The buzz about herbal honey

"A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine do down."

Mary Poppins

 

Herbal Honeys

 

There are countless benefits to honey, especially in its raw state. Honey normally consists of sugar (70-80% content) and also wax, pollen, coloring and aromatic constituents. Honey is emollient, demulcent nutritive, and mildly laxative (Green, page 244). It helps relieve painful, dry throats and it also helps the body’s tissues assimilate nutritive components.  Also, who doesn’t like the taste of honey?! It’s the more nutritious and health-promoting form of white sugar!

 

Honey is an immune system booster. It has antioxidant and anti-bacterial properties that can help improve the digestive system, which ultimately helps you stay healthy.

 

Honey is an energy booster. It’s a great natural source of carbohydrates, which provide strength and energy within our systems. Honey has glucose that has been found to keep levels of blood sugar fairly constant (in comparison to other types of sugars).

 

Honey has anti- tumor and carcinogen-preventing properties.

 

Why infuse honey?

Honey is a great preservative. It also absorbs the medicinal constituents of herbs, including their bioflavonoids. So not only are you absorbing the multitude of benefits from the peculiar fluid, yet you can readily absorb the healing properties of the herbs you infuse. Unlike syrups (which undergo a decoction and use water within its preparation), honey has a longer shelf life and more stability.

 

How do you infuse honey?

Depending on what you are trying to infuse…leafs, flowers, roots, etc… there is a simple standard honey infusion and there is an herb specific infusion.

 

Here’s the Generic, Standard Honey Infusion:

1.     Harvest herb.

2.     Cut herb (making many windows and doors for the honey to penetrate through) into jar.

3.     Fill jar ¾ of the way full with fresh herb. **If you are working with berries or herbs in the Rose family, fill jar ½ fill because the sugar tends to ferment and expand!

4.     Cover the herb and fill the entire jar with honey.

5.     Let infuse for 4 weeks in dark, warm area of home. **Unless working with berries or cottonwood buds, you might have to keep in freezer to slow expansion.

6.     Set jar by warm place in home, to easily strain herb material out. Or keep herbal material in and eat it with your honey.

 

 

What about Root Infused Honey?

Roots sometimes need a more heat for the honey to penetrate and absorb the nutrients and medicinal constituents. Here’s Michael Moore’s recipe for Balsam Root, Lomatium, Osha, or Angelica Root Honey:

 

Freshly-Dug-Spring-Root Herbal Honey:

1.     Add 1 part of finely chopped roots by volume to 4 parts by volume of honey to a pot.

2.     Heat to a slight boil (I let mine simmer), maintaining low heat for an hour or two.

3.     Allow to cool overnight.

4.     The following morning, warm over some heat until liquefied and pour through a strainer OR keep roots in honey and chew on them as lozenges when sick.

5.     Pour honey into a jar and store at room temperature.

6.     Take a teaspoon as needed.

 

**This honey combined any of the roots above (also including elecampane) is an amazing expectorant and disinfectant.

 

Sage Honey

Thyme Honey

Elecampane HOney

 

“THANK YOU LITTLE FURRY ONES FOR THE SWEET NECTAR OF YOUR LIVES.”

 JAMES GREEN

 

 

Resources:

The Herbal Medicine Maker’s Handbook; A Home Manual, James Green

Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West, Michael Moore

Cedar Mountain Herb School, Suzanne Jordan

O.G.

Oregon Grape

 

Common Names: Barberry, Mahonia, Mountain Holly Odostemon, PNW Goldenseal 

Botanical Name: Mahonia repens, M. aquifolia, M. nervosa, M. pinnata

Plant Family: Berberidaceae

Parts Used: Roots, Berries and New Growth Leaves for snacking

Actions: Bitter Tonic, Astringent, Alterative, Cholagogue, Laxative, Anti-emetic, Anti-catarrhal, Hepatic, Antibacterial, Antimicrobial, Antitumor, Diuretic, Ophthalmic

Habitat: Grows in the shade in the northern coastal range of California and western slopes or the Sierras, also in shady lower forests of Oregon and Washington, sometimes on the east side of the Cascades. Also found in forested areas of Idaho and British Columbia.

Identification: If I were to ask a child in the forest what Oregon Grape was, they would immediately yell out, “HOLLY!”. Yes, Oregon Grape has dark, evergreen leaves with prickles on the edge like Holly, but its growth habits and patterns are quite different. Oregon Grape is commonly found growing low to the ground (though M. aquifolia grows as a leafy bush up to 2-6Ft. high). It has pinnate leaves, where the leaflets are opposite and there is one terminal leaflet. The leaves are shiny, dark green and oblong-oval. Though the leaflets are opposite the compound leaves grow ALTERNATE on the plant with long, wiry petioles. The flowers bloom in March-April and give a lovely yellow burst to the forest flora. The mature fruits are a bluish color and are ready for eating by mid-summer (but remember that the animals eat here too!).

 

 

ANTI-INFLAMMATORY

It’s a fact that people take Turmeric for inflammation, yet does anyone know why? Turmeric has berberine. It’s a yellow colored alkaloid compound that has properties such as antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and an immune-enhancer. Like Turmeric, the inner cambium/bark layer of Oregon Grape’s roots are bright yellow and filled with berberine. You can even taste this alkaloid in the bright yellow inflorescence of Oregon Grape’s flowers.

 

Oregon Grape is BITTER. It is cooling, detoxifying and drying. If someone is hot, moist and stagnant, Oregon Grape will stimulate their energy. Heat can be characterized by redness, inflammation, hotness, moistness/wetness in the body and yellow fluids. Oregon Grape’s cooling bitterness can balance a hot, infectious person.

 

LIVER STIMULANT

Oregon Grape falls under the category of being a “hepatic”, meaning it’s an herb for the liver. The herb’s bitterness stimulates saliva, bile and digestive enzymes. It helps the lining of the digestive tract (from mouth to anus). The secretion of bile from the liver and gallbladder ultimately help the body digest fats and also helps promote movement of peristaltic muscles. Oregon Grape stimulates a stagnant liver.

THE LIVER IS A MAIN ORGAN OF ELIMINATION; WHEN IT IS NOT FUNCTIONING OPTIMALLY OTHER SYSTEMS OF ELIMINATION MAY BE OVERWHELMED. –ROSALEE DE LA FORET

Did you know that the liver filters hormones? And the female reproduction system can suffer from liver stagnation resulting in irregular menstruation, bloating, cramps, PMS and headaches. Yet, Oregon Grape root can be combined with lymphatic and blood-moving herbs to help move hormone imbalances and complaints that arise from that.

What about liver’s connection to the skin? If the liver isn’t happily circulating nutrients and waste in/out and throughout the body, then we can start noticing skin reactions. A healthy, functioning liver makes healthy skin.

Give your liver a break. If you are using Oregon Grape for Liver Health, take it in the morning/early day. Let your liver rest over night by not eating or stimulating the salivary glands.

 


ANTIMICROBIAL/ DISINFECTANT

Oregon Grape’s constituent, berberine contains a specific multidrug resistance pump inhibitor (MDR Inhibitor, known as “5’-MHC)) that works to decrease bacterial resistance in antibiotics. Hence, Oregon Grape (and other plants with berberine) has proven to fight off MRSA. A former student at Cedar Mountain Herb School, recently got rid of this serious staph infection that’s resistant to pharmaceutical antibiotics (A.K.A MRSA) by using Oregon Grape root tincture. And more case studies are showing the positive results of the berberine constituent.

Though MRSA is more of a serious infection, Oregon Grape can also be used for the following infections:

-Urinary Tract Infections (UTI)

-Vaginal infection

-Eye infections

-Mouth infections

-Inflamed Bowel conditions

-Infections in the upper digestive tract

-Sore Throat from viral infection

-Skin Infections (from wounds)

 

Herbal Preparations:

 

Skin & Liver Tea

1 tsp Burdock root

1 tsp Oregon grape root

1 tsp Licorice root

1 tsp Ginger root

 1 tsp Dandelion root

1 tsp Cinnamon Bark

½ tsp Yellow dock root

½ tsp Orange Peel

4 cups water

Combine the above herbs in a pan and cover with the water. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes; cool and strain. Take a tablespoon at a time, up to half a cup a day.

 

Detox Tea:

1 pt Calendula

1 pt Dandelion root

1 pt Oregon Grape

1 pt Nettle

½ pt Red Raspberry Leaf

½ pt Red Clover

½ pt Fennel

½ pt Sage

¼ pt White Oak Bark

Combine the above herbs in a pan and cover with the water. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes; cool and strain. Take a tablespoon at a time, up to half a cup a day.

 

 

Other:  Tincture, Honey

 

CASE STUDY/REFERENCE:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=berberine

EncyclopediaofHerbsandTheirUses,Deni Bown, Dorling Kindersley, 1995; ISBN: 0- 7894-0184-3

Planetary Herbology, Michael Tierra, Lotus Press, 1988, ISBN: 0941-524272