jim mcdonald: Herbal Energetics and Fevers

Episode #69 March 24, 2016

Jim McDonald returns to HerbMentor Radio for a special episode on fevers and herbal energetics. What is a fever, why do they happen, and what are the popular myths? The difference between stimulating and relaxing diaphoretics as well as detailed descriptions of many herbs with diaphoretic properties.

Diaphoretics are herbs that direct circulation, open pores, ventilate the body, and allow perspiration. This 105-minute lesson is sure to clear up any confusion you may have had about herbs and fevers.

You can visit Jim Mcdonald at http://HerbCraft.org. His site has many wonderful and extended articles on a number of plants and how to use them for various ailments.

Episode Transcript

From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.

You are listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher. Today, we welcome back Jim McDonald to Herb Mentor Radio for a special edition. Jim's classes are based in Michigan, and you can learn about his courses and other work on his web site, HerbCraft.org. HerbCraft.org has wonderful articles and is an excellent resource. So Jim, welcome back to Herb Mentor Radio.

Hey. How are you doing?

Doing excellent.

Holidays are coming around, and I was wondering what the heck I was gonna do, who I was gonna interview in December, then I got this the way it usually works is then I get an email, and that usually from somebody, and that usually dictates where I'm gonna go.

And, I was very excited because you were, willing to share with us something that you do talk about from time to time on our forum and whatnot. And that, that's a holistic energetic treatment of fevers. And, that can be really confusing to some folks, the whole thing about fevers and and and what the energetics and how to treat it and all that. So I'm excited that you're willing to share your wisdom with us. So what do you got for us?

Well, you know, the, one of the things around here because there's a couple, parenting groups that I'm a part of. And, you know, a lot of people, they they're totally down with the idea that, yes. Okay. A fever is a good thing.

You don't wanna suppress it. Mhmm. But they don't really necessarily know how to work with it. And, you know, fevers, it's not that, like, oh, okay.

They have a fever. That's no big deal. It's an, you know, it's an immune response. You don't have to do anything with it.

Because a lot of times you do. You have to manage it. And to to manage it, you have to really understand what the body's trying to do.

And so, you know, just like with with anything else, you know, if if you wanna have a more vitalist approach Mhmm.

To using herbs, you know, more holistic approach. You're not just using herbs to treat a fever, using herbs to support the body and what the body wants to do because you can use herbs allopathically just like you can use medicines allopathically.

Mhmm. So, you know, the the main thing is to think like, well, you know, what is going on with the fever? And, one of the things that, you know, people don't always recognize is that all the symptoms that they get, you know, whether it's their runny nose or their cough or their sore, achy muscles, or their fever when they get sick, those are all immune responses. You know?

We think about them as like, oh, I'm sick. I have a fever. I'm sick. I have a cough.

I'm sick. I have this. But these are all immune responses.

And so if you take you know, let's say you have a runny nose and you take a whole bunch of Golden Seal and your runny nose stops, well, you just you know, if you use the Golden Seal allopathically and you suppressed your runny nose, and that's not really making your cold go away, it's sort of like, you know, that that mucus that you have is like, you know, if invaders are you know, evil orcs are trying to get into the castle, someone's up at the top of the battlements, and they they pour some tar in, You know? And the tar mucks up the the the guy, and he falls down.

You know, if you dry it up at Goldensteel, you go pour that tar, and it's all dried out in the can. It's like, oh, no. You know? I can't do that.

So with with fevers, it's the same thing. The fever is an immune response. And, really, it's it's an important part of the immune system because it's not the part that gets the most play. You know?

If if you learn about herbs from, you know, advertising, which is really initially where a lot of people get their information, you know, some kind of product oriented advertising that that that simplifies an herb noun like, oh, echinacea stimulates the immune system or goldenseal is a natural antibiotic.

The part of the immune system that it always gets to focus is the germ theory part of it. Like, herbs that stimulate white blood cell production, and those white blood cells go around the body, and they directly kill germs. You know? So it's like increasing the police force's body. Right.

Or herbal antibiotics or herbal antimicrobials or herbal antifungals or anti you know, like, the whole anything with the word anti in front of it.

Right. You know?

It's referring to basically you have something, a germ in you that's making you sick. You take this herb, and it kills the germ, you know, in a direct, you know, really American kind of movie, you know, thing. Runs around, chases after him, gets the bad guy.

Mhmm.

And and then you're better.

Better. But the the fever response is a lot more subtle. It's it's a part of the immune system, but it's it's more ruled by the endocrine system.

Okay.

And it doesn't get as much play, which is interesting because in traditional herbalism, these are the most important herbs to use. You know? Native Americans did not use echinacea for colds and flus.

What did they use it for?

They they mainly used it for snake bites, and for poisoning and for things like gangrene. You know? So, like, septic infection. So there was an infection element, but more like a septic infection.

I would say that they would use it for, like, eruptive fever. So someone had, like, you know, chickenpox or smallpox or, you know, got some kind of septic infection sort of welling up interruptions on the skin. They would use it in that. But for run of the mill influenza, they didn't use it for that. It wasn't until the I think the Germans started doing research on it and figured out that it stimulated white white blood cell production that it got that, use sort of in in into its, its profile, and it will never go away.

They used the same thing that Europeans use, the same thing that South American Indians use, the same things that, African, you know, indigenous people use, the same thing that European and Asian people use. This was the the aromatic diaphoretic herbs, you know, like elderflower tea, mint tea, catnip tea. You know?

That, yeah, there are oils in there that are antimicrobial, but the main way that they work is by supporting body systems. And when you have a fever, what's happening is, you know, let's say that, you know, some little microbe gets into your body. Well, you know, a signal gets sent to the hypothalamus that says, you know, kind of like intruder alert intruder alert.

Right.

Right. Hypothalamus raises the temperature of the body, and it does that to make the body inhospitable to that, microorganism so they can't live there. And the analogy that I because I love analogies. I just adore them.

Mhmm.

The analogy that I always do here is, like, you know, let's say that you're hanging out, with your family and then, you know, knock at the door and it's like an old friend of yours or some college or high school or it's a sibling or a parent or in law or something. And you like them and all that, but you don't really want them staying with you for a long time?

Mhmm.

Okay. So rather than just, like, you know, getting a baseball bat out and saying, get out of my house and start whacking at them. You know, that's good for white blood flow approach to get things out of your house.

Thought thought you might like to do that or something. Right. Right. Right.

We're gonna be a little bit more subtle.

You know? You're like, well, okay. And you go to the thermostat, and you dial it up to, like, a hundred and three, hundred four degrees. Okay?

All of a sudden, you know, whoever this is that's that's staying with you and causing you grief starts to get really uncomfortable. And then they're either gonna pass out in kilo from heat or they're going to, you know, leave the body in some way.

Because it's not a sustainable environment for them. Okay? So that's what's going on when your body is generating that temperature of a fever.

Influenza virus dies, I mean, dies at, ninety nine to a hundred degrees in the lungs, which are a little bit cooler than the rest of the body because they're cooled by the air that you're breathing in. Mhmm. Okay?

So without any white blood cells touching them.

So if you do what most people do when they're sick and they have fever, which is take Tylenol or Motrin or Advil or, aspirin to lower the fever because you think that the number of the fever, you know, the temperature is is too high, and you lower it be below that level, you're directly suppressing the immune system.

I mean, there would be no difference, between that and, like, taking a drug to prevent you from making white blood cells.

And, ironically, white blood cells function more efficiently at elevated temperatures.

Okay? So this really is a vital response.

And, you know, so you you raise the temperature in your house. Your houseguests, you know, pass out, and you, you know, kind of shift them out of the house to get rid of them. And then what do you do to, cool the house down? You know? Of course, you turn the thermostat back down, but it's gonna take a while to cool down. So what what makes sense as a response to cool it down a lot quicker?

Oh, open the windows?

Yes. Okay. And that's what happens when the pores open up, and it lets that heat get out. You know? So that you actually do, you know, help with the temperature and the fever response that's doing it, but you don't do it by suppressing it. You do it by letting the process complete.

Mhmm.

You know, so so that's the really important aspect of it is that it's so important to let that process complete because that is a vital immune function. And, you know, I don't know that this is documented anywhere, and maybe it's just my supposition, but I think that if you have someone, who from childhood, every time they get a fever, you give them something that brings the fever down. You give them something that brings the fever down. Give them something that brings the fever down. You run the potential that the body's eventually going to learn, like, why even bother going into that response?

You know? Right. Right. I'm never allowed to complete it. And now that really will weaken the, immune response and make that person more susceptible.

You know? So it's the environmental defenses of making the body inhospitable to infection, that the fever is controlling.

And from a vitalist perspective, what we wanna do is we wanna look at the qualitative nature of what the body's doing and assist it if it gets hung up in a certain area. Okay?

So, one of the things that is perpetually brought up is but what if the temperature gets too high?

Right. Because right. Because you have a little kid. You're freaked out. It's the middle of the night.

Totally. A hundred and four. And you're like, well, this person says that I should do this, and this person says that it's okay. And, you know, you're, like, freaking out.

Yes. Absolutely. And, now I personally myself, and then I'm not advocating this. I personally so I've never taken my kids' temperatures ever.

What I do is I look at them.

You know? Because I'm not treating the number on the thermometer. I'm treating them. And I've seen my kids, have low fevers and look like crap, and I've seen them have high fevers and be running around the house playing. You know?

And I'm more concerned when they look like crap than when they're, you know, looking like they're, you know, doing relatively okay. Certainly, running around the house when you have a fever isn't the greatest therapeutic strategy, but Mhmm. It it shows you that they're not feeling awful. You know?

But I finally found, by accident, actually, this this little document that's on children's hospital websites all over the country. And you can post a link of it.

I sent you a link of it.

Yeah.

I'll put the link, on the page where this, is hosted on urban on urbanenter dot com.

Yeah. It says myths about fever. Okay?

Mhmm.

And you've gotta figure that if this is on a children's hospital, this is not radical alternative medicine contrary contrarianism, you know, saying like, oh, well, they say this, well, we say this. This is something that, is posted because the people at the hospital are constantly having freaked out parents bring their kids in for things that they're better off staying at home for.

Mhmm.

And I'm just gonna read a few of these.

Funny. When I read through this, it's like, oh my god. You would think with this on their website that the treatment they would get once they get into the hospital would be sane, but I'm not sure if it necessarily correlates. Myth.

All fevers are bad for children. Fact. Fevers turn on the body's immune system. Fevers are one of the body's protective mechanism, and most fevers are good for children to help the body fight infection.

Totally same page.

Myth, fevers cause brain damage, or fevers above a hundred and four degrees are dangerous. Fact, fevers with infections don't cause brain damage. Only body temperatures above a hundred and eight can cause brain damage, and fevers only go up this high with high environmental temperatures like being confined in a closed car. Okay? Now that's really pertinent because that's one of the things that parents especially are freaked out about. You know? I can let the fever get up too high, and it's going to cause neurological damage.

Okay? And this is clearly saying that doesn't happen.

Myth, anyone can have a febrile seizure. Fact, only four percent of children can have a febrile seizure.

Myth, febrile seizures are harmful.

Several seizures are scary to watch, but these we stop within five minute, and they cause no permanent harm. Okay?

Myth, all fevers need to be treated with fever medicine. Fact, Fevers only need to be treated if they cause discomfort.

Without treatment, fevers will go higher. Fact. Wrong. Severs from infection top out at one hundred and five or one hundred and six through a thermostat in the brain.

Yeah.

If a fever doesn't come down, the cause is serious.

Fevers that don't respond to medicine can be caused by viruses, bacteria. It doesn't relate to the seriousness of the infection. This is my favorite.

Actually, you know, it's one of the when you get really nerdy about stuff like that, you're like, you have your favorite fear myths and facts.

Myth. If the fever is high, the cause is serious. Fact.

If your child looks very sick sick, the cause of the fever is very serious.

You know?

Miss, the exact number of the temperature is very important. Fact, how your child looks is what's important. You know? So, again, this is a children's hospital website, and I've seen this same document on several different hospital websites.

And it's, it's just a really good reality check to have that on hand, you know, when you're feeling like, oh my god. The sea was too high. I better bring it down.

They're not going to have the temperature is not related to them having a fibro seizure. It's not really gonna give them brain damage.

What matters the most is that you look at how they're doing and deal with that. Really, the main dangers that are associated with, fevers or influenza is that, you can get dehydration. Mhmm. And that's very serious. And with anyone who has a child, if they think their child has dehydration, I usually tell them that's the time to, you know, go to the hospital, especially if it's a small child.

Dehydration can progress rapidly in small children or in the elderly or really frail people, and it's not the right time to be googling, you know, how to do a cat's enema or something like that. Right. Which not to say that I don't think that that stuff works or that, you know, I wouldn't do it, but it's not the right time to be trying to figure out how to do something when your child is very sick.

And then the other, thing that is is a very common cause of serious illness or or death associated with fevers or influenza is like secondary bacterial infections like pneumonia. It's not the fever itself. You know? It's not the temperature. It's not the number. So that shouldn't be the thing that people freak out about.

It it would have been the case, and for some people, it still is. But, back in the time when the eclectics and the physio medicals were cracking, they might look at someone who had a ninety nine degree fever and be concerned about that person more than someone with a hundred and four fever, a hundred and five fever because they would say well, they would say, now what's going on here is that the body's vital force can't muster up a better immune response. You know? If you had someone if you had someone who had influenza and they can't get the temperature high enough to get it to where the fever will start to kill the influenza It makes it harder on the other part of the immune system, the white blood cell part because now it has to do all the work itself rather than letting those environmental defenses, you know, take care of, the brunt of them.

So so that's a really important thing to just wrap your head around and not be, obsessed by.

One of the things that I think is also very important is that, especially since there's a lot of people, who are into natural medicine and they don't do vaccinations, they, you know, try not to do conventional medicines, if you're not going to do that stuff, it's not really, like, suitable in in in my the way that I think to just, say, well, I'm just going to use herbs to treat their fever. If you don't know how to do that, if you don't sort of understand the way that fevers work and how to do differentiation, which is, you know, ever since the swine flu and the bird flu before that, I get tons of email and it says, like, what herbs are you planning on using for the swine flu?

And perennially, my answer is, I won't know until I see a person who has it. Right. Because I I don't I'm not treating just the flu. Now granted, I would probably give anyone elderberry because elderberry is just really broadly acting.

Mhmm. But, you know, different people manifest their symptoms, entirely differently. And so that's the the thing you wanna work with. You wanna work with the the person with the condition, not just the condition in isolation of the person who has it.

Okay. Otherwise, you're working in a more allopathic, mind state. So the there's so many different ways that you can break apart, how you assess a person and a condition and how you use herbs.

Right.

And the the way that I do it is So just so I go to the you're just essentially, like, a person's gonna have a have a fever when and we're really probably concerned here more like a fever related to a flu.

And, of course, they can have, you know, fevers related to other types of infections too. Right? But are we mostly talking about fevers related to flus or what? I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. Mostly related to influenza. So so I wouldn't necessarily, oh, like, if someone had, you know, fever associated with mastitis.

Okay. So this kind of infection or fever associated with a kidney infection. Mhmm. Kidney infection actually yeah.

I'd go to the hospital for that. You can still use IRFs, but go to the hospital for a kidney Mhmm. Don't let that progress.

Okay.

But this is more for, like, you know, colds and flus and and your run of the mill or into flu season.

A good number of people are gonna end up with fevers whether they're healthy or not. Mhmm. If you get sick, that doesn't mean that you failed. Doesn't mean that you're not good at what you do. It doesn't mean that herbs don't work. You know?

If if healthy people didn't get sick, we wouldn't have herbalism. You know? We have herbalism because everyone gets sick. Mhmm.

And, when when I hear stories about people who say like, oh, I heard from someone who said they started using herb and they haven't been sick in the last thirty years, I usually wanna respond with something, and sometimes I do. Or like, oh, yeah. That's like you know, I my wife and I love each other so much that we've never gotten into an argument. You know?

Just unrealistic Right.

Right.

That that's the case.

Right.

But I I basically use, sort of a modified physio medical approach. And the physio medicalists were herbalist, school of herbalism, in the eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds. Mhmm. They sort of grew out of the Thompsonian School of Herbal Medicine, and they were more plant oriented than the eclectics who also used some isolated chemicals minerals and glandulars. Mhmm.

And the physiometicals never use anything they consider toxic. You know, the eclectics would say, well, you know, you can use toxic herbs like gelsimium.

You just use them in really small doses. Mhmm.

And the physiometicals never use anything they consider toxic. You know, the eclectics would say, well, you know, you can use toxic herbs like gelsimium. You just use them in really small doses and in certain situations.

The physiom medicalists, as a rule, thought if something's toxic, it's toxic no matter what.

Anyway, makes sense.

They didn't like homeopathics at all. They would say, you know, nope. You know, know, homeopathic belladonna is toxic because belladonna is toxic. One of the reasons I think that, all the other schools of medicine, fell in the face of the allopathic medicine, was that they couldn't bond together against the common, you know, disruptive force.

Mhmm. That they they all hated each other. You know, the eclectics didn't like the homeopaths, the allopaths, and the physiomontics didn't like the homeopaths, the allopaths, or the eclectics. And the homeopaths thought everyone was doing something wrong.

You know? And so if you read a lot of these books in the introductions, you they'll take time out to sort of jab and poke at all the other, you know, schools of medicine. You know? I know in Cook Physiomedical, Dispensatory, which is another wonderful book, one of those ones that make you realize that you're turning into an urban nerd, when you're reading the introduction of it.

He he makes the comment that, the only, useful things that are found in the, Eclectic School of Medicine are the ones that they appropriated from the Physiomedicalist without giving any credit for.

You know? So they they were all like that. But the physio medicalist, basically, they they looked at two broad patterns, that were at play. And they would say, if a person has a fever and they're hung up in a part of it, does the person need stimulation or they need something that's going to relax them? Okay?

And it's really important because the first thing that people do when they hear those words is they, you know, put stimulating on one end of the polarity and relaxing at the other end of polarity.

Right.

The first important thing to do that is is not to think about them as opposites. Okay?

Hard hard's hard to do.

It is hard to do. Okay. So but a a really good way to do this. Okay. So this is like an exercise for anyone listening right now. You you take your hands and you vigorously scratch your head.

K. I'm gonna do my headset. I might pick it up. Okay. Alright. Right.

So what you'll notice is that you feel the sense of stimulation Yeah. From the scratching. Right? Uh-huh.

And yet the tension that you're holding in those almost imperceptible muscles, all over your skull, is relaxed. Okay? Mhmm. So you have both things happening at one time, stimulation and relaxation.

A good vigorous massage is stimulating and relaxing at the same time. Okay? Okay. So they're not opposites, that are sort of, like, fighting against each other, and it's not, something that that needs to be reconciled.

They're both, two forces working towards the common head.

So so so you're you're trying to look to determine You're trying you're looking at the fever, and you're looking at some patterns in the fever to determine whether it needs these stimulating or relaxing Right.

Right. Needs a stimulating or relaxing influence. Okay?

Okay.

So, and the plants we use for these, conditions are called diaphoretics.

Okay? And if you look in any herb book, there's usually, like, this two sentence definition that says something to the effect of. Diaphoretics are herbs that help to make people sweat and are used in treating fevers.

And that definition is pretty okay for two sentences, but it's not okay to really understand what those plants are doing. A diaphoretic plant is a plant that is useful for treating colds, flus, and fevers, so even common colds too.

And it does so by directing the circulation of the body and by, working with the ventilation of the body. Okay?

So, like, what the pores are doing.

And sometimes you can use diaphoretic herbs, and they'll actually stop sweating, and they're still diaphoretic. Okay? So you think about, like hopefully, you've never had this happen to yourself, but a lot of people have or have seen it. Someone who really early in the fever, they're, like, cold and clammy, and they're sweating and okay.

The circulation is not getting out to the surface, but their periphery is open and there's sweat leaking out all over. That person is dehydrating. Okay? So you need to, like, close-up the pores in that situation because it's not a therapeutic sweating. It's just losing fluid from weakness. Okay?

So, you can break the class of diaphragtics down into two two broad categories. It's really the stimulating diaphoretics and the relaxing diaphoretics. And what the stimulating ones do, they're the easiest ones for people to figure out.

They're herbs that, direct the circulation out from the core to the periphery. Okay? And the reason they're so easy for people to figure out because you can feel them working. These are all of our common kitchen spices.

Okay? Ginger, cayenne, clove, cardamom Cinnamon. Cinnamon, pepper. Yeah. You know? So all of these herbs that you take them and you feel that flush, that warm flush.

They're stimulating peripheral circulation.

And, the relaxing herbs are herbs that help with tension in the body that is inhibiting that outward circulation. Okay? So you can think like if you have shivers, if you're curl up in a fetal ball, if you are, like, just really, really tense and your neck is tense and your shoulders are tense and your whole body hurts and you're all tight. Okay? All with your muscle tension comes to constriction of the blood vessels in the body. So your body is trying to get that good outward circulation, but the tension is inhibiting it.

So you relax that tension, and you get good peripheral circulation out to the surface. Okay? That's the thing that we want to see happening in a fever is Good circulation from the core up to the periphery.

So I guess I guess at this point, I've just some more clarification and just understanding a little more. So, okay. We have someone. We're looking at them. And we're first determining what kind of fever it is before we look at stimulating or relaxing?

Well, you look at okay.

Again, what are we looking for?

And you say broad categories.

And then you you you start with broad categories, and you work your way down to finer points. Okay?

Alright.

So you look at the person who is and you say, do they need to be stimulated? Do they need to be relaxed? Or do do they need both?

And how many know?

Someone who needs to be stimulated, is going to be more pale looking because there's not good outward circulation to the surface. Right? Mhmm. They're gonna be cool to the touch, and they're going to be, like, sort of lax on the bed. You know?

So they look like they need stimulation. They're cool. They're pale. That means that there's not good blood out to the surface, and they're sort of like dead weight on the bed. And I'm not talking dead weight dehydration, you know, about the keel, but but just sort of, like, weak. They need stimulation.

Yeah.

Okay? Someone who is, like, bright red like a fire hydrant Mhmm.

And you go to put your hand on their head and you get about four feet away from them and you can feel the heat radiating off of them Yeah.

They don't need warming spices to stimulate their outward circulation.

They've got you know, that that that part of the process is already happening great. Okay?

Alright.

So you you don't need to use the warming stimulating spices on the person who's glowing red and who is radiating heat around them like, you know, sweat lodge rocks.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Because they've already got that. They don't need to be stimulated. Mhmm. Okay. Is that pretty clear?

Yes. That is. Thank you.

For for the relaxing thing, you've looked basically at their state of tension. If the person is again, if they're curled up fetal, you know, they're holding a lot of tension in their gut and they can't straighten out. If they're really restless and fidgety in bed and agitated, you know, so, like, they lay and they keep fussing their pillow around or they, you know, they're the kind of, you know, type a person that can't deal with being sick and so they keep trying to get up and do something. And then they feel like crap and so they keep getting down. All of that is generating tension that's inhibiting that outward circulation. So restlessness, muscle tension, if their brow is all tight and furrowed, you know, that's a sign of tension.

Agitation, even even sort of, like, irritability. Mhmm. Those are all signs of tension, and you would use relaxing diaphoretics for those.

Okay.

If the person was laying, like, dead weight on the bed, you wouldn't need to really focus on relaxing diaphragmics.

If the person was, sweating copiously, you know, that's showing that there's sort of like a weakness in the periphery. You wouldn't need to use relaxant diuretics, at least in quantity.

Most of the time, you you have some combination of both things going on at once. And so you blend the herbs together, rather than just using one herb at a time. I know some people like to do that, but I think with fevers, really specifically, this is a situation where, sometimes you have the good combination of different properties, and it allows you to tweak and fine tune things.

Okay. And some herbs actually work on both of those, processes at the same time. Pretty much most of the mint family will do that. And I'll sort of talk about specific examples of each one of these categories.

But that's the main thing you do. You look at the person. You say, are they, you know, deficient and pale and cool and and, you know, sweating too much and looking like dead weight, do they need stimulation? Okay.

I'll use some of these warming stimulating herbs.

Are they tense, restless, you know, curl up fetal, agitated? I'll use some of these relaxing herbs. And then at the same time looking like, okay. I don't need to give someone who's, you know, deep red and and hot, you know, who's making the whole room hot, a bunch of cayenne.

Right. Right.

Yeah. I just don't need they don't need what cayenne does.

Okay. So once you look at those broad things, you start to think about, like, well, okay. So what are the individual plants you can pick out from? Because this is I think with beginning herbalists, and I just know this from my own experience. You know, you look and you see this list of herbs, and you say, well, how do I know which herb on this list of herbs?

Right. Right. Exactly.

So you have a book and it has herbs for fever and it has, like, twenty herbs and you're like, I think I have those three.

Well, I'll just use that one.

Those two use those one because those are what I have or those are what I can get or those are the ones that I'm familiar with.

Right. Exactly. Yes. I've all done that.

So what you could do is you could basically break them up, into stimulating and relaxing.

Okay? And I'll cover some individual examples of those, or herbs that possess both properties.

And then you start to think in individually with the different herbs you can use, which one is most appropriate. And I'll I'll talk about how you can sort of pick and fine tune down from there. So, some really common stimulating herbs, and these are herbs that a lot of people have in their house, you know, or they can get in any supermarket.

One of them would be like cayenne. Okay?

Personally, I don't use cayenne a whole lot because I am sort of constitutionally, like, hot and dry. And if me and Cayenne are, like, too close together and I can smell it Mhmm. All my mucus membrane start to dry out, and I can barely talk, and I can barely breathe. And, you know, it just gets it agitates me too much.

But a lot of people will use that as a small, you know, like a spice in into a tea blend. And you just put a teeny bit of cayenne into a tea bed, and it stimulates peripheral circulation. Everyone knows that who's ever eaten it. You take it, you feel flushed.

So for a person that really needs some stimulation, they need to get blood out to the surface and, you know, maybe to have that be more dramatic, Cayenne, a little bit of cayenne into their tea, will do.

I should also say hot teas are the best form of using diaphragmatic herbs. Okay? Doesn't mean that tinctures don't work or that syrups don't work or that other preparations don't work.

But if you're going to give an herb that has a diaphoretic action, if you give it in hot water, the hot water itself also has the diaphoretic action.

So the two the herb and the form that you're giving in complement each other, and it makes it work better.

If you only had tinctures or something was just like ghastly bad tasting and you know you didn't think that the person would drink the tea you can give the tincture in hot water or in a cup of hot tea But you wanna use these hot fluids to to really benefit, this. When we talk about yarrow, I'll explain the way the temperature of what you drink actually will affect the way it works on you.

Oh, wow.

So the the a little bit of cayenne in something will work.

And a a really good example of, just a great formula, one of my favorite formulas I've ever come up with is, called Cocoa Buzz, and it's basically just a hot cocoa Yeah.

Okay, where you mix unsweetened cocoa powder, like a spoonful of unsweetened cocoa powder, a spoonful of honey, and hot water, and you stir it. And then you have your cocoa base. And then you can mix all different kinds of things into there. You can put elderberry syrup in there. You can, you can make tea rather than just use water of, like, marshmallow root if they have a dry cough or something. And if someone needs that stimulating aspect, you can put some some tayenne in there. And that seems kind of odd to people, but anyone who's ever seen the movie Chocolat Yeah.

It was traditionally done in in in Mexico and the Aztecs. They would always put peppers with their cocoa.

Yeah.

And, you know, gone and had certain kinds of, like, mole rubs on on meat that's been cooked. Cocoa and chilies, they go together really, really well. So you can actually have medicinal hot cocoa, you know, as a good means of delivering this. I know other people will also make, like, fire cider or they'll mix, you know, some ginger and some garlic and some cayenne into apple cider vinegar.

We have that recipe on Herb Mentor somewhere you can Yeah.

Search for it.

That's a great what that is is that's a stimulating diaphoretic recipe. You know? And, even though you're not taking it as a hot tea, anything that you put cayenne in is going to be diaphoretic. I mean, you could put cayenne in butter and rub it on your feet, and it'll work as a diaphragm.

But I also use those when, kinda feel like something might be coming on and I got a little chill.

Mhmm. You know, not just with fever.

But Right.

Yeah. There's a a broad range. Most of these plants have, broad range. And that's one of the other things that's really good about them. Okay? So like, another stimulating diaphoretic that everyone is, familiar with is ginger. Okay?

Oh, yeah.

And here's where you get into fine tuning things down. So if you only had in your cupboard, you knew you needed to stimulate diaphoretic, and you only had cayenne or ginger in your cupboard, and you said, well, which one do I use? Well, you could say they're both stimulating diaphoretics. Cayenne is stronger than ginger, but ginger also does some things of its own. Okay? So what's something that Ginger is really well known for?

Well, it's, you know, it's it it has a lot of activity against various bacteria, microbes, and whatnot as well as just warming and stimulating and Yes.

And and for nausea.

Nausea. Right. Okay. Right.

Okay.

So many things.

So if if you know you need a stimulating diaphoretic and you have these two herbs to pick from and you say, oh, but the person has a stomach flu. They feel nauseated. You know? They're curled up fetal.

They're feeling like they're throwing up or they are throwing up. Well, I use ginger rather than cayenne because ginger is more specific to what that person is going through.

Mhmm. You know? And I would say that, and this applies to, like, morning sickness or any using ginger for any kind of nausea is, a lot of times people will overdo it with ginger. Like, they'll make ginger tea and they'll try and, like, chug it down.

Mhmm.

And if you've been throwing up a lot and you try and chug anything down, even if it's good for you, probably throw it up. So what I always tell people is make ginger tea, smell it for a while, and then take a small little sip, and then just put the tea back down on the nightstand. Yeah. Yeah.

And then take another sip and then take two sips and then take three sips and then you can sip it more regularly. But initially, let the herb, like, do its work really subtly before you go filling the stomach up with, you know, a couple ounces of of liquid that the stomach is just too irritated to handle even if it's good for it. Okay? So sipping on ginger tea is better than trying to guzzle it if you're nauseated.

Another really common stimulating diaphragmatic herb would be cinnamon. Okay?

And with cinnamon, in addition to the fact that's another warming spice gonna stimulate that peripheral circulation.

It's also, has an astringency to it. Mhmm. Okay? And the astringency can work on the lower digestive tract.

So if someone has, a flu and a fever and they have really bad diarrhea, the cinnamon is gonna be more specific to their condition. You know? So again, you have now let's say you have three herbs you're choosing from, the cayenne, the ginger, or the cinnamon. Oh, well, you know, you know, this child's throwing up and that child has to run really bad.

You give the one child the ginger, you give the other child the cinnamon.

Cinnamon's gonna act as a astringent in the digestive tract and help to tighten everything. There's also, although I don't know why there's not more attention paid to it, but there's also mucilage in the cinnamon. And so it's it's not only astringing the tissues, but it's also coating them and soothing them. So it's very soothing and, really wonderful for, lower digestive laxness and, diarrhea.

Now will you will you take the cinnamon like that and and and take cinnamon sticks like in simmer and make a decoction, or will you mix the Yeah.

I I will usually if I if I only have the powder, I'll work with that. But usually, I've got cinnamon sticks and or, you know, chipped up cinnamon. Mhmm. Then I if it's if they're in sticks, I'll bang them up into small pieces.

I'll put them on the stove. Mhmm. I'll boil them covered, you know, to keep the volatile oils in. Mhmm.

Because I think if you have the the top off, it'll lose some of that. And I don't really reduce it like a decoction, you know, down to half its volume. But I'll bring it to a boil, and then I'll simmer it for at least fifteen minutes. Very often, I put it on the simmer, and then I come back, you know, twenty minutes later, and still simmering.

Mhmm. But, yeah, if you just pour hot water on it, it's not gonna extract very fully. Right. Right. K. The other thing that cinnamon will do is if someone is sweating too much in the early stages of a fever so this is the cold and clammy that I was talking about earlier.

You know, they're soaking the sheets, and you put your hand on their their head, and they feel hot inside, but the heat's not getting out to their skin. Okay? Mhmm. So the person is, losing fluid from the body. That's not something that you want to happen. You don't wanna have to deal with dehydration.

So you can have them use cinnamon tea. And the sooner that you can be, doing that, the the better and more effective you're gonna be at, like, not letting dehydration come into the picture and then have to deal with that situation. You know? Good. Especially if someone is sweating a lot, they've got cold sweats, and they've got, diarrhea or and they're throwing up because then they're losing fluids through the skin and through their bowels or through their stomach. Mhmm. K.

So and and go figure. You know, if someone someone can have diarrhea and, nausea at the same time, holding a lot of tension and they got at the same time, the ginger and the cinnamon taste well together too.

Let's see.

Oh, another one. And, well, we have one to think about.

You know, there's so many because you can get into, prickly ash bark.

Yeah. But what about, like, yarrow? Does yarrow fit in that?

Yeah. Yarrow is an oddball. So I'm gonna save that one for just a little bit.

Save for a bit. Okay. Sorry.

Yeah. So there's prickly ash bark. Prickly ash bark is kinda good for, like, people I learned this from Matt Wood. It's basically they're sort of, like, writhing around in agony. So they're really uncomfortable, and they're having pain, and you can give them prickly ash bark. Prickly ash bark is also astringent, and presumably the berries are astringent. So that will be good for, like like the cinnamon, lower bowel, laxness and diarrhea.

Sassafras is another good stimulating, diaphoretic, and that actually helps acts as an alternative too. So it helps generally with the metabolism and and the dealing with waste products in the body. If anyone has any kind of, like, septic type infections, their skin looks kinda, like, dark and and, you know, dusky, and they're having eruptive conditions, I might consider you sassafras.

There's nothing lead people to your very extensive sassafras plant walk video on herbmentor dot com as well. You go into detail there, and you show sassafras.

Just wanna Yeah.

So there's black pepper. There's nutmeg. There's cloves. I mean, there's so many different air like like I said, these are all of your your common cooking spices.

Okay? And then you have yarrow. And yarrow is sort of your oddball here because it's definitely a stimulating plant. It definitely stimulates peripheral circulation.

And yet rather than, you know, immediately, like, you taste it and it's got that warming sensation.

Now most people, if they taste yarrow, they won't go like, oh, this plant's really cooling because it's it doesn't taste like, say, cucumber. Right. Cucumber, anyone will taste, and they'll be like, yes. This is a cooling plant.

It's more like a Yeah.

The the things that you'll notice first with yarrow is if if you take a tincture of it and taste it on your tongue, you'd be like, woah. It's really aromatic, and it's got a strong flavor. If you make a tea with it, you're gonna get more of the bitterness of it along with the air so have the aromatic, which you'll get more of the bitterness that you'll taste too. And you'll just be, like, you know, eat. And yarrow is a really broadly acting plant, so it it doesn't have the overt warmth, that a lot of, the other spices have.

And it doesn't have necessarily the specific sort of indications that the other ones have too. The yarrow, you can kinda give across the board, but it's generally cooling. Of course, there are other properties with yarrow. You know, it helps to with excessive bleeding.

And and that, I think it does by actually working on the blood to make the blood clot itself. Most herb books say that yarrow is an astringent.

But when I put yarrow flowers on my tongue, when I put yarrow tincture on my tongue, when I put a little bit of yarrow tea in my tongue, when I put yarrow leaves on my tongue, feeling that drying tightening sensation that you get Mhmm. Astringency Mhmm. Isn't something that I think is predominant in that plant. You know?

It's not like if you put, you know, oak tincture on your tongue or if you have a banana that's a little bit too green and you take a bite out of it, your whole mouth dries up and tightens.

Mhmm.

That's astringency. And that's something that I don't taste, in yarrow is is it being like an overt quality of of that plant, one of the main actions that it has. So I think that its action on bleeding is primarily that it's worth again clotting the blood and, actually directing the blood into the areas around, say, like, if there's an injury that you're bleeding out of around where that injury is rather than actually just astringing and tightening So yarrow is kind of the anomaly there. Yarrow tea, if you were to make just yarrow tea as a strong tea and give that all by itself, you'll have to keep in mind that the person that's getting that, if they're taste intolerant, they're not gonna wanna drink it. So it's a good plant to modify with other plants, if you're going to use it.

There's a a lot to be said for, you know, just bucking up and saying, okay. This doesn't taste good, but I know it's gonna be good for me.

But if you're trying to do that to kids Right.

You know, and and you give them something that tastes really, really awful and you should generally never give your kids anything that you haven't tasted yourself or used yourself.

Kids will pick up. If, like, if you're walking with, you know, this cup of tea towards them and you're really unsure about it, it, they're gonna be looking and going, mom doesn't know about that stuff she's trying to get me to drink. You know? So, that's really important. But if you give them something that's really bad tasting, the next time you wanna give them something, they'll remember that bad tasting cup of tea, and it'll create, like, resistance there.

But, yeah, it is amazingly effective. One of the the benefits of it is that it's not, really, really specific. It'll act on a broader spectrum of people, and conditions.

So some relaxing plants. Okay? Mhmm. So for the most part, with the stimulating ones, you think warming familiar spices.

For the relaxing plants And these are ones we're gonna use on the hot person?

The ones that we're gonna use on the people that are tense. Tense. You know? So they're not necessarily going to be hot too. They're gonna be tense, agitated, you know, shivering, shuddering, moving around, restless.

Okay.

The most basic broadly acting one that I love is elderflower.

And I could go on for, like, weeks. If I was an incredible poet, I would write an ode to elderflower.

It's such an important remedy. And with all of the attention that elderberry gets, elderflower does not get the attention that it deserves. And Right. At least for me, if someone said, you know, thank god no one will ever say this. But if someone said you can only ever use either elderberry or elderflower again for the rest of your life, I would choose elderflower.

Wow. I think it's it's a more dynamic, herb. I can do more with it, and I think it possesses a lot of, qualities that make it so broadly active, for a number of conditions. Okay? But elderflower tea tastes really nice. It has this nice sort of, like, floral honey flavor to it, and it's very broadly acting, so it'll work in pretty much anyone that you give it to.

There was a situation where someone that I knew, was sick, and I knew they had elderflower tea in their house. And I stopped in, and their husband was there. And, I said, you know, what are they are they making tea? And he said, no.

I haven't made tea yet. So I I made a big pot of, elderflower tea. And I said, you know, keep this on the stove. Keep it warm.

Just keep bringing bringing her cups up and, you know, you can do it.

I don't wanna go up there.

It's like Mhmm. Keep bringing her cups up and, you know, have her just keep drinking it. And, the next day, she called me up. She said, I couldn't believe how good it worked. I knew that I had it in the house, but that's the stuff that we always give to the kids.

And I just didn't think it would be strong enough. And so this gets into this sort of gentle strong dynamic Mhmm. Where people think like, oh, that's a gentle herb. It's weak, and this is a strong herb.

You know, it's strong. And gentle herbs aren't necessarily weak. You know, it just means that they're not gonna aggravate people. They're not forceful.

They're not pushy.

The if you think in your life about people you know who are like gentle people, a lot of them are extremely strong people, you know. They're really, really powerful people, but they don't do it with this overt forcefulness, You know? Right.

Like, cayenne or poke root, really strong force for elderflower, it's just gentle. It's not weak at all in comparison.

It's just not that overtly, extroverted.

Yeah. It has an extroverted nature. Yeah. Yeah. That's That's great.

So It's like an elder. Yeah. Strong and gentle.

It it it makes a great tea. You can give it to anyone, you know. So it'll work on Mhmm. You know, even these robust construction worker type constitution people.

But you can also give it to the elderly. You can also give it to infants. I mean and I mean infants, like, a month old. If they needed elderflower, I wouldn't hesitate to offer elderflower.

Say, like, is a tea mixed with breast milk and given with a surgeon while they're nursing or have the mother drink lots of elderflower tea.

It it it's totally appropriate to do that.

Elderflower will also work on, like, upper respiratory congestion and lung congestion, but it it facilitates the process and doesn't dry up secretions. You know? It keeps them in a really healthy, clear running state until they resolve rather than just just drawing up so you don't have problem with your runny nose.

And it's also kind of an alternative too. You know, elderflower tea is something that you can take, and it just makes your metabolism work better. It's a little bit you know, again, it's gentle. It's subtle.

Sometimes I think it's it's with the subtle herbs, it's hard to tell exactly what they do, especially if they're relaxing Because is it the elder flower that's causing the medicinal effect? Or is it relaxing tension the medicinal effect is actually the vital energy doing what it would normally do without the inhibition that the tension is causing.

Another good example of relaxing diaphoretic would be bone set. Okay? Mhmm. And I know that, Paul Bergner, has a video on your site, and he talks about, you know, bone set and how important it is as an influenza remedy.

And it is a spectacular plant.

It's so effective. And the the specific situations that I think bone set is for is number one, it's relaxing.

If you have a feeling like you wake up and you're sick and you feel like someone just beat the tar out of you with a baseball bat, Your whole body just aches. That's really specific for Boneset. Another thing that that Boneset, addresses that seems really specific to it is this alternation between getting chills and getting, like, the hot fever. Okay? Yeah. So you you feel all chilled and shippery, and so you put a blanket on top of you. And then you get all flushed and sweaty, and so you throw the blanket off of you.

And then you feel all chilled again, and you keep doing this on off again, you know, thing with the blanket.

Yeah.

If you have that and you have the the achiness, the goes Boneset is gonna be very helpful for you.

It's another really bitter tea.

When you need it, it doesn't seem to taste that bad. Sometimes I think, you know, how your your taste goes off when you get sick?

It's true.

I think that's sort of like your body's failsafe mechanism to be like.

It is tough to take down, but this this is the plant that I've had the most, relationship and success with with in fevers personally.

It always works wonders. It's like my the wonder herb.

Yeah. And Boneset Boneset is a diuretic, and it also, stimulates white blood cell production at the same time. So it it really works on the entire immune system, and it works in a a very deep acting level. One of the conditions that people can get is, used to be called ague.

So I suppose it's still called ague, but no one uses that word anymore. But it would be an intermittent fever.

Mhmm. And this you know, it still still happens. I still see this. Someone will get sick.

They'll have a fever thing. It'll last, like, three, four days, you know, and then they feel like crap. They feel really, really bad and they get better. And then let's say, like, three weeks go by and then they get sick again.

And they're like, oh, this is like that same thing I had last time. And then they get better. And then they get sick again, like, three or four weeks later. And they're like, you know, why am I just like, am I not getting over this or am I, like, catching it again?

Like, what's going on here? And what it is is it's some illnesses, the infecting, agent, It it works by flaring up, making a whole bunch of copies of itself, and then, like, laying low when the immune system comes to get rid of it. And And then the immune system looks around and says, oh, there's nothing really here. Oh, okay.

Cool. And then everything seems to be fine, and then it flares up again. Okay. So that's the way that it's it's adapted to live in your body and to survive your immune system because viruses and bacterias have a vital force too, you know, that that nature is on their side too.

You know, nature doesn't favor us.

Right.

Nature wants all of our children to thrive in the world, you know. So this is this one's little adaptation.

And Boneset, I think, really encourages deep immune scouring, to go and and deal with those infections. Sometimes I think, you know, like, I like to, personify, like, infecting bacteria and viruses. It's like, rambunctious teenagers having bonfires, you know, out in the woods. And, like, you know what? The police cars show up, and they see the flashlights coming to the couch coming. And, like, so some of the slower kids get caught, but the clever ones go and hide the bushes. They wait for the flashlights to go away, and then we have the car to drive away.

And then they all creep back and stoke up the fire again and start the party again. And when the use of the, you know, police come back, they all lay low. So this is like and it really gets in there and and looks, you know, in the bushes and says, okay. All of you out this time.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Yeah. It's, it's when when when Bone said, when its diaphoretic actions kick in, I just personally feel, like, after that, it's a really cleansing feeling. It's almost like you feel a bit of cleansing. You feel a bit of reinvigoration.

Like, you can feel you're on the other side of this thing. You start you know, it really feels like it's, you know, done something thorough.

Yeah. Boneset, that would be in fact, god, isn't one of the names for bonesets thoroughword?

Is it?

I believe one of the common names for bonesets is thoroughword. So that's that's very auspicious coincidence.

Well, you know, and and and not to mention the near instantaneous relief of the aching when you Right. I mean, it's incredible.

Yeah. Yeah. It it can be. I would say that, there happens sometimes, particularly if someone has, like they feel like a semi truck is parked on their head, you know, and it's centered in the head.

I've had that not resolved with the bone type. The body aches are getting better. Yeah. But the, the the sort of, like, my head is gonna be crushed or explode or both at the same time.

Mhmm.

Maybe isn't gonna always, recover. But it it is there if you read some of the old ethnobotanical accounts of, like, the New England and Appalachia, every family going into winter would stock up on bones that make sure they had bones that are on the house.

Sure.

It was so essential. And I know, Paul Bergner has has talked about, you know, how he would put bone set tincture into some elderberry syrup and give it like that.

And I've used definitely have used bone set tincture because even even me with my, fairly liberal flavor tolerance.

Mhmm.

There are times I'm just like, oh, I don't know if I can do a strong bone fantasy.

You know?

But I will rather than just put it in the syrup, I'll have it along with hot tea or mix into the hot tea, to to facilitate the diaphoretic action more in in the hot liquid.

Oh, darn it. You know, I I had to go back for a minute. One of the things I forgot to say about yarrow, and this is kinda pertinent, is that yarrow is diaphoretic, and it's also a diuretic.

And if you drink the tea hot, it favors release of fluids through the skin. And if that same cup of tea gets cold, it favors release of fluids through the kidneys.

So that's where the temperature of the preparation actually comes into play.

Wow. Yeah. Okay.

Another herb that I think of as being really closely related to boneset, and also closely related to lobelia bilia in some ways. I learned that from, Leslie Williams who's in Herbalist out in let's see now. She's in Cleveland area now.

Blue vervein, you have the same sort of hot cold thing. You have the same sort of achiness thing.

A little bit better when people are holding a lot of, like, tension in their neck and shoulders and head. Mhmm. So more specific to that. But in box flower essences, verveined essence is for someone who's, like, has a lot of very high, strong ideals that they're applying to the people around them and to themselves and that they give people around them or themselves a hard time if they can't live up to those ideals.

So these are, like, the really type a people that when they get sick, they're, like, like, I can't be sick. You know? They would tell anyone in a second, like, oh, you need to take care of yourself. But when they get sick, they say, I can't be sick, and they're always getting up and trying to do stuff.

Okay? That's interfering with the whole process. You know? As soon as you stand up and you're walking around, your immune system is inhibited.

You know? Because you're you're saying you're sending a signal to your body that says, I need to divert my energy outside of my body. Whereas if you're laying down, you're sending the signal, like, I'm not gonna do anything external, you know, work on the inside. Mhmm.

The the vermaine flower essence carries over into the use of the tea and carries over into small doses of the tincture.

Where if you have that person who's sort of like, you know, I have to be doing this or even if the herbalist that keeps, you know, getting up every ten minutes to try a different herb and not really letting anything kick in. Like, oh, well, that didn't work in ten minutes. Maybe I'll try this. Oh, well, this didn't work in ten minutes.

Oh, maybe I should have done that. Well, maybe maybe I should have, you know, infused it longer. And the there's that activity. There's a restlessness there.

Mhmm.

There's an agitation there. And if there's restlessness and agitation and a feeling of, like, I need to be over this now, not because I feel crappy, but because I have, you know, I have stuff to do, then Blue Vervain is going be good for that person. That's a real good, blue vervain is an incredible plant, but that's a real good, indicator for its use in in treating fevers.

Another, one to think about would be, like, butterfly weed, and this would be the plant most people call, plerasir root or the butterfly milkweed. Okay? So it's the, Asclegius tuberosa. It is in the milkweed family. It doesn't have the milky sap. It's got clear sap, and it's got bright orange flowers, and monarch butterflies eat it and lay their eggs on it. And, I always just think that if I was this plant and people were deciding what to call me, I would way rather they call me butterfly weed than Plurisy Root.

Plurisy Root.

Plurisy Root is good for respiratory conditions. And, again, with respiratory conditions, one of the main ways that you you address, what herbs you're gonna use, you say, you know, damp cough, dry cough. Okay?

With pleurisy root, the cough that a person can have that's associated with a fever that they have is if they cough really shallow, it sounds dry. But if they get into, like, a coughing fit or when they lay down at night Mhmm. There's actually in the lower parts of the lungs, there's damp mucus. So if they start coughing really hard, you can hear this dank music mucus kind of, like, sloshing around down there, but not it's too wet to get up all the way and expectorate. Or when they lay down, it sort of spreads out on their lungs horizontally, and then it starts coughing bits.

So that's one of the indications I use for these fursuit roots If you have a fever, you have this sort of dry in the upper lungs, damp in the lower lungs condition.

Another indication for it, and this goes to its use in pleurisy, is is that when you have that dryness in the lungs and you take an inhalation, it creates, like, a little bit of friction in the pleura, and you get that stitch in your size. You take a deep breath, and you get this painful stitch in your side. Or when you cough, you get this painful stitch in your lungs, and it's very specific to that condition.

And then we can talk about catnip. Okay? Mhmm. Catnip, I always wonder whether I should say is a herb that does both stimulating and relaxing properties, but it's predominantly relaxing.

And it's interesting to to contrast catnip with, ginger. Okay? Because catnip is another herb that is good for nausea and, you know, abdominal tension. Okay? But ginger is the warming, stimulating, nausea plan.

Catnip being the, you know, the relaxing, tension reducing, agitation reducing nausea plan.

And this one, one of the things I would say is that commercial catnip is often very poor quality.

Like, really good catnip should smell a little bit skunky and minty.

But it's definitely got, like, a skunkiness to it. Right? Mhmm. And a lot of times when when I've seen cut and sifted catnip, it's got an aroma to it, but it doesn't have that funky, skunky scent to it, which the more of that it has, the more relaxing it's gonna be, the more sedating it's going to be to agitation and restlessness.

And so this would be like the person is holding a lot of tension in their abdominal organs and they're the they're curl up fetal, you know.

They, like, they can only lay in bed all curled up and that tension is that they're holding is inhibiting everything. Mhmm. The outward circulation.

You know? A lot of this, you know, it seems like it's about circulation.

But if you think about the Chinese concept of, you know, with the blood goes the chi or the vital energy, the circulation is really making the vital energy be able to flow all throughout the entire body and it's the vital energy that is the the healer. You know, the vital energy is the magic that makes your body, all the responses work.

And when the responses aren't working it's because that there's some kind of imbalance with the way that the vital energy is inhibited in in one way or another, from carrying out its responsibilities.

Okay. So then you have herbs that possess both properties. So these are like the scratch your head vigorously herbs that get in massage herbs.

You know, they stimulate and they relax.

The archetypal one here, the really broadly acting one is mint.

Okay? And it's gonna be peppermint or spearmint. Peppermint's a little bit more stimulating.

Spearmint's a little bit more relaxing.

And then, you know, you have, like, common field mint and all kinds of different mints that you can put into the category. You know, catnip is a mint. Lemon balm is a mint.

There's, you know, all the dozens and hundreds of different mints you can apply. They're all gonna have some diaphoretic action, and they're all going to help with circulation. They're all going to help with tension and the digestive, things. So, you know, mint also helps with nausea.

Mint also helps with abdominal cramping, so it'll also help with that fetal thing. So it makes it really broadly acting.

And one of the things that Mint is so wonderful for is that if you are getting into herbs or you are into herbs or you are a professional herbalist or whatever, and you get a call from someone who is not into herbs, or you can be like a professional herbalist and and, you know, well regarded all over the place. And when someone who knows you calls you up, they're like, oh, call, you know, that person. They're into herbs.

Mhmm.

And you could when it's like thirty years and you're you're like that guy in town who's into herbs.

And if you say something like, oh, you should take some bone set and pleurisy root and put a little bit of prickly ash in there.

Those plants are unfamiliar to them.

They don't know what you're talking about and it all seems kind of intimidating. Right? Right. Right. Definitely.

And they don't feel good.

You know?

They feel sick or, you know, whoever is calling you is dealing with the person who's sick in a lot of cases.

And it's hard to get. Who's sick in a lot of cases.

And it's hard to get.

And those are all stumbling blocks that will keep people from doing stuff. Okay?

Mint. If you tell someone to drink mint tea, very few people think that that's going to they don't feel sketchy about that.

Right.

They feel comfortable with it because it's so familiar. Like, oh, mint tea. Well, I'm not gonna do any harm with mint tea. Right?

And so they'll try it. And because it's so broadly acting, because it has both properties and it you know, what it's it's also decongestion for upper respiratory congestion and for lung congestion. You know, it it works in all the systems. So it's kind of, so broadly acting that it becomes like, you know, sort of your, go to herb, is a is either an adjunct to or a base in in a lot of formulas because it'll work on so many different kinds of people, and so many different people will take it without questioning it.

Exactly.

You know? The a lot of the kitchen spices are like that too, but when you get into things that are called, you know, bones that are prickly aches or pleurisy root, people just it's not even an unreasonable reaction. If it's something that's new to them and it's unfamiliar, they're gonna not comfortable because they're already in a vulnerable place, you know, just by being sick.

Right.

You know, so having mint in there even is a flavor that they can taste makes them connect with something that's familiar.

God, mint is just such a wonderful plant. And, you know, Matthew Wood writes in, I think, his seven herbs book and he says something along the lines of, like, you know, even if you only know one herb but you know it really well, you could have an effective practice. Mhmm. Limited, but still very effective.

And think if if one person only knew mint really well, how much good they could do for so many people around them. I mean and then you think like, oh, you know, combined let's say you know mint really well and you know kenma out really well. It just keeps broadening. So it it doesn't need to be like, you know, oh, well, I need to know all these plants.

Whatever. You know, I'll talk about a lot of plants here, but most people won't necessarily do themselves justice going out and getting, you know, four ounces of each one and and and just having them to try out when they get sick. It's like, oh, well, you know, work with the bases and then add on to that. You know, work with the foundation at once and add on to that.

In the mint family, there's wild bergamot.

Okay?

A lot of the Anishinaabe people are native American people, outside of the Anishinaabe region, which is kinda like this northeast Great Lakes area, into into the Dakotas, we'll, call the sweet leaf. And they don't mean sweet flavor. They're not talking about stevia. It's actually got a really spicy, pungent flavor like oregano. So some of the other names for it are wild oregano or, it's really it's related to, the the bee balm, the wild bee balm Mhmm. The marinade fistulosa.

And this is good for all the stuff that people use, oil of oregano for. Okay? The flavors are very, very similar. But rather than going to the health food store and buying buying this essential oil diluted in some olive oil from who knows where in a capsule.

You can, you know, plant this or grow this or pick this, on your own. And because it's a mint, you'll find one of it. You find hundreds of them, and collect this and make tinctures and dry it for tea. It's really potent stuff.

It's not as strong as an essential oil, but it doesn't need to be. It actually has strength in the fact that it's not that strong. But one of the things that while while bergamot does is it really sort of saturates you. There's this little subterranean, thought I have of, like, a class of herbs they call, like, saturating diaphoretics.

And those are the herbs that when you take, you, like they they come out your lungs. You sweat them out. You pee them out.

You know, you can you, like, rub your hand on someone's forehead and smell your hand, and you can you can smell that herb. It's really going through all their tissues. And, wild bergamot is strongly antimicrobial.

And it works on yeast. It works on fungus. It works on viruses. It works on bacteria. Wow.

So it's it's very, very broadly acting.

And yet, it's not in any way, like, disruptive to the gut. You know, it's not going to disrupt in a negative way your gut ecology.

But you can make a tea out of this. And now this is an herb that people feel.

One of the the more esoteric uses of it is that, when people are really passionate about something, but they have a difficult time expressing it, they feel it inside, but they can't bring it out of themselves and express it and project it out into the world.

Wild bergamot is an herb that you can take small doses of or, you know, make a flower essence out of, or, put in a little medicine bag and carry around with you or do all kinds of, you know, weird doing stuff with, and it will help to facilitate that. And part of the reason it does that is because it does that physiologically too. So you have this, you know, it's it's far more stimulating. It is still relaxing, but it's really overtly stimulating. You take it and you're like, wow. This is an herb that people feel and have an immediate, like, gut reaction to as soon as they taste it.

And, you can, make tea with that, make a tincture with that, and add it to your tea. I really like making tinctures and teas and combining them together, especially for this Yeah. That seems very, very dynamic. I'm I'm not very good at being like an either or person.

Mhmm.

I'm like, why choose tinctures or teas when you can do both?

And you get kind of like of the fresh plant with the, the magic of the dried plant too, you know.

But, this tea will really bring out that temperature. So it it would also work for people who are, like, cold and clammy intense.

You know? So cold on the surface, hot inside, shivery and shuddery, and that heat's just not getting out, you know? And, like, what is heat associated with? It's associated with, like, passion and life and expression. It's something trapped inside of them. It helps to project it outwards.

Right.

So that is just a spectacular plant to have. That's also one of those almost indestructible plants. You know, like, you could put wild burger land on your dashboard and, like, park in the Grand Canyon, you know, or Death Valley in the summertime and come back in a month, and it would still be potent.

It just it it really hangs on to its its medicinal action even though it's an aromatic plant.

Right.

Wow. I mean, I have the reg I have the, kinda garden variety bergamot. Right? I mean, the the monarda.

You know, I I always used to think that that there was a great deal of interchangeability between them.

Mhmm. And I think one of the factors that comes into play is that people generally grow the garden variety in nice, cushy soil.

Mhmm.

You know? Nice compost, and they put for kelp down for it to, you know, come manure bat guano, who knows what. You know?

Wild grows in crappy field soil.

Mhmm.

And if you grow the regular red bergamot in really crappy field soil, it'll get a stronger flavor.

And so I had always thought about, there being, you know, a lot of similarities that you wanna you wanna give plants the soil that they would naturally grow in.

Right. Which is the kind of gardening that Heather teaches in Village Herbalist three, planning the cure.

Yeah. Yeah. See, you're you're replicating their their habitat for them.

Because I'll tell you what, if you put me in a a really cushy house where everyone's doing everything for me, Mhmm.

I would totally get lazy. You know, I'd I'd like to say that I wouldn't, but I'd be like, hey. Yeah. This is nice. Go get that.

Bad, though. No.

No. I get big vibrant flowers. You know?

But I think it was I heard this it may come from Matt Wood through Margie Flint. I think it's in her book where she notice notes that, that there's a difference in the the leaves. The leaves of the red bergamot, the anartadidema, are dry feeling, and the leaves of the wild bergamot are, like, oily. I mean, they feel oily like they're like someone painted them with oil and the oil soaked into that leaf and really hydrated it.

So that there's a there's a qualitative difference there. It's not just a difference of strength. You know, there's also the horsemint, the monarda punctata, and a whole lot of native varieties. With aromatic plants, if you wanna find out how strong they are, just taste them.

The stronger the aromatics they have, the stronger medicinally that they're going to be, in terms of the actions that aromatics have, which, are stimulating, relaxing, dispersive of congestion.

One of the real things I love Wild Bergamot for is a really deep acting steam inhalation.

So you get a whole bunch of the dried leaves and flowers.

These are all in a pot of water. Nice.

You put the lid on it.

You bring it to a boil. Wow.

And then you go and sit somewhere, and you take the lid off, and you have a towel over your head.

And you inhale that steam and kinda sit there with all the tent, you know, the towel tent over your head. Yes. And it really pulls up. You can use sage for that.

You can use thyme for that. You can use eucalyptus, a whole bunch of different herbs, but wild bergamot is really it gets in deep, into the respiratory passages and help you pull stuff up. You know? Because that's what it did.

Pull stuff out of you, whether whether it's the circulation or congestion or passion. I mean, it's just a very, very dynamic plan. And it's one of the ones, you know, I can talk about that plant for a long time, and I really don't feel like I even know the tip of the iceberg about it. You know?

It's one of the most important, plants to the indigenous peoples in the regions that it grows in. And and no wonder, you know, I think, Tisamal Crow, who is Native American herbalist, I think he's Muskogee.

I'm not sure.

Anishinaabe. Some band of the Anishinaabe.

Herbalist wrote a book, and and he's since passed on. But he talked about how they would actually just bind the flowers or rub the flowers into people's hands and feet, and that would stimulate its its, diaphragmatic action of stimulating peripheral circulation there.

Very active, powerful plant.

And, another one would be a real local one in sort of like one of my favorite plants because I've focused on this and and sort of brought it back into use, which would be New England aster.

So this is the in the east here, it's usually the purplest, most aromatic, stickiest aster you can find growing in a field.

And, a tincture of that or an infusion of that and I will say that when you pick it, it has all these beautiful purple flowers. As soon as it starts to dry, all the flowers go to seed. It'll still work, like that.

But this is another instance where I I'll combine the tincture and the the dried plant, in in a tea.

And that one is really specific for people who are holding tension in in their lungs.

So they have this, like, tight, not, you know, spasm, but tight sort of quivery tension in their lungs, and they can't take deep breaths.

And the tension when it gets too much, they start into coughing fit.

Very good for asthma. I use it for bronchitis.

It's when I teach this class, I'm always passing around tinctures and and, samples of the plants as I do that. After this class, I don't think there's a single time I've taught this class where someone hasn't come up to me and been like, I want some of that New England Aster. Relax my lungs so much. And I know people who, have given the tea or the tincture, and I've done this too to someone who had asthma, and they've said that they actually needed to use their inhaler less the next day.

So it's a really, really wonderful plant, and it's also relaxing to the central nervous system. So that agitation thing. And the first time that that I used it as a diaphoretic, I was really agitated. And, I should have taken Blue Vervain because I'm I've definitely got Blue Vervain type personality in me. You know?

So I was trying a whole bunch of different things. I was like, like, oh, I'm gonna try that new one and then I asked her.

And it was it was that was the one thing that chilled me out and calm me down and helped me get to sleep until I rolled over, and I I had put the cup down, like, on top of my chest, and it spilled all over me.

But, that's a such a good plant for for, respiratory tension and tension in the lungs, aggravated by cold. You know? So it's the cough that gets worse when you go out in the cold.

So that's a a good example of that. Now one of the things that you don't wanna be doing when you're sick is trying to make sense of all this because you're not thinking right when you're sick. Okay? So what I usually advocate is you have on hand a quantity of three different tea blends or preparations.

Something that's predominantly stimulating, something that's real middle of the road, and something that's predominantly relaxing. And I'll just talk about a few of my favorites. The middle of the road one, this is a really old, formula. It goes back to the gypsies or something, which equal parts stimulating.

So you have yarrow flowers Mhmm. Relaxing. You have elder flowers and singling and relaxing. So you have mint of of one kind or another.

So yarrow flowers, elder flowers, and mint is this ageless, you know, time honored, cold and flu tea that you can make. It the the mint and the elder flowers sort of tame and temper the flavor that's a little bit intense from the yarrow, and it works great. In any, situation where you need something, that'll work. You know?

It's got a very, very balanced action. If you need something that's more along the lines of a stimulating diaphoretic, you can use, like a fire cider type blend. Okay? That'll always work, and that can be even in the vinegar.

It doesn't necessarily have to be as a tea. But, like, what's another real popular, real popular you can go to coffee shops and find this. Stimulating diaphoretic, you know, herb blend that people all over the world are drinking all the time and don't think about it as being medicinal is, chai. Right.

You know, chai tea.

What's in chai? You know, cardamom, cloves, ginger, cinnamon.

You know, it's just you could do without the black tea, but in a pinch, it'd be okay to have black tea in there.

Well, we've got a great we've got a great chai recipe with that black tea on HerbMentor.

Yeah. You've got that one.

And I know that even Mountain Rose Herbs, they sell that, it's called Firefly Chai Uh-huh.

With the rooibos in it, you know, which that is a very, very good one. Or you can just, you know, make your own. Just figure, like, okay. You know, what are the cinnamon, ginger, cardamom pods, clove?

Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Yeah. Black pepper. All those are stimulating spices. So that's gonna be more stimulating. You have that on hand.

And then for the relaxing, there's so many blends you can make, but one of my favorites is eliflowers and lemon balm.

Mhmm.

Lemon balm, I didn't talk about, but that's another mint, primarily relaxing. And it's also very uplifting to the spirits. So when someone's sick and they just feel down, you know, kind of downtrodden, like, oh, sick. I just don't wanna be sick.

I feel crappy. Elderflower lifts their spirits up. And rose hips, you know, rich in vitamin c, and it also adds the red into the tea blend that makes it look so nice. Got the green and the yellow flowers and the red.

Very beautiful looking tea. And you can have that being a primarily relaxing one. And then if you have each one of these, you can say, like, okay. I need something more stimulating.

I'll take that one. If something more relaxing, I'll take that one. I need something in the middle of the road, I'll take that. But you can also say, like, okay.

Well, I have a lot of tension, so I can do the relaxing one. Elderflower, lemon balm, rose hips. But I also could use, you know, the circulation being stimulated.

Well, you could put a little bit of ginger into that tea to modify it and make it more stimulating, especially if there's nausea.

If there's lower bowel issues, you could put some cinnamon into that tea, You know? So you can kind of tweak it to modify it, to make it more singling just by adding some stuff into it and not necessarily having to make the whole tea from scratch. You just throw in a little bit of ginger root or throw in, you know, a cinnamon stick into the pot while you're making it.

Mhmm.

The same thing, like, with your middle of the road, do you need it to be a little bit more stimulating? You throw some wild bergamot in there. You know? So now I've got the mint and the wild bergamot, which is more stimulating, than the elderflower and the yarrow.

With anything, you know, that's as strong as fire cider, if it's got the cayenne in there, it'll always be primarily stimulating. But you can throw in, you know, some bone set tincture or some blue vervain tincture, into that tea.

The the flavors of those, like, if to throw the dried urban to make the tea rather than using the tinctures, it seem like they conflict too much to me. Mhmm. We can modify it with those tinctures and then drink that. So you you have a lot of, leeway to, like, have these teas on hand when you just need to, like, have something there and make a cup of tea.

As I mentioned, you wanna drink the tea hot, and there's a couple ways to facilitate this because if you're sipping on the tea and having it over the course of a day rather than thinking like this, you know, we we have this sort of stuck in a two or three times a day mentality. Mhmm. I'd rather have people sipping on tea throughout the course of the day and not counting like, oh, I I did this cup and this cup and this cup. It's, you know, four hour intervals or five hour intervals.

You can get at any thrift store, crock pot.

Mhmm.

You know, you can plug in and put on the nightstand and a little ladle, and you can, you know some people have crock pots, but I know the crock pots at thrift stores, they just they're like peas in a pod. They're always there.

It's true.

And then you can you can keep them at a heated temperature and then just ladle a little bit out into your mug and tip on it and not have a whole cup that's getting cold and needs to be reheated because you don't need to be up and going to the stove. Another thing you can do is a thermos.

Another thing you can do are those air pods. You know, like, people put, coffee in them and you press down on the top and the coffee comes up little spot.

Those will keep tea hot for a day. I mean, I had where I made tea and I put it in there, like, you know, just off the boil, and it was still hot the next morning.

And then so that those are really convenient because they're easy to move around between the couch, the bath, or wherever you're gonna lay around.

And you can just push out a little bit, and it keeps your tea hot as you're drinking it. You don't have to do that. Like, oh, it gets cold.

I'll have to add it back to the pot, go to the stove, and and deal with that.

The less you have to deal with in terms of, taking care of yourself And and sometimes you only wanna drink a little bit at a time, and you don't wanna Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. And it's it's I think it's it's better to do that, to, you know, have a few sips and then wait twenty minutes and have a few sips. Wait twenty minutes. Have, you know, finish off the cup. But, you know, to let your your body direct it.

So those are all real good ways to keep the tea hot and on hand and easy I really like since we got air pods like we have the little discount stores and I got two of them for when I did classes here you know I'd have people and they make tea and put them in there and they've turned out to be so good for, for fevers and for having that. You know, you make the tea once in the morning or someone hopefully makes the tea for you once in the morning, and then they give you this thing where all you have to do is lean over and press on the top of it. Okay. They're they're not all that expensive.

Alright. If you especially if you go for the off.

I'm really excited about that because I I've been using a thermos mostly. You know.

Same same idea. But I like Right. Right. And then wouldn't that filter out the herbs too in a way? Wouldn't that be better at because when I use a thermos, I always have to have a little, you know, screen in a over my teacup.

Right. You can definitely put a little, bag or muslin over the little because there's, like, a a long tube that goes down, and it pulls off the bottom. Right.

So you can put a a bag on there, but it still might clog, you know, clogs. Awesome. What I do is make the tea in a pot. Yeah. Let it infuse, and then I pour it in there while it's still hot.

Smart right now. That's good.

And then one more class of diaphragtics. It's called sebaceous diaphoretics. Mhmm. And I first read about this in William Cook's Physiomedical Dispensatory, and he talked about them as being specific for when the sweat on the body is like an oily sweat, not a watery sweat.

And he said, you know, the the three herbs that are really good for this are burdock seeds, sunflower seeds, and, the root bark of bittersweet, not bittersweet nightshade, but bittersweet vine, okay, which is Celestris scandens.

Okay.

And, I thought, okay. That's really interesting. And I sort of, like, wrapped that, bit of information, like, clogged in my my brain, and I didn't necessarily really understand it. I just remembered it.

And I applied it a couple times, but still didn't really get it. I just, you know, sort of, like, name association herbalism. Oh, this works. I wonder why. And then I was talking with Matt Wood one time, and he says, oh, we know that why that is, don't you? I said, because oil on the skin is like an insulator. So, like, here in northern climates, when winter comes, you know, if it was like this, if you were an indigenous person out here, you'd be rubbing bear grease on your skin to insulate you and keep you warm.

If you were living in Scotland and you were gonna go on a fishing boat in the ocean, you'd have this thick wool sweater and this wool hat has all this lanolin in it as an insulator.

Keep you warm. Right?

When the body is exposed to really intense cold or cold and damp, It'll secrete an oily sweat to help to hold heat in the body as an insulator And then what these herbs do is they sort of, like, after you get that person in and that oily sweat is still on the skin, it sort of flushes it off with with more watery perspiration, to to clear it and not to to sort of, like, insulate when you don't need that anymore. After you get inside, you're out of those elements.

So that's, that's an important consideration. For most people, the easiest, one to get a hold of will be the sunflower seeds.

Burdock seeds are really, really common, but to collect and process yourself a lot of burdock seeds is quite a bit of work because those fine little hairs are are really irritating to the skin.

And then the first time that I did that, I just had, like, one debacle after another. You know, I collected a whole bunch of burrs, and I put them in a coffee grinder, you know, initially. And the burrs just stuck together on the coffee, you know, grinder blade spun around, and the burrs only got ground down at the bottom. And, oh, well, I'll just use one of these bigger Cuisinart things. And normally, I like to, do everything by hand, but I already tried that and I got little, you know, burr pieces in my fingers and all over the table and it was it was just, you know, it's very, very tedious to break them open.

So then I put them in this and the whole ball of burs spun around the Cuisinart thing.

And so then, like, from there, I nowadays, if I need to process them, I'll put them in a couple shopping bags, and I'll run over them with the car back and forth.

Oh.

You know, several times.

Basically, break open the burrs. Mhmm. And then you have to sort of sift through them. But even that's dangerous because you open that bag and all this fine little hair from the burrs goes up. And if you inhale it, it's irritating. If it's on your skin, it's irritating.

It's just been a lot of work to process. Okay.

I I think it's, Flax Family Farm sells burdock seed or maybe it's Kate Farm.

They're both in I'm pretty sure they're both in Vermont.

You can get them from them, and it would be getting them right from the grower. You'd get the most recent harvest from them.

Great.

And so that's a a really good resource, and they got really good quality seeds. Because the other thing is, and this just comes along with herbalism. Okay? But if you're skeeved out by breaking up in a little burr and seeing that there's some little larva in in the seeds, you know, so like three of the seeds have some little critter living in it.

If that's gonna freak you out and turn you off and you want someone else to deal with that and just send you nice clean seeds, then then Kate Farm. I Kate Farm. It might be Flack Family Farm, but Kate Farm would be the the way to go for that.

Okay. Alright.

So what else? I don't know. Do you have any any questions? I mean, this really covers it.

Yeah. It was it was a lot. And and I guess, you know, the thing is that people probably got at this point is the differentiation between different types of fever that you don't treat them all the same. And then when you do treat them, examples of what herbs and different ways to use them. And you went you you covered, common ones that we could, have probably already have in our kitchens or can easily get in a supermarket.

And then a few others that if if you, that maybe you can get to know and and introduce one by one over time. Like, maybe if you've never used Boneset or something like that, you could try you could get some and try some.

Maybe make some tea or make some infusion, before you get sick. You know, have a little experience, so you you know what to do when when it happens.

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, one of the I think it was the International Art Symposium, that me and several other herbalists were talking. And, somehow, it came up, you know, like, does anyone use plants that they've never used themselves and none of us had? Okay?

Mhmm.

And that's really important because I think about when I think about herbalism, the two main things I compare it to are music, okay Mhmm.

And then, cooking or food. Okay? So imagine if someone came to you and they said, oh, I cooked a meal for you. I've read a lot about the plants and and the foods I I prepared, but I've never tasted any of them. But I I know what they all do and I know what's in them all. Mhmm.

And so I think they should go together.

You know? And that's where you come up with with the possibility that it looks good on paper, but anyone who's ever been exposed to the actual things you've combined would be, oh my god. No. You know, like like, oh, I need to create an antioxidant cocoa is really rich in polyphenols and and tomatoes are really rich in lycopene. So we'll have, like, like, dark chocolate ketchup together. You know? Like, it could look good on paper, but the thought of the two of those things together is just wretched.

You know? But the main thing the the main thing to keep in mind because it can be confusing.

People always think energetics is confusing.

Most people, pretty much everybody, understands energetics to a certain degree. They understand the extremes. Because you say to them, okay, I have two vegetables. One is a cucumber, one is a chili pepper.

Which one's cold? Which one's hot? Everyone says the chili pepper's hot and the cucumber's cold. Okay.

That doesn't mean literally, like, if you stuck a thermometer in in the chili pepper, it'd be hotter than the cucumber. Mhmm.

But it's just that sensation that it you get.

No one comes in, you know, who lives in a a northern climate, comes in from shoveling snow off their driveway, has been out for a long time in a blizzard. And he goes like, oh, I need a cucumber salad. You know?

They want some kind of, you know, you know, ginger tea or, you know, hot cocoa or they want, you know, soup or broth or stew or something warming that's gonna really warm and and and nourish them on the inside. Just the same as, you know, no one spends the whole day, like, out in the hot sun working and says, like, you know, oh, okay. I wanna have, a bowl of, like, really, really hot chicken soup.

Yeah. And a hot tub of coffee.

So Right. Well, you know, people drink coffee anytime of day or night, whatever the weather. So that's just that's very specific to coffee.

Oh, that's not a good example.

That's alright.

Yeah. I mean, coffee is is one of those exception there. And and maybe actually, it doesn't necessarily relate to, holes and flus directly. But one of the things people get confused about, and indirectly, we can relate this to what we've talked about is, well, why do people eat warming spices in the tropics?

You know? Because that's warm, and it's warm where they live. But what those herbs are doing is it's actually because of their medicinal actions that they're they're working.

These warming herbs have a stimulating action on the peripheral circulation. So they get blood out to the surface.

Well, you you sweat. You you you cool down when you sweat.

You cool down when you sweat. And also, the blood goes out to the surface and it's exposed to the the the air around you, and it cools down, and it goes back into the core of the body. Okay?

So, like, right here where I'm at, you know, we just got some of our first snowfall that's sticking to the ground. It's not very much, but, you know, if someone's gonna go and spend the day outside, you know, taking their kids sledding, they'll be like, oh, I'm gonna fill up a thermos with, like, you know, ginger tea or chai or something like that. And what that's gonna do is that's going to stimulate your circulation out to the periphery of your body where it's really cold outside, cool down your blood, and then your blood's gonna go back into your core. Okay?

It's not a good idea to do. Better when you're outside to, like, lots of fats and oils and lipids, you know, nuts and seeds. And if you don't think that's bad for you. That's a good point. If you're more of the nourishing traditions, you know, like like bacon and sausage and all that. Think about, you know, what did the Eskimos eat? They're not eating spices.

They're eating lots of fats and saturated fats and high cholesterol foods. The oils are insulating them. And then when you come in from being outside, you know, sledding all day long or going skiing or doing whatever, that's when you have the warming spices to then get the circulation back out into the, extremities of the body.

Oh, that's great. That that really clears it up.

You know, because that that can be confusing to people because they think warming, And and of all the dynamics within energetics, because there's about six dynamics that are that are pretty universal. There's hot and cold. There's dry and damp. And there's, like, tension and, like, weakness or laxity. Okay?

Hot and cold is probably the most confusing.

The extremes are always pretty obvious. Like I said, you know, the chili pepper and the cucumber.

When you get into the middle, it becomes more confusing. And even really good herbalists don't agree about what belongs in which side or, you know, whether something's temperate or a little bit warming or no. It's cold. Some people will say like, oh, bitters are cold.

So, you know, anything that's bitter is cold. Well, you know, Kalmus root is bitter. It's an aromatic stimulator. It's actually really, really warming.

So the middle can be confusing. But you learn about the edges and you sort of work your way in and fill out the fine details, just like you do with anything. You know? Like, you don't go, oh, I don't I just don't get this, so I'm not gonna learn about it.

Like, okay. Well, let me focus on the stuff that I get. And then slowly, you'll pick up on the other stuff. It's like learning plant identify plants.

Like, first, you walk out into the woods. You go like, oh my god. How am I gonna figure out what anything is? And then you see some plants that have, like, really obvious leaf shapes, and you go, oh, well these are really easy to identify.

And then because you know those plants, you start to notice, like, oh, well, there's this plant that always grows around this other plant. Oh, now I know what this one is. And then, you know, you become more and more familiar and you you pick it up.

But for the most part, with the energetics as applied deceiver, you just take that, like, step back and you look at the big picture. More stimulating, more relaxing. It's hardly ever gonna be exclusively one or the other. And then you you fine tune from there, with your your more specifics.

And there's so many different plants we could have talked to. We could talk about like, you know, here we have like spice bush, you know, collect the berries of that. And so I've put them in my elderberry surface here, and they're just incredible, you know. You have sweet fern up in the the Northwoods, you know, a little bit north of here.

And I'm sure that you guys have, you know, all kinds of different, you know, aromatic plants out there and then Southwest is laden with aromatic plants.

So even regionally, there's all different kinds of plants you can fit into these. William Cook's Physiomedical Dispensatory is probably the best, and this is on Henriette's Cressif site and also on Paul Bergner's site.

Paul Bergner was the one who actually, I think, transcribed it and put it up online. Henriette's is a little bit easier to navigate than Paul's is.

Mhmm.

But they're both great sources of, learning about this particular perspective of, addressing fevers and differentiating them.

Well, that's great.

You know, Jim, thanks so much for taking your time today and sharing all of a side. I just kinda let keep letting you talk. I know we went kinda long, but I I I I don't mind. I I just wanted to kinda, you know, keep you going until you were until you were done.

You're the kind of person that, like, if you were in in my class, you know, the class is supposed to end at, like, the clock, and it's, like, going on eight.

And I didn't let you know.

Yeah. If no one tells me, you know, just like, I'll just talk.

Yeah. Well, you know, it was like that when I was following you around with the video camera too in the, AIHS. I was just kinda, I'll just keep taping them. I'll keep I'll get going every talk you do and keep taping.

So which we Yeah. Which, by the way, people don't know under mentor dot com. They're in the video section.

Well, probably at this point, put out about half or a little less than half of all the ones that I have. And I've been putting them out every couple few weeks, and there'll be more of those. And, also, if you've never, don't know Jim or his background at all, there is a, Air Mentor Radio, a first interview we did together. You can listen to that.

And, but most of all, the very best place to get to know Jim is to go to herb craft dot o r g, where you can Oh, well, I'll let you go. I'll go and check it out because it's a wealth of, articles and great information. It should be on your bookmarked short list of places where you go check things out. Anything else you wanna, throw out there, Jim, before we get going or are you are you talked out?

Oh, well, you're risking getting these started together.

Care.

This is like I I only accidentally joined, like, that the Facebook thing. Yeah. And the reason I don't post much on there, I'm like, it always cuts me off. I'm always still, like, typing, and it's like I've I've reached my quota of sentences and I, you know people are like, oh, you should join Twitter. I'm like, Twitter won't even let you do more than like three sentences.

With letters.

Yeah. I I I don't do good in short form.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know? Even I mean, I sent you the, you know, some of the written material for this to look forward. You know? When I do classes, you know, that are not, like, at a conference, but, you know, my day long six hour, classes or seven hour classes sometimes, you know, the handout packets are, like, twenty or thirty pages.

And, you know, I they keep kind of growing and, you know, I'm like, oh, I wanna talk about this plant. No. I can't because then I can't cover it in the allotted time anymore. Oh.

But, I'll be able to follow you.

When you when you teach at the, at at the conference at Kiva, Rose is putting together down in, in September. Will you be doing air blocks and even though it's are you okay in the southwest?

I'm I'm not scheduled to do any air blocks out there, simply because I I don't well, Kiva told me she'd be really shocked if I knew anything. And I looked at the pictures of where it's gonna be, and it's all brown.

Well, I'm gonna follow I hope Kiva does something because I'm gonna follow her around with the camera.

Yeah.

I'm I'm tempted to agree with her. Although, what I am gonna do is I'm gonna, like, look for weeds and stuff, so that when she does it, has a second conference, I can say, like, oh, I saw weeds.

There's an herbalist in Detroit named, Gary Wantaja or maybe Wantaja, I guess. I I've known him for years. I used to know how to say his last name, but, he's got a place called Nature's Products, and he told me how he went to, I think, Peru. And he said it was it's really amazing.

He's more, like, even keeled guy than I am. He said it's really amazing. You'd go out into the the rainforest, and you could walk for half hour and not see the same plant twice. But when you got back into the village, among all the houses and dwellings, you'd see dandelion and yellow dock and plantain.

Uh-huh. You know, all these really common, you know, like, these plants of of of of people. You know? Their habitat is where people are, not, you know, a certain country.

Right. Right. Right. Right.

So if I can find stuff like that there, then I will I will, interject myself. Actually, this would be the first time I've ever been to a conference.

I haven't done walks.

I don't know what I'll do with myself.

I've been trying not to butt in while other people are doing theirs.

I'm sure you'll find something to talk about. Yeah.

Keepa put me on the list. I was like, oh, maybe I'll just do, teach, how to make, websites for herbalists.

Good call. Okay.

If I'm going to the southwest, I'm gonna play it safe.

I hope they've got WiFi.

If not, I'll make it up.

Alright. Well, okay, Jim. Well, it's a I I really appreciate it, like I said. And, I look forward to having you again. And anytime you just feel the urge to share something sporadically, through our mentor radio, you know, all you gotta do is email me and I'll I'll be here.

Right. Right. Yeah. You know, you get one of these nights and I'm in a manic may mode, and I'll call up. I think I could call up because it'd be late here and not too late for you.

Exactly. Anytime. Okay. Great. Well, I'll talk to you later, Jim.

Yeah. Have a beautiful day. Bye.

Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com is a production of LearningHerbs.com. Visit LearningHerbs.com for free herbal lessons, including Herb Mentor news, home remedy secrets, and supermarket herbalism. You'll also find the herbal medicine making kit and our board game WildCraft.

jim mcdonald: Herbal Energetics and Fevers

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