I'm lacking in SO much knowledge about herbal remedies, but I've increased my studies this year and I've been experimenting with more things.  Probably the biggest challenge has been giving up the "bad stuff" so we don't need to work so hard to recover!  Have you ever eaten too much food or the wrong food and immediately knew you could have done without it?  One thing I know for sure I shouldn't do is drink beverages made with high fructose corn syrup when I feel a sore throat coming on.  For some reason,  they accelerate the progression of the sickness, for me.  Even without a sore throat, last night I got a drive thru drink and within minutes, I had a runny nose. 

Thankfully, I'm not sick this morning, but this week, we've been battling a few things and I've kept some herbs handy to minimize the sore throats and fatigue.  Catching sickness early gives the immune system a boost to do the job it's already trying to do.  The sickness around here started where it usually does...after being with a bunch of kids on the weekend, our 8 yo woke up with a sore throat a few days later.  I made him a cup of hot tea with yarrow and I made him a throat wrap with ginger, peppermint, sage and rosemary.  Under his feet, I put a garlic poultice and he laid on the couch.  Our older son had just come home from camp and was a little under the weather, so I made him tea and the garlic poultice for his feet too.  By the next morning, they were both running around the house and feeling much better.  The little one had a runny nose and dry throat in the morning, but all was better after breakfast. 

In my reading this morning, I came across the following excerpt from a testimony off of the website for bulkherbstore.com:

"This morning my Husband woke up with an RA flair up. Early this morning I was in the woods to get some burdock root (because my dried BHS supply is gone). I boiled the root with some plantain leaves in olive oil. Once reduced, I strained out the roots and and poured some into a little spray bottle, the rest I mixed with bees wax. He's been using this for about 3 hours now, and his pain is diminished by 1/2 and he says is getting better as the morning wears on."

I have some boiled burdock root cooling in the other room.  I'm going to try it out on joint pain, back pain and a bladder infection.  I'll write back and report how it's working, but I'll have to wait until my "lab assistants" wake up.

I wanted to write about my experience with making kombucha, as it was all a mystery to me a year ago, even though I  had read about it a number of times.  I just didn't seem to have time to look into it and experiment.  Everything I read said it was pretty easy to do once I got the hang of it.  So, somehow I found the time to do it at the most busy time in our lives, because my chronic stomach troubles were just getting worse.  I started buying the kombucha at the health food store, in 16oz bottles.  I liked it a lot for the flavor and it seemed to help my tummy, but it costs nearly $4.00 a bottle!  So, it was time to look into doing this myself.

I had been a long-time member of an online forum for homeschoolers and I had frequently seen threads posted about kombucha, where I read a lot of tips and tricks.  So, I went back and read over some of those.  I tried to get a kombucha culture from one of the ladies there, but it was much easier to just buy one on ebay.  I looked on ebay for a seller that came recommended, but you can do a search for sellers of kombucha cultures, as well.  I bought from the ebay member "Stichingtime" and it was a good experience.  She mailed 2 cultures to me by priority mail.  They came in a box, wrapped in a ziplock bag with a bit of the kombucha tea to keep them moist.  The ziplock was wrapped in paper towel and in the box was a set of instructions on making the tea.  The instructions were very emphatic about the use of clean utensils and containers, washing everything with hot, soapy water and then rinsing, with one last rinse in white vinegar.  I did all of that and then I made a gallon of green tea, adding a cup of sugar and letting it cool to room temp.  The cooling part is pretty important.  The hot tea will kill the cultures.

Storing the tea to sit somewhere in my kitchen was a challenge.  We were in the process of moving from one house to another and our old kitchen was being packed, but I did have one small, out-of-the-way piece of counter and put up a big sign in the area to NOT TOUCH.  (The kids have taken to calling me an HERBshiner)  I had bought the 2 quart canning jars from Rural King, as it was harvest season when I started this whole process.  I haven't been able to find the jars any other time of the year.  (You could buy the huge jars of pickles at WalMart/Sams and after eating the pickles, use the jars for kombucha.)  I then poured the tea into the clean jars and dropped one of the cultures into each of the 2 jars.  The cultures are round, rubbery patties that are colored any shade from white to brown, depending on the tea strength when the culture was grown.  The culture dropped into the tea will sink to the bottom of the jar and it is now called the "mother".  I covered the top of the jars with an inverted coffee filter and then screwed on the lid rim without the metal top, so the tea can "breathe".  Then I covered them with a towel and put the jars in my kitchen laboratory.   

I tried to obey the instructions by not checking too much on their progress, but within a few days, I could see a "baby" forming on top of the liquid in the jars.  I let them form until they looked pretty sturdy.  It took about 2 weeks.  I could have left them longer, but I used the most common advice I had seen in my reading: 2-4 weeks.  I was too excited to wait longer than 2, to see how my experiment turned out.  I washed my hands and then rinsed them in vinegar before carefully removing the new "baby" from the top and the "mother" from the bottom.  Since I wasn't going to use them again immediately, I put them together in a quart jar with a little of the kombucha tea and some extra vinegar to cover them.  The instructions said after refrigeration,  to use the cultures again soon and no longer than 3 months.  I've gone as long as 6 months and had them still work out fine.  Anyway, then I put a lid on the jar containing the kombucha tea and put it in the refrigerator.  I then tasted the kombucha....hmmm.  It didn't have as much of a bite as the one from the healthfood store.  The instructions said that I could add some fruit and/or ginger to the jars, put on the entire lid now and let them ferment for up to 30 days.  I didn't do that.  I just put them in the refrigerator.  I drank the kombucha until it was gone. 

In subsequent tries, I let the kombucha ferment a little.  One time, I added leftover apple juice that had already started to ferment after being left on the kitchen counter for a few days.  Now that was a really good batch.  This time, I have 4 big jars on the counter, to which I added shredded ginger root and apple juice.  Out of the 4 jars, 3 of them keep trying to grow more cultures, which I scoop out and put away. I was doing this while my 13yo son was standing nearby.  He wasn't as thrilled as I was.  The instructions say that if the jars grow mold, then they aren't working out and to throw them away.  I haven't had even one grow mold.  One of the jars seems to be fermenting nicely, with small bubbles around the rim at the top.  It's the jar that is the most full.  They all smell wonderful.  Soon, I'll put them in the refrigerator to chill and then drink them. 

MMMMM........and much better for the tummy than Coke!

On April 7th, my husband was joyously celebrating his 45th birthday.   And as we were all milling around the house doing our normal routine, I walked past my 13yo son Ryan as he sat at the computer, looking up info about the Rubiks cube and it's various mysteries.  He had his pocket knife out and was using the pliers to pry something apart on the cube, when I heard a quick cry and I turned to see him run into the kitchen. I knew immediately what he had done.  I went in the kitchen, and he started apologizing, while he held his hand under running water.  He had stabbed himself in the palm of his hand, right the base of his thumb.  The knife went in about 3/4 of an inch, and the cut in the hand was about 1/2 inch across.  It was bleeding profusely.  It was flowing steadily, and Ryan was getting pretty nervous and pale.  I pulled up a chair for him and he asked me to get the cayenne pepper out of the freezer.  We started putting it directly on the wound.  Within a minute or two the bleeding stopped.  I washed his hand off and left a small amount of the cayenne directly on top of the wound, then I put a cotton pad over the wound and wrapped the hand with an ace bandage.

Well, off to urgent care we went...my husband, my son and myself.  Ryan was much more relaxed and no longer pale.  He said his hand was throbbing, but there was no blood showing through the bandage.  When the doctor unwrapped the hand, it looked just as it had when I wrapped it.  He asked me how long we waited before we put the cayenne on the wound.  I said about 3-4 minutes.  He said with wounds like that, you can let them bleed for up to 10 minutes, because the blood will clean out the cut.  He examined the knife and said he was glad Ryan had not been using it to cut up game or chickens or something.  The doctor poked around to make sure Ryan didn't damage any nerves and he asked if the blood was flowing or spurting.  Thankfully, there was no nerve damage and he hadn't hit any major vessels.  They cleaned and bandaged the wound and gave Ryan a prescription for antibiotics.  That night, Ryan took his first and only pain reliever for his hand,  so he could sleep.  He kept the hand elevated, as it throbbed more when he held it down.  There was some swelling, but it never got any larger and by the next day, the swelling was gone and so was the pain.  A few days of antibiotics and yogurt to replace the good stuff and all was well.

Never fear, makers of Airborne!  I WILL NOT request a refund for the many, many packages of Airborne that I purchased.  I was one of your biggest investors for awhile.  And who is that guy that the media keeps quoting saying, "It just doesn't work"?  Well, it has worked for our family for a long time.  You have to use it at the very thought of a cold, and it DOES work.  It might not work as well if you eat twinkies for breakfast (sorry Eddy) or ride around all day drinking 44oz big gulps.  I currently have Airborne in the cabinet that I use for our 7yo along with Dannon Activia yogurt any time he is ill.  They work great together.  He may stay sick for 24 hours, but after that he's up and at 'em, making a name for himself around here, and he hasn't needed antibiotics since he was 2.  We adults have switched to Supermom and Superdad daily supplements from Beeyoutiful.com. (See my links to the right) We use those and Tummy Tune-ups to keep us healthy.  All of these supplements boost your immune system, but I'll tell you what will sink it right back down...a cruddy diet.  Every time I drink more than a few ounces of anything containing high fructose corn syrup, my sinuses let me know.  So, put down that twinkie and coke and go grab some plain water, (Not Vitamin Water...have you read the ingredients?), a few slices of cheese, a hard-boiled egg, some broccoli...

Over the last few years, we have had some interesting experiences with natural remedies.  I've always had some interest in nutrition, natural hygeine and herbs, since I was pregnant with our first child.  I wanted my pregnancy to be a very healthy one. So, over the last 16 years,  I've done a lot of research and experimenting with these things.  We haven't given up our typical American diet and I can't say that we ever will, but there are still some good things we can do to keep everyone as healthy as possible and treat illnesses and injuries as naturally as possible. 

Recently, my husband has had some pain in his neck and shoulder and he's being treated for this, but while he's receiving therapy, he has needed some pain relief, but nothing over the counter or prescription has been helping him.  I decided to try some herbs that are meant for pain, so I made him some capsules with an herb mix and I used the same herbs to make a rub to massage into the muscles of his neck, shoulder, arm and back.  Although it wasn't instant pain relief, it worked steadily over a few days.  He's not pain free, but he's sleeping better and he smells like gingerbread.

What I used was herbs from bulkherbstore.com.  There is a link in the right hand column of my blog, down near the bottom of my whole list of links.  I mixed the following into 1-2 cups of melted coconut oil:

• 1 cup jungle juice mixture (see bulkherbstore.com)
• 1 cup St. John's Wort
• 1/4 cup comfrey
• 1 TB cinnamon
• 1 TB ginger

I let this simmer slightly on the stove and then I strained out the herbs and let the oil cool.  Also, I gave him the jungle juice in the capsules.  I'm sure it works better as a tincture, but I haven't gotten around to making that yet.