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Are herbs “dilute forms of drugs” – and therefore dangerous? Or are they “natural” – and therefore safe? If you sell herbs, you probably hear these questions often. What is the “right” answer? It depends on the herb! These thoughts on herbs will help you explain to your customers (and yourself) how safe – or dangerous – any herb might be.
To prevent problems when selling or using herbs:
1. Be certain you have the correct plant.
2. Use simples.
3. Understand that different preparations of the same herb can work differently.
4. Use nourishing, tonifying, stimulating, and potentially poisonous herbs wisely.
Be Certain You Have The Correct Plant
One of the easiest ways to get into trouble with an herb is to use the “wrong” one. How could that happen? Common names for herbs overlap, causing confusion as to the proper identity. Herbs that are labeled correctly may contain extraneous material from another, more dangerous, herb. Herbs may be picked at the wrong stage of growth or handled incorrectly after harvesting, causing them to develop detrimental qualities.
Protect yourself and your customers with these simple steps:
* Buy herbs only from reputable suppliers.
* Only buy herbs that are labeled with their botanical name. Botanical names are specific, but the same common names can refer to several different plants. “Marigold” can be Calendula officinalis, a medicinal herb, or Tagetes, an annual used as a bedding plant.
* If you grow the herbs you sell, be meticulous about keeping different plants separate when you harvest and dry them, and obsessive about labeling.
Use Simples
A simple is one herb. For optimum safety, I prepare, buy, sell, learn/teach about and use herbal simples, that is: preparations containing only one herb. (Occasionally I will add some mint to flavor a remedy.)
The more herbs there are in a formula, the more likelihood there is of unwanted side-effects. Understandably, the public seeks combinations, hoping to get more for less. And many mistakenly believe that herbs must be used together to be effective (probably because potentially poisonous herbs are often combined with protective herbs to mitigate the damage they cause). But combining herbs with the same properties, such as goldenseal and echinacea, is counter-productive and more likely to cause trouble than a simple. A simple tincture of echinacea is more effective than any combination and much safer.
Different people have different reactions to substances, whether drugs, foods, or herbs. When herbs are mixed together in a formula and someone taking it has distressing side effects, there is no way to determine which herb is the cause. With simples, it’s easy to tell which herb is doing what. If there’s an adverse reaction, other herbs with similar properties can be tried. Limiting the number of herbs used in any one day (to no more than four) offers added protection.
Side effects from herbs are less common than side effects from drugs and usually less severe. If an herb disturbs the digestion, it may be that the body is learning to process it. Give it a few more tries before giving up. Stop taking any herb that causes nausea, dizziness, sharp stomach pains, diarrhea, headache, or blurred vision. (These effects will generally occur quite quickly.) Slippery elm is an excellent antidote to any type of poison.
If you are allergic to any foods or medicines, it is especially important to consult resources that list the side effects of herbs before you use them.
Understand That Different Preparations Of The Same Herb Can Work Differently
The safety of any herbal remedy is dependent on the way it is prepared and used.
* Tinctures and extracts contain the alkaloids, or poisonous, parts of plants and need to be used with care and wisdom. Tinctures are as safe as the herb involved (see cautions below for tonifying, stimulating, sedating, or potentially poisonous herbs). Best used/sold as simples, not combinations, especially when strong herbs are being used.
* Dried herbs made into teas or infusions contain the nourishing aspects of the plants and are usually quite safe, especially when nourishing or tonifying herbs are used.
* Dried herbs in capsules are generally the least effective way to use herbs. They are poorly digested, poorly utilized, often stale or ineffective, and quite expensive.
* Infused herbal oils are available as is, or thickened into ointments. They are much safer than essential oils, which are highly concentrated and can be lethal if taken internally.
* vinegars are not only decorative but mineral-rich as well. A good medium for nourishing and tonifying herbs; not as strong as tinctures for stimulants/sedatives.
* glycerins are available for those who prefer to avoid alcohol but are usually weaker in action than tinctures.
Use Nourishing, Tonifying, Stimulating, & Potentially Poisonous Herbs Wisely
Herbs comprise a group of several thousand plants with widely varying actions. Some are nourishers, some tonifiers, some stimulants and sedatives, and some are potential poisons. To use them wisely and well, we need to understand each category, its uses, best manner of preparation, and usual dosage range.
Nourishing herbs are the safest of all herbs; side effects are rare. Nourishing herbs are taken in any quantity for any length of time. They are used as foods, just like spinach and kale. Nourishing herbs provide high levels of proteins, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, carotenes, and essential fatty acids.
Examples of nourishing herbs are: alfalfa, amaranth, astragalus, calendula flowers, chickweed, comfrey leaves, dandelion, fenugreek, flax seeds, honeysuckle flowers, lamb’s quarter, marshmallow, nettles, oatstraw, plantain (leaves/seeds), purslane, red clover blossoms, seaweed, Siberian ginseng, slippery elm, violet leaves, and wild mushrooms.
Tonifying herbs act slowly in the body and have a cumulative, rather than immediate, effect. They build the functional ability of an organ (like the liver) or a system (like the immune system). Tonifying herbs are most beneficial when they are used in small quantities for extended periods of time. The more bitter the tonic tastes, the less you need to take. Bland tonics may be used in quantity, like nourishing herbs.
Side effects occasionally occur with tonics, but are usually quite short-term. Many older herbalists mistakenly equated stimulating herbs with tonifying herbs, leading to widespread misuse of many herbs, and severe side effects.
Examples of tonifying herbs are: barberry bark, burdock root/seeds, chaste tree, crone(mug)wort, dandelion root, echinacea, elecampane, fennel, garlic, ginkgo, ginseng, ground ivy, hawthorn berries, horsetail, lady’s mantle, lemon balm, milk thistle seeds, motherwort, mullein, pau d’arco, raspberry leaves, schisandra berries, St. Joan’s wort, turmeric root, usnea, wild yam, and yellow dock.
Sedating and stimulating herbs cause a variety of rapid reactions, some of which may be unwanted. Some parts of the person may be stressed in order to help other parts. Strong sedatives and stimulants, whether herbs or drugs, push us outside our normal ranges of activity and may cause strong side effects. If we rely on them and then try to function without them, we wind up more agitated (or depressed) than before we began. Habitual use of strong sedatives and stimulants – whether opium, rhubarb root, cayenne, or coffee – leads to loss of tone, impairment of functioning, and even physical dependency. The stronger the herb, the more moderate the dose needs to be, and the shorter the duration of its use.
Herbs that tonify and nourish while sedating/stimulating are some of my favorite herbs. I use them freely, as they do not cause dependency. Sedating/stimulating herbs that also tonify or nourish: boneset, catnip, citrus peel, cleavers, ginger, hops, lavender, marjoram, motherwort, oatstraw, passion flower, peppermint, rosemary, sage, skullcap.
Strongly sedating/stimulating herbs include: angelica, black pepper, blessed thistle root, cayenne, cinnamon, cloves, coffee, licorice, opium poppy, osha root, shepherd’s purse, sweet woodruff, turkey rhubarb root, uva ursu leaves, valerian root, wild lettuce sap, willow bark, and wintergreen leaves.
Potentially poisonous herbs are intense, potent medicines that are taken in tiny amounts and only for as long as needed. Side effects are common.
Examples of potentially poisonous herbs are: belladonna, blood-root, celandine, chaparral, foxglove, goldenseal, henbane, iris root, Jimson weed, lobelia, May apple (American mandrake), mistletoe, poke root, poison hemlock, stillingia root, turkey corn root, wild cucumber root.
In addition, consider these thoughts on using herbs safely:
* Respect the power of plants to change the body and spirit in dramatic ways.
* Increase trust in the healing effectiveness of plants by trying remedies for minor or external problems before, or while, working with major and internal problems.
* Develop ongoing relationships with knowledgeable healers – in person or in books – who are interested in herbal medicine.
* Honor the uniqueness of every plant, every person, every situation.
* Remember that each person becomes whole and healed in their own unique way, at their own speed. People, plants, and animals can help in this process. But it is the body/spirit that does the healing. Don’t expect plants to be cure-alls.
What are the Six Steps of Healing?
These are remedies you can use for your problem in order from safest to most dangerous: Step 0 is the safest; Step 6 the most dangerous. Use Steps 0, 1, 2 and 3 as preventive medicine. Prevention is an important, though often invisible, way of healing/wholing in the Wise Woman tradition. Deep relaxation, information exchange, energetic engagement, optimum nourishment (including touch) and exercise promote health with little or no side effects.
Examples are in parenthesis: (with a few of the modalities available at each step)
Step 0: Do Nothing
(sleep, meditate, unplug the clock or the telephone)
A vital, invisible step.
Step 1: Collect Information
(low-tech diagnosis, books, support groups, divination)
Step 2: Engage the Energy
(prayer, homeopathy, ceremony, affirmations, color, laughter)
Step 3: Nourish and Tonify
(herbal infusions and vinegars, hugs, exercise, food choices, gentle massage, yoga stretches)
Note: Healing with Steps 4, 5, and 6 always causes some harm.
Step 4: Stimulate/Sedate
(hot or cold water, many herbal tinctures, acupuncture)
For every stimulation/sedation, there is an opposite sedation/stimulation, sooner or later. Addiction is possible if this step is overused.
Step 5a: Use Supplements
(synthesized or concentrated vitamins, minerals, and food substances such as nutritional yeast, blue-green algae, bran, royal jelly or spirulina)
Supplements are not Step 3. There’s always a risk with synthesized concentrated substances that they’ll do more harm than good.
Step 5b: Use Drugs
(chemotherapy, tamoxifen, hormones, high dilution homeopathics, and potentially toxic herbs)
Overdose may cause grave injury or death.
Step 6: Break and Enter
(threatening language, surgery, colonics, radiation therapies, psychoactive drugs, invasive diagnostic tests such as mammograms and C-T scans)
Side effects are inevitable and may include permanent injury or death.
How to Use the Six Steps of Healing
If you want to remedy your problem with the least possible side effects and danger, start at Step 1. After reading Step 1, pick one remedy from Step 2 and set a time limit for working with it. If your problem is unresolved within that time, decide if the time limit needs expanding or if you are ready to go to Step 3. Continue in this manner, moving to Steps 4, 5 or 6 as needed, until your problem is solved.
Each step up increases the possibility of side effects and their severity so try at least one of the Step 2 techniques, even if they seem strange to you, before going onto the remedies of Step 3 and beyond (note also that time spent at Step 2 will help you choose appropriate remedies at Step 3 and so on). When your problem is resolved don’t stop. Go back through the steps, in reverse, before resting at Step 0.
You can continue to take remedies from a previous Step after moving on, but be cautious about the use of Step 4 remedies in combination with Step 5 remedies.
If you deem it necessary to heal through Step 5 and/or 6 (and real healing can and does take place with the aid of drugs and surgery) and have not yet tried any techniques from Steps 2 and 3, do so immediately. Engaging the energy, nourishing and tonifying will aid and abet the healing powers of the more dangerous healing ways and help prevent or moderate their side effects.
Who is Baba Yaga? She is the Goddess, she is the Witch, she is the Wise Woman, she is the Crone, she is aged artemis.
Baba is Grandmother. In Tibet, fierce demons are Yagas. So she is the Grandmother Demon, Grandmother Dragon, the fearsome, the fierce.
Baba Yaga is the subject of many Russian folk tales or fairy tales. She is very very old.
How do we know? We are told her nose curves down and her chin curves up and they nearly meet. Since the cartilage in our noses, chins and ears continues to grow throughout our lives, only someone a hundred or more would have such a remarkable face. Her fingernails, it is said, are as thick and ridged as roof tiles. My, what a mineral-rich diet she must have! And they are stained brown. Any herbalists here who have noticed such a staining on their hands after a summer of harvesting? I have.
Baba Yaga lives in a house that nearly defies description, yet any herbalist would feel right at home there, overlooking perhaps that the latches on the cupboards, windows, and doors are human fingers, and that the door knocker is a toothed snout, and that the fence is made of bones and skulls. But that all pales when we step back and see that the whole house stands atop scaly yellow chicken legs. It moves about at its own whim, whirling like an ecstatic dancer around and around in a trance. Baba Yaga is Whirlwind Woman, Woman with Drum of the deep north, Shaman Woman, Deep-Dreaming Woman.
Baba Yaga is the keeper of the eternal fire, the spark of divine consciousness that informs the best of every profession, that lives in the best healers and the most intuitive herbalists. Baba Yaga, like all muses, like all guardians, like treasure-bestriding dragons everywhere, is not averse to sharing but she is demanding.
You must give to her, must do her bidding, before she will do yours and give to you.
With wrinkles enough to hide the world’s secrets and a store of tales enough to fast talk my way out of any situation, I am surely the most fearsome thing ever seen, ever imagined: A powerful old woman at home with herself. I am Baba Yaga, and this is one of the stories in my basket.
Baba Yaga’s Story of Sassafras
by way, I believe, of Doug Eliott
Old woman and old man lived together and each did their chores and they were happy. One cold winter evening, coming in from tending the animals, old man ventured: “Old woman, when I’m out on such a cold night my feet stay warm because you knit me such fine warm socks. I wouldn’t want you to think I was complaining, but my hands are cold. Do you think you could knit me some socks for my hands?
Old woman thought for a while, a short while, then she smiled and said: “Old man, I would love to knit some socks for your hands. And she took out her yarn, and she took out her needles, and click clack click clack, she knit socks for old man’s hands.
Old man was very happy and his hands were warm. Still, one evening, coming in from tending the animals, old man ventured: “Old woman. I sure am happy. My hands are warm now, as warm as my feet in those fine socks you knit me. But I have to take those hand socks off to do some of the chores, times when I need to use my thumbs, and then my hands are cold. Do you think you could knit me some socks for my hands that had thumbs?
Old woman thought for a while; she thought for a good long while; she thought all that night and all the next day and well into the next night and all through the whole next day too. Late that evening, before the warming fire, after all the chores were done, she smiled and said: “Old man, I would love to knit some socks with thumbs and trigger fingers for your hands.”
And she took out her yarn, and she took out her needles, and click clack click clack, she knit new socks – with thumbs – and trigger fingers – for old man. Then she took the old hand socks, the one with a thumb on the left and the one with the thumb on the right, and she tossed them out back, by the edge of the woods.
Neither old woman nor old man was happy with the new hand socks. The trigger fingers weren’t next to the thumb, but across from it. They looked at each other and smiled.
Old man went out to do the chores with strange socks on his hands and old woman, she hardly had to think at all, this time. She took out her yarn, and she took out her needles, and click clack click clack, she knit socks with five thumbs for old man’s hands.
It took some time, but when she was done with the last one, she gave them to old man with a grin. Then she took the hand socks with a thumb on each side and she tossed them out back, by the edge of the woods. And old man was very, very happy.
In the spring, out back, by the edge of the woods, a tree grew, with hand socks for leaves and the sweet smell of love lived long by two old folks. We call it sassafras.
The Wise Woman Tradition is the oldest known healing tradition on our planet. It offers a unique view of health that is woman-centered and deeply empowering to women. This is in stark contrast to orthodox – and most alternative – healing traditions, which are based on male viewpoints which disempower women.
The medicine I learned in school was based on a linear, scientific, male worldview whose truth I did not question. When this medicine failed me, as a woman and a mother, I sought alternatives. Herbs helped me take care of myself and my family, simply and safely, but I questioned the assumptions behind what I was taught. It was clear to me that alternative health care disempowers women as much, or more than, orthodox medicine does. They both actively assume that the norm on which assessment of health is to be based is masculine in gender.
Assuming that a healthy male is the definition of health may not seem like much of a problem, unless you are a woman. This core assumption has hurt, and continues to hurt, women in a multitude of direct and indirect ways, from the deeply personal to the widely political. This assumption leads to attempts to “correct” – with drugs and surgery – physical and emotional states that are normal (and healthy) for women, but not for men.
Consider: Healthy women were given DES (a hormone) simply because they were pregnant – their offspring are cancer-prone.
Millions of menopausal women have been (and are still) treated with hormones in an effort to replace what is “lost.” Does this improve their health? No. Use of hormone replacement increases the risk of stroke, heart disease, and breast cancer.
Menstruating women need some quiet time alone. Instead they are offered pink Prozac to help them overcome their “depression.”
Women are advised to have their uterus (and increasingly their ovaries, too) removed since they are “not needed after menopause … just places that can harbor cancer.” It is well known that a woman’s sexual response is unlikely to be as strong, and may even be lost, when she loses these vital organs. A century ago, a woman who challenged male authority could be diagnosed as “hysterical” and her uterus (”hyster”) removed (often without anesthesia or disinfectants).
There is more to medicine than the male perspective. I speak for the woman-centered tradition. It offers men and women a new way to think about and create health in all stages of their lives. It empowers women to take charge of their health and their lives, to honor and respect themselves, and the earth. I call it the Wise Woman Tradition.
The Wise Woman Tradition empowers women by:
The Wise Woman Tradition empowers women to:
Much of modern medicine seems complicated and difficult to understand. Many alternative remedies are also complicated, some are unduly expensive, others require special training and initiations. This disempowers women. The Wise Woman Tradition, by focusing on simple remedies that are easily accessible, and by sharing information freely, allows women to feel competent and powerful in taking care of their own health.
The Wise Woman Tradition heals by nourishing the wholeness of each unique individual. Nourishing has three primary aspects: simple ceremony, nourishing foods, and compassionate listening. When women are heard, when we listen to each other, then we feel validated and empowered. Harking back to the consciousness-raising sessions of the 1970’s, and informed by Native American teachings of the talking stick, compassionate listening reshapes women’s stories so they can reshape their lives.
One of the great gifts of the Wise Woman Tradition is the renaming of our weaknesses as strengths. When we allow ourselves to be depressed, outraged, yearning, grief-stricken, confused, fearful, bitchy, and more; when we allow all that we are to be part of us, then we can finally find and celebrate our wholeness/health/holiness.
The Wise Woman Tradition empowers women by reminding us that we are sacred, that our bodies are sacred. As women, we are the earth. Each one of us lives in the body of the earth. Each one of us comes from this sacred ground of being. And not only are we empowered to honor ourselves, we are empowered to demand that respect from all others.
When women accept orthodoxy’s image of them as constantly in need of help, they accept a powerless position. When women accept the Wise Woman Tradition’s assertion that they are already perfect, already vibrantly healthy, even when they have problems, they assume a position of power. When women create their own healthy norms, they create a place of power in which they can stand, no matter how fast and furious the changes.
When women believe that their natural cycles and changes (puberty, menses, pregnancy, menopause) are somehow sick or wrong, they open themselves to medical experiments. When women learn that the Wise Woman Tradition honors these states above all others, they find a source of deep wisdom and great power flowing into their lives.
When women define themselves from a male-centered viewpoint, they always lose. When they define themselves from a woman-centered viewpoint, they always win. The Wise Woman Tradition offers this power to women, from the Ancient Grandmother’s heart to yours.
