From the Rodale book, Dr. Duke's Essential Herbs: Edit id 1006
Best Herbal Medicine
Best Herbal Medicine, Best Herbal Bargain
When I toss a salad or dip a ladle into a big pot of vegetable soup, I want my greens and herbs untouched: unaltered, unprocessed. I'd rather they were fresh from my organic backyard, where they're nurtured, watched like babies, and harvested with my own two hands. When it comes to my tea, I'm a purist about the herbs and mints that go into my daily drink. They must be pristine.
I've grown every plant in this book except one (bilberry, but I'm working on it) and dozens upon dozens more. I've made my own tinctures and have treated my own wounds with homemade herbal poultices and compresses. Even though I regret the cost, compared with impure, chemically grown herbs, fruits, and vegetables, I fervently believe in the superiority of whole, organic, unprocessed food plants.
Given these predilections, you'll be surprised to learn that, with only a few exceptions, I don't believe that whole, unprocessed herbs necessarily represent the best way to derive therapeutic benefit from medicinal plants.
Yup, the ol' caretaker of Father Nature's "Farmacy" takes supplements--lots of them. And they're the same ones that you can find in any good health food store.
Sure, I've got a lot of echinacea growing out in my Green Farmacy Garden. The surrounding forest is well-endowed with introduced goldenseal, too. But when I come down with a cold or infection, I almost never harvest either. You just can't know, without lab analyses, the concentration of immunity-strengthening ingredients they contain. And besides, I hate to sacrifice those gorgeous flowers just to get at their roots.
Similarly, I'm voracious about my vineyard-grown garlic, eating it both fresh and aged, raw, cooked, and juiced. But especially when I'm traveling, I also swallow garlic capsules, whose contents are extracted and processed somewhere far, far from my backyard. To build mental musculature and help fend off Alzheimer's disease, I swear by ginkgo biloba, but I rarely consume the leaves of my own ginkgo trees. That could be dangerous for some people, especially if you're sensitive to poison ivy. Besides, I'd need dozens of leaves for just a couple of doses.
All things considered, standardized, store-bought phytomedicinal supplements tend to be more medicinally effective and more qualitatively reliable than whole herbs, whether homegrown, purchased in bulk, or ground up and stuffed into capsules. Efficient, easy to take, and economical, they're the best bet for anyone who isn't intimately knowledgeable about therapeutic plants.
I have only one qualification to my blanket statement. And it's a big one: You have to know what you're getting. You cannot just go to a store and buy any old phytochemical supplement. The smart use of herbs demands that you acquire some smarts about herbs.
Standardized Science, Unstandardized Art
I doubt you'll ever catch me taking a supplement of standardized coffee extract. So far, the herbal medicine caffeine I dispense to myself with coffee comes unstandardized, unpurified, unisolated. The same goes for tea. And the same goes for a cup of cocoa.
Part of the reason is the whole experience. There's nothing like sitting down to a steaming cup of coffee. Or tea. Or cocoa. The warm liquid trickles down your esophagus and fills your belly. The aroma's invisible fingers, so inviting and exciting, slither through the air and wiggle their way into your nose. Even the preparation--warming the water, heating the milk--primes your senses to receive the phytochemical fix.
But that's not all. There's an indefinable something in the drink that does not--cannot--transfer to an isolated, standardized extraction. Somehow, those xanthine alkaloids in coffee, tea, and cocoa work better in a simple home-brewed extraction rather than in a fancy distillation process. I feel the same way about most of my herbal teas and liqueurs, too.
The Measure of Medicine
As much as I want to tell you that phytomedicine is a rigid science with rigid protocols that demand rigidly dependable dosages, I really can't. In my mind, I adamantly believe that people generally should take standardized herbal supplements. My heart, though, still tugs at whole, unadulterated foods. So do my tastebuds. (As an aside, you may not even need herbs if you're sure that your diet, exercise, and stress management programs are satisfactory. But that's not the case with most of us.)
It's tough to explain when you should take the supplements and when you might, instead, rely on whole foods. I have a knowledge of herbs and an intuitive feel that took decades to acquire. Most people just want to know what works, when it works, and, sometimes, why. I wish I could fashion a few hard-and-fast rules, but I can't. The best I can do is offer a few examples.
By and large, when I'm on the road and don't have access to my garden, I prefer standardized supplements. Sure, I'll nibble on garlic, onion, and other herbs if I can, but I rely on standardized supplements. At home, I more often take the "food farmacy" approach, leaning on whole plants and herbs for my daily phytochemical dosages. One big exception is celery seed, which, as you'll soon read in chapter 4, has kept me from getting agonizing attacks of gout for more than three years. (Another is saw palmetto; I hate the taste of the berries.) Because I can't fool with gout, I almost always, except when experimenting, take supplements.
Using yourself as a guinea pig is ill-advised, but it's taught me that chomping on four celery stalks protects me from gout just as well as the supplements--so far. Drinking celery juice does the same thing--again, so far. I've been incredibly lucky. Given all the variables that determine a plant's phytochemical content, though, I can never know for sure when or if food farmacy will work. I can bet the farm, though, that swallowing two standardized supplements will keep my big toe free of pain.
If you have gout, you also need to know the amount of celery's active ingredients to which your body will respond. You might need more than me. Or less. Setting dosages by the stalk doesn't give us much of a point of reference. Is it a big stalk or a little one? Do you have green celery or white celery? With a standardized supplement, we can be much more certain and precise.
Don't deny yourself the pleasure of celery juice, celery soup, and whole celery, and even celery seed on an English muffin. Eat and drink to your heart's content. If you consume enough, perhaps you'll stave off gout attacks. Standardized supplements, though, are a better bet.
Choosing Not to Choose?
With other therapeutic plants, I generally go the food farmacy route at home, too--so long as no immediate medical need arises. Unless a cold comes up, I eat unstandardized whole cloves of garlic almost daily instead of taking garlic supplements. If you cannot (or will not) eat garlic every day, you had better look for a good standardized supplement. I dump curry in my recipes rather than swallow turmeric capsules--again, barring some exigency. If I had fresh bilberries, I'd eat them in lieu of taking them in supplemental form. Sometimes, though, I'll help myself to a double-dose of fresh blueberries, expecting approximately the same phytomedicinal effect that I'd get from half as many bilberries.
Granted, I don't know exactly how much of the various active ingredients I'm getting. With food farmacy, you never do. I suspect, though, that the unique chemical mixes in food, those blends of phytocompounds that not even the most careful extraction could preserve, are closer to what my genes expect. To an extent, I suppose you could say I'm also hedging my bets, just in case some active ingredients lost in the standardization process turn out to be important.
I readily acknowledge that this answer is inadequate. Perhaps once the medical industry pays more than lip service to phytochemical research, we'll gain a more complete understanding. Until then, I'm sticking with my self-designed program and getting the best of both worlds--the wholesome, healthful goodness of food farmacy and the therapeutic power of standardized supplements.
The Standardization of Excellence
Little more than a decade ago, I was an ardent advocate of completely natural, unrefined herbs--just the crude plant, steeped in alcohol or vinegar or crushed up into tablets and capsules. I defended my stance even though I constantly encountered sometimes horrendous, quantitative (and thus qualitative) variations in their phytochemicals, the plant chemicals that give them their medicinal value. From species to species, garden to garden, harvest to harvest, the phytochemical content often fluctuated by anywhere from twofold to tenfold. Sometimes, it varied a hundredfold. Nevertheless, I remained a proponent of unrefined crude herbs.
Then one day I read about a subspecies of thyme and the amount of a certain chemical it supposedly contained. Each and every sample was grown within the same square meter of land. One individual plant in that square meter had an impressive 13,900 ppm (parts per million) of the chemical. Another held virtually zero. The other samples measured everything in between. Same soil, same climate, same subspecies. And that was for just one of the thousands of chemicals, many of them medicinal, in this herb.
Thyme, if you will, ran out on my tolerance of phytochemical fluctuations. I started to comprehend how standardization could improve the reliability of herbal medicines.
It's not hard to understand why such great discrepancies occur. You and I belong to the same species, yet we naturally exhibit tremendous differences in our body chemistries. So it is with herbs.
The phytochemical quality of a plant hinges on many variables: the species, the weather, the soil, the care and tending given, the time of harvest, and the intervening presence of insects, deer, groundhogs, and any other herbivore that might munch on your garden. These factors and others lay the groundwork while the plant is alive. After the harvest, you've got to consider length of storage before processing; exposure to air, contamination, heat, moisture, and sunlight; method of processing; and who knows what else.
To accurately assess a plant's medicinal potential, I became convinced, we needed some way to assure a consistent potency to every batch. Phytochemicals aren't magic. Their mere presence doesn't guarantee success. Usually, a little dab won't do it. A certain amount is required to induce a certain change, and anything less just won't work. (In a few rare cases, a little dab will at least help. If, for example, you're deficient in some vitamins, it seems that every little bit counts.)
Imagine the uncertainty and insanity that would ensue if we couldn't count on the medicinal content of each pill in a bottle of prescription tablets. Or if people with diabetes had to cross their fingers and guess the amount of insulin that filled a syringe. What if they couldn't be certain that the insulin they purchased yesterday was as potent as the vial they bought last month? Without our knowing what to expect, nonstandardized herbs would be less likely to claim their rightful place as superior, safer substitutes for a good many man-made pharmaceuticals.
Pulling Out the Potency
The process of standardization resolves the dilemma. With proper standardization, unlike with the raw, pulverized plant or a simple extract, you know two things:
1. You're getting a certain quantity of the plant.
2. You're getting a certain quantity of one or more of the plant's phytochemicals.
A simple extract is just an herb in concentrated form, and anybody can make one. You do it every time you brew a cup of coffee, for example. You use hot water as a solvent to draw certain compounds out of the ground-up coffee beans. You also expect a certain physiological benefit: You want to wake your tired carcass up and get the day going.
Not too many of us want to relinquish our morning coffee in favor of a few caffeine capsules. That's just one of numerous instances in which the whole, unstandardized crude herb is preferable to its standardized equivalent. When seeking a medicinal or therapeutic effect, though, the average person generally needs an assurance that only a standardized supplement can provide.
Standardizing an herb can provide so-called guaranteed-potency extractions--consistent, measurable levels of one or more active ingredients. Herbal insiders can bicker among themselves over which chemical or which method is best, but the outcome basically remains the same: In every dose, you get a specific amount or amounts of one or more of the plant's many medicinal constituents.
There's a practical aspect to consider, too. In many cases, you have to consume impossibly large quantities of a natural, unrefined herb to get the equivalent beneficial effect of a standardized supplement. Let's say you're interested in saw palmetto for your prostate. In standardized form, you'd take a couple of capsules daily that contain a known level of phytosterols and/or fatty acids. With a supplement made just from crushed-up saw palmetto berries, you might conceivably have to choke down two dozen or so tablets every day. Or you might have to knock back an ounce or more of an alcohol-based saw palmetto tincture. As you can see on the labels, tincture dosages are usually measured with an eye dropper. And even if you could afford a shot's worth of tincture every day, you still might not be getting most of the desired phytochemicals.
The Principal Principle
My first rule for buying medicinal herbs wisely, then, is to stick with standardized brands. Many, but by no means all, plant experts have come to agree on the need to standardize our herbal "farmacy." Some clinical herbalists and naturopaths remain opposed, though, and they state their case quite passionately. I should address two of their arguments:
Cost. Critics claim that standardized extracts cost more. On a purely superficial level, they're right. The whole herb, pulverized and encapsulated, will almost always be cheaper than the standardized version. But, whether with a trowel or a calculator, I always like to dig a little deeper.
If price were the only argument, I'd still conclude that the trade-off is worthwhile, for when we assess cost based on effective dosage of the major active ingredients, the standardized extract clearly is the better bargain. Compared against an unstandardized extract, a tincture, and the whole crude, crushed herb, you get a bigger medicinal bang for the buck.
A standardized ginkgo extract, for example, costs less than $20 a month, as Michael T. Murray, N.D., a naturopathic doctor and one of natural medicine's foremost researchers, noted back in 1996, but the same amount of active ingredient from an alcohol-free commercial tincture costs nearly $500 monthly. St. John's wort, standardized at 0.3 percent hypericin, is less than $20 a month; the alcohol tincture, in contrast, is more than $700. Standardized saw palmetto also costs less than $20 a month, while the alcohol tincture runs you one big Ben Franklin.
Phytochemical synergy. An even more fundamental concern is the integrity and effectiveness of the herbal medicine. Lately, critics have charged that extracting and standardizing isolates certain phytochemicals and robs us of others that are possibly therapeutic.
Theoretically, I suppose, that's true. If we increase one phytochemical, another one must be reduced to compensate. By and large, though, if we are standardizing an herb properly and not just spiking, we don't isolate one compound and filter out everything else. The process reduces the entire plant to a concentrated form, based on measurements of one or more key elements. Generally, when we concentrate one biologically active substance, we usually concentrate closely related chemicals, too, in proportion with the target phytochemicals. We end up with more of the intended chemical and more of its companion constituents. Usually, that means more of the synergistic, therapeutic ingredients that nature intended.
What's wrong with aiming for that main magical, medicinal ingredient? Plenty. If the worst thing about whole herbs is their wide, ever-fluctuating phytochemical content, the best thing is the very existence of so many diverse, biologically active compounds. I'm the first to argue that it is often wrong to single out one chemical as the be-all, end-all ingredient. Dozens of other closely related active compounds usually are present in a plant, and I prefer that they remain present in any supplement. To produce the therapeutic benefit for which the plant is known, in many cases, they work with one another synergistically or additively. Singling out one of them may very well rob us of the plant's full medicinal potential. Our bodies (our genes, that is) know these substances not as isolated chemicals but as they appear in nature.
Here's an extreme analogy: How healthy would we be if science had isolated thiamin (vitamin B1) and disregarded all other B-complex vitamins? Even the worst nutritionist advises taking a mixture of the whole complex so as not to upset natural ratios. If we just took thiamin, we'd lack vitamin B2, vitamin B3, vitamin B6, and vitamin B12, not to mention folic acid and other nutritional partners. We'd be goners.
I wonder if we've made just such a mistake by focusing on beta-carotene, just one of a whole class of plant pigments that have antioxidant and nutritional qualities, at the expense of all the other carotenoids. Carotenoids are composed of a whole class of yellow to deep red pigments that are found in plants of which beta-carotene is only one member.
And could we have done the same with vitamin E? In nature, a whole group of chemicals called tocopherols and tocotrienols make up a sort of vitamin E complex. But the supplement we commonly buy, DL-tocopherol acetate, is actually a synthetic imitation of a single tocopherol. Are we making the right choice for our health by taking this single substance?
But what if there is no correct choice? I'd like to posit the radical theory that both sides are right and wrong simultaneously. We need all of the tocopherols, all of the tocotrienols, all of the carotenoids, and all of the B-complex vitamins. I'll bet that a natural vitamins mix of related compounds is better (and better for us) than an incomplete isolate. One day, in a future where a vitamin E-complex is commonplace, we may look back with a sad smile on the days of man-made DL-tocopherol acetate.
Herbal equivalents abound. It makes no sense, to give one example, to isolate a single sulfur compound in garlic. The result would be less effective than a standardized whole extract--and more expensive, to boot. Yet the supplement industry really is expending energy on this very endeavor. Don't buy it, literally or figuratively. Nutrient profiteers are doing the same with St. John's wort: Some American experts are pushing hypericin as the main active ingredient, while their German counterparts tout a compound called hyperforin. Each has some science on its side.
And each seems to lack some holistic common sense. Once more, I'd like to propose a simplistic notion: It's not just one or another active ingredient--or even something else that has not yet been identified. It's all of them, each with its own peculiar contribution to the plant's therapeutic value. Keep this in mind if you ever hear of a successful attempt to isolate just one of the various complex carbohydrates in echinacea, just one of the essential oil terpenoids or phthalides in celery, just one of the flavonoids in hawthorn, or just one of the phytosterols or fatty acids in saw palmetto.
Farmaceutical Forms
You can enjoy the medicinal benefits of whole herbs, whether cultivated under your own careful watch or bought in bulk from a store, in several ways--from meals and drinks to tinctures, poultices, and compresses.
Meals
My favorite way, of course, is in food, whether as a spice, garnish, condiment, or main ingredient. Here and there throughout these pages, you'll see what I loosely refer to as recipes. I cook, but I'm not a great one by any definition. Unless I'm following a recipe strictly, only rarely do I use a measuring spoon or a measuring cup for its intended purpose. A pinch of this, a dash or two of that, a big handful of something else--guesswork guides me. No recipe is ever quite the same. Usually, the meal is very good. Every once in a while, it's not. Either way, it always surprises me.
Teas
Beginning as soon as I can with spring's new growth, throughout the summer, and right until fall's last harvest, I make tea with fresh, right-from-the-plant herbs. As a matter of fact, here in Maryland I can find basal rosettes of some flavorful mints all year long.
You can certainly use dried herbs, but a lot of the aromatic compounds are lost in the drying process. (You can even crack open capsules of powdered herbs.) The brew from fresh plants usually tastes better, though, and the whole process is much more enjoyable. Just keep in mind that fresh herbs are about 80 percent water and 20 percent phytochemicals. Reverse the numbers for the approximate composition of dried herbs.
Because tea recipes typically call for the dry form, you need a general conversion rule: To get roughly the same potency, use about four times as much fresh herb as you would dry herb. To make a tea that's as therapeutic as it is thirst-quenching, you'll probably require a refresher course in how to brew. Most people simply pour hot water over a tea bag, squeeze the bag with a teaspoon a few times, and drink up. Medicinal tea isn't made so instantly. You have a choice of two methods. If leaves and flowers comprise the tea material, use the infusion method. If you're working with roots and stems, make a decoction.
Infusion. Pour boiling water in a cup and let the herbs steep until the water cools. Allow the water to draw out the phytochemicals for some 10 to 20 minutes.
Decoction. Roots, stems, and bark release their medicinal compounds more reluctantly. Put the desired amount of plant in water and boil it on the stove for 10 to 20 minutes.
And then there's the sun method--steeping aromatic plants in a jar of water on a hot, bright day. I've enjoyed sun teas occasionally, but they always bring to mind the hay infusions we made to prepare for labs in the old days. To culture amoebae and other microscopic amazements, we'd steep hay in water and let it sit in the sun. If I could examine my old sun teas under a microscope, I think I'd find a host of interesting protozoans swimming around in there.
Tinctures
The name may conjure up thoughts of alchemy and witches' potions, but medicinal martini might be a little more apt. The classic before-dinner drink is essentially a hydroalcoholic tincture of onion (or olive, depending on your preferences, although both are good food farmaceuticals).
A tincture is just another liquid-based way of extracting some therapeutic potential from a plant. Instead of steeping the herb for 10 to 20 minutes, as you would a tea, you wait for a week. And in place of boiling water, you substitute your favorite alcohol. I'm rather fond of vodka, but pure ethanol will do, too.
If you're not comfortable with alcohol, use vinegar. It draws out some phytochemicals just as well. You can use an alcohol-based tincture to complement and strengthen herbal teas and juices. A vinegar-based culinary tincture is great as a salad dressing or as an extra ingredient in soups, stews, and other recipes.
Amounts to use vary widely, anywhere from several drops to a dropperful or more. With homemade tinctures, you're generally on your own for how much to take. Commercially made tinctures often suggest a dosage on their labels.
Unless consumed in great quantity, a tincture doesn't typically give you a big shot of phytochemical medicine. However, the active plant ingredients do enter your bloodstream a bit faster, and a lot of people find it easier to swallow a liquid rather than a couple of capsules.
Tinctures are best for herbs whose therapeutic activities depend largely on their aromatic constituents. These volatile compounds are readily lost in bulk, ground, and powdered forms unless processed and packaged carefully with antioxidants. Tinctures capture and preserve them a little better. Among my baker's dozen of recommended herbs, those whose health-influencing properties stem at least in part from their aromatic compounds are celery seed, turmeric, and garlic. St. John's wort works well as a tincture, too. Have you ever seen a martini with a garlic clove before? I haven't, but I think I'll experiment with one tonight. That's part of the beauty of this form of herbal medicine. Do-it-yourselfers can enjoy tinkering with their own tinctures. Pick an herb and see what happens.
Whether you use alcohol or vinegar, the instructions are the same. Measure 2 ounces of dried herb (or 1 handful of fresh herb) for every pint of liquid, and just let the mixture sit. I prefer to cover it and keep it in a dark, cool spot. Every once in a while, stop by and stir it a little. After about a week, strain the liquid (discard the sediment) and store it in a bottle.
Poultices and Compresses
Sometimes, the best way in is from without. Compresses and poultices are two time-honored topical methods to apply a phytochemical, usually to an injury or another problem site. In most cases, you want to fight an infection or speed healing, but I'm sure the body puts to good use elsewhere all the healing compounds it absorbs.
Belatedly, science is discovering that many substances are absorbed transdermally, meaning through the skin. We'll probably learn of more. Right now, though, there's more scientific evidence supporting internal use of Duke's Dozen than their topical application. The best evidence leads me to conclude that none of Duke's Dozen can be used to full effect strictly as a poultice or compress. That's not to say they may not have some value. You should definitely experiment. In folk medicine, some of my 13 herbs have indeed been used topically.
Mashed garlic and mashed turmeric, for example, have been applied as poultices to help wounds heal. I have even used garlic poultices on infections, with good results. Similarly, mashed horse chestnut has been placed directly on a bruise or a site of swelling. A poultice of celery or turmeric might help tame inflammation. I've never tested either, but their use makes sense. Compresses of St. John's wort oil or alcoholic tincture have been placed on burns and arthritic joints. (If you try celery or St. John's wort in this manner, stay out of the sun. They might cause photodermatitis.)
echinacea, my number two herb after celery seed extract, boasts a whole array of ofte
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