Winter Herbal Care

Caring for ourselves and our families through

Winter

As the wheel once again turns to the coldest and darkest time for those of us in the northern hemisphere, we can benefit from attuning ourselves to the cycles of the Earth. We are naturally urged to slow down, rest more, and turn within. While this can be quite challenging with busy lifestyles as well as the swirl of holiday merriment and stress as the season begins, there are approaches we can take to ensure our optimal health, help prevent sickness, and tend to it with care when it does occur.

ò In winter, we bring the warmth and light inside – into our homes and into our bodies. Fires in the hearth and candles can help nurture our need for this light. Likewise, warming foods and herbs, along with loving relationships and simple creative endeavors such as cooking, crafts, storytelling and writing can help keep the fires within alive.

ò Our bodies may need more water as well as essential fatty acids such as in flax and fish oils, which may also help temper wintertime blues.

ò We need to keep our bodies moving everyday. Getting out into the sunshine, walking, playing in the snow, and dancing or yoga indoors.

Foods

Nourishing marrow soups and homemade veggie broth, mineral-rich roots such as beets, carrots, parsnips, and rutabagas, dark leafy greens, and whole grains are all wonderful. This is an excellent time for trying new recipes and foods. Keeping it colorful and varied helps ensure a variety of nutrients. Including warming spices to foods is an ideal way to include herbs in our wintertime ways. Adding even very small amounts of sea vegetables, astragalus (in soups), or shitake mushrooms also makes an immune medicine.


Wintertime Herbs

These plant medicines and spices can be used in cooking, in teas or tinctures, either as simples (by themselves) or in blends. Among the abundance of useful plants for this time:

Warming Herbs - Cayenne, Ginger, Cinnamon, Cardamon, Garlic, Rosemary, Sage

Nervines – these calm, soothe, and may help enliven the heart: Oats, Lemon Balm, Chamomile, Nettles, Motherwort, Linden flowers

Immunomodulators and Adaptogens – These help build our overall resistance to disease preventatively, as well as aid our bodies ability to adapt to stress: Reishi (probably best in capsule form) & Astragalus are my two favorites for this time of year. There is no herb to substitute fundamental self-care with proper rest and nutrition however.

Colds & Flu

Increased rest, soups, staying warm, beginning herbal treatment in early stages if possible, and staying consistent with dosages are fundamental in herbal treatment of wintertime sickness. Indicated herbs do vary depending on the person being treated and characteristics of symptoms. Often combined each other and with peppermint or ginger in a tea, some general suggestions include:

ò Elderberry - flowers and berries traditionally used for colds and flu. Sambucus is great for kids, especially as a syrup, yet also useful for adults. Tea: one cup boiling water poured over 2 tsp. flowers, infused 10 minutes or 2 to 4 ml of tincture, three times per day. Safe in pregnancy.

ò Yarrow - used in acute stage of colds and flu, this antimicrobial herb is also known to help keep infection from reaching the lungs. Use 2-4 grams of yarrow in tea or 2-4 ml of tincture, three times per day. Not in pregnancy.

ò Boneset – A favorite for bringing down fevers and dealing with aches and congestion in colds and flu. Tea: 1-2 tsp steeped in covered container 15 minutes, three times per day up to every hour. “Bitter as all get out” explained Appalachian herbalist Tommy Bass, yet for the hardy, there’s nothing like it to bring down a fever. Not for use in pregnancy.

Expectorants- these include: mullein leaf or marshmallow root for a dry cough; thyme tea or tincture, or eucalyptus leaves as a tea and steam for a wet mucus- rich cough.

Suggested Books for more information:

The Family Herbal and Herbal Healing for Women by Rosemary Gladstar. This remarkable herbalist shares valuable traditional knowledge for addressing a wide range of health issues as well as simply enhancing well-being.

Naturally Healthy Babies & Children by Aviva Jill Romm. This is a commonsense guide to herbal remedies and nutrition for young ones

Medical Herbalism by David Hoffmann. A hardy text full of applicable information for the more serious student. the less serious and more economical herbalist might try his Holistic Herbal.

Mythically, winter is the time of the wizened old woman and old man, the Grandmothers and Grandfathers - those who have lived fully and well. They are the old ones who have lived long before us and who now guard the gates of life and death. They are guides in the darkness, weavers of fate, and even glorious angels, whose reverence has endured for at least thousands of years. They speak to us to honor and listen to the stories of our elders as well as to connect with the places inside ourselves which are ancient and wise. Winter is an excellent time to remember and discover that which is truly most important to us and to our world, as though we were looking over our lives at their end. What might seem most essential to us then? The still darkness of winter invites us to enter into the timelessness of our own spirits and to connect with that which most truly nourishes our bodies and souls. While no doubt a supreme time to treasure and deepen bonds with loved ones, winter is also a time of great benefit from quiet reflection, from time spent in conscious self-discovery. Journaling, meditation, prayer, ritual, artwork, and creative expression of all kinds can emerge from the darkness of winter.

Winter’s promise is the rebirth of the sun at winter solstice as the daylight once again begins to grow and soon enough, the Earth will warm again. This time of sacred darkness can be well spent envisioning ideas and plans for our lives and for the year ahead as we rest and replenish our vital energies.

Curried Chicken Coconut Soup

Curried Chicken Coconut Soup

A very warming soup for wintertime

Will definitely help cure just about whatever ails you

* About 3 lbs organic chicken w/ bones * 2 cans coconut milk
* 1 bunch chopped green onion * 1 -3 Tbs curry paste
* 2 –3 stalks lemongrass (if available) * 2 – 3 Tbs mined ginger
* 1 bunch chopped spinach * juice of 1 lime
* 1 bunch chopped cilantro * pinches of sea salt

Cut edible parts of lemon grass into small pieces and set aside to add later, saving stalks. Boil, then simmer chicken in one quart water for 40 minutes until done, skimming the top as you go. Take chicken out of broth and allow to cool. Then separate the meat. Place bones back in broth with lemongrass stalks and simmmer on lowest setting for another hour or up to twelve hours. Meanwhile, wash and prepare veggies and ginger (cuttings thrown in with broth), and cut chicken meat into small pieces. Let broth cool a bit, then strain out bones and lemongrass stalks into empty pot. Place remaining ingredients together with strained broth except for the lime and cilantro, which are added just before serving. Simmer on low for at least twenty minutes, longer is fine. Curry paste can be mixed in small bowl of broth separately before being added, to ensure smoothness. It can be quite hot, so add to taste.
* Is excellent served with basmati rice or rice noodles .
* The longer the bones are simmered, the richer the broth. Canned chicken broth and boneless chicken can be substituted for boiling processes (yet soup will lack fullness of both taste and nutrient richness). Making hardy stock is a lost art, see book Nourishing Traditions or www.westonaprice.org/foodfeatures/broth.html for more detail).

Immigrants Preserve Traditional Remedies

Immigrants From Mexico's Indigenous Groups Work to Preserve Traditional Health Care CustomsBy JULIANA BARBASSAMADERA, Calif. Dec 29, 2005 (AP)— A thick tangle of marigolds reaches chest-high around Caritina Cruz, who plucks one of the deep orange flowers and explains to her little sister how to prepare it in a tea that soothes indigestion.With Cruz's care, the plot eventually will sprout plants that immigrants from Mexico's dozens of indigenous groups may use to treat everything from insomnia to stomach cramps.The garden was planted with the help of a nonprofit group and is part of a larger effort to preserve health care customs that predate the Spanish conquest even as community leaders work to forge ties with the local medical establishment."I want to keep what we know and be able to use what's here, too," said Cruz, 19, standing in the patch of dirt she hopes will preserve the community's health and its cultural identity.Members of Mexico's 60 Indian groups are even more likely than other recent immigrants to fall outside the reach of the American health care system, said Nayamin Martinez Cossio, of the indigenous organization Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indigena Oaxaqueno.Isolated in remote farmworker settlements and usually uninsured, they often speak languages most Spanish-speaking Mexicans don't recognize.Often discriminated against in Mexico, they also are "at the bottom of the ladder" in the United States, said Jonathan Fox, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz.The 2000 Census showed there were about 154,362 such immigrants in the state, according to an analysis by researchers at UC Santa Cruz.Mexico's indigenous groups also are making up a growing share of migrants entering the country, according to estimates from the National Agricultural Workers Survey.Between 1993 and 1994, Mexicans from states such as Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero accounted for 9 percent of immigrant farmworkers coming to the country, a figure that rose to 19 percent between 2001 and 2002."They're difficult to reach and they're difficult to treat because they travel so much," said Norma Penalosa, a communicable diseases specialist with Fresno County's Department of Community Health. "One case can become many cases spread around the country."In 2003, Fresno County health workers identified a tuberculosis outbreak that eventually spread to dozens of Mixtecs. Centro Binacional raised money, held educational meetings and tested more than 1,000 people.Martinez and others with Centro Binacional also have sent 15 immigrants who speak a variety of Indian languages to train as interpreters at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.They've delivered workshops in far-flung rural towns on AIDS prevention, diabetes, nutrition, and other health problems farmworkers might come across in the United States.And they brought three traditional healers to California for a November conference where the healers told their American counterparts about how they rely heavily on herbal remedies and rituals to treat diseases.Several doctors attending the conference said having access to traditional medicine can comfort patients by giving them a connection to home something Western doctors can't do. But they also warned against relying only on traditional healers and herbs.Jesus Rodriguez, a family practitioner at Fresno's Sequoia Community Health, encourages his patients to bring in any herbal remedies they might be taking so he can evaluate them and work them into a regimen that might include conventional medicine."They'll go to a healer for as long as they can and by the time they come in, they might have advanced diabetes and be at risk for losing a limb," Rodriguez said.Enriqueta Contreras, a Zapotec midwife, said that being in a foreign land where nothing is familiar can itself be a source of physical and mental illness."They are away from their family, their language. They can't get the herbs they're used to," Contreras said in Spanish. "They don't know who they are anymore. That makes them sick."
On the Net:Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indigena Oaxaqueno:http://www.fiob.org/centro.html