Thursday, October 2, 2008

BODY/BRAIN: Herblore on Nettles




Was doing a little research on nettles to try and back up what I'd remembered, and see if I could find anything else. First off, I went to Susun Weed's fantastic site, which is an absolute wealth of information about herbs, weeds, womanhood and sooo much more - I can spend hours there! But for now I was looking for one thing in particular, so I mostly restrained myself to these two pages. A quote from the first:
"[Nettle] stimulates the kidneys, cures diarrhea, stops internal bleeding, cleans the blood, and is an important source of iron, calcium, and vitamin C making it valuable in anemia. Nettle tea has been used to treat asthma,wheezing, and shortness of breath. The tea is also diuretic and has been used for cystitis and high blood pressure."
and the second:
"Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) builds energy, strengthens the adrenals, and is said to restore youthful flexibility to blood vessels. A cup of nettle infusion contains 500 milligrams of calcium plus generous amounts of bone-building magnesium, potassium, silicon, boron, and zinc. It is also an excellent source of vitamins A, D, E, and K. For flexible bones, a healthy heart, thick hair, beautiful skin, and lots of energy, make friends with sister stinging nettle. It may make you feel so good you'll jump up and exercise."
Sounds great! But I noticed one problem. The dosage given on the first page is 2 t/c of boiling water, steeped for 10 minutes and then taken 1/4 c at a time, 4 times over the course of the day. This is pretty much directly contradicted by the other page, which promotes drinking not teas but infusions of herbs - 1 oz by weight (about 1 c by volume) of dried herb brewed in a quart of water anywhere between 4 hours and overnight, and subsequently drunk over the next 36 hours. The first seems like a surprisingly small dosage, but the second seems like almost too much. I've decided to go somewhat in-between, and right now am brewing about 2 T in a pint of water, for about 30 min before refrigerating. I'll drink a little tonight to see how the taste is and finish up the rest tomorrow morning.

Most of the sites I saw didn't say much else that was new, but I did find this interesting video on Youtube. A quote from about halfway through:
"It keeps your mind very very active, too; I drank a whole thing of nettle tea one night and I couldn't go to sleep all night - my mind was just ruminating, ruminating, ruminating..."
Aside from the fact that "ruminating" is a fun word to say, I think I can already back this up a little. Last night the small amount of nettle tea I had (1/2 c, if that) didn't so much make me feel zomguberawake like coffee might, I DEFINITELY had the whole thoughts-randomly-filling-the-head bit - it was more than a little overwhelming at one point, actually, although that might be more the effect of hormones right now. A cup of warm milk (yay tryptophan!) and a little chilling helped, but yeah...this is NOT a tea to drink a nice warm cup of right before bed. I'll be trying valerian in a while though, so stay tuned for that ;)

On price: if I were to go with the recipe from Susun Weed's article on infusions and drink a quart of the stuff every day, it would run me about $35/mo - that's about $18/lb in my local healthy hippie store, figuring I'd have to buy that much every two weeks or so. However, the good several scoopfuls I bought myself are enough to fill a jar that I think holds 1 c, tamped down a bit, and cost me a grand total of 45 cents. So far it looks like I've used barely any at all - dried herbs are fluffy! - so I'm guessing this much should last me about 2 weeks, if I use it every day. Not a bad price at all, considering. More tomorrow on the effects of drinking a cup or more of this stuff at a time.

-N

1 comment:

HippieAtHeart said...

First time you drank nettle did you just crash that evening? I can't decide if I was just THAT tired after the nettle wore off of my brain (cause wow) or if the nettle had something to do with it.