Marguerite Dunne is a city girl and traveler. Visit her website at www.herbs-on-hudson.com or listen to her radio show, The Urban Herbalist, on www.wtbq.com. Marguerite was also the third place winner in The Herb Companion's essay contest, "Looking Forward to Herbs."

Now that it's spring, it’s time for me to do an internal spring cleansing. Our bodies respond to the rhythm of the seasons—the waking up of our metabolism is naturally accelerating so that we can grab our spears and hunt buffalo or collect our baskets and gather roots, leaves, twigs, bark, seeds and berries. My favorite springtime tonic is an herb I fell in love with as a child: sassafras. 

Dr. James Duke tells us that sassafras (Sassafras albidum), which was the original herb in root beer, was regarded as a "blood-purifying, all-purpose tonic for whatever ails you...The pleasing tea made it a favored tea on both sides of the Atlantic.” My 1861 US Dispensatory (Materia Medica) notes that the bark of the sassafras root is a stimulant, flavors other teas, renders other teas “more cordial to the stomach,” and has been particularly recommended for "complaints of the rheumatism and cutaneous eruptions.”

Richly colored sassafras leaves make a delicious tea.
Photo by Martin LaBar/Courtesy of Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinlabar/

In the pharmaceutical industry’s never-ending quest to discredit the indigenous plants with which humankind has co-evolved over the last one million years, they’ve gone after safrole, one of the hundreds of compounds found in this complex plant, linking exaggerated quantities of a single extract with carcinogenic results. The Journal of the American Herbalists Guild pointed out in Volume 9, Number 1, “These studies were in vitro studies that only used safrole in the testing and did not compare to the effects of whole plant extracts. It should also be noted that water infusions of sassafras, which would have significantly less volatile oil content, have been used on a daily basis by various populations in the Appalachian Mountains with no epidemiological increases noted in liver cancers or hepatic toxicity concerns.” So when great-great grandma made her sassafras tea, or great-great grandpa took her to the drug store for a root-beer float, she felt really good afterwards.

I think I’ll go make some tea right now.

Marguerite Dunne is a city girl and traveler. Visit her website at www.herbs-on-hudson.com or listen to her radio show, The Urban Herbalist, on www.wtbq.com. Marguerite was also the third place winner in The Herb Companion's essay contest, "Looking Forward to Herbs."

This weekend I was outside with my kittens and my cutting shears, delighting in the dirt, cutting back the natural raffia, amending my butterfly bush, (which took one wallop in our last snow storm), and juggling ropes to tie up my poor lilac bush, (which too much ice split right down to the roots). Betwixt and between the lavender and comfrey, my darling golden honey daylilies are crowning, and my azalea bushes are pushing back against my pruning shears. Then I remembered, “Time for M.’s springtime garden deer tonic.” Well, it’s not really a tonic to the deer, but a real tonic for the plants. 

You see, I love all the graceful fawns and gentle does and strong young bucks who think my garden is their personal salad bar, but I kind of wish they would find another garden to frolic in.

(Check out our five tips to keep deer out of your garden.)

Here’s my own deer go-away recipe to sprinkle on their favorite garden munchies.

Once the deer have tasted this impolite gruel, they're not likely to return.
Photo by xtoq/Courtesy of Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fourtwenty/

Deer Go-Away

• 1/2 pound beeswax
• 1/2 cup grapeseed oil
• 1 cup biodegradable dishwashing liquid
• 1/2 cup hot-hot cayenne

1. Throw all the ingredients in an old pot and set to heat on a low flame until the beeswax is completely melted (10-20 minutes). Stir.

2. While it’s still hot (once you remove the pot from the stove the wax starts to cool and harden), run outside and “sprinkle” this waxy deer go-away on the plants you don’t want to loose with a wooden spoon. (It won’t hurt the plants.) Wipe the spoon on some of the hard-to-reach leaves. 

Marguerite Dunne is a city girl and traveler. Visit her website at www.herbs-on-hudson.com or listen to her radio show, The Urban Herbalist, on www.wtbq.com. Marguerite was also the third place winner in The Herb Companion's essay contest, "Looking Forward to Herbs."

It’s too early yet, to glimpse what might lay ahead in Haiti, as the harsh isolation of poverty continues to divide and define the fragile existence of life. I’m touched by island life since my dad was from Puerto Rico, and I’ve been to so many Caribbean islands, each time enjoying the beauty of sun and sea and heart song found only in island life. The curanderas have continued to gather, heal the jibaros, and weave the pueblo into casas verdes, recalling our Earthspirit mothers and the miraculous, natural teachings from the garden. Earth and Spirit: Medicinal Plants and Healing Lore from Puerto Rico (Verde Luz, 1998), a lovely little book by Maria Benedetti, describes the life of the village healers today, planting and gathering in the mountains of Puerto Rico. So many people still live close to nature in Central and South America, yet even this life may be completely lost to the Haitians now. Cities in shambles, no roads upon which to carry and deliver goods, and fields stripped bare from years of desperation, with no hope nor moontime to till and harvest. Where will the Earthspirit go?

Photo by Vianney (Sam) Carriere/Courtesy Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/samcarriere/

“According to Dr. Esteban Nunez Melendez, professor emeritus at the College of Pharmacy at the University of Puerto Rico and author of Plantas Medicinales de Puerto Rico (La Editorial Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1988), ‘The Caribbean region has contributed many aromatic oils, which are used in creams, unguents and rubs absorbed by the skin.’ The aromatic essential oils offered by citrus trees and other plants abound in Puerto Rico are highly valued throughout the hemisphere, not only for flavoring and scents in medicine and perfumes, but also in local anesthetics and preservative for emulsions.” –Earth and Spirit

If we could be outside with our abuelitas right now, las espiritistas, we’d have taken up our baskets and be gathering the pazote, verdolaga, yerba buena, ruda, and oregano for healing. Under the moonlight, and by the ocean’s shore, between the flowers and under the avocado trees, the healing herbs grow there for us. 

I hope the Haitian grandmothers have taken up their baskets and are ministering, like all the gathers before, restorative arcane herbology—still a woman’s rite.

Editor’s Note: The Herb Companion does not endorse the opinions offered by our guest bloggers. Our blogs are intended to further discussion about the impact herbs have in our lives. 

Marguerite Dunne is a city girl and traveler. Visit her website at www.herbs-on-hudson.com or listen to her radio show, The Urban Herbalist, on www.wtbq.com. Marguerite was also the third place winner in The Herb Companion's essay contest, "Looking Forward to Herbs."

The holidays, especially New Year’s, always invite us to reassess whatever the heck it is we think we have to reassess about our own cacophonous agendas. I like the Japanese tradition of making New Year’s a time to clean out the closets; a little feng shui de-cluttering sounds like a good start to the new year. ‘Tis also the season of more than enough colds, flus, indigestion, and even a little heartache; add in all the holiday spending we do, and who’s got time to figure out how to stay healthy? 

I was shuffling these (almost) disparate thoughts around, thinking about what to write here, when I opened up my latest email question post to by fellow writers from The Association of Health Care Journalists. I thought the questions represented a good state of art in health care:

“….a story involving a hospital board and its political lobbying, conflicts of interest, illegal awarding of salaries and severances to executives, possible violation of non-profit statutes and IRS codes.  Can you suggest any experts or former attorneys general who advise boards in these areas…..?”

and  

“…in California, people are going to alternative treatment centers to be injected with sodium bicarbonate ‘because their pH is too high.’ Has anyone else heard of this…?”

Whether we are seeing doctors in hospitals or visiting alternative health practitioners, we must be ever viligent about the care we are depending on, seeking and choosing. 

Since it is winter, and we are facing that tricky combination of crowds coughing, flu germs flying on close-quarters sneezes, weakened livers from festive holiday drinking, and sugar-overload from sugar plums dancing in our mouths, it’s very tempting to just grab the first echinacea tea bag and hope it will all go away. At this propitious moment, we need more information to take care of ourselves right. Our health won’t come from any laws passed; by taking the reins, we can give ourselves a blooming health annus mirabilis. The feng shui of our vitamin/herb/nutrition routine is the key; however, the riddle of our story is: Where were you before? 

• Have you been eating cheeseburgers, French fries, and a coke 4 to 8 times a week? (Did you see Supersize Me?)

• Have you been getting frequent colds and flus since you moved to a new place? (Have it checked for mold and other resident bacteria.)

• Did your digestive problems begin when you got back from that exotic vacation to Africa? (It’s nice to see the animals, but many Third World populations hardly receive any vaccines, and frequently, the living conditions breed illnesses we’ve never even heard of.)

• Did you change jobs recently and are now sitting at a new desk in a new room with new people? (You are now in a new germ pool, and when this happens, your body goes through a lot of readjustments.)

Sometimes, taking care of your health means getting to the deeper, deeper layers first—address those issues and then go for the immediate symptoms.

David Winston, founder of Herbalists and Alchemists and the author of many books, has several favorite seasonal supports. I’ve added to some of his.

•  Holy Basil . Long in use in Ayurvedic medicine for the mind and nervous system, holy basil helps lift the spirits, dispel depression, and acts as an antiviral.

•  Schisandra Berry . A powerful adaptogen, schisandra berry helps strengthen the pituitary and adrenal functions.  It is rich in anti-inflammatory flavonoids and is useful for mild asthma as well as cleansing to the liver.

•  Elderberry . Rich in antioxidants, elderberries have been shown in clinical trials to inhibit viruses, especially the flu.  And your great-grandma might have even made some nice elderberry wine for those cold, winter nights.

•  Goldenseal . Goldenseal treats gastric inflammation, upper intestinal tract deficiency, eye inflammations, hemorrhoids, liver congestion and jaundice, sore throats, coughs, and more and more and more. This one’s my favorite and I won’t leave home without it.

So how much to take? It goes back to where were you before? One cup of tea daily or two capsules or fifteen drops of the tincture are usually safe places to start….Where’s my dust bunny?

Marguerite Dunne is a city girl and traveler. Visit her website at www.herbs-on-hudson.com or listen to her radio show, The Urban Herbalist, on www.wtbq.com. Marguerite was also the third place winner in The Herb Companion's essay contest, "Looking Forward to Herbs."

When the herb spirit is alive, roots mature, vines unfold and souls blossom, reaching out with a fragrance of subtle energy. The herb spirit increases with each herb gardening task: planting, tilling, pruning, gathering, infusing, decocting, tincturing, compounding, dyeing and the wistful sundown delight of simply watching the garden grow.

For a millennium, the herb spirit has grown as gatherers have bundled, blended and applied precious herbs. Father Time's laws have never ordered Mother Nature's gardens and so her gardens have continued to grow. Every herbalist carries this intense energy of the vine, which reaches and pushes upward. And when each garden wall is scaled, the vine simply develops, adjusts and flourishes.

Photo by angavallen/Courtesy Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/angavallen/

How did our holistic health garden grow? Expo East, an extended vine of the herb spirit, is an annual event in Boston where health food companies can display their wares for the benefit of  storeowners  So in September, several hundred health food industry vendors carried their boxes and set up their displays. Meanwhile, curious independent store owners and chain-store buyers busily sampled new flavors, dabbed crèmes, collected cute samples and carried out stacks of scientific reports. The “old-timers” wanted to show off their newest merchandise while the “newcomers “ proceeded with caution, ever vigilant for the show’s discount specials. The “old, old-timers” mused pensively about the olden days (the late 1960s) when we still sold bunches of wild-crafted herbs from the backs of battered station wagons and traded addresses for where to get authentic brown rice and good local clover honey. I miss the days when our herb-talk was a secret code among friends, who took the time to put their hands in the dirt, do some digging and do some thinking too.

Lo and behold, I found some wonderful, recycled hippies who've kept the faith and turned our evergreen idealism into the kind of small town companies we admire.  Bob MacLeod and SteveByckiewicz  (“two vegetarians”) started Kiss My Face about 25 years ago. I like their products because they feel great and they don't leave any sticky residue from overly processed extracts. Their product line started with a big bar of olive oil soap, but many face moisturizers, shaving creams, shimmers and cosmetics later, they’ve got a charming website (www.kissmyface.com) and the goodwill of customers in 19 countries.

Photo by Timothy Valentine/Courtesy Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/el_ramon/

I chatted with their VP of kissing and telling, Lewis Goldstein, whose “business card” is a coconut-pineapple SPF 15 lip balm. Who says corporate can’t be fun? We wound our way around the conventional business max topics: the roller coaster economy, quick-fix supplements wrapped up in chocolate and educating the next generation. But what made me smile the most was Lewis describing his mother's experimentations with natural remedies.  Growing up, he knew that there were herbal health alternatives for conventional medical and cosmetic trades.  We reminisced about making soups and brewing teas.  We talked about teaching children the right food choices and the early encounters Lewis’s mother had when questioning doctors.  It’s nice to know that there are still good folks out there and that the herb spirit is very much alive.

Now it’s late fall and my herb drying rack is loaded with peppermint, lemon balm, oregano and catnip. I’ve already made my last batches of this healing salve with my freshly picked comfrey and calendula, maybe I’ll run some over to Bob, Steve and Lewis.

Photo by tristrambrelstaff/Courtesy Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tristrambrelstaff/

Marguerite’s Comfrey Salve
Makes twenty, 1-ounce jars

This salve is great for cuts, scrapes, bruises and soothing irritated skin.

• 20 comfrey leaves
• 10 calendula flower heads
• 2 cups olive oil
• ½ cup grape seed oil
• 1 cup lanolin
• ¼ cup of beeswax
• Lavender oil

1. Slow-boil all ingredients in a crockpot for about 4 hours. Periodically, wipe the water off the lid.

2. Strain through cheesecloth into a spouted measuring cup and pour quickly into individual 1-ounce jars.

3. As soon as the liquid salve is poured, add 10 drops of the lavender oil to each jar. The lavender oil is added at the end so it won't evaporate if boiled.    

Marguerite Dunne is a city girl and traveler. Visit her website at www.herbs-on-hudson.com or listen to her radio show, The Urban Herbalist, on www.wtbq.com. Marguerite was also the third place winner in The Herb Companion's essay contest, "Looking Forward to Herbs."

My Jewish friends have always found it odd that I'm such a fan of Yom Kippur. I like the idea of taking one day a year for thinking about your mistakes and making yourself a better person. When I was still teaching, I used the occasion to assign this essay thesis statement: If you could take back one thing you did as a child, what would it be? 

The stories were often painful to read. One story was written by an angry, adolescent young boy from the inner city. He wrote about the time he was 11 years old, hanging out with his pals in the garage, and playing with his father's guns. They were each taking turns handling the gun. When it was his turn, he accidently shot his friend, nearly killing him and taking out one of his friend’s eyes.

He never alluded to this tragedy before, masking the emotion he felt. The part that was so painful for him was that he'd never been given the canvas, the paper or the platform to express his feelings and tell his tale.

People are faced with great challenges, and somehow people have to deal with them daily. Reading these painful essays reminded me of how regenerative Mother Nature can be, and how lucky we are to have her abundance to help overcome tough situations.

Although it would trivialize my former student’s situation to imply that a few herbs could take away the pain of his life situation, I do believe that some of nature’s healing plants can help put our bodies and spirits at ease.

Here are some herbal remedies that have specific healing properties for dealing with overcoming sorrow, anger and depression.

There’s nothing like a sip of skullcap tea. Also try a medium green leaf tea, which helps relax nervous tension and is a favorite at the end of a trying day.

Verbena officinalis

Vervain (don't forget to add the honey to this one!) is more “full-bodied” and can help overcome a deeper depression. The secret is in the consistency; you can’t have a “one cup here and a one cup there" approach. Instead, use 2 to 3 cups daily for a couple of weeks, depending on how overwhelming the sorrow is and how many toxins one loads up with. Vervain also acts as a hepatic remedy and helps with inflammation of the gallbladder. In Chinese Medicine, anger is held in the gallbladder.

Next, I suggest picking up a paintbrush, grabbing a pen, or finding a guitar and discovering new ways to express your emotions and overcome terrible situations. Bodies and minds can mend; nature and art can lead the way.

Marguerite Dunne is a city girl and traveler. Visit her website at www.herbs-on-hudson.com or listen to her radio show, The Urban Herbalist, on www.wtbq.com. Marguerite was also the third place winner in The Herb Companion's essay contest, "Looking Forward to Herbs."

It's officially summertime. The fish are jumping, the catnip is high, the birds and the bees are busy gathering, the plants are busy growing and some herbalists are busy brewing up herbal recipes for skincare lotions and creams. But what about taking care of your skin from the inside?

In The Practicing Herbalist, master herbalist Margi Flint does an outstanding job of explaining Chinese Facial Analysis, illustrating how the laugh lines around your mouth and the lines across your forehead are reflections of a backed-up colon. Other lines are also connected to toxic body sites.

Here are a couple of my favorite herbs that work from the inside to help your skin shine on the outside. 

• Burdock (Arctium lappa). My favorite blood cleanser, with an affinity for the epidermis. So good, it helps with psoriasis and poison ivy. 

• Red clover (Trifolium pratense). An antibacterial agent. It’s been effective with many skin disorders including athlete’s foot.  It also helps with cough, colds and burns. 

• Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica). A safe and effective laxative; also useful for clearing impurities out of the blood.

• Boldo (Peumus boldus). A gentle remedy for the liver, gallbladder and digestion.  
          
Helping to clean the digestive system and liver will assist clearing the body of toxins so that epidermis eruptions, pimples, and rashes don’t have a chance collecting and dispersing on the skin.    

Marguerite Dunne is a city girl and traveler. Visit her website at www.herbs-on-hudson.com or listen to her radio show, The Urban Herbalist, on www.wtbq.com. Marguerite was also the third place winner in The Herb Companion's essay contest, "Looking Forward to Herbs."

In 2003, one week after 23-year-old rookie Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Belcher died, Mark Blumenthal, the founder of the American Botanical Council, the première non-profit research and education organization that is “passionate about helping people live healthier lives through the responsible use of herbs, medicinal plants,” came on my radio show to dissect the misinformation being funneled to the press about the cause of death and the effects of the herb ephedra.

I had used ma huang, ephedra, a highly respected herb in Chinese traditional medicine with 5,000 years of empirical research, for 20 years every spring for my hay fever. One cup in the morning and my runny nose and itchy eyes dried up. One of the 200+ chemicals in ephedra is ephedrine, an “upper,” which 21st century snake oil salesmen have extracted to rev up their over-the-counter diet pills. (In a cup of the tea, you feel less of a “wake-up” than with a cup of decaf coffee.)

What we brought to light on-air was that Steve Belcher had a heart condition, was on four to five presciption drugs, had been told to lose ten pounds quickly, had hardly eaten for days, and he’d been standing in the 104 degree-Florida-sun for a couple of hours when he collapsed. Yet, the mainstream press kept playing it that the herb ephedra was “the bad guy.” The ABC is dedicated to providing accurate and reliable information for consumers about herbs, and Mark’s job regularly includes debunking these negative reports.

Who is the expert they’re going to call in to blast the medical practitioners who allowed Michael Jackson to take three different narcotics daily?  He was on Demerol, Dilaudid and Viodin—any one of which could have been deadly. Michael Jackson was also on Soma, Xanax and Zoloft. Explain to me how this is a good health regimen. But the pharmaceutical industry buys too many ads in newspapers and on television, therefore, this issue’s investigative journalism will be meek and buried in the back pages.

By December of 2003, the FDA announced its intent to publish a rule banning the sale of ephedra-containing products. But the agency didn’t clarify the details; the subsequent ban only curtailed ephedrine from weight-loss products—there was no mention of the fact that ephedra is still the key ingredient in most OTC products for hay fever and colds, including Allegra and Sudaphed.  

I am saddened by Michael Jackson’s death; let’s use this as a teachable moment to discuss good and bad health protocols with herbs and with drugs.

Marguerite Dunne is a c ity girl and traveler. Visit her website at www.herbs-on-hudson.com or listen to her radio show, The Urban Herbalist, on www.wtbq.com. Marguerite was also the third place winner in The Herb Companion's essay contest, "Looking Forward to Herbs."

A friend asked me to be a guest speaker in her college class one night, with the noble task of explaining to her students how to get started using medicinal herbs. Twenty intelligent adults leaned forward as the spotlight was on me and I told the tale of how I got started with herbs. I talked about how the doctors had pumped me with drugs, which made me feel worse, and about how herbal roots and leaves were what gave me back my body.

One flustered 40-year-old lady raised her hand. She described, in scathing detail, her arthritis, hip replacements, autoimmune diseases and the various failing pill protocols the doctors placed her on and off and on and off for the past five years. She raged over a lopsided conversation she’d had with a young clerk in a health food store. Pounding her fist into her hand, to the beat of every spoken word, she intoned, “How do I know I’m getting the right medical advice when I go into a health food store?” 

What I would have liked to have said was, “So, you want to make sure this 18-year-old young woman in a health food store can give you the proper diagnosis to your illness, which three medical doctors and, collectively, 55 years of graduate medical school, have failed to correctly analyze? Did I get that right?”

It’s frustrating as heck when your body is going one way and you want it to go the other and nobody, but nobody, is giving you the right information and you just want some answers; when it isn’t like anything you or your friend has experienced before; when you did all the things the doctor told you to do! I remember how sick I was for three years after I stopped taking birth control pills: I lost my period, gained 30 pounds, got all kinds of allergies and suffered from 104 degree fevers for days. I went in for all kinds of tests and got all kinds of pills and shots from nine different doctors—nobody could tell me what was wrong with my body.

That was when an old and dear friend, turned me on to herbs. My friend took me to a chiropractor who adjusted my back and suggested I use aloe root and blue cohosh. Within two weeks, I got my period back for the first time in nearly three years and fifteen pounds fell off of me. I was sold!

My very first herb book, which I still recommend and now holds the highest place of honor on my bookshelf, was the original 1939 version of Back to Eden by Jethro Kloss (Lotus Press, 1997). Yeah, I know there are thousands of scientific studies about herbs and all kinds of texts with annotations written and efficient, systematic technobrews that have been sliced-and-diced-analyzed, investigated, footnoted, and refined, but after 30 years as a practicing herbalist, I still prefer the sweet sensibility of the wise, old healing shaman of the village. I learned so much from trying each herb. Sometimes, there is no exact name for one disease to explain all the knotty symptoms your body is showing. Locate which body system feels the most affected, and begin there. When anyone asks, I just say, “Start with one herb related to one health issue you want to work on.”  Jethro Kloss would approve.

Marguerite Dunne is a c itygirl and traveler. Visit her website at www.herbs-on-hudson.com or listen to her radio show, The Urban Herbalist, on www.wtbq.com. Marguerite was also the third place winner in The Herb Companion's essay contest, "Looking Forward to Herbs."

What are herbs?

Herbs are the spirit of Mother Earth talking to her children who walk, fly, swim–keeping the connection between the garden, the green, the light, the wind, the sand and the stars. They are working plants, giving us nourishment for our minds, clothing for our bodies, medicine for our ills, dyes, colors, fragrance and harmony.

Many lessons come from herbs and from the garden. We can take the light of day and transform it into a whole person. We need to find our place in the garden in order to grow. Whenever a plant does not thrive in one place there is always another place for it to flourish. Every season has its own beauty. If you move, shake loose and tumble, you will only be a tumbleweed, bumping along on the whimsy of the wind, or you can burrow down deep into the earth, spread your roots, claim your space, stretch your limbs, arms and soul, face the light, take the rains, snows and storms, bare your hardened bark, shed your falling leaves, and go inward on the veil of the winter solstice.

Grow grandly into a mighty oak; weep as a willow, head bowed all the daylong. Tend to the weeds, the infinite distractions we face daily, the loss of time, creativity and energy.

Herbal plants offer the medicine of Mother Nature–ye shall be known by thy fruit. Whatever grows of beauty and purpose is more than a single day’s work.

Courtesy of Flickr/Per Ola Wiberg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/powi/

It's time to get planting again as the chi of my comfrey, burdock, yellowdock, chocolate mint, catnip, stinging nettle, golden seal and echinacea rises, remembering the infinite connection. It’s spring once more. I grab my gardening tools, call my kittens and join the birds and bees as we all have work to do.