The Sweet Taste of Life: A place for sweetness in the medicine cabinet and pantry

It's Blog Party time! Visit Kiva's blog for the rest of the contributions to this months blog party on sweet medicines!

Here's my exposition on the place for sweetness in our medicines and foods, and my "Sweet Melissa Divine" honey!

Who doesn’t enjoy the sweet taste of a special treat after supper, a little drizzle of honey in the evening cup of tea, or a morsel of sweet chocolate? It seems as if the sweet taste is irresistible to the human animal, and though will power and dedication can steer us away from indulging in sugary sweets daily that rot our teeth and lead us down the garden path of deteriorating health, there is still a craving for the sweet taste of fresh fruits and small indulgences that is natural to our taste buds.

Though I am the last person who will tell you that eating sugar is even remotely good for you, I want to explore how the sweet taste can mean so much more than “sugar” to our body, mind and spirit. Most traditional medical systems, including Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Unani Tibb reserve a place in the therapeutic toolbox for medicines and foods of a sweet nature. Yes, that is correct, the sweet taste DOES have a therapeutic value, and many traditional systems have recognized it and put it to work for thousands of years.

Both TCM and Ayurveda have a classification of the five or six primary tastes, which include sweet, sour, salty, acrid/pungent, bitter, and astringent. According to these systems the body must receive all the tastes on a daily basis to maintain balance. Too much of one or not enough of another can tip the scales in an unwanted direction. This is easily seen by the excess of sweet tastes in the modern SAD diet, and the resulting problems with obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes.

According to TCM, the sweet taste is warming, strengthening, harmonizing, relaxing and moistening. It builds up energy and strengthens spleen qi, nourishes body fluids and is associated with the energy of yang and earth. Too much of sweet flavor can produce dampness, obesity, and weakness in the kidneys, teeth and bones. In Ayurveda the sweet taste is used to pacify excess pitta and vata conditions (excess heat, dryness, or ungroundedness). It builds and restores the water element and ojas (life force/vitality). It represents the qualities of love nourishment and sustenance.

In a sense, the sweet flavor is the primary taste that provides nourishment and the building of energy both in the body and the mind. It is important to remember that the six tastes effect the spirit and mind just as much as they do the body, and the sweet taste will nourish the heart and spirit, build strength and energy of heart and spirit, and calm states of deranged pitta or vata (think bouts of anger, emotional upset, ungroundedness, bitterness, dryness or lack of luster and verve for living.) It’s not a surprise then that we crave sweet foods to console ourselves in times of emotional upset, or to soothe sensations of physical weakness, or deprivation. We must also remember that as much digestion as our stomach, spleen, liver and intestines do, our minds also digest myriad forms, thoughts, ideas, events and emotions on a daily basis. It is just as important to fill the mind with healthy, nourishing thoughts and emotions, and that our mind be able to digest well that which we provide it. The sweet taste is not to be reviled in our quest to shun refined white sugar which harms our health, but must be used with respect in appropriate fashion to nourish our minds with the sweetness of life, and nourish our bodies with strength and energy.

There are many foods which qualify as “sweet” that are completely unrelated to sugar, honey, syrup or candies. I generally recommend using the following foods as our main sources of “sweetness” on a daily basis.

Fruits (often of mixed flavor with sour, or astringent)

Nuts/seeds

Whole grains

Meats

Dairy products

Winter squashes and other starchy vegetables

But there is a time and a place for sweet medicines and you will often find traditional formulas from ayurveda or TCM with raw sugar, honey or syrup added as an important player, either as a corrigent or as an active component. For example, rose gulkand, a very cooling, soothing food to pacify pitta (especially in hot, dry summer months) is made primarily with rose petals and jaggery (raw cane sugar). Many herbal formulas are administered in honey and ghee, i.e. Chavawanprash- a complex rejuvenative formula.

All that said, let’s dive into the sweetest, loveliest of sweet medicines I’ve been creating lately, herbal honey!

Honey is one of my favorite methods of administering herbal medicines, and I often mixed powdered herbs into a jar of honey for a sweet easy to take honey herb paste. This is much like the Ayurvedic herbal jam Chavawanprash, which combines herbs, honey, and ghee. These can be spread on crackers, fruit, or eaten off the spoon. Honey itself is considering warming, moistening (demulcent/emollient), and rejuvenative/nutritive. It is full of nutrients, enzymes and other health promoting compounds aside from the sugar content. Honey is used to bring herbal medicines deeper into all the tissues of the body.

My favorite way to use honey medicinally is to steep fresh aromatic medicinal herbs in raw, local honey for a week or so and infuse it with all the properties of the herbs. These medicinal honeys can be used as a dressing for wounds and burns, as herbal syrup, stirred into hot or cool water for a refreshing drink, mixed in tea, or even used as a beauty treatment (there is something lovely and luscious about smearing honey all over your face as a hydrating, soothing face mask. Or anywhere else for that matter!)

The most recent herbal honey I’ve made is a fresh lemon balm in mesquite honey, and it is a lovely, divine elixir. I think I’m going to call it “Sweet Melissa Divine” in honor of the plant, the bees that made the honey, and the Bee Priestesses called Melissa in The Fifth Sacred Thing. This summer elixir will be put too good use as an antiviral wound dressing, a sweetener for fresh lemonade, as a mood brightening sweet treat to dress fruit, berries, or fresh yogurt. In light of the mood lifting and soothing properties of the sweet flavor, and the sweet uplifting spirit of Melissa officinalis, this honey will be a perfect remedy for a mild case of the winter blues, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), insomnia, stagnant depression and mild anxiety.

Sweet Melissa honey  has also found its way into a magical and delicious potion called Sweet Melissa Divine Elixir- a stunning and remarkably effective combination of the lemon balm infused honey and a full strength fresh plant lemon balm tincture.  This sweet medicine is delicious, easy to take, and excellent for soothing those grumpies in adults and children alike.  My partner Sean likes to use it at summer music festivals in cases of heat exhaustion.   No complaints with this tasty medicine!  It's a treat for everyone! I have a few of these available in my Etsy shop if you would like to get your hot little hands on one!

Sweet Melissa Elixir @ Etsy.com

Other favorite herbal honeys include rose, lavender, rosemary, bee balm monarda, and peppermint. I have a hankering to make St Johns Wort honey, but alas, I live in a land nearly devoid of fresh St Johns Wort, so will have to save it for another year.

Making herbal honeys is quite simple. Many times I’ve read to heat the honey, but heating raw honey too hot can destroy the properties, so I choose to cold process my herbal honeys.

1 pint jar

1 pint honey (raw and local if you can find it)

Enough herb of your choice to fill the jar full (do not pack it too tight, just loosely full)

Chop the herb finely and add to the jar. Pour honey over the herb until well covered, you may use a little less or a little more honey depending on the herb. Stir the concoction well with a spoon or chopstick to ensure all the herb bits are coated in honey. Put a lid on and set in a warm spot for 1-2 weeks. You may put it in the sun if it isn’t too hot.

After the allotted time (and several taste tests between putting it up and now), you may choose to strain the herbs from the honey using a wire mesh strainer. Hopefully your honey is relatively runny and warm from the summer climate and can be poured reasonably. If it isn’t, you may need to GENTLY warm it to thin it out. I recommend a hot water bath for just a few minutes. Reserve the honey in a special jar with a label. Eat the herbs! Or rub them on your body for an instant hydrating herbal scrub.

Use the honey generously and as often as you need to nourish the sweetness of life in your spirit and body.

Sources:

Chinese Nutrition Therapy, Joerg Kastner

Ayurveda: The Devine Science of Life, Todd Caldecott

Ayurveda: the Science of Self Healing, Vasant Lad

Cool, calm and collected with Roses

Last months blog party was on staying cool in summer heat, and I wasn't able to put anything together in time, but we've been having a bit of a heat wave in the Northeast this past week or two and I've been turning to Rose to keep the heat from rising too much!

Rose, besides being sweet smelling, heart soothing and settling to emotional frights and upsets, is a wonderful cooling remedy. Roses gently move blood, are slightly bitter, astringent, antiinflammatory, nervine and nourishingly rich in vitamins, minerals and bioflavanoids.

I always turn to rose for burns. Sunburns respond amazingly quickly to an application of rose vinegar diluted in water. I've also used a rose tincture applied similarly with great results. I also turn to rose for cooling and calming red inflammed and damaged skin- either on the face or elsewhere- heat rash, red and painful chaffed skin, cold sores, and the delicate skin of the face in rosacea or general sun damage. Rose tea, rose tincture, rose vinegar, rose hydrosol, rose infused oil, and rose otto all work well in these cases. I choose the preparation that is both convienently close by, and appropriate for the situation at hand. i.e. tea or vinegar as a compress for heat rash, oil for damaged skin or inflammed dry rashes, hydrosol to cool and calm.

I use Rose tincture diluted in a saline solution as an eyewash that offers quick relief and healing from burning, redness, itchiness, or in removing a particle of something in the eye. Rose eyewash works really well for the unfortunate experience of hot burning chile pepper/cayenne in the eyes! Just make sure to strain the solution well through a coffee filter to avoid putting more particles in the eye. I dilute 30 drops of tincture in 1 oz of saline solution (1/2 tsp non iodized salt in 8 oz water), and use an eye cup, or a shot glass, or just use a clean dropper to rinse and irrigate the eye. You can also use rose hydrosol for this.

But lately, as I've been dealing with the hot, sticky humid New England heat wave, rose has made its way into my daily routine in the following ways.

After a sticky, hot walk outside I drink a glass of cool water with a splash of rose hydrosol. Yum! you can also add a spoonful of rose petal honey to this to make it a bit sweeter. Some days I add a generous splash of rose petal elixir to the mix as well. Feel free to mix and match to what suits you. If you like the taste you can also make a rose vinegar and rose honey mix to add to your water.

I frequently mist my face, neck, chest and back with a blend of rose tea, rose vinegar, and rose hydrosol mixed in a mister bottle. You can add a drop of rose otto, lavender essential oil, or peppermint essential oil if you like.

After a cool shower I massage my skin with a rose infused and scented oil- honestly I can't say how directly cooling the oil massage is, but it feels so beautiful after a cooling shower, and heart nourishing- do it just to love yourself. Anoint your heart with rose.

Include rose petals- either fresh or dried in your daily infusions. This can be very astringent and drying, so take note of how much rose you use, and if you are already dry and dehyrated or live in a dry/hot climate, you might consider adding a demulcent like marshmallow root to the infusion as well.

I like to use the fragrant wild roses for most of my medicinal preparations, but note that unsprayed cultivated roses and the wild multiflora rose which is less fragrant still make wonderful cooling medicines - as vinegars, elixirs, infused honey and tea.

Blog Party: Bioregional Allies for Influenza: Butterfly Weed

Blog Party: See all the amazing entries at www.methowvalleyherbs.blogspot.com

One of my favorite wildflowers that is widespread across much of the country, in patches, and grows quite well in the southwestern Sky Island mountains is Butterfly Weed, or Pleurisy Root (Asclepias tuberose). Not strictly limited to the Southwest, and certainly a very commonly cultivated plant, I choose it as one of my prime allies for influenza.

Influenza is primarily a respiratory illness, and

beautiful Butterfly Weed, is a versatile and complicated plant which has a strong affinity for the respiratory tract. Known in herbal circles more commonly as Pleurisy Root, this plant from the Milkweed family was often used for exactly that, Pleurisy, a very painful, acute inflam

mation of the pleural lining of the lungs, in which there can be fluid build-up between the pleura and lungs. Pleurisy usually occurs from an acute infection like influenza, pneumonia, or in autoimmune conditions with widespread inflammation. Pleurisy aside, Butterfly Weed (the name I prefer to call it by) is definitely a good choice in any respiratory condition with inflammation and dampness, including influenza.

Butterfly Weed, in the Asclepidaceae family, is named for Asclepias, the Greek god of healing. Its virtues are many and diverse, and thus was well respected throughout history as a healing medicine plant. Butterfly Weed is one of few plants in the milkweed family that doesn’t have a milky white sap and is a primary food source for Monarch butterflies. It can be very locally abundant in the right environment, but it is less com

mon than one might suspect, and due to this fact, and its ecological importance, one must wild craft this healer with care. Here in the Southwestern mountains I find it in the regions of transition between oak/juniper woodlands to ponderosa pine forest, often growing among the rocky banks of dry arroyos. Its brilliant orange flowers in early summer are a tell tale giveaway to its identity and location, but is otherwise a non-descript green plant easy to overlook.

Butterfly weed is relaxant, stimulant, diaphoretic, diuretic, expectorant, lymphatic tonic, antispasmodic, anti-inflammatory, and emetic. One of the finest relaxing diaphoretics in our western materia medica, I usually turn to Butterfly Weed when my other favorite relaxing diaphoretic, Elder flower hasn’t been as effective as hoped. It is specific to feverish conditions where the skin is hot and dry, and the individual is tense, and experiencing inflammation, pain and fluid congestion in the respiratory tract. It relaxes tension in the tissues of the skin, mucous membranes (think respiratory, digestive and urinary systems), and allows fluid balance and movement to be restored. It will readily produce a sweat in those hot, dry and tense feverish folks, dilate the bronchials, ease expectoration of mucus, and ease pain and inflammation. This can be especially helpful in influenza which is characterized by hyper immune response resulting in inflammatory cytokine storm, with fluid build up. I also fin

d it to be extremely useful in those feverish cases when the person really needs to relax and sleep, Butterfly weed eases those individuals into a relaxed state where sleep will come easier and they will get the rest they need to recover.

Butterfly weed is most effective when given as a warm tea, 1 tsp of root per cup, taken 2-3 times per day. Though I find administering smaller portions 2-3 tablespoons or a few swallows at a time, over the course of 30 min to an hour can be quite effective as well, and far more tolerable to most folks, as the taste of butterfly weed is hard to swallow. A tincture of the fresh root is also an effective medicine, and I like to administer it as such: 2-3 droppers of tincture in hot water, sipped slowly over 30 min to an hour.

Butterfly weed can be very useful in bringing down a high fever to a healthy level, by opening pores and stimulating circulation to the surface of the skin and away from the core. I like to put the feverish person in a tepid bath ( 98 degrees F) as they sip their tea. I’ve seen a fever nearing 104.5 F respond quickly to this combination of herb and hydrotherapy, and return to a healthy 102 F.

William Cook informs us that the effects of Butterfly weed are slow to take effect but are lasting, but the usefulness is enhanced when given with another circulatory stimulant which is quicker acting, like ginger. In the interest of bioregionalism, I’d likely combine it with Monarda (Bee Balm), Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) or even Osha (Liguisticum porteri) depending on the case and the person.

“The chief employment of this agent is in febrile and inflammatory affections, where the

perspiration needs to be decidedly promoted, and excitement of the heart relieved by a full outward determination of blood. It secures a slow, steady, and free perspiration, at the same time suitably diminishing excessive heat of the surface; which action renders it highly serviceable in typhus, scarlet, bilious, puerperal, lung, rheumatic, and other forms of fever, with a hot skin and rigid pulse. Measles and catarrhal fever may be added especially to this list; and so great is its service in pleurisy, that pleurisy root is one of the most popular of its names among the people. In acute dysentery, with fever and tormina, it secures that free circulation to the surface which affords great relief to the bowels; and in the acute stages of inflammation of the womb, bladder, and kidneys, it is of equal advantage. In all these cases its use is followed by not only an increased perspiration and softening of the pulse; but the action of the kidneys becomes better, the mucous surfaces act more firmly and naturally, and the nervous system obtains a soothing impression that is very desirable.” William Cook

This is just the tip of the root of this amazing and versatile plant, and I plan to write more in depth on it in the future, but its application in influenza can’t be faulted. Stay well!