Podcast 064: Herbs for First Aid & Disaster Response

There are so many fantastic herbs for first aid purposes, it’s hard to name them all! But if we focus our thoughts specifically on a post-disaster situation, this helps us narrow it down. Even better, think about the most likely emergency situations that might arise where you live, and you can keep your kit nice and targeted, your go-bag fully stocked. In this episode, Katja & Ryn share their must-have herbs for first aid both in the context of self-care and personal preparedness, but also in that of a large-scale emergency.

Prepping isn’t just for preppers! Getting familiar with first aid herbs and how to prepare them effectively, bundle them neatly, and work with them quickly under pressure is a skill that could save lives. Start planning today!

Our listener question this week: Are there any guidelines for knowing when an herb might have a drug interaction? (Listen in for the answer!)

Herbs discussed include pine, blackberry, yellow dock, goldenseal, Oregon grape, barberry, goldthread, rose, witch hazel, calendula, ginger, chamomile, betony, skullcap, passionflower.

Mentioned in this podcast:

• First Aid Kits For Everyone! – including our “tiny carry”, every day carry, & street kit breakdowns.
• Go-To Joint Liniment
• The Holistic Herbalism Podcast, episode 036: First Aid for Burns & Sprains

The Emergent Responder Program is a deep dive into these concepts at the intersection of personal preparedness and community disaster response. It gives you the skills and confidence to function calmly and efficiently in an ongoing or post-disaster scenario, providing effective support for your loved ones and community – no matter what the situation is. And just like all of our programs, you get our 14-day, no-questions-asked, zero-risk return policy! So, what are you waiting for? Get started today!

Episode Transcript

Katja (00:00:16):
Hi, I’m Katja.

Ryn (00:00:18):
And I’m Ryn.

Katja (00:00:20):
And we’re here at the Commonwealth Center for Holistic Health in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ryn (00:00:23):
And on the internet everywhere thanks to the power of the podcast.

Katja (00:00:25):
Woohoo.

Ryn (00:00:28):
All right. Do you want to start this week?

Katja (00:00:30):
We are not doctors. We are herbalists and holistic health educators.

Ryn (00:00:34):
The ideas discussed in our podcast do not constitute medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the US. These discussions are for educational purposes only. Everyone’s body is different, so the things we’re talking about may or may not apply to you. But they will give you some information to think about and to research further.

Katja (00:00:53):
And we want to remind you that your good health is your own personal responsibility. The final decision in considering any course of therapy, whether it’s discussed on the internet or prescribed by your physician, is always yours.

Ryn (00:01:06):
All right. So like always, let’s lead with some shout outs. We have some Instagram shout outs this week. One to Greenjewel_beauty who requested a pod on reflux. We can definitely handle that one.

Katja (00:01:22):
Yeah. In fact, I added it to the schedule for February 8th.

Ryn (00:01:25):
Cool. Yeah, we did a heartburn podcast a while back, back at number 26. Mixed it up with some thoughts about women in science. So, if you’re super antsy, you can check that one out. But we’ll take another crack at heartburn, and reflux, and all of the attendant stuff on February 8th.

Katja (00:01:46):
Yeah, sound good?

Ryn (00:01:47):
Sure, yeah. Let’s do it.

Katja (00:01:48):
All right. Deedsing wrote to say that she listened to the headache episode four times. And I really liked to learn that way too. I like to just listen to it until it’s totally stuck in my head, and I really have it in there. Yeah.

Ryn (00:02:06):
Yeah. Pretty great. OnceUponAPlant agrees that’s doing the dishes can be hygge.

Katja (00:02:14):
And LizAcupuncture, but I think it might be Liza acupuncture, and she’s just sharing the a in between. You can let us know which one it is.

Ryn (00:02:23):
That’s what I would do.

Katja (00:02:24):
That’s what I would do too.

Ryn (00:02:25):
It’s fun to share letters.

Katja (00:02:26):
Yes. She was asking if we do online consultations. Yes, we do.

Ryn (00:02:31):
We do, indeed. Yes. You can schedule an appointment with us no matter where you are in the world. Just go to commonwealthherbs.com and click on clinic. And there’s a button right there to book an appointment. And you can choose a web conference consultation with either of us.

Katja (00:02:47):
Yes, you can.

Ryn (00:02:48):
And we would be delighted to see you. Yeah.

Katja (00:02:52):
HolisticHouseCalls on Instagram.

Ryn (00:02:56):
That’s a good one. That’s nice.

Katja (00:02:58):
Likes to drink tea and listen to the pod.

Ryn (00:03:01):
Cool. And we have Ridge Side Soap Company, who’s making a sage, rosemary, and thyme steam to beat a head cold and presumably will then be inspired to make a sage, rosemary, thyme soap.

Katja (00:03:13):
Hey, that would be so cool. I would like that soap, actually. Just don’t put any goat’s milk in it because I’m allergic to that, and I would be so excited. Yeah. Excellent.

Ryn (00:03:22):
Cool. Hey folks out there in podcast world. Don’t forget that you can become a monthly supporter of our pod, and we’ll even give you some secret goodies. So, if you want to get in on that, then just head over to commonwealthherbs.com. And down in the footer or on the podcast page you can see quick and easy a little button to subscribe, and we would be eternally grateful. And we will try to keep coming up with other fun stuff to give you.

Katja (00:03:54):
You just use your login to access the page that has all the secret goodies on it. So, it’s the same login that you use to become a subscriber. Excellent.

Ryn (00:04:04):
Yeah, no problem.

Katja (00:04:07):
All right, well this week we have a student question.

Ryn (00:04:09):
Ah, yes.

A Listener’s Question: Guildelines for Herb-Drug Interactions

Katja (00:04:10):
And this one is from Jessica. She asked are there any guidelines for knowing when an herb might have a drug interaction? And yes, there are. So, I mean obviously you can look stuff up in books and look stuff up in PubMed. And that can be a little bit frustrating because… Well, you know, our mentor Paul Bergner likes to put it as nobody knows much. So, you have to be careful.

Ryn (00:04:37):
And it’s very complicated.

Katja (00:04:38):
Yes.

Ryn (00:04:39):
Nobody knows much, and it’s very complicated. So, you have to be careful.

Katja (00:04:43):
Yeah, and that is true. There’s a lot of stuff that we just simply don’t have data for, so we proceed with caution.

Ryn (00:04:50):
And I like the way you ask this though, about guidelines because it’s so much more effective and efficient to have a set of concepts. Things like oh, if there’s a blood thinner involved, then that requires caution with these types of herbs or this type of effect. Or don’t combine herbs and drugs that have the same kind of pharmacodynamic effect in the body because then you’re going to get a multiplied action, and it could be more than you need.

Katja (00:05:19):
Oh, you might get a multiplied, yeah. Yeah. So, that’s how we like to think about it is with those kinds of guidelines. Just because it’s a little bit more… It’s a little more broad. You’re more likely to catch a problem if you think in terms of guidelines like that, instead of this one drug and this one herb can’t go together. But instead, if you’re thinking in terms of categories of places you need to be very careful, you’re more likely to think about a problem before it happens.

Ryn (00:05:56):
Yeah. It’s just that you can’t really find a definitive list of this drug and that herb, and plug them into the computer, and see if they interact or not. Such a thing doesn’t exist. And even if it did at this point, it would still be very monotonic. You would have maybe a connection between one herb and one drug or one herb and another drug, but not the 12 drugs this person is taking and the 32 herbs that are in their life between their food, and their tea, and their tincture, and their everything. It gets complex really rapidly that way. So, we have to think on another scale or another level of zoom for this one.

Katja (00:06:32):
Yeah. All right. Well, let’s talk about some of those. The first one is, as you mentioned, blood thinners. Blood thinners are complicated. They’re tricky. One way that we kind of think about blood thinners is that roughly you can break blood thinners into two categories. And one group of them you’re not allowed to eat spinach. And the other group of them you are allowed to eat spinach. And that comes down to the actual way that the drug is working in the body, and the way that minerals are going to interact or not interact with that drug. And so if it is a blood thinner where you’re not allowed to eat spinach, then always avoid all green herbs because they’re like spinach. They have lots of mineral content and stuff like that. If it is a blood thinner where you are allowed to eat spinach, still be very careful. And probably talk to the doctor about it or to a pharmacist. But generally with blood thinners we do exercise sort of extra bonus caution.

Ryn (00:07:47):
Yeah. And I mean, the major issue is the vitamin K content, vitamin K1 content in those green leafy foods, and green leafy herbs, and all of that. That’s kind of doing the opposite of what the blood thinner is trying to accomplish. Anyway, yeah. So, that’s a category. And in that case, there are a lot of herbs that you’re going to need to use caution with because it turns out a great many herbs have blood thinning qualities. So yeah, that one does throw a wrench in the works. It doesn’t mean that there’s nothing we can do, but we have to proceed with a lot more caution. So, that kind of drug or that category of drug and then some other categories of drugs, things that are keeping you alive, or that your life really depends on it. Like if you had an organ transplant, and now there’s an immunosuppressant involved so that your body doesn’t reject to the new organ. We really don’t want to mess around with that. We don’t want to take any herbs that could interfere with the function of that drug. And on a similar level really, we would look at antipsychotic drugs or really almost any kind of psychiatric medication. Because that too can put somebody at really great risk if the way the drug is being metabolized or affecting the body is altered in such a way as to make it less effective. So, yeah, so that kind of thing. And what can we say? Yeah, I guess with drug categories, those would be the major ones that we would be looking out for. I guess another one would be to look at some other parameters of the blood. So, we talked about blood thickness with the blood thinning drugs there. We can also look at blood sugar. And so if people are taking medications to manipulate blood sugar. Usually this is to keep it down and people with insulin resistance and diabetes and so on. And we need to use a little bit of caution with herbs that also have blood sugar lowering effects. Because if you combine what the drug is doing and what the herb may do, then now you can get to a point where your blood sugar has gotten too low. And now you have a completely different problem, but still a serious one.

Katja (00:09:57):
In that particular case, it’s not necessarily unsafe to work with an herb. It is that you absolutely, positively must be checking your blood sugar levels on an extremely regular basis. And people who have to do that tend to fall into patterns, because obviously it hurts to do that. And having to do that multiple times a day is a pain. But so if at any time you say well, I think I really would like to increase my cinnamon intake. It’s not necessarily out of the question, but it means that the likelihood that you’re going to reduce or change your dependence on whatever pharmaceutical you’re taking to manage your blood sugar levels is going to change. And so you need to be able to be in regular communication with your prescribing healthcare professional to let them know if your blood sugar numbers change. And that could happen very quickly. So, it’s something that you need to be super, super proactive about. Let your doctor know that you’re going to try that. And this is true even if you suddenly eliminated all carbs from your diet also. If you suddenly went on a super low carb diet, that also would screw up your numbers with regard to your dosing of your blood sugar management medication. And so that’s another time when you A: want to let your doctor in on that before you start, and B: want to make sure that you are testing with extreme discipline, and regularity, and frequency.

Ryn (00:11:34):
Yeah. Okay. So then blood thickness, blood sugar, and then also blood pressure can be a place where herb-drug interactions can be problematic or something you just need to be on the watch for. And in that case, it’s really more about not having that kind of additive effect again, right? So, not taking somebody who’s on a blood pressure lowering medication and then giving them a really strong or concentrated dose of herbs that also lower blood pressure. Because then they might stand up, and get dizzy, and fall.

Katja (00:12:09):
Which isn’t actually funny.

Ryn (00:12:11):
No, I don’t mean to make light of it. That’s really a concern.

Katja (00:12:14):
Yeah, I didn’t mean to laugh either. It was just cute how you said it.

Ryn (00:12:16):
Yeah. But I mean if you reduce the blood pressure too much, then you have trouble getting it up to your brain, and then you get faint. So, yeah. So, those categories, those basic parameters of the blood itself, when someone’s on a drug to manipulate those, then herbs that also manipulate them, we just need to use a little more caution. And I think the general concept of saying it doesn’t mean they’re outright contraindicated in all amounts and all purposes forever. It means you need to be aware of this potential for interaction and monitor for it. So, you can check your blood sugar parameters. You can check your blood pressure. You can do both of those at home. Blood thickness, I don’t know if there’s home tests for that.

Katja (00:12:59):
No, that one I just am way more conservative about, just because those drugs are really intense anyway. So, if a person’s taking blood thinners every day, then that gives us, first off, the information that they’re doing that. But secondly, the information that if they’re a person who requires that, the body is already delicate. And so that’s also a body we want to be very careful with. So, it’s sort of like dual reasons there.

The Special Case of St. John’s Wort

Ryn (00:13:30):
Yeah. You know, I’m kind of realizing that we’re answering this question backwards in a way because what she asked was are there guidelines for knowing when an herb might have a drug interaction? And here we started with the drugs. And that makes sense because the general way this math works is dangerous drug plus very safe herb equals potentially dangerous interaction. That’s usually the way that goes down rather than vice versa or vice versus. So, now that said, there are some herbs that do have a much higher potential than their fellows to result in a drug interaction. The most famous is St. John’s wort. And it’s worth knowing this is not because St. John’s wort has some chemistry in it that goes around looking for pharmaceuticals to break, or to mess up, or to do anything weird directly to that pharmaceutical substance. What’s happening instead is that St. John’s wort acts on the body, it acts on the liver. And then the liver acts on the drugs. And what happens basically is that St. John’s wort accelerates the pace at which your liver is transforming or metabolizing the drug that you take. And in the simple case, what this can mean is that normally you take your pill. You absorb it, you metabolize it in the liver, and some of it gets circulated to the bloodstream. And over the course of time, your liver and other parts of your body are breaking down the drug and eliminating it from the system.

Ryn (00:15:05):
And when you add St John’s wort to that equation, that breakdown and elimination happens more rapidly than usual. So, that would be the simple case. And that means that the total amount of time that you’re under the influence of that drug, or the degree to which it’s influencing your physiology is going to be reduced because it’s getting kicked out of the system faster than would have been expected. So, there are some drugs where that’s not a huge problem. And there are some drugs that are taken in such high doses that you’re not going to eliminate their effects because of working with St. John’s wort. I’m thinking there mostly of the birth control pill. There’s a lot of hype, there’s a lot of scare stories around people taking a St. John’s wort supplement and then getting pregnant even though they were on the pill. And if you really dig into most of them, they either involve completely outrageous doses or strange preparations of the herbs that nobody’s actually consuming. Not like your standard off the shelf capsule or certainly…

Katja (00:16:05):
Or like some tea.

Ryn (00:16:06):
Certainly not your cups of tea, or your droppers of tincture, or things like that.

Katja (00:16:10):
But on the other hand, cups of tea or droppers of tincture absolutely can reduce the amount of organ rejection drugs in your system. And so that can become a problem even at a much lower dose.

Ryn (00:16:24):
Right. So, yeah. So when we say that we don’t worry about the birth control pill, that doesn’t mean we don’t worry about all pills because they’re all really different. And we definitely worry about the organ rejection meds, the immunosuppressants. We worry about the psychiatric medications. We worry about blood thinners. We worry about… Well, not worry, but we are aware of this effect on thyroid medications as well. We don’t worry because those tend not to be life threatening if they were to stop working.

Katja (00:16:52):
They’re annoying, but not…

Ryn (00:16:53):
It’s going to be uncomfortable, yeah.

Katja (00:16:56):
But, you know, the difference there is that all those drugs that we just mentioned are drugs that are dosed very, very specifically, directly in relation to the weight of the person, or the exact time that they’re taking it, or whatever. Whereas a birth control pill, it doesn’t matter how much you weigh, you get the same pill. So, the dose is just high enough that it can accommodate all different types of bodies, all different kinds of metabolisms. Whereas if you’ve ever been on thyroid medication, you know it takes a long time to get your dose exactly right. And it’s very finicky because every body is different, and they have to dose it very specifically to your own body’s needs. So, even messing it up a little bit is going to really cause you some annoyance.

Ryn (00:17:48):
So you know, this particular effect that St.t John’s wort has as a result of the way that it influences the liver and some of the enzymes that it uses to do this metabolism. There are other herbs that have related effects. But in general, none of them are going to hold a candle to St. John’s wort in terms of the degree of potency they have in this regard. The closest thing is actually grapefruit, and it kind of points in the opposite direction where instead of accelerating liver metabolism, it slows it down. So, one way to do a kind of first-line assessment of whether a drug is going to interact problematically with St. John’s wort is to see if they advised you to not consume grapefruit juice or to not change your frequency of consumption of grapefruit juice while you take this drug. Because those two plants operate on the same set of liver enzymes just in different directions. And I say this because there are actually a whole bunch of different enzymes involved in this system. And St. John’s wort doesn’t act on all of them, and not all drugs are metabolized by all of them. And so you can see there’s many layers of complexity to this. But again, most drugs, and especially anyone that is carefully dosed that has adjustments to the dose as you figured out what’s right for your body, or is dosed by weight, or things like this. Those are the ones that we’re, just on the very face of it, going to say all right, no St. John’s wort for you as long as that drug is in your life.

Demulcents & High-Mineral Herbs

Ryn (00:19:18):
So, that’s a big place that we would be looking. A couple of other like types or categories of herbs you need to be aware of having potential drug interactions. One would be all of your demulcent herbs. So, herbs that you make a nice cold infusion and get it good, and thick, and slimy, and wonderful. And the biggest issue here is actually just a matter of timing. So, what you don’t want to do is make a nice thick marshmallow slime or an Irish Moss gruel or something and then use that to swallow your pill with. The concern here is that the polysaccharide goo matrix from your herb is going to slow down or inhibit absorption of the pharmaceutical if you take them too close together. But fortunately the solution here is really very simple. And it is to give a couple of hours between the time that you’re taking your good, thick demulcent preparations and the time that you’re taking your pharmaceutical. So, you may wake up in the morning. Take your pill with some plain water. Do whatever you do for a couple of hours, and then start on your nice cold infusion habit, and go from there.

Katja (00:20:35):
There’s a similar effect – a little different – with some of the high mineral herbs. So, if you’re a person who loves a good long infusion of nettle or dandelion leaf, stuff like that, that can interfere with absorption of thyroid medications on some psychiatric meds. And that is actually a mineral binding issue. So again, it’s not that you can’t have nettles if you have thyroid meds. It’s just that you need to offset them by a couple of hours. If you have thyroid meds, you’ve probably been told to take it first thing in the morning, and then you can’t eat for a couple hours after taking it. And so in this case, we are considering the high mineral nettle infusion as food. And so that’s just falling into that same category of it’s okay to have it. You just wait until it’s been a couple hours. And now your thyroid meds are in your system, and it’s time to eat. Now you can have your nettle & friends as well.

Ryn (00:21:44):
Yeah. All right. Well, I think we’ve gone on a bit about this one. There’s a ton more we could say about herb-drug interactions, and we do have a whole segment on this that we cover in our advanced program for students who are going to enter into clinical work. And so yeah, there’s definitely a ton more that can and should be said about herb-drug interactions. So, maybe we’ll do some more bits and pieces of this on the pod again in future episodes. But again, a lot of it is about understanding the way the herb works in the body. So, this requires us to know more than St. John’s wort is good for depression. But to understand that St. John’s wort has a suite of effects on hormones and processes in the body, including the liver, including these particular enzymes that are involved in drug metabolism. And so it does require us to understand our herbs on a little more detailed level and in some cases on more of a biochemical level, right? So, we’re seeing intersections between human physiology, and phytochemistry, and pharmacology. And so none of that should scare us away, but it should give us an appreciation for the complexity involved and recognize that we’re not going to find a list of this plus that equals frowny face. We need to be thinking more critically and more in a systems pattern in order to do this well. So, there we go. That was 20 minutes on herb-drug.

Katja (00:23:17):
Sorry.

Ryn (00:23:18):
And that’s just the first twenty minutes.

Katja (00:23:20):
Yeah.

Ryn (00:23:21):
All right. So let’s see, what else should we get to today?

Katja (00:23:24):
Well, should we talk about the Emergent Responder program?

Ryn (00:23:27):
Oh, right, right. That was our topic for today. Yeah, we got there at minute 23. We’re good.

Why We All Need Disaster Response Skills

Katja (00:23:35):
Okay. So, the Emergent Responder program is two courses that I did that are about responding to a disaster in your community, whether that is a hurricane, or fires, or something manmade. This sort of information is helpful basically no matter what happens because having a good solid understanding of what to do in emergency situation means that you’re going to be confident, that you’re going to have a plan for what to do, and be able to be a leader in your community and a person who helps everyone else stay calm. Because the reality is that after the initial whatever is over, there’s still a lot of work to do. And if everybody is calm and organized, we can get it done a lot faster than if everyone is panicking, or doesn’t really have a plan, and they’re not sure. Should I try to evacuate now or should I… It’s last minute. And now all the highways are full, and you can’t actually get anywhere. These are skills that humans just used to have. If you think about people who used to live out in rural areas, if there was a fire, we didn’t have fire departments. We didn’t have hospitals. We didn’t have whatever. And I’m pretty glad we have those things. I’m really glad we have those things.

Ryn (00:25:09):
Yes, we are extremely grateful for the firefighters. We’re extremely grateful for the trauma surgeons. That’s awesome. That’s really great. We’re happy to live in a time and a place where those exist, and that even some of us can afford them.

Katja (00:25:23):
Yes. But even though we have those things, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have some basic skills to get ourselves out of a jam. That’s better than having to just wait around for somebody to come and save us.

Ryn (00:25:34):
Well, because you never know when it is going to be available. And the reasons why it might not be don’t always involve the fact that they’ve been completely wiped off the face of the planet, right? Throughout just American history, there have definitely been political reasons, and race-based reasons, and all kinds of other terrible bad reasons for people not getting care, and support, and basic protection services, and things like this.

Katja (00:26:01):
I’m even thinking about in hurricane Sandy in the Far Rockaways, that is an area that was sort of a marginalized community. It was a lot of immigrant communities, a lot of elder housing. And it already was an under-resourced community. And when hurricane Sandy hit, it took five weeks for anyone from FEMA or the Red Cross to get around to that area. But the wealthy areas had been attended to right away. So, part of that is because obviously there’s some equity problems in the sentence I just said. But even if it not equity based, it also is just a fact that there are only so many first responders. And they are also tired, and have to sleep, and worried about their own house and their children. And they’re out there putting their lives on the line. And if all of us have some skills, then not only can we pitch in and help, but the first responders only have to respond to the people who are really in danger, and not the people who are halfway in danger but wouldn’t have been if they had had some skills for themselves.

Ryn (00:27:16):
And a plan.

Katja (00:27:18):
Yeah, and a plan. And then also the thing is that many of the skills that we use in emergency situations are actually skills that we could use any old day of the week. I have a client who just came out of surgery and has an incision that needs care. And that’s a really common situation. If you know how to deal with an incision wound really confidently, and how to identify when something is going wrong, that can save you a lot of headache. And I’m so excited that we’ve got visiting nurses, and we’ve got emergency rooms, and all sorts of other stuff. But some basic skills can just make you more self-reliant because the visiting nurse can’t be there 24 hours a day. Well, so this is a whole program to teach you all of that stuff.

Ryn (00:28:10):
There’s a ton of amazing content in here, you guys. Katja worked on this really, really hard. And it’s just a very unique kind of a program. There’s a lot in here that you’re basically not going to find anywhere else. She’s pulled together some concepts, and some resources, and some skill drills and things from a bunch of different places and kind of synthesize them in a way that I’ve never seen done before but makes a lot of sense. So – I don’t know – do you want to give like the big picture?

An Overview of the Emergent Responder Program

Katja (00:28:39):
Well, the big picture is actually really, really big, but I think that it also needs to be. You don’t have to be an expert in all of the skills. But if you know that they are factors, that can help you a lot. So, the first course in this program is about managing an emergency clinic and getting that all set up. And that is everything from what resources are you going to need? How are you going to allocate those resources? Where are you going to get them from? To how will you interface with government agencies once they get to you, if they get to you? To how can you transport people to higher definitive care? Maybe there are no hospitals in your area, but 150 miles away there is a hospital. How are you going to get the people there safely if they are wounded? How will you stabilize them before transporting them? And even how will you transport? What if there’s a bridge out or whatever else? That one covers triage. It covers death support. Both how to work with people who are dying, as well as what to do with dead bodies. Which on one hand is kind of gruesome, but on the other hand is actually super important information to have. Because when people don’t know how to handle dead bodies… Which nobody knows how to do anymore because when someone dies, we just take them to a funeral home. Then what happens is – and the World Health Organization has actually done a lot of studies around this – is that choices get made in a panic that just adds more trauma to everyone. Because the reality is that being able to bury the people who have died in ways that are appropriate for your culture and your traditions is actually a really important part of the healing process. So, even though it sounds like a weird thing to make plans for, it actually is very important. And then there is a second course in this program that actually deals with all the skills. So, all of the first aid skills like the bandaging, and the splinting, and burns, and all that kind of stuff. Elder care, childcare, emergency pregnancy care and emergency birth and labor care.

Ryn (00:31:10):
Yeah, we call this one First Aid and Long-Term Care to try to indicate that yeah, first aid skills are awesome. They’re super important, and they’re relevant for the first five minutes, or the first five hours, or somewhere along that stretch. But if we’re looking at a post-disaster situation or a community disaster response kind of a situation, then you definitely need to be thinking beyond first aid. You need second aid. You need third aid. You need all the numbers. And those skills can be substantially different from stopping bleeding, and cleaning the wound, and all of that.

Katja (00:31:47):
Right. If you know that you’re going to end up in a hospital in a few hours, all you really have to do is stop the bleeding. But if you’re not going to have higher definitive care for five weeks, then you need to know about infection management. And you need to really feel confident about being able to do that because even a small wound can become a really big problem. Somebody actually asked me in an interview to tell them some big… I can’t remember the question exactly, but what they wanted was for me to talk about some big, lifesaving, important skill. And I could see that in their mind they were thinking about jumping out of a helicopter and saving someone.

Ryn (00:32:31):
Or like a traction splint for a broken femur. Something like that.

Katja (00:32:36):
Yeah, like some big, superhero kind of thing. And my response was infection management. Because a two-inch wound, some small thing that that looks fairly run of the mill, if you’re not focused. If you are a little bit panicked, or a little this, or a little that, and not really focused on hey. I need to take care of every single thing that comes through here, and I need to be thinking about infection management for the future. Then that’s what’s actually going to kill people. So, most of the time you’re not really going to be jumping out of helicopters. I don’t actually know how to jump out of helicopters. So, it’s a good thing that that is not actually something that you have to do as often as they show in the adventure movies.

Ryn (00:33:24):
I guess that’s a good thing. I guess.

Herbal Favorites for First Aid Kits: Pine Resin

Katja (00:33:26):
Well, actually we have teams of people who know how to jump out of helicopters, and that’s great. They can do that. But we can take care of infection management and stuff like that. There’s also stuff about environmental stuff like hypothermia, or heatstroke, and bug, and parasites, and water treatment, and even stuff like security and communications, all that kind of stuff. Anyway, basically it’s huge, and we cannot talk about it all in one podcast. But what we can do is tell you some of our favorite, most important herbs that we keep in our first aid kits that we sort of considered to be our I can’t live without them kind of herbs. Now, we have a blog post on the website that we’re going to link in the show notes that will give you the complete content list of all of our first aid kits. Each of us have three different first aid kits. A what we call a tiny carry, which is a first aid kit that is small enough to fit into a cargo pocket. And it’s really handy, especially if you’re going somewhere that they don’t allow you to bring a bag. And then a daily carry, which is a first aid kit that fits in our backpack that we just take whenever we leave the house, going around the city or whatever, if we’re in the subway or stuff. So, that’s a little bit of a larger first aid kit that is really sort of geared towards the everyday sorts of things that could happen in the train or in the wherever.

Ryn (00:35:11):
Yeah. A little basic wound care stuff in there. A little basic digestive upset. A little basic anxiety and emotional discomfort management. Yeah.

Katja (00:35:23):
And then we each have what we call our street kits, which are much larger first aid kits. They themselves fill an entire backpack. And that’s what we work from if we are out doing either work for supporting in a protest, or if we’re doing work with populations of people who are living on the street. Or also those are the first aid kits that we would grab if we were leaving in an emergency situation, if we were evacuating. And those are large enough that we could operate fairly long-term before we needed to be resupplied. We definitely could get through a significant number of injuries before we would need to restock. Obviously if we were planning some sort of a community response clinic, we have much larger tubs of supplies that we would bring to that. But in terms of an emergency – I have to grab this and go with me – that’s what our large street kits are for. And so we made a list of some of the herbs that are in those kits that we think are really important. And maybe you’ll be able to tell as we talk about them which ones I picked, and which ones he picked.

Ryn (00:36:47):
I don’t know, maybe.

Katja (00:36:48):
Maybe they will by now.

Ryn (00:36:49):
I don’t know. But this first one is really kind of both of ours in a big way.

Katja (00:36:55):
Yes. Neither one of us can live without pine resin salve.

Ryn (00:36:58):
It’s also something that we started making together. Like I don’t think this was a habit of yours before.

Katja (00:37:02):
Yes, that’s true. I didn’t do this before I met you. This was a thing that we did do together.

Ryn (00:37:07):
Yeah. So this is pine resin salve. And we’ve talked about this a bunch of times on the podcast before.

Katja (00:37:15):
It’s because we really love it.

Ryn (00:37:16):
A little video about it in there and everything. Yeah, it’s just so useful. So, short version is you find a pine tree. You harvest some of the resin in a careful way such as to not damage the tree and to leave it some protection. Because the resin is basically like a part of the tree’s immune system, part scab, part lymphatic sort of analog. Anyway, so you gather some resin. You melt it into some oil on a low temperature. And then you strain it out to get all the bark, and dirt, and bug legs, and whatever out of it. They’re in there. And then you take that. Now you’ve got pine resin-infused oil. You melt a bit of wax into there. And then you get it into the little containers and let it harden up. And now you’ve got pine resin salve. And this stuff is really fantastic for any minor wounds. Any dry wounds or wounds that have scabbed over you can put this onto there. Burns that are in a dry state. So, it either started as a first degree burn, or it was a second degree burn that has gone past the blistering and wet phase and has started to dry out. You can put pine resin salve onto there.

Katja (00:38:26):
Basically whenever it starts to get itchy. That’s when you know that you’re in the healing stage, that you’re ready for salve.

Ryn (00:38:32):
Right, yeah. You can put salve… It’s really handy if you get an abrasion where you haven’t cut deep into the skin anywhere, but you’ve cheese gratered off a big area of it. Then pine resin salve is really good for that kind of thing. It’s also nice if you’ve got skin infections going on. Here I’m thinking primarily of a fungal issue, something like athlete’s foot, or tinea, or something like that. You can put pine resin salve onto there.

Katja (00:39:01):
It’s also really lovely. It’s got a lot of crossover. Because the pine resin has all of those volatile oils preserved in it, and they’re quite potent. So this is also something that I love to put on the skin on your nose that gets chapped when you have a respiratory infection, and you’ve been blowing your nose a lot. Don’t wait for it to get all chapped to start doing this. Just put it there prophylactically way before that happens. Because what’s happening is that not only are you protecting that skin, but you are breathing in those volatile oils. And you are getting those down deep into the lungs where they are helping in an antimicrobial way to fight against the respiratory infection. Also just to keep in mind that we live such sanitary lives right now. And in fact we live lives on one hand that are actually a little bit too clean. But on the other hand, we have really kind of forgotten about needing to stay clean. And both of those things are sort of happening simultaneously. And it sounds contradictory, and it is. But one thing is that when you have broken skin, you are really susceptible to infection. And because we live really a sanitized lives, we don’t think too much about the chapped skin around the cuticles of our fingers. Or if we do get chapped skin on our nose from blowing her nose too much, we don’t think too much about that. I mean it’s uncomfortable and unpleasant, but we also need to be thinking about the infective potential in that area. Especially if this is a post hurricane situation, and now there’s floodwater. And the floodwater has maybe untreated sewage in it or whatever else it might have in it. And now there’s also tons of mold and crud going on. And so at this point, the need for the physical barrier of our skin to be intact is really high. Which means that we don’t want to wait for your skin around your nose to crack because you have a respiratory infection from breathing in all that mold. We want to prevent that from happening right from the start. And so yeah, pine resin has that dual action there that I just love.

Ryn (00:41:38):
Yeah. So great. Couldn’t get by without it.

Katja (00:41:42):
No.

Ryn (00:41:43):
And you know, in more minor applications, it’s just like oh, I got a cut. I’m going to get a bandaid on there. Wait. Before I put the bandaid, a nice little glob of pine resin on there, and it really accelerates the healing. Please don’t call it herbal neosporin because you’ll just make me sad. But if you have to think of it that way to yourself sometimes, that’s okay.

Katja (00:42:04):
It’s so much better. It’s so much better.

Ryn (00:42:07):
Yeah, way better. Okay. So that’s pine resin salve. Next thing that I would want to include, if you don’t mind me butting in here.

Katja (00:42:16):
Yes. Actually, this was your addition to the list. And I can’t believe I forgot to put this on because it’s so important.

Go-To Joint Liniment, Blackberry Root, & Yellow Dock

Ryn (00:42:22):
Don’t forget your joint liniment.

Katja (00:42:23):
Yes.

Ryn (00:42:24):
Yeah. So this is… well, we’ve actually done a whole podcast about this. Let me see if I can find it. Oh, maybe we if we haven’t done.

Katja (00:42:34):
No, we did.

Ryn (00:42:36):
We did one about the joint support decoction. Maybe it was in the episode for sprains and strains.

Katja (00:42:42):
Yeah, I bet it was.

Ryn (00:42:43):
Yeah. Podcast 36: First Aid for Burns and for Sprains. Yeah, so we talked a bunch about joint liniment there. There’s a recipe for it in our book Herbal Medicine for Beginners. I’ve got a blog post all about my go-to joint liniment on our blog. So, you’ve got options for learning about this.

Katja (00:43:02):
You know, last night actually, before you got home from doing free clinic, I pulled out some of your joint liniment from one of the first aid kits. And that actually is a thing by the way – just to have a tiny tangent – is that it’s a really good idea to work from your first aid kits. Because that way you’re very familiar with where everything is. You’re restocking things regularly, and you’re just really comfortable rooting around in them. They’re very well organized. You know they’re well organized because you practice a lot. And so that’s better than just having a kit that stays in the closet, and you never open. And instead you have a medicine chest that you work out of or a cabinet in your bathroom that you work out of. Anyway. So, I was grabbing some joint liniment out of your first aid kit yesterday. And my intercostal muscles all around my lungs right now are really tight, and I’ve got some kind of lung crud going on. And lately I’ve just felt really great with a little bit of ginger essential oil mixed into some kava oil rubbed onto my lungs before bed. And last night we ran out of the kava oil. And so I was like ah, what can I do? I don’t want to just put it in plain old olive oil because I’m wasting my… There’s something that could be in there. So, I was looking around to see if we had any other infused oil that made sense. And then I saw your joint liniment. And it was like ah, that would be perfect. And it was one that had St. John’s wort and Solomon’s seal. It had alder, which I was really happy about for the lymphatic action. It had prickly ash. It had lobelia. It had basically, you know, the Solomon’s seal is really lovely for that connective tissue that is getting all tight right now and the lymphatic action. And then you had a little clove essential oil in there.

Katja (00:45:03):
And so I put that into a bottle of MegaMag that was empty but not yet washed. So I was like oh, there’s a couple of drops of magnesium in the bottom. That’s going to be good because that is such a great muscle relaxant. And then I added to that some ginger essential oil. And you guys know I’m not a huge fan of essential oil except in this sort of a situation. Then it really is called for to get that sort of deep muscle penetration. So, I put some of that in, and all of this, and then I felt much better. It really does deliver a lot of relief. And all of that is to say that you’ve got joints in a lot more places than you think about joints. The areas between my ribs are not joints like my wrist and my ankle. But there’s still a lot of connective tissue and a lot of movement happening in there. And right now that movement is more restricted than I would like it to be. And so, when we talk about a go-to joint liniment, then don’t just say okay, well this is what I use for a sprained ankle. But really expand that idea in your mind of all the ways that you can work with that. Because if somebody comes in, and what they’ve got is pleurisy, or what they’ve got is bronchitis or pneumonia. And they’ve been coughing a lot, and all of their intercostal muscles hurt. That go-to joint liniment is going to be awesome there. And basically all of the stuff that we’re listing is stuff that we can work with in many different ways. We don’t really want to carry something in our first aid kit that only has a single application, unless that single application is so important that we really need it. And blackberry root is one that I’m thinking about there.

Ryn (00:46:55):
We do have a couple like that. Yeah, that’s true.

Katja (00:46:57):
But for the most part, we’re going for as many possible ways that we can work with a particular thing as possible.

Ryn (00:47:07):
Yeah, cool. So joint liniment is awesome and not just for your ankles. Cool. So, then the next one that we…

Katja (00:47:13):
Do you want to do blackberry root real quick, since I just mentioned it?

Ryn (00:47:16):
Oh, okay. We’ll do that and its friend, yeah. So blackberry root is a good inclusion in a first aid kit because it is a fantastic, fast-acting remedy for diarrhea. And if you, yourself need this kind of help, or you’ve got somebody on your team or your travel group or whatever that needs this. If you can solve that for somebody, you will make a friend forever. So, that’s nice. So what we do with blackberry root in this context is take the dried roots and then make a tincture of them. And we like to make our tincture of blackberry root in red wine, something nice and oaky with lots of tannins in it.

Katja (00:47:56):
Which is traditional.

Ryn (00:47:57):
Yeah. And a lot of the blackberry medicine itself is in tannins. And combining some oak tannins, and some blackberry tannins, and some other astringent friends altogether is a nice way to kind of diversify your preparation while still keeping it nice and targeted with that one, tightening, astringing effect. So yeah, so blackberry root’s effective for that. We generally give a dose of a teaspoon to a tablespoon and repeat that. Take a few doses every 15 minutes, and then maybe you space it out a bit more afterwards. But generally by the third dose, you’re a little more contained. Yeah, you’re a bit more stable in that regard. So yeah, that’s blackberry root. Really simple, very easy, hard to screw it up, so that’s nice.

Katja (00:48:49):
And the flip side of that is yellow dock. Yellow dock is one of my favorite laxative plants, partly because it’s not habit forming. So, we don’t have to worry about this being something that somebody is going to get really hooked on, like Cascara sagrada or senna can be. It’s really safe. You can even work with it if you’re pregnant. And one of the reasons is that part of the way that it functions is by stimulating bile. And so it’s working more as a lubricant then as sort of forcing a purgative action. And that is just a little bit more gentle. For my body, which tends a little towards the stagnant side, I typically find that if I take some yellow dock root at night before I go to bed, in the morning, I’m ready to have a nice bowel movement. Somebody with a speedier constitution may find that that happens a lot faster for them. But just because somebody has a zippy constitution or a metabolism that’s really fast doesn’t mean that they can’t get a little constipated. Especially in an environment where maybe they’re not drinking enough water. Maybe there isn’t quite enough water for everybody, and so everybody’s kind of rationing. Then that is a situation where even a person who isn’t prone to constipation could find themselves constipated. Some other nice things about yellow dock is it is quite bitter. So this is going to double as a digestive bitter. It has the ability to help you absorb minerals better from your food. And those are good things as well.

Berberine+ Containing Plants

Ryn (00:50:41):
Yeah. Good little plant. Cool. All right, so let’s see. In sort of a different place in our first aid kit, we can think about some herbs that share a common constituent called berberine. And this is a pretty well-known antimicrobial compound that a variety of different plants make. So, famous ones you might have heard of include golden seal, and Oregon grape root, and also yellow root, not to be confused with yellow dock root. And what else? Oh, barberry, right? It gives the substance its name because Berberis vulgaris is barberry, and berberine comes out of that plant. So barberry is one there. And then in our part of the country we have a plant called gold thread or Coptis.

Katja (00:51:37):
Yes, Coptis trifolia.

Ryn (00:51:40):
Yeah. And there’s also a relative of that from China that’s also fairly well known. But yeah, so…

Katja (00:51:48):
In the southwest, algerita.

Ryn (00:51:51):
Yeah, algerita, which is kind of more like a tree sort of thing. And berberine turns up in a few other plants here and there. There’s actually kind of a cork tree that has some berberine in it, and a few other herbs. But it’s… Go ahead.

Katja (00:52:05):
The thing about berberine is that often you will hear it called the herbal antibiotic. And if that’s all you hear about it, then that can get you into some trouble. Because on one hand, yes, technically that is true. On the other hand, it doesn’t pass through the digestive tract. Now that’s not a problem. Because in a post disaster situation, a topical antimicrobial plant – whether that is topical on the skin or topical in the digestive tract – is super important. So, this is going to be helpful if there is water that’s not being sufficiently treated, and people are getting crud from the water. It’s going to be great if maybe there’s some food that was a little past its prime, and there’s some food poisoning going around. But it’s also really excellent for wound care as a wound wash or whatever else. And in a real pinch, if I couldn’t treat water. Obviously, I would always prefer to boil water, or treat it with iodine, or some such. But if I couldn’t treat water, and I really had no other option, I would strain it through whatever cloth I had to get any particulate out. And then I might add some berberine constituent plant. Just to sort of understand that I’m still taking a risk, but to kind of give myself a better shot at mitigating that risk. So, there’s a lot of ways that this can be applied. And not only is it about the berberine content that is having that antimicrobial action, but also these plants tend to have astringency action as well on the mucous membranes. So, that is particularly handy in the gut lining. Because when there’s gut compromise, being able to astringe that area and tighten it back up again is also going to be very, very helpful.

Ryn (00:54:10):
Yeah. So, how to work with these. You’ve got a variety of options. You can work with berberines in tincture form. Certainly if you’re taking them internally, then that’s an easy way to go about it. And if you had say an abscess or some kind of infection in the mouth, then that’s a nice delivery method. It will sting. It will burn a bit, but it’s also very strong. You can mix it half and half with pure water if you want to and swish with that or use that as a wound wash. There still will be some collateral damage from the alcohol if you put that into an infected wound. But when your choice is kill off a few cells or let the infection continue, then you make that choice, and you go with it. You can also keep this in your kit in the form of a powder. And then you could mix it up with some water or some tea, and make a paste out of it, and put that over wounds. Just recognize that because it’s powder, you are going to have to then wash it out again thoroughly and completely in order to not leave irritating particulates in the wound. So, okay. But the easiest way really, or the cleanest way to work with these plants is in a water extraction in a tea. So, if you know that you’re going to be in a place where you can boil water, and you can work with these, then that’s going to in some ways be the simplest way. At least at the level of the wound itself, or the infection itself, or the mouth problem, or whatever it is.

Katja (00:55:40):
Yeah. It won’t be delicious, but it will be effective.

Ryn (00:55:43):
Yeah, that’s for sure. Now one thing to keep in mind though is that rather than choosing a single herb for this, and saying oh, which of all those plants has the most berberine? That’s not necessarily the right way to go about this. What seems to be better for both fighting infection and all of the other things that we want to do with these herbs is to get a combination of multiple of them and also multiple parts of the plants. So, a lot of this, we can get into a bunch of phytochemistry here, but the basic idea is that it’s not just berberine. There are related alkaloids, related antimicrobial compounds in each of the berberine plants, and they each have a different subset. So gold thread has berberine. It also has coptisine. Golden seal, it has berberine, and it also has hydrastine and a few others.

Katja (00:56:35):
and they probably have lots of other things too that they just haven’t studied yet.

Ryn (00:56:39):
Oh they definitely do. They totally do, yeah. But the idea is that you have this kind of cohort effect where we sort of have our mind map centered around berberine, but there are a lot of other branches that kind of travel together with it and are variously concentrated in each of the different plants that carry it. We focus on berberine because it’s easy to detect. It gives a yellow color to the root, to the root bark, or to the branches, or the interior part of the plant.

Katja (00:57:09):
It has a really specific flavor too that you can identify real easily.

Ryn (00:57:12):
Yeah. So, those are useful in terms of distinguishing them and in seeing oh, this yellow plant has that same taste as that other yellow plant. Hmm. I get it. There’s something going on here. So there’s that. But yeah, so keeping a blend of these herbs together is really the best way. So, if it’s a tincture blend, then I might put in golden seal, and barberry, and some of the gold thread, and some of the Oregon grape root and put them all together. So that’s one side of it. And then the other side of it is to combine the roots along with the leaves of these plants. Because there’s a different type of compound with a long fancy name that people usually abbreviate as MHC. But this is something that serves as a biofilm disruptor. And it’s going to basically get into the bacteria or the microbes that it is you’re trying to fight, and disable some of their defenses, and prevent them from joining hands and making red rover chains with each other. And essentially this enhances the effect of the berberine, and the hydrastine, and the coptisine, and all of the alkaloid agent killer friends basically that are coming through here. And so combining a bit of leaf extract with a bit of the root extract from these plants tends to bring all of those functions together and get you a much more effective remedy.

Rose Water & Calendula

Katja (00:58:43):
In other words, this is yet another place where we see that diversity makes us stronger. So just keep repeating that to yourself. Diversity makes us stronger. Yes. Excellent. All right, well the next on my list actually also thinking about wound care is rose water. And in particularly I like rose water and witch hazel mixed together actually for this. So you can get one or the other. But in my first aid kit, I do have a blend of both together. And actually there’s a commercial product that you can just buy and put right in your kit. It’s called Thayer’s. And they have a witch hazel rose water extract that is alcohol free. And that’s really important for me.

Ryn (00:59:35):
I think it has a little aloe in it as well.

Katja (00:59:37):
It does have a little bit of aloe. And that means that maybe we’re not going to put this on staph. But it’s pretty far down the ingredient list.

Ryn (00:59:46):
I think in this case it’ll be all right.

Katja (00:59:48):
So rose water and witch hazel both have some astringent action. Rose water itself is also really antiseptic. It’s very cooling and anti-inflammatory. And you can’t forget that it also smells good. And when we are thinking about emergency situations, we tend to in our minds get very spartan. Sort of as a culture we tend to get very spartan. And very like everything has to have a purpose of strength, and otherwise I don’t need it. But actually the smell of rose water I think is a very important part of the medicine. Because if somebody is wounded, and I am caring for their wound, they’re in pain. And if what I am working with to clean their wound is also something that smells overwhelmingly of roses, that is distracting from the pain. It is something that people notice right away. And they’re like, what? Why does it smell so good? And that ability to distract somebody from their pain is actually really, really important. And it helps to sort of break that panicky place and get them way more grounded. So, don’t neglect things that are lovely and things that are comforting when you’re thinking about your planning process. And you’re like all I need is a bunch of protein cubes, and I’ll be fine. No, you also need a little chocolate. You’re going to need a little chocolate. That’s going to be important. So anyway. Rose water, it is the chocolate of wound care.

Ryn (01:01:40):
Pretty great. Yeah. You can keep it in a spray bottle or something.

Katja (01:01:44):
I like either a spray bottle or a sport bottle with a good squirty top so you can get a little pressure behind it, in case there are little bits of dirt that you’re trying to get out.

Ryn (01:01:54):
Right. Yeah, cool. Okay. And then another herb that can be related to wound care is calendula. And with calendula, again, you’ve got options to work with that. It can be in a powder. It can be just the loose herbs. And then maybe you’re working with that on a compress or a poultice or something like that. So it is a wound healer. It has a bit of antiseptic actions to it as well. It’s particularly helpful when you’re coping with a fungal infection. So, that’s a place where it’s very called for, whether that’s on the skin, or it could be up in the sinuses. You can get this up into the nose with a nasal spray. Or you can do a Neti pot thing if you filter it real careful first.

Katja (01:02:46):
I really don’t love either of those. They are just very uncomfortable for me. But I find that if I have a sinus infection that’s all… Sinus infections are very frequently fungal. And I can really tell when it is when the roof of my mouth itches. And what I find is if I drink some calendula, either tincture or tea, but hold it in my mouth for a long time, that actually seems to be extremely helpful. And it’s really quite sufficient. So, you don’t have to spray it up your nose if you’re not into that. I am not into that, so we will be in good company together.

Ryn (01:03:28):
Yeah. Well, you can also drink calendula. And it’s really very helpful for a variety of digestive problems. It is a cooling agent. It’s going to be a little bit drying and a little bit tonifying. So, if you were just having a bunch of dry cramping problems, then maybe this isn’t the right herb. But when there’s inflammation, when there’s laxity in the mucous membranes, and especially when there’s leaky gut going on, calendula is one of the very first herbs that we think of. Because it does astringe, and it does tonify those tissues while encouraging the generation of healthy new tissue in areas that have been inflamed, or even ulcerated, or something like that. So, it’s just an extremely helpful agent like that. And yeah, again, tea, tincture, powder, poultice, compress, soaks are really great with calendula.

Katja (01:04:18):
Yeah. You know, also calendula has a lovely lymphatic action. And that is something really important in the digestive system, especially if maybe everybody’s eating food that is not necessarily optimal for their own bodies. Then that’s going to be very helpful not just in moving that lymph but also in healing any damage to the digestive tract. But it’s important to recognize that that lymphatic action is topically stimulating as well. And so when there is a wound that you’re caring for, then you still need to move the lymph, even if it’s up to the closed top part of your skin. That still is a factor involved. And we need to make sure that just everything is flowing very freely. Not necessarily gushing, but just that everything’s able to move around. And that you don’t have stagnation in that lymph because if you do, you can’t more nutrition to the area through the blood. And with no fresh nutrition, then you can’t grow any new cells. So, we need to have that internally and externally. So it’s something that I really like to think a lot about with calendula. And I appreciate that.

Ryn (01:05:35):
Cool. All right. So, also related to some digestive troubles is one of your absolute favorites.

Ginger-Chamomile & Betony-Skullcap-Passionflower

Katja (01:05:40):
Ah, ginger-chamomile. And I know we’ve talked about this a million times, so we don’t even really need to. Except I do want to mention one thing. Don’t neglect to ginger-chamomile as a wound wash as well. Chamomile is tremendously strong in terms of antiseptic action and wound care ability. And ginger is a lovely anti-inflammatory. And also the warming action really helps again to help with keeping all of the flow going, the circulatory flow, but just all of the flow in the area with that warmth. So even though we usually talk about it in digestive terms. Or I’ve talked about it for headaches and for emotional and psychological stuff. It also has wonderful wound care applications. So it’s sort of like two plants that literally, if those were the only two plants you had, you could do an amazing amount of work.

Ryn (01:06:44):
So good. You know, we’ve kind of been focusing so far on wound care, and acute problems, and stuff like that. Acute like traumatic sort of problems. I mean, we talked a bit about upset stomachs, and digestive complaints, and that kind of thing. But I always find it important to remind myself about first aid that some of the most common situations that people need help with are actually more emotional and mental rather than strictly physical in nature.

Katja (01:07:16):
Or even if they have a physical thing that you’re dealing with, we can’t neglect the emotional and the psychological aspect of it. It’s not like you can just bandage them up and ship them out. You kind of also need to give them a hug, and there are herbs that can do that.

Ryn (01:07:30):
Yeah. Yeah. And I an anxiety attack is just as overwhelming as a sprained ankle or whatever else.

Katja (01:07:37):
And just as debilitating.

Ryn (01:07:39):
Yeah. It takes them off of the team basically. So, we do need to have remedies for that. And there are so many different nervines. And we do often try to be specific and choose the right one for the situation, and the individual, and the constitution, and everything else. But I’ll also say that when I’m packing a kit, and I don’t know who it is I’m going to be working with, or working on, or anything like that, then I might put in a little combo of betony with skullcap and passionflower. Because that is effective for a really decent variety of people and for a pretty broad array of problems. So, it’s a nice blend for an anxiety attack. It’s a good blend for mitigating panic. It can also though help with some kinds of depressive states or people feeling like they’ve lost motivation. But it’s kind of major thing that ties all of this together is that this is a remedy for embodiment. This is a remedy for bringing people into their body, into the present moment and getting them out of their worries, and their fears, and their anxieties about the future and the past. So, that kind of like presencing medicine is very, very important to get people to stay focused where they are. I’m not going to call this a remedy for shock, but it’s pointing in the same kind of direction. You know, a lot of what’s going on with shock is that the person is losing connection to their body. And a lot of the remedies for that are really about get you here. Come back to the moment. There drops of Cayenne tincture, or whatever it may be. It sounds harsh. It sounds intense. And it is, it kind of has to be when it’s something that severe. But for milder degrees of the same type of problem…

Katja (01:09:35):
Or for after the cayenne tincture.

Ryn (01:09:38):
Right, yeah. Then that betony, skullcap, passionflower combo was really nice. It also doubles as a remedy that can be useful for people who are having some insomnia or some inability to settle down and rest.

Katja (01:09:51):
That’s going to be super important for you and anybody else who is doing response work because you get in that adrenaline state. And when it’s time to sleep, you need to sleep, but it’s really hard to do that. It’s really hard to come down from that place and allow yourself to go to sleep because you’re really in your emergency response space.

Ryn (01:10:18):
Yeah. And I guess that kind of is a thing to pay attention to as well. You need to take care of the caretakers.

Katja (01:10:27):
Yeah. So critical.

Ryn (01:10:29):
And you go into this in a lot of detail in the Emergent Responder course, but one of the big ideas is that you can have a team of folks who are going to be the free clinic, or the herbal medics, or whatever. You’re going to help people out. And one of the people on that team is the caretaker or the team provider.

Katja (01:10:49):
Yeah. The person who really is focused on caring for the team. And you really, you really do need to have a person who’s dedicated to that because it is very, very important. I want to say one of the things about your betony, skullcap, and passionflower blend there because I just can’t help myself. Normally I’m in a position of advocating for psychological and emotional first aid, and including that, and whatever. And it shouldn’t all just be big heroic medicine. But I do also need to say that that blend is really excellent for concussions, and for whiplash support, and any kind of cervical spine injury support, any kind of pinched-ness between the shoulder blades up through the neck. That is going to be a lovely blend there as well. So, not to turn it into a heroic medicine, but…

Ryn (01:11:48):
No, hey it’s true, right? Yeah, that is true.

Katja (01:11:52):
That is true, which just means you should have twice as much of it.

Prepare for What is Most Likely

Ryn (01:11:57):
Yeah. Be prepared. So, there’s a lot of other things that we could talk about. I mean, we didn’t really even talk about asthma attack.

Katja (01:12:03):
Oh, I know. There’s so much here.

Ryn (01:12:05):
We could say two works, which would be lobelia tincture, but there’s obviously more to it than that. So, there’s lots of different things that we could get to there. We could be talking about exhaustion and adaptogens. We could be talking about all kinds of different aspects. But a lot of the root of this is you need to think and prepare for what is most likely to happen. So if you know you’re in a part of the country where there’s a particular communicable illness that would be a part of a post-disaster work, then you need to be prepared for that. If there are bugs that are going to be in your part of the world. And if you’re not living in a modern, clean situation, then they’re going to start to be more and more of a reality for you.

Katja (01:12:47):
And even stuff like if you live in a place where fires are the issue, then thinking about lung support. Versus if you’re in a place where cold or water is the issue, then you’re thinking about okay, actually water has a lot of directions of problems. But you’re thinking about…

Ryn (01:13:06):
Too little, too much.

Katja (01:13:08):
Yeah, you’re thinking about supporting the digestive system and supporting all of the body barriers and stuff like that. And if you are in a place where heat is going to be the major focus, then you’re thinking about totally different plants. So, all the way around, it’s really just important to spend some time getting aware. And being prepared doesn’t mean you’re a crazy tin foil hat person. Being prepared just means that you’re a responsible adult. So, it’s not weird to spend some time really thinking about that and making sure that you are ready so that you are not somebody who needs to be rescued. You’re somebody who can contribute to the rescue effort. Not that there’s any… I mean, if you do need to be rescued, then we just feel really grateful.

Ryn (01:14:02):
Then you need to be. Yeah.

Katja (01:14:03):
Right. Then we feel grateful that there are people who are able to do that. And even if you plan, sometimes things go sideways.

Ryn (01:14:10):
Yeah, and it’s not a binary thing either. It can be like all right, I’m here. I’m able to stay hunkered down for this period of time. And then I do need a rescue because my meds are going to run out or my whatever’s going to happen. Those are real. But for anybody, no matter what your degree of mobility, or baseline health, or whatever else, there’s always something that you can do to be a little more resilient, a little more… I don’t like the word independent so much, but…

Katja (01:14:41):
Actually, so I’m listening to Michelle Obama’s book Becoming, the audio book right now. And she’s just telling her life story in this book. But there was a really beautiful example of that in that her father had MS. And they lived in a part of Chicago that had fires very frequently. And when they were children they decided, like the whole family said well, dad can’t run. And so we need to make a plan for what would happen if we had a fire. And so they did. And dad was a hero in the community, and dad was a really strong person. Just he couldn’t run, so they had to make a plan for that. And that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t going to also be able to be a resilient part of supporting the community in other ways. But they all sat down, and there’s this whole part of the book where they talk about how they made a plan for that.

Ryn (01:15:37):
And practiced.

Katja (01:15:39):
Yeah, and they practiced. And I think that’s really important. Because even if you are a person who has a back injury, or a chronic illness, or any kind of a disability or mobility impairment, that doesn’t mean that you can’t plan to be of service. You totally can.

Ryn (01:15:57):
Cool. All right, well if you’d like some help with your planning, then let’s get one more plug for Katja’s series of courses there. We call it the Emergent Responder bundle. And that has two components to it. One is the Community Disaster Response: First Aid and Long-Term Care course. And the other one is the Community Disaster Response: Emergency Clinic Management. So, you can take either one. You can take both. You can get a bundle pricing I think on there.

Katja (01:16:28):
Take it with your friends.

Ryn (01:16:31):
Yeah. Share this knowledge, right? Get those ideas out there. So yes, you can find that the same way you find all of our other courses.

Katja (01:16:40):
Commonwealthherbs.com/learn.

Ryn (01:16:43):
There you go. All right. Well, we’ll be back with another podcast next week.

Katja (01:16:47):
Our podcasts are getting longer.

Ryn (01:16:49):
They are getting a little bit longer. I’m actually going to be away next Friday. And I don’t know if we were planning to like…

Katja (01:16:54):
We have a plan.

Ryn (01:16:55):
Do we have one?

Katja (01:16:56):
We have one.

Ryn (01:16:57):
Okay. We have a secret plan, which I will learn about sometime soon.

Katja (01:17:01):
That’s right.

Ryn (01:17:02):
And then you’ll hear about it later. All right, everybody. Have a good week.

Katja (01:17:07):
Bye bye.