Hops (Humulus lupulus) tea before bed time or sleeping pillow
• Ginseng (Panax ginseng.) a tea late morning and after lunch
• Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) just chew on a piece of root or infuse with a tea of your choice
• Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) as infusion
• Oats (Avena sativa) porridge, muesli, Sagelets or other cooked oat

To strengthen your nerves use the following nervine tonics

• Oatstraw (Avena sativa) as nourishing and tonic infusion
• Vervain (Verbena officinalis) in tincture form or tea
• Sage (Salvia officinalis) tea or tincture as well as in cooking
• Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) tincture or tea before bedtime

If you have difficulties to relax or sleep, make one of the following teas and sit down drinking every sip consiously

• Chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla)
• Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata
• Valerian (Valeria officinalis)
• Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis)
• Hops (Humulus lupulus)

Some people find also help in meditation or yoga.
Unfortunately my mind runs in such a speed I never can relax in form of meditation BUT I find help by just going outside and breath the clean, fresh air surrounding our garden.
Watch the wide open space with it’s stars (how little am I in such a huge cluster of stars… and how wonderful to have the opportunity to be alive… )
A little walk under the forest trees and some deep inhaling breaths and I am calmed in any situation.
If I have no time to go outside (no time means REALLY bad stressful situation) I still pick up a flower or herb and hold my nose to it. Best for this is a herb with aromatic volatile oil like lemon balm, lavender or rosemary.
Herbs, trees, flowers just nature has such a healing effect to our body.

Even making a simple tea has a therapeutic effect.
You have to stop and bring water to boil, place some herbs into your cup and let it infuse. Sure you can do this with thousands thoughts on your mind but just try to make a break and do it fully aware.
If I see the herbs infusing I can let my fast thinking mind go and give it all a rest.
Smelling the infused herb is… just heavenly. Simple water and a few plant people celebrate their combination to help me…

When we just talk about water… there is nothing more relaxing then soaking in a wonderfully bath by candlelight
Use any of the above herbs and add some sea salt.
Sea salt has a relaxing effect to our body and many people have enjoyed this in their holidays at the beach.
The salt is not only cleansing to skin but also removes toxins.
I think I will write about all good (and bad) things about salt in another post… see, just writing a post and other things pop up which led to other posts and others and others…
Here comes a priority list handy.

If you have constant stress make a list and look what you have to do first and give your self a rest then and now. You will finish things much faster and better when you have enough breaks to recharge your batteries.
So, now I take a break make me a tea and go into my rocker, thinking about the next post of salt… oops, I mean, I make a break and just enjoy my tea and relaxing music

Mine oh mine what a week!
I am so thankful for the invention of the wash-machine!
It kept going nonstop for a few days because my ‘crocs’ have been sick.
Christoph has an ongoing tonsillitis and cold for quite a time and finally went to the GP for some antibiotics (no, that wasn’t my idea…)
Anyway, when we lay in bed and he was coughing into my face (again…) and then when I was opening my eyes to see a pile of used tissues in front of my nose I was not even that surprised but a bit worried about MY health.

I kept drinking the new anti-flu remedy but when David was wandering vomiting through our bedroom I thought I take St John’s wort too… just in case…
Gosh!
That night after I cleaned the mess David had left in his bed and our bedroom I was excused to sleep by his side in front of the open bathroom door (away from coughing sneezing big croc… and close to the toilet so David could reached it in time…)
I was very worried when David kept vomiting the whole day and not even kept a sip of water in his little body. Then there was also a slight diarrhoea.
Since he had no chance to take a medicine I infused some chopped garlic covered with olive oil in front of our warm fire place.
Then when it was ‘smelly’ enough I rubbed it on his feet (sole) just like you do when a child has a cough. The antibacterial, anti-viral and antibiotic healing properties of garlic are then transferred through the body.
Since he had problems to keep something down I also rubbed a bit of this garlic oil onto his stomach and was happy when he fell a sleep.
Our body is an amazing healer and restorative when we are fast asleep…

For Christoph I made a quick cough relieving massage oil (had no time for a chest rub which is the same oil but hardened with some bees wax)
In a small jar I gave approximately 6 Tablespoons sunflower oil which is soaked up better by the body then olive oil. To this oil I mixed essential oil of eucalyptus (around 10 drops) lavender (6 drops) and white camphor (4 drops)
Rubbing it onto my husbands chest and back (over the lungs) he fell asleep too.
Here is a pic of David on the floor and Christoph on the sofa while the big white bowl was placed carefully between both just in case someone couldn’t make it to the bathroom…

We have a wonderful house where there is always a room flooded by sunshine.
The two slept wonderfully warmed by the sun which is also a useful healer.

Meanwhile I was resting as well since I had not much sleep the last days and we all woke up together when the room was filled with shadow… the sun was gone behind the trees…

Anyway, this was a few days ago and David was back at school today. He is fit (and naughty!) again and I am thankful the garlic helped him.
My husband feels also better and has already emptied a bottle of my marshmallow cough syrup and is now drinking plantain cough syrup which is helping to reduce the swollen glands.
The tonsils look fine again (of course from the antibiotics he says and yes, he might be right even when he was gargling with my ‘killer tincture’ of clove with sage…)
Poor Christoph doesn’t get away without my teasing because I am the one who has ‘no’ flu shoot and keeps using herbs while he has all his ‘pharmaceutical’ remedies and gets sick…

In my own well being I am not sure what kept me healthy over the stressful time with two sick people beside me.
Was it the cayenne remedy or St John’s wort?

Hurray it is time for the blog party of the UK Herbarium!
Tomorrow on the 20th April Sarah will kindly host the party with the subject:

‘Herbs for aches and pains’

I would like to start my post for this party with some suggestions to prevent aches since we sure want to do our best to enjoy a painless day outside.

• Watch your diet (it should be easy to digest as well as protein, mineral and vitamin rich)

• Drink nettle infusion which has a high content of magnesium and calcium. This fights against muscle cramps.

• Drink a lot of water while working in the garden.

• If you work in your garden make many breaks.

• Stand up and stretch your body. Raise your hands high up to the sky and take a deep breath. Then breath out by lowering your arms. Repeat a few times.

• Look around and admire the beauty of nature.

• Make goals you can achieve (you don’t need to weed out the garden in one day!) Just a little every day goes a long way without pain. Admire the work you have achieved.

• Take your time to walk around and smell the flowers and herbs.

However, if you haven’t had exercises for a long time (or you suffer from past injuries) or you just start to work in your garden after a winter of rest you might get sore and aching muscles. To prevent this I take 5-15 drops St John’s wort tincture (diluted in an eggcup with water) just before I go outside.
St John’s wort relaxes muscles and I also saw people finding relieve by rubbing the tincture over aching muscles after hiking.

The most important painkiller for me is comfrey root tincture which is the most effective rubbing mixture for aching back or sore feet.
If you make comfrey root tincture make sure you use dried roots in Vodka. This does extract all the painkilling ingredients (alkaloids… ) of the root.
Once I made it with fresh roots which hasn’t had the proper effect.
But the dried root tincture is strong enough as rubbing mixture and you might even dilute it with filtered or spring water. Unfortunately the tincture is very dark so you shouldn’t wear bright clothes (however, it doesn’t stain permanently and your shirt will be clean again after washing)

When I made my Certificate in Herbal Studies we were given the challenge to invent rubbing creams for the Musculoskeletal system with a herb combination for different aliments.

Here are my recipes which turned out very helpful:

• Cold cream:
For this cooling cream I took Aqueous cream and mixed it 1:1 with tincture.
First I gave 1 Tbsp peppermint tincture (cooling), 1 Tbsp St John’s wort tincture (takes tension and cramp), 1 Tbsp calendula tincture (soothing and cooling) and 1 Tbsp arnica tincture (anti-inflammatory and pain relief) into a milk jar.
Then I gave 4 Tablespoons Aqueous cream into a clean dish and stirred the tincture slowly with a whisker into the cream. At the end I stirred vigorously and filled the finished cream into a clean jar. I screwed the lid on and labeled it with all its ingredients and date.
This cream was cooling, soothing and took muscle tension as well as muscle pain.
Ideal to rub onto legs before or after physical activities. This cream gets nicely absorbed by the skin. But it shouldn’t be used on broken skin because of the content of arnica.

• Refreshing and anti-inflammatory liniment:
For this oil liniment I used 2 parts fresh rosemary (refreshing and anti-inflammatory), 1 part thyme (anti-bacterial), 1 part lavender (stimulating and circulating) and 1 part sage (anti-spasmodic), cut it coarsely and gave it loosely into a 500ml jar.
Then I did top it with olive oil and stirred slowly to remove air bubbles. Then I lid and labeled it and left to infuse on a warm place. Every day (for the first week) I stirred it and topped up with oil when necessary. After 4 weeks at a warm place (and stirring once a week and control if there was enough oil) I strained the aromatic herb oil.
Then I left it to sit for a day or two so the water could set on the bottom. After that it was ready to be filled into nice 250ml bottles (without the water on the bottom). With a nice label of ingredients, date of production and what it can be used for, this liniment had its final touch.
This liniment not only smells delicious, but also brings joy and refreshment to a tired and sore body (nearly like a refreshing bath or shower
Sure this liniment would also be great by infusing the herbs in alcohol. Alcohol is cooling and refreshing as well.
In oil it is nice as a massage oil as well as liniment for tired sore muscles.

As you may know I am a simple person which chooses simple medicine, which means I normally choose only one herb for a rub, liniment or ointment, like comfrey root (takes pain), St John’s wort (muscle tension) or horseradish (to heat up).
Lavender is also a favorite to relax muscles and  I love it as massage oil. Therefor I make an aromatic oil infusion with lavender leaves and flowers.

Another wonderful forest scented favorite is pine needle liniment for muscle spasm!
Pine buds and needles infused in alcohol is a recipe from my granddad
He used Schnapps as menstrum since he was the man in the village who was making the distills out of apples, pears, cherries, plumbs or even elder.
The first run of the distill was always a high concentrate (100% alcohol)
For the liniment he diluted it with spring water and then gave the pine needles and buds into a wide mouthed glass jar covering it with the diluted Schnapps (I think it was 70% alcohol). I have seen the jar standing on the windowsill as well as resting in the cellar.
Maybe he left it some days to infuse in the sun before moving into the dark.
I let my Vodka pine tincture infuse in the pantry and it always turns into a wonderful liniment.

So… now you read about a lot of my herbal secrets… and… I add one more…

When I was working as a gardener the wife of my boss introduced me to the benefit of raw milk.
Every night she soaked her hands in raw milk (pasteurized fat milk from the shop is fine as well if you can’t find raw milk)
This keeps the hands moist and soft even by working all day in the garden.
The minerals in the milk as well as the fat are nourishing for the skin. The woman also used raw milk to wash her face every night and even in a high age she had not one wrinkle! That”s what I call the best proven natural anti-aging secret!

If I don’t forget it (by all the joy of speeding out into the garden) I pamper my hands with calendula ointment.
This keeps them protected from water and soil and even brings relief afterward if your hands are sore or chapped.

So, enough written… now I go and have a relaxing hot rosemary bath which is also sooooooooooo lovely for sore muscles

On the first January we went the long drive over gravel to the end of our road. There is the wonderful patch of mullein I posted earlier (please click here to see it)

Now the mulleins are very high and are starting to bloom.

Thess buds are just ready to open.

I had two pairs of helping hands

Some people react allergic when touching the fluffy leaves. The tiny hairs can produce a skin irritation.

I have no problems but my husband has and that’s why he wears gloves for protection. I heard that once girls rubbed their cheeks with the fluffy mullein leaves to get lovely red cheeks (that’s why it is also called Quakers Rouge in America)

Mullein is biennial which means that it has a live cycle of two years. In the first year it grows a rosette of beautiful big leaves. That is normally when I collect the leaves for medicine or acid/alkaline balancing tea. This year I try something different and collect the second year stalks like Susun Weed

In the second year the leaves grow smaller and the flower spike grows sometimes over two meters high.

That’s the time when you can collect the flowers. The flowers open in the morning and close in the evening. They don’t bloom at the same time so that’s why I harvested some plants with roots.

If you give them into a vase or bucket with water you can collect the blossoms every day for a week or two.

As you can see in the picture above there really grows a lot of mullein on this spot. If you harvest mullein never collect when there are only a few plants. Leave them to seed and come the next year for a leaf harvest.

At home I made a fresh leaf tincture which I will use as pain relief. Mullein is a herb you need only a small dose when taken internally (just 3-5 drops or so). I actually rub the mullein tincture on aching joints and also my neck. You have the same relaxing effect with St. John’s wort but since I have non for medicine this year I long for mullein.

As you see I couldn’t resist to make a root tincture even it would be more potential with an autumn harvest of the first year mulleins…

On the other side, the herbs have medical effect the whole year round. Our fore-mothers did collect them when needed, even in the middle of winter you can harvest plant medicine.

The root has a soft outer part and a very hard inner part. We used our garden scissors to cut it small.

Now  I will shake the tinctures once a day for a week. After that  I let them infuse for 5 more weeks before using.

The rest of the mullein I prepared for drying. Some of the stalks reviled a black juice at the base.

I hung them over a stick (yes you can see it was already night and the poor mulleins with roots still have no foot in a water… but that is no problem cause this plant is very rough and strong and can stay so for quite a time. Mullein likes it dry

It will take quite a time to dry this herb with stalks…

… so hang them up in a dry room best would be a dark room so… close the blinds

If you like to read a little bit more about mulleins healing effect, please click here.

Things in our garden do well even without water in this hot summer days.
Comfrey is stretching out more and more and I am so glad he made it, because it’s roots have been in a plastic bag for a few weeks when we moved and lost it under a stack of other things…

Comfrey shows us his strength as plant and as medicine as well. He is my first choice as rubbing for sore muscles or back pain which results from Scoliosis.

When we started to cultivate piece by piece of our garden, I sow some Amaranth and now he finally comes out through the soil (he really took a long time to show up)

I will write something about Amaranth as soon as he is bigger and I can use it for food and medicine

Not far from him there grows St. John’s wort in a sunny spot. He already starts to bloom and I am looking forward to next year where there will be a nice big patch of it

Our Kidney beans also stretch their heads out.

We had a good laugh when David went inside to bring a big can of ‘Backed beans’ (our Earthquake aid) and asked me to open it so we can sow them
He had seen me soaking the Kidney beans over night and instead of cooking them we sow them together in the garden. Yes, this are the first beans my son sees grow

He is such a blessing. David is always helping us in the garden.

And you can see how busy he can be…

There are always a lot of interesting things in the garden like this Weta…

… here you can see one back leg of this big Tree Weta.

They sleep during day and come out at night.

In the morning while we had breakfast we saw another amazing animal…

… it was an Eastern Rosella! How amazing to have such exotic birds in the garden!

It is really a paradise… the kids can play and jump and run around outside the whole day.

And my husband can enjoy his tools
His latest wizz-bang was a lawn mover…

… and I am glad to have David who helps me to save herbs and other things before Daddy comes with ‘the machine’

At least I found a treasure too…
It is a rocking chair for only NZ$40!!!

Ah! What a joy!
Happy New Year every one! Enjoy live!