Tuesday, 11 May 2010
A fairy tale
Some of the folk over at Down to Earth Forum have been discussing anxiety - when it occurs and what can be helpful in managing the emotion. I asked if they knew the story of the soldier, the inn and the axe. It was one told me by my mother when I was a child - the moral being that it is never worth worrying about something which might never happen. Some people asked to be told the story, so I have written my own version from what I can remember and have posted it here.
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
April blog party: Herbs for aches and pains
This post is a belated addition to the April UK Herbarium blog party - better late than never!
It took me years to appreciate the subtleties of pain. My first insight came from discussing different methods of pain control during labour with an anaesthesiologist as part of a year long study of parentcraft classes offered by our local community midwifery services. We talked about relaxation techniques, drugs, tens machines and an innovative offering of acupuncture.
I knew about gas and air – it was my only pain relieve when my three children were born. Later I learned that pethidine was also a common form of pain relief offered at accident scenes and in ambulances with the dangers of addiction. Individuals would be blacklisted by the service if they appeared to be asking for the drug for very minor incidents.
Later, I became involved with facilitating patient feedback from a pain clinic. Once more there was a hierarchy of distraction, relaxation and acupuncture before the drugs and nerve blocks were offered. It is interesting that my sister has gained great benefit from the acupuncture offered at her local pain clinic in Derby, something she wasn’t expecting when it was first offered!
Some years ago I attended a lecture on pain management from the medical director of our local hospice when I started to become involved in the development of end of life services. He talked about the two different pain trees – aspirin and paracetamol /opiate derivatives and the importance of understanding the source of the pain before offering something to help the individual cope.
He also stressed the involvement of emotional and spiritual aspects to pain – something you don’t expect to hear about in a post-graduate lecture theatre – but which hospice doctors are often adept in discovering and helping with because they take time to talk to their patients and are not afraid to discuss the most difficult subjects. Even more importantly, they take time to listen.
It really should come as no surprise to learn we hold emotional pain within different areas of our bodies. This is very evident from research done on back pain. I remember a talk from a skilled osteopath, who told the story of a lady who came to him with chronic back problems. As he worked on her back, she told him how unhappy she had become since her husband retired. Their time together was nothing like she imagined it would be and his invasion of what had been her personal space and activities because he no longer had anything else to do, was proving intolerable.
Once she identified her “real problem”, her back pain disappeared, helped not only by the osteopath’s skills but his ability to listen and support her in talking about her situation.
Aches and pains should never be ignored. They are messages from the body to tell us something is happening or needs to happen. Hopefully those messages allow us to act before pain becomes so intense we lose the ability to function. Everyone is different. Everyone responds to pain in a different way.
Having observed the difference in response to pain in my family and Chris’ family, I have come to the conclusion some of it is neurological – some people’s nerves are closer to the surface and are more vulnerable – and some is learned behaviour. It is much easier to deal with pain with a calm demeanour rather than rushing around shrieking as if the world were ending!
So where do herbs come in to all this?
As always, herbs can be fantastic allies within a regime to support the whole person. Where aches and pains are concerned I would actually extend the whole person concept to the whole family. Being emotionally attached to someone in pain can be the most difficult thing anyone has to endure. You cannot bear their pain for them, however much you wish to.
The guilt and concern of being pain free when someone else is hurting also needs to be addressed and supported. Nervines can be helpful in this situation – chamomile, lemon balm, motherwort, skullcap and even St John’s wort as either teas or tinctures can be helpful in stressful situations. Remember that children are able to cope much better with either their physical or emotional pain if the person who cares for them is perceived to be strong.
Pain often comes from muscle tension or spasms. Anything which eases the tension either through warmth, relaxation or massage can be extremely helpful. No household should be without a hot water bottle and/or a wheat pillow which can be heated and laid over the affected part.
Fomentations and poultices can also be used in the same manner – chamomile, mustard, horseradish, ginger – always remembering to check the area regularly to prevent skin blistering.
Many herbs can provide relief when administered in a soothing massage oil or salve.
Dandelion flower oil is useful for a light muscle massage. Last year I went to give a herb talk at a sheltered housing complex. One of the women asked if I had anything for the pain in her shoulder. The only oil I’d taken with me was dandelion flower, so I gave her the salve and told her to rub it in and see what happened. She reported the pain eased considerably.
Rosemary is a favourite for soothing back massages. A German friend of mine is a professional oboist. His orchestra pit is very cramped as it is almost underneath the stage and he has to hold the same position for long periods whilst he is playing. He suffers with severe back aches and pains which have been greatly helped by his wife massaging him with rosemary oil. I made them a selection of St John’s wort, angelica and rosemary oils to take home with them one year and before we met the following year, they requested another batch of rosemary oil!
Golden rod infused oil can be another help in deep muscle massage.
Where pain has a nerve component such as sciatica, St John’s wort and rosemary oil blended together can bring relief. If there is also an inflammatory element, St John’s wort and meadowsweet can bring relief.
Pain from inflammation also needs to be treated internally. I’ve found plantain, calendula and turmeric to be especially helpful here. Sage and elderflower can often be used for their cooling effects.
Where muscles are actually spasming, crampbark can be helpful. When dealing with period pains, Howie Brounstein pointed out that menstrual pain is a bit like having bitters in our diet - you want to know our abdominal muscles are working at maximum capacity to ensure they are removing the womb lining in the most efficient way. To remove the pain entirely, to lose any efficacy of their function is actually counter productive.
If you do suffer with monthly or occasional problems, I would suggest reading the relevant chapters of Carol Wood's book, "The Woman's Guide to Herbal Medicine" which is available online. Her chapter on menstrual problems is very comprehensive, giving ideas for dietary changes, exercises and herbal supplements which can help with PMT and menstrual pain. She suggests cutting out wheat and wheat products for a month if you have a tendency towards bloating and says that severe pain can sometimes be cause by lack of calcium which can be helped with calcium supplements.
If the muscle spasms are in your legs, then crampbark tincture and magnesium supplements can be helpful. If the spasms could be of a nervous origin, you may want to try a gentle nervine. A friend of mine was suffering with spasms in her upper abdominal muscles recently. She came to one of the talks I was giving for the Mercian Herb Group where various tinctures were handed round for people to try. She liked the motherwort tincture so much, I gave her the bottle to take home with her and she told me recently the spasms are much diminished.
Pain can also come from joint damage or disintegration. Matthew Wood and Jim Macdonald have been doing a lot of work with using mullein root for straitening the spine and solomon’s seal for supporting the regeneration of mucous membranes and cartilage around joints. You can find Jim’s excellent discussion papers on the two herbs here
During the February workshop, one of the participants created a salve for her frozen shoulder with Solomon’s seal root, plantain and St John’s wort oil. She emailed me later in the week to say she had used it and been able to sleep without pain for the first time for weeks.
One of my apprentices also created an arthritis salve during the previous year’s salve workshop. He used plantain, ginger, SJW and meadowsweet. He gave it to his father for the arthritis in his hands. His father reported the salve had been the most effective pain-resolver he had ever used. His mother in law also tried it and found it helped her arthritis as well.
Children can also suffer joint pain. Most parents will be woken in the night at some stage of their child’s development by screams relating to “my knees hurt”. In my pre-herbal days, I soon learned that wrapping the offending joint in firm bandages was just as effective as a dose of Calpol and today I would also massage with St John’s wort oil. Some children also benefit from physiotherapy to help them stretch their limbs, especially if they have excessive “growth spurts”.
This has been a long post, but aches and pains are a complex area of study. I haven’t mentioned using Californian poppy or our own field poppy which will soon be gracing the fields. I have not used them yet, but maybe, one day, I shall have stories to share about these plants.
In conclusion, the next time you find yourself or your loved one in pain, it may be helpful to answer the following questions.
How did this pain arise?
Will it feel better if I rub it, warm it or cool it?
Will it feel better if I gently stretch or move around?
Who might be my herbal ally at this point in time?
How can I help myself relax/rest?
And when the pain is diminished, ask yourself what you have learned!
It took me years to appreciate the subtleties of pain. My first insight came from discussing different methods of pain control during labour with an anaesthesiologist as part of a year long study of parentcraft classes offered by our local community midwifery services. We talked about relaxation techniques, drugs, tens machines and an innovative offering of acupuncture.
I knew about gas and air – it was my only pain relieve when my three children were born. Later I learned that pethidine was also a common form of pain relief offered at accident scenes and in ambulances with the dangers of addiction. Individuals would be blacklisted by the service if they appeared to be asking for the drug for very minor incidents.
Later, I became involved with facilitating patient feedback from a pain clinic. Once more there was a hierarchy of distraction, relaxation and acupuncture before the drugs and nerve blocks were offered. It is interesting that my sister has gained great benefit from the acupuncture offered at her local pain clinic in Derby, something she wasn’t expecting when it was first offered!
Some years ago I attended a lecture on pain management from the medical director of our local hospice when I started to become involved in the development of end of life services. He talked about the two different pain trees – aspirin and paracetamol /opiate derivatives and the importance of understanding the source of the pain before offering something to help the individual cope.
He also stressed the involvement of emotional and spiritual aspects to pain – something you don’t expect to hear about in a post-graduate lecture theatre – but which hospice doctors are often adept in discovering and helping with because they take time to talk to their patients and are not afraid to discuss the most difficult subjects. Even more importantly, they take time to listen.
It really should come as no surprise to learn we hold emotional pain within different areas of our bodies. This is very evident from research done on back pain. I remember a talk from a skilled osteopath, who told the story of a lady who came to him with chronic back problems. As he worked on her back, she told him how unhappy she had become since her husband retired. Their time together was nothing like she imagined it would be and his invasion of what had been her personal space and activities because he no longer had anything else to do, was proving intolerable.
Once she identified her “real problem”, her back pain disappeared, helped not only by the osteopath’s skills but his ability to listen and support her in talking about her situation.
Aches and pains should never be ignored. They are messages from the body to tell us something is happening or needs to happen. Hopefully those messages allow us to act before pain becomes so intense we lose the ability to function. Everyone is different. Everyone responds to pain in a different way.
Having observed the difference in response to pain in my family and Chris’ family, I have come to the conclusion some of it is neurological – some people’s nerves are closer to the surface and are more vulnerable – and some is learned behaviour. It is much easier to deal with pain with a calm demeanour rather than rushing around shrieking as if the world were ending!
So where do herbs come in to all this?
As always, herbs can be fantastic allies within a regime to support the whole person. Where aches and pains are concerned I would actually extend the whole person concept to the whole family. Being emotionally attached to someone in pain can be the most difficult thing anyone has to endure. You cannot bear their pain for them, however much you wish to.
The guilt and concern of being pain free when someone else is hurting also needs to be addressed and supported. Nervines can be helpful in this situation – chamomile, lemon balm, motherwort, skullcap and even St John’s wort as either teas or tinctures can be helpful in stressful situations. Remember that children are able to cope much better with either their physical or emotional pain if the person who cares for them is perceived to be strong.
Pain often comes from muscle tension or spasms. Anything which eases the tension either through warmth, relaxation or massage can be extremely helpful. No household should be without a hot water bottle and/or a wheat pillow which can be heated and laid over the affected part.
Fomentations and poultices can also be used in the same manner – chamomile, mustard, horseradish, ginger – always remembering to check the area regularly to prevent skin blistering.
Many herbs can provide relief when administered in a soothing massage oil or salve.
Dandelion flower oil is useful for a light muscle massage. Last year I went to give a herb talk at a sheltered housing complex. One of the women asked if I had anything for the pain in her shoulder. The only oil I’d taken with me was dandelion flower, so I gave her the salve and told her to rub it in and see what happened. She reported the pain eased considerably.
Rosemary is a favourite for soothing back massages. A German friend of mine is a professional oboist. His orchestra pit is very cramped as it is almost underneath the stage and he has to hold the same position for long periods whilst he is playing. He suffers with severe back aches and pains which have been greatly helped by his wife massaging him with rosemary oil. I made them a selection of St John’s wort, angelica and rosemary oils to take home with them one year and before we met the following year, they requested another batch of rosemary oil!
Golden rod infused oil can be another help in deep muscle massage.
Where pain has a nerve component such as sciatica, St John’s wort and rosemary oil blended together can bring relief. If there is also an inflammatory element, St John’s wort and meadowsweet can bring relief.
Pain from inflammation also needs to be treated internally. I’ve found plantain, calendula and turmeric to be especially helpful here. Sage and elderflower can often be used for their cooling effects.
Where muscles are actually spasming, crampbark can be helpful. When dealing with period pains, Howie Brounstein pointed out that menstrual pain is a bit like having bitters in our diet - you want to know our abdominal muscles are working at maximum capacity to ensure they are removing the womb lining in the most efficient way. To remove the pain entirely, to lose any efficacy of their function is actually counter productive.
If you do suffer with monthly or occasional problems, I would suggest reading the relevant chapters of Carol Wood's book, "The Woman's Guide to Herbal Medicine" which is available online. Her chapter on menstrual problems is very comprehensive, giving ideas for dietary changes, exercises and herbal supplements which can help with PMT and menstrual pain. She suggests cutting out wheat and wheat products for a month if you have a tendency towards bloating and says that severe pain can sometimes be cause by lack of calcium which can be helped with calcium supplements.
If the muscle spasms are in your legs, then crampbark tincture and magnesium supplements can be helpful. If the spasms could be of a nervous origin, you may want to try a gentle nervine. A friend of mine was suffering with spasms in her upper abdominal muscles recently. She came to one of the talks I was giving for the Mercian Herb Group where various tinctures were handed round for people to try. She liked the motherwort tincture so much, I gave her the bottle to take home with her and she told me recently the spasms are much diminished.
Pain can also come from joint damage or disintegration. Matthew Wood and Jim Macdonald have been doing a lot of work with using mullein root for straitening the spine and solomon’s seal for supporting the regeneration of mucous membranes and cartilage around joints. You can find Jim’s excellent discussion papers on the two herbs here
During the February workshop, one of the participants created a salve for her frozen shoulder with Solomon’s seal root, plantain and St John’s wort oil. She emailed me later in the week to say she had used it and been able to sleep without pain for the first time for weeks.
One of my apprentices also created an arthritis salve during the previous year’s salve workshop. He used plantain, ginger, SJW and meadowsweet. He gave it to his father for the arthritis in his hands. His father reported the salve had been the most effective pain-resolver he had ever used. His mother in law also tried it and found it helped her arthritis as well.
Children can also suffer joint pain. Most parents will be woken in the night at some stage of their child’s development by screams relating to “my knees hurt”. In my pre-herbal days, I soon learned that wrapping the offending joint in firm bandages was just as effective as a dose of Calpol and today I would also massage with St John’s wort oil. Some children also benefit from physiotherapy to help them stretch their limbs, especially if they have excessive “growth spurts”.
This has been a long post, but aches and pains are a complex area of study. I haven’t mentioned using Californian poppy or our own field poppy which will soon be gracing the fields. I have not used them yet, but maybe, one day, I shall have stories to share about these plants.
In conclusion, the next time you find yourself or your loved one in pain, it may be helpful to answer the following questions.
How did this pain arise?
Will it feel better if I rub it, warm it or cool it?
Will it feel better if I gently stretch or move around?
Who might be my herbal ally at this point in time?
How can I help myself relax/rest?
And when the pain is diminished, ask yourself what you have learned!
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Update since Spain
I can hardly believe it is only two weeks since we returned home from Spain. The physical exhaustion of 32 hours in one position with little sleep really took its toll both physically and mentally. There seemed to be no time to recover before we were having to cope with various family stressors coupled with another weekend away at the farm.
The herb workshop was lovely and you will see some photos on the right of the blog. Everyone had fun. We planted lots of herbs and seeds and Chris even managed to give most of the summerhouse a new coat of preservative.
Daffodils were fading fast in the glorious, warm sunshine, but the whole Sanctuary was alive with blues, whites and yellows from forgetmenots, ground ivy, dandelions and creeping comfrey.
Even though I was exhausted, the supper party for my uncle and aunt’s golden wedding was great fun. I sat next to an Egyptologist from Oxford University and spent most of the time quizzing him about his lifelong research – Egyptian methods of preparing the soul for the afterlife. One of his students has just completed a PhD on Egyptian interpretations of dreams. I would be fascinated to read it and compare their interpretations to those of Freud and other writers.
Sitting opposite me was an expert on orchids and she has agreed to identify the new orchid which appeared in the field this time last year.
It would be hoped that a Bank Holiday signifies a time of rest and relaxation – maybe with a few hours spent pottering in the garden or sowing vegetable seeds. As always, the forecast was grim. It was to be expected temperatures would return to freezing since blackthorn blossom was in such profusion in the hedgerows!
Chris spent most of Saturday creating a portable framework to carry the backdrop for Kathryn’s musical, The Girl with the Crystal Heart, which is being performed in the Dovehouse Theatre at Langley School tonight and tomorrow night. My job, besides providing the embroidery prop, was to feed the cast and extras during the Sunday dress rehearsal and on performance days.
So Bank Holiday Saturday was spent picking nettles, garlic mustard and sorrel from the garden and turning them into nettle pesto and nettle and sorrel soup. Henriette Kress asked for the recipes when I mentioned them on Facebook, so here they are.
Nettle pesto
4oz pine nuts
4 oz grated parmesan cheese
2 crushed garlic cloves
Leaves and flowers from six garlic mustard plants
Enough nettle leaves to fill a 1 pint saucepan
8 fl oz extra virgin olive oil.
A handful of fresh basil leaves
Blanch nettles and garlic mustard leaves for one minute in boiling water. Drain. Transfer leaves, pine nuts, cheese and garlic cloves to liquidiser and keep adding olive oil until the mixture blends easily. The original recipe calls for about 4 oz of olive oil, but my leaves were in such a compact block, I had to use loads of oil. This made 2 jars of pesto and tastes really good.
Nettle and sorrel soup
4/5 pints rich chicken stock made by boiling a chicken carcass for 4 hours with 2 tablespoons winter savory vinegar, 2 dried bay leaves, 5 peppercorns, a sliced onion and 3 sticks sliced celery. When using stock, discard herbs and chicken bones but retain vegetables for the soup.
½ basket of nettle leaves removed from their stalks
2 large handfuls of fresh sorrel (I gathered most of my plant). You could use less and cook for less time than I did.
2 peeled and sliced carrots and potatoes.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Add fresh ingredients to the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes or until potatoes and carrots are just soft. Blend, check seasoning and serve with fresh bread topped with pesto!
Sunday I made two and a half loaves of sandwiches for the thespians, chicken a la king, flapjack, ten pints of steak and kidney stew and a vegetarian curry.
Bank holiday Monday, cooking completed, I made double infused oils with the rosemary and thyme collected in Spain. I also cleared the backlog of tinctures still left in the larder – skullcap, dandelion leaves, dandelion roots, Jim Macdonald’s wonderful bitter!, an opal fruits tincture, citric bitter and a forgotten bergamot elixir. Perhaps now I will have room to make some more!
The herb workshop was lovely and you will see some photos on the right of the blog. Everyone had fun. We planted lots of herbs and seeds and Chris even managed to give most of the summerhouse a new coat of preservative.
Daffodils were fading fast in the glorious, warm sunshine, but the whole Sanctuary was alive with blues, whites and yellows from forgetmenots, ground ivy, dandelions and creeping comfrey.
Even though I was exhausted, the supper party for my uncle and aunt’s golden wedding was great fun. I sat next to an Egyptologist from Oxford University and spent most of the time quizzing him about his lifelong research – Egyptian methods of preparing the soul for the afterlife. One of his students has just completed a PhD on Egyptian interpretations of dreams. I would be fascinated to read it and compare their interpretations to those of Freud and other writers.
Sitting opposite me was an expert on orchids and she has agreed to identify the new orchid which appeared in the field this time last year.
It would be hoped that a Bank Holiday signifies a time of rest and relaxation – maybe with a few hours spent pottering in the garden or sowing vegetable seeds. As always, the forecast was grim. It was to be expected temperatures would return to freezing since blackthorn blossom was in such profusion in the hedgerows!
Chris spent most of Saturday creating a portable framework to carry the backdrop for Kathryn’s musical, The Girl with the Crystal Heart, which is being performed in the Dovehouse Theatre at Langley School tonight and tomorrow night. My job, besides providing the embroidery prop, was to feed the cast and extras during the Sunday dress rehearsal and on performance days.
So Bank Holiday Saturday was spent picking nettles, garlic mustard and sorrel from the garden and turning them into nettle pesto and nettle and sorrel soup. Henriette Kress asked for the recipes when I mentioned them on Facebook, so here they are.
Nettle pesto
4oz pine nuts
4 oz grated parmesan cheese
2 crushed garlic cloves
Leaves and flowers from six garlic mustard plants
Enough nettle leaves to fill a 1 pint saucepan
8 fl oz extra virgin olive oil.
A handful of fresh basil leaves
Blanch nettles and garlic mustard leaves for one minute in boiling water. Drain. Transfer leaves, pine nuts, cheese and garlic cloves to liquidiser and keep adding olive oil until the mixture blends easily. The original recipe calls for about 4 oz of olive oil, but my leaves were in such a compact block, I had to use loads of oil. This made 2 jars of pesto and tastes really good.
Nettle and sorrel soup
4/5 pints rich chicken stock made by boiling a chicken carcass for 4 hours with 2 tablespoons winter savory vinegar, 2 dried bay leaves, 5 peppercorns, a sliced onion and 3 sticks sliced celery. When using stock, discard herbs and chicken bones but retain vegetables for the soup.
½ basket of nettle leaves removed from their stalks
2 large handfuls of fresh sorrel (I gathered most of my plant). You could use less and cook for less time than I did.
2 peeled and sliced carrots and potatoes.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Add fresh ingredients to the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes or until potatoes and carrots are just soft. Blend, check seasoning and serve with fresh bread topped with pesto!
Sunday I made two and a half loaves of sandwiches for the thespians, chicken a la king, flapjack, ten pints of steak and kidney stew and a vegetarian curry.
Bank holiday Monday, cooking completed, I made double infused oils with the rosemary and thyme collected in Spain. I also cleared the backlog of tinctures still left in the larder – skullcap, dandelion leaves, dandelion roots, Jim Macdonald’s wonderful bitter!, an opal fruits tincture, citric bitter and a forgotten bergamot elixir. Perhaps now I will have room to make some more!
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