Natural Medicine - Haiku - Day 223 - What Three Medicines Would I Take With Me Into the Wilderness?

Natural healing
medicines from Mother Earth
are all that we need.

Okay, I know that I've paraphrased the Natural Medicine question, so sue me. ;-)

I was reminded a few days ago that, during the American Civil War, rank and file soldiers were sent into battle with a kit that included two natural remedies: dried yarrow flowers, because they stop bleeding; and garlic, because it is naturally antibiotic, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, and has a whole host of other health benefits, as one of its primary constituents is organic sulphur.

And seriously, as a stop gap natural medicine kit, you could do a lot worse. I would add raw local honey, as honey is damned near a cure all, although it may not have been included because the assumption was that they would be able to find it anywhere. Which in the 1860s, was largely true, regardless of which side of the battle you were on.

So what actual natural medicines would be in my final arsenal?

1. My "magic elixir" would have to be one, which I've posted about before, as I've used it for years, and it's gotten me and my loved ones out of more bouts with flu and viral bugs than I can count.

The basic recipe is an equal amount of raw honey and apple cider vinegar, say a cup each, and 10 to 12 cloves or more of raw garlic, minced fine in a blender or food processor. I peel mine, but not everyone does, and it seems to work equally well, you just have to make certain that it is processed to a very fine stage.

The dosage is a teaspoon or so to a cup of water, more or less, though some stalwart souls I know take it by the spoonful undiluted. More power to them, but I dilute mine when fresh, and only take it undiluted once it has had a few weeks or months to age.

But it kicks flu's ass. Or any bug you're dealing with. Seriously. I'll take this over questionable vaccinations any day and twice on Sunday.

1. Fire Cider. And screw the jerks who registered the name, despite admitting that they were given the recipe, as they are wannabes who absconded with a name made famous by countless generations of professional and lay herbalists and healers, including Rosemary Gladstar, who has been publishing about it under the name "fire cider" since the 1970s.

I use a variation of Rosemary Gladstar's recipe, which can be found in the video here, which incidentally was posted years before these dweebs decided to co-opt the name, which resulted in herbalists all over the country having their fire cider banned from eBay, Amazon and other online venues, because of the name being registered.

I hope their company goes down in flames just from the bad karma they've generated. Which isn't actually true. What I really wish is that they grow some personal and professional ethics, and morals, and allow herbalists to use the name fire cider again without penalty, as they have been doing for generations.

So yes, I still call my fire cider "fire cider," in honor of Rosemary Gladstar and others, damn the registration, and the pseudoprofessional "officials" who allowed the registration to take place without doing ANY research whatsoever into the history of the name. They are at least equally culpable, if not more so.

As Gladstar suggests in the video, I have added a few herbs, most notably fresh rosemary, black seed (Nigella sativa) and a tiny amount of neem leaf powder . . . only a tiny amount as it would taste rank if I used more. Really good stuff, and I need to decant mine soon.

1. Spiced Honey. And, unlike the previous two remedies, which I learned about from other herbalists, this one is all my own.

I've read for years about various herbs being powdered and added to honey, which extracts the healing constituents from them, and becomes a fine medicine of its own:

Turmeric and honey, considered to be one of the finest antibiotics in Ayurvedic medicine.
Ceylon cinnamon and honey, another fine healing remedy, also considered to be an exceptional antibiotic.
Black seed and honey, one of the best remedies around, which also helps to prevent and cure various cancers, in addition to being antiviral and antibiotic.

So, being of a scientific mindset, and something of an experimenter in the kitchen, I decided to combine several together, and to give it my own twist.

The basic recipe is similar to my spiced cider, and really, you could take the same herbs and add it to either, to excellent effect. And it is not only delicious but incredibly healing.

I use approximately one tablespoon of Nigella sativa seed, aka black seed, freshly ground in my coffee grinder; one healing teaspoon each of ground Ceylon cinnamon, ginger and turmeric; a heaping quarter teaspoon each of ground cloves, nutmeg and black pepper; and a few shakes each of cayenne and chipotle pepper.

Stir the lot into a pint of raw, unfiltered honey, and keep on the back of the stove to extract over time. You can use it immediately, and it is still effective, but it tastes better and has a better texture if you let it extract over weeks or months.

I strongly recommend filling the jar half full of honey, stir in the spices until very well blended, then fill the jar with honey and blend well again. This is far easier, and considerably less messy, than trying to stir the spices into a full jar of honey.

My favorite way to use it is stirred into to hot oatmeal on a cold morning, though Marek's favorite use is stirred into hot tea. Each to his own, but as with the two remedies above, I've yet to meet a virus that can outgun it, and even if you already have symptoms, it will cut the severity and the duration of any illness.

And of course, since we're heading into the wilderness, there is one more remedy I never travel without, and this one lives in my purse full time. I've blogged about this one before as well, another of my own concoctions, which is my tick and poison ivy remedy.

This one was inspired by a conversation I had with a gentleman who owns a supplement company in Alabama, who sells a rich, healing, and lovely skin lotion that has organic sulphur and magnesium as its primary active ingredients.

During the conversation, he recounted the story of a close friend who had a German Shepherd, that was bitten on the nose by a rattlesnake, far from any possible medical treatment, with potentially fatal consequences. He took the lotion and rubbed it well into the wound, then bundled his dog into his truck and drove the hour or more to his dog's vet, rubbing more lotion into the wound whenever he stopped at a traffic light.

Long story short, the dog not only lived, but never suffered the debilitating symptoms that usually result from a rattlesnake bite. He lived to a ripe old age with few health issues.

The explanation I was given was that the organic sulphur and magnesium in some way rendered the snake venom harmless, though I've yet to confirm this through medical research, but from a biological standpoint I can see where that could be possible.

So one day I was bitten by a tick, right in the fold of skin where the top of my thigh and groin meet. Not a fun place to be bitten, but at least I could reach the little blighter, and didn't have to request my neighbor's aid in removing it.

The next morning I had purple stripes radiating from the bite wound. No telltale bullseye, so definitely not lyme disease, which I'm told we don't have in Tennessee, but infected all the same.

And I started thinking of the gentleman's lotion, which I was long out of, but I did have both DMSO and ionic magnesium on hand. DMSO is primarily organic sulphur.

So I took about a tablespoon of DMSO gel and added about a teaspoon of ionic magnesium to it, in an empty essential oil bottle, and shook it up - and, much to my surprise, they started heating up from a chemical reaction.

I then got the notion to add frankincense oil, which is one of the most healing oils on the planet, maybe twelve to fifteen drops or so. And, of course, there was some residual dill seed oil in the bottle, as that is what it had originally contained.

I rubbed several drops of the resulting solution into the bite wound, which had an immediate soothing effect, and didn't think much more about it. I rubbed more into the wound before I retired for the night, and though it may have been my imagination, it seemed that the purple stripes had already begun to fade.

By the next morning there was no doubt. The purple stripes had not only faded, they were no longer purple, but mostly yellow with a few brownish tints . . . as though it had been several days, not hours. This stuff was good!

I'm not sure if it was that night or the next night that Marek got home, but obviously I told him about it, and he too was amazed by how well it had worked.

The next day he went out and mowed, and a few hours later, he came in and told me that he had gotten into some poison ivy, which he is badly allergic to, and he already had little blisters popping out across his chest.

I rubbed a drop of the remedy into each of the blisters, and by the next morning, they were gone. Vanished.

For reference, Marek's allergy is such that ordinarily, when exposed to poison ivy, the blisters would get worse over several days, and only fade after eight to ten days of abject misery. To have them gone overnight was nothing short of a miracle.

One of the primary attributes of DMSO, and organic sulphur, is that it penetrates to the deepest layers of the skin, and anything you apply immediately following, or in combination, goes along for the ride.

So, while ordinarily topically applied ionic magnesium and frankincense oil would stay on the surface of the skin, and penetrate only shallowly, in the presence of DMSO they penetrate much deeper, and are thus able to affect health at a much deeper level.

In any case, this is a remedy I now consider to be indispensable, and as I said, it goes with me everywhere, as it has a permanent place in my purse. I've used it to help half a dozen people so far, for a variety of ailments, and all have agreed that it works very fast.

The one thing it does not do is to take away the pain from a yellow jacket sting. Damn. But the last time I was stung by a wasp on my arm, in Florida, my arm swelled up to over double its normal size, and the pain lasted for three full days.

This time, after rubbing in the remedy, the swelling was only localized right around the sting, and subsided in a day. I'll take it.

The photo is of my witchhazel tree, taken a few weeks ago with my Samsung Note 8 phone; witchhazel is a healing wonder in its own right, which I will write about in another post.

I am totally jazzed that mine bloomed this year for the first time, as it is unusual in being a late fall/early winter bloomer, and the blooms are fragrant, though not with the kind of knock out fragrance I'd been led to believe.

I am hoping to propagate this, so that I can spread a few throughout our woods, and help to perpetuate this wonderful Appalachian native.

This post, and all those from now until the end of 2018, I am dedicating to the work of #tarc and #yah, aka @rhondak's nonprofit dog rescue and @sircork's charity @youarehope.

Half the liquid proceeds earned from my posts will be evenly split between the two organizations, and more when I can manage it.

The photos above were taken by me within the past several weeks with my Samsung Note 8 smartphone.

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