Podcast 247: Herbalists’ Views on the Top-Selling Herbs (Part 4): Green Tea, Fenugreek, Ivy Leaf

We discuss green tea, fenugreek, and ivy leaf in this, the fourth part of an episodic sequence about the best-selling herbs in the US.

Our primary purpose for creating this series of episodes is to share an understanding of these herbs from the perspectives of traditional and contemporary herbal practice. Frequently, the high-volume sales of these herbs comes along with oversimplified or diminished ideas about what they can do. If we ask “what does this herb help with?” and answer it based only on what we see on store shelves and product websites, we’ll miss out on a lot of possibilities!

Every herbalist practicing in the US today should be familiar with these herbs, because they are the ones your clients are most likely to be taking even before they show up for an appointment with you. Their use may have implications for your own herbal recommendations, or serve as a jumping-off point for a more involved protocol. You may also be able to advise your clients about alternatives which may serve them better, or even some supplements that aren’t really worth the price.

So overall, this series is both an example of materia medica study and also a guide to ‘marketing literacy’ for supplements.

10. Green Tea – Camellia sinensis

• Green Tea at Herbal Reality

11. Fenugreek – Trigonella foenum-graecum

• Fenugreek at Herbal Reality

12. Ivy Leaf – Hedera helix

• “Hedera.-Ivy.” in King’s American Dispensatory, 1898

Find the previous episode of this series here:

• HHP 240: Herbalists’ Views on the Top-Selling Herbs (Part 1): Psyllium, Elderberry, Turmeric, Ashwagandha
• HHP 244: Herbalists’ Views on the Top-Selling Herbs (Part 2): Apple Cider Vinegar, Cranberry
• HHP 246: Herbalists’ Views on the Top-Selling Herbs (Part 3): Wheatgrass, Beet Root, & Ginger

Whether you’re a brand-new beginner or an herbalist with experience, it’s always helpful to study the herbs in depth! Our comprehensive presentation of herbal allies is in our Holistic Herbalism Materia Medica course. It includes detailed profiles of 100 medicinal herbs!

Like all our offerings, this self-paced online video course comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Episode Transcript

Ryn (00:14):
Hi, I’m Ryn. And I’m here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts and on the internet everywhere thanks to the power of the podcast. Today we’re going to be continuing our series on the top-selling herbs in the United States. This is part four of the series. If you haven’t seen the others, you can find them in our feed right here. Today we’re going to be talking about green tea, and also black tea, and other of those because they’re all from the same plant. We’re going to talk about fenugreek and about ivy leaf. So, these are top sellers number 10, 11, and 12 for the data we’ve got to work with. So, before I dive right into that, I want to just remind everybody that I’m not a doctor. I’m an herbalist. I’m a holistic health educator. So, the ideas discussed in this podcast do not constitute medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalist in the US. So, these discussions, these episodes are for educational purposes only. I want to remind you that good health doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. Good health doesn’t exist as an objective standard. It’s influenced by your individual needs, your experiences, and your goals. So, please keep in mind I’m not attempting to present a single dogmatic right way that you must adhere to. Everyone’s body is different. So, the things we’re talking about may or may not apply directly to you. But we hope that they’ll give you some more information to think about and some ideas to research and to experiment with further. Finding your way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility. This doesn’t mean that you’re alone on the journey, and it doesn’t mean that you’re to blame for your current state of health. But it does mean that the final decision when you’re considering any course of action, whether it’s discussed on the internet or prescribed by a physician, that’s always your choice to make.

Ryn (01:56):
All right. So, continuing our series talking about top-selling herbs in commerce in the United States. This is coming out of data from a market report put out by the American Botanical Council every year. We’re looking at the data from 2023 because that’s the most recent stuff that we’ve got to work with here. And in previous episodes in this series, we’ve talked about psyllium, elderberry, turmeric, ashwagandha, apple cider vinegar, cranberry, wheatgrass, beetroot, and ginger. So, those are all doing really good out there in the world. People are buying those and liking them. And today, like I said, yeah, we’re talking about tea, green tea, fenugreek, and ivy leaf. So, let’s get right into it.

#10 Green Tea: Energy Support & Weight Loss Claims

Ryn (02:46):
When we say green tea, we’re talking about the plant, botanical name Camellia sinensis. Previously it was known as Thea or Thea, right, and that’s where that’s connected to that word tea. Thea sinensis. But nowadays Camellia is what we call that. And that plant is what produces green tea, but also black tea, white tea, oolong tea, silver tea. And all of those differences are just about the way you process the herb after it’s been harvested. If the plant is harvested and then just dried, then we get the green tea. There’s a process called withering that gives you white tea if you just do that. If it gets what they call fermented, but it’s really an oxidative process, that’s how we get from green tea to oolong tea and then to black tea as you let that process progress. But anyway, again, these are all about post-harvest processing of the plant material. It all originates from the same plant, same herb.

Ryn (03:49):
And so all of those different versions of tea, the tea plant, the tea drink, they have similar chemistry. But there are some differences as they transform. I’m going to talk here today about catechins as one of the key groups of beneficial constituents found in this plant. Those catechins can be transformed or altered when that withering process is done, or when that quote-unquote fermentation process the oxidative process is done. Ane again, it can result in some related chemistry, maybe not quite as potent. When it comes to potency for anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, which are at the root of a lot of the benefits of green tea or the tea plant in general. The maximum way to get the most benefit from those is to have it as green tea rather than oolong, or black tea, or others. Now for flavor reasons you might prefer one of those others, and that’s fine. You’re still getting a ton of benefit. You don’t have to be like ah, well, I have to drink green tea if I want to be healthy. You can have your black tea. That’s totally fine. But I’m trying to explain why when it comes to supplements, and when it comes to supplements that are targeting some of these key, well-studied, understood constituents, that they’re doing it with quote-unquote green tea. Okay.

Ryn (05:19):
So, when we look at these things on the shelf in a supermarket, or on a website like Amazon, or Vita cost, or one of these things. And we say all right, well, what are these being marketed for? The people who sell you a green tea capsule, what are they telling you it’s good for? What are they suggesting that you’re going to do with it? And again, we’re taking that perspective. You know, I’m assuming if you’re listening or watching this, you’re an herbalist or you’re interested in herbs. Maybe you’ve got some knowledge, some training already. But a lot of people, their only exposure to these things is through such advertising. And so it’s a good exercise for us practitioners and herb people to look at things from our perspective and try to adopt the perspective of somebody who doesn’t know anything about plants at all. They see this product on the shelf. What are they going to see? What’s going to catch their eye? What’s going to draw them to that? And a lot of times it’s the claims or the things that the person is saying this is for, or this is going to support, or this is going to help as they market it. So, with green tea supplements, they’re advertised primarily as quote-unquote energy support, right, which really just means it’s a way to say this is going to stimulate you. This is going to give you energy. It’s going to make you feel powerful.

Ryn (06:30):
There’s also very frequently either an explicit or an implied claim that you’re going to take this green tea product, and it’s going to help you lose weight. This is going to be in the category of a weight loss aid supplement. So, I won’t spend a lot of time on that discussion today. But I just want to make a little note as we do whatever this topic comes up, that weight loss and herbs are very frequently misstated. They’re very frequently overstated. There are a lot of false promises that are being made out there by people who make, and sell, and promote herbal supplements. And other kinds of supplements as well such as amino acids and all kinds of things. When it comes to weight, and body fat percentages, and things like that, your body will resist a lot of your efforts to change them. In many cases or to a large extent, these things are established in the course of puberty, and your body establishes a sort of a set point for you. And it says this is the amount of fat mass I want to maintain on my body. And I’m going to fight to maintain that and sustain that over long periods of time.

Ryn (07:50):
You can make changes in these things, but you can’t do it fast. Not if you want it to last. Not if you want it to be sustainable. And any product that promises you fast weight loss is something you should look at with a lot of skepticism and a lot of caution. If you choose to work with such a thing, you should be very, very careful. In general I advise against it. If we’re interested in losing weight, actually often my first discussion is going to be what is the underlying goal behind that? Are you actually concerned about health? Are you concerned about appearance? We can work with that, right? I don’t want to dismiss that either. But just to be clear that we need to understand why this is something you’re focusing on. In a lot of cases, it’s because people have been told this is the only way. This is the most important thing to do for them to get healthier. Oh, your knees hurt. Well, it’s probably just because you’re overweight. And if you would just shed some pounds, then you would feel fine. This is something that’s said to a lot of people who have serious connective tissue problem or have a chronic inflammatory issue that may not actually be related to their weight at all. And they may be dismissed. They may not receive the best possible care because there’s this bias, this fat phobia in our society, and especially in our medical culture. So, to the extent that this touches on the herbal world, which is pretty vast, there are a lot of supplement products, let’s say. I don’t regard all of them as fully herbal in nature, because they might be working with isolated constituents, or just very high-powered extracts, or other things that drift them further and further away from the plants in your garden, or the plants in your jars on the shelf, or things like that.

Ryn (09:25):
But anyway, be cautious about weight loss aids. Be skeptical about promises of fat loss being something rapid, being something that can be both fast and sustained over time. Because in general, that doesn’t turn out to be true. If people want to work with green tea for other reasons, then that’s totally fine. But I would just give a lot of salt to claims about yeah, swallow these capsules. Don’t change anything else about your diet habits, your movement habits, your sleep, the stresses you undergo and how you cope with them, and it’ll just magically go away. That is extremely unrealistic. and not something that I want anybody to go around expecting because you’re going to be disappointed, okay? But listen. There’s a lot more to green tea and to supplements made from it than the caffeine, right? The idea of energy support and the idea of weight loss aid are focused on caffeine. If we stimulate your metabolism, it will raise your basal metabolic rates. And then you’ll be burning calories without even thinking about it. That’s the idea behind that, okay? It doesn’t really turn out that way in a free-living human, but that’s the idea. Energy support here is really just in the sense of well, if we stimulate you, you’ll feel like you’ve got more energy. This is not energy support in the sense of improving mitochondrial efficiency, right? This is not energy support in the sense of making sure your body has all the nutrients available to you, that you can power your metabolism flexibly and fluidly as you go through different changes in the course of your day.

#10 Green Tea Energetics & Catechins

Ryn (11:04):
No, this is about caffeine, right? And caffeine is a powerful chemical. It’s got strong activity, and it’s not something that we can ignore. Caffeine is going to have a drying influence. When we look at this herb from an energetic perspective, we see an herb that is heating, yes. Stimulating, activating, moving, metabolically enhancing, yeah. Okay, sure, so heating. Drying, because caffeine is a strong diuretic, and it’s going to eliminate fluids from your system, okay? And tonifying, tightening, tensioning is the third quality that we have there. And so we should never ignore the energetic aspects of our plants because they are our direct observations of the influence of that herb on our physiology. And I think people run into a problem where they know a particular plant from cultural context. From just being familiar with it as a food item or some other substance that people work with often. And they drift away from even thinking about energetics with that, even when they’re trained in it, right?

Ryn (12:09):
So, we see this happen with tea. We see it happen with coffee. We see it happen with cannabis, and tobacco, and kratom. And a lot of times it’s because people are enchanted by the famous chemical, the powerful alkaloid, or some other agent there. So, when we think about tea and about caffeine, I don’t want to ignore it. But I want to point out that other chemistry in this plant has also been very well studied and characterized and is contributing a lot to the benefits that we observe. So, we can talk today about catechins, about theanine, and about theophylline. These are just three constituents or constituent groups found in a tea plant that are really active and are contributing a lot to the benefits that it exerts in our bodies. When we think about green tea, it’s a health food. It’s a famous health food. It’s up there with brown rice, and seaweed, and things like this as a health food. And people have had that idea about it, that reputation since at least the seventies in the US. It’s very widespread, very well understood, right? So, green tea is kind of famous in that regard, and it is indeed an excellent anti-inflammatory.

Ryn (13:29):
A lot of the activity in that direction is attributed to the catechin content. Catechins are an interesting group of constituents for a number of different reasons. One of the ones that I like to talk about is that when you start with that chemical in the plant. So, the plant is doing its metabolism. It’s transforming and complicating different molecules inside of its body inside of itself and creating these metabolites, these constituents, these things that are part of its chemical nature and its contribution to its medicinal activity. With catechins the plant goes through a series of transformations where it makes catechin, and then it continues to complexify or to build onto that molecule as time goes forward, right? And what is convenient for us about this is that the longer the molecule becomes, the more pieces attached to it, the longer its name gets at the same time. So, we start with catechin. We attach a piece, and we have epicatechin. We attach another piece, and we have epigallocatechin. We attach another one, and we have epigallocatechin gallate. And I’m going to stop there. The chain does keep on going for a while. But that one, EGCG is the way people usually refer to that. That is the most potent catechin as far as we understand them so far in terms of anti-inflammatory activity, antioxidant activity.

Ryn (15:01):
And that’s really, really beneficial in human health, especially in the modern era where we’re coping with an epidemic of chronic inflammatory disorders. Where we have multiple inputs through food habits, stress exposures, sleep or lack thereof, habits that are pretty widespread, sedentary lifestyles. All these things create, generate, or sustain inflammation in the body. And so we’ve got to work on anti-inflammatory agents. Green tea is rich in them. EGCG is a really powerful one. You will even see the occasional supplement where they have standardized for the level of catechins as a group or EGCG in particular. And this is the rationale for why that’s done, right? So, if you see a green tea product. And you read the label, and you notice that it’s talking about guaranteed to contain X percent catechins or X percent EGCG. This is the reason why they’re bothering to put that on the label. It’s for the people who know that these are the anti-inflammatory components, and they are excited that they’re being guaranteed a particular amount of that. It’s hard to make a green tea extract that doesn’t have a really rich presentation of these things. So, I wouldn’t stress too much about efforts to enhance bioavailability or to power that up even further, because the level you get from drinking some cups of green tea is great. The level you get from a standard dose of a normal capsule of these things is really solid. And so you don’t need to be going to the nth degree to try to get these into your body. The catechins and EGCG, right, they’re all, like I said, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory as a result.

Ryn (16:45):
And because of those two, we can branch out into a whole bunch of other action terms for these things. We can say they’re anticarcinogenic. That they’re cardioprotective. That they’re anti-diabetic, right? And again, in most cases, the root of those endpoint action terms for what the plant has accomplished in the body is due to reducing inflammation or improving the efficiency of the inflammatory process so that it can work where it’s needed. But it can run its course and then be gone rather than just sticking around forever, right? And that can indeed protect your heart, and help to maintain blood sugar control, and reduce the propensity for nascent tumors to develop into a full-blown cancer. So yeah, all of that is real. Now I was talking about the catechins and how they develop into longer and longer molecules as the time goes forward, as the plant’s metabolism continues, right? The interesting thing is that something kind of in the reverse happens when you steep it, right? So, what happens when you steep it is that the smallest molecules come out first. So, that includes caffeine, actually. It’s just highly water soluble is what’s really going on with that. But with the catechins, you get the smallest catechins come out first, and then the slightly longer, more complex ones, and then the third level, and then the EGCG level, and so on, right?

Steeping Time, Caffeine Actions, & Theanine

Ryn (18:11):
So, what this all means is that the longer you steep your tea, the more of these things you get out into the water, the part that you’re going to drink, okay. Unfortunately, what you also get at the same time, or as you allow it to run on you get more and more of condensed tannins from this as well. And the tannins are astringent, and they can also have a bitter flavor to them at the same time. So, what happens is that the longer you steep your tea, the more bitter it becomes, the more astringent it becomes. And so in a sense there’s kind of a Goldilocks zone here where you would want to maximize your extraction of the catechins and EGCG in particular. But you might not want to let it run on indefinitely, because now it’s going to become less pleasant to drink. And maybe even for some people very sensitive to tonification, that astringent effect, you might be risking gut cramps or other kinds of discomfort if you’re prone to that kind of reaction. This is also the reason why for a tea enthusiast – somebody who’s got a tea shop, a tea bar, or does the tea ceremony as part of their practice or whatever – there’s often a very specific and brief steeping time recommended for when you’re going to prepare green tea, or black tea, or other preparations from this plant.

Ryn (19:37):
This is a question of flavor rather than medicinal potency, right? So, usually when it’s like yeah, steep this for 60 seconds, 90 seconds, 45 seconds, whatever. The idea there is we’re going to; you are guaranteed a good caffeine extraction. That’s guaranteed, right? And then we want to get the flavor and the aromatic elements, but we don’t want to let it become bitter. We don’t want to get it astringent like that, right? And so that’s why those shorter steep times happen. For me when I make green tea, or black tea, or others, I usually steep it more like five minutes, you know? For me that’s a pretty good Goldilocks zone where I feel confident that I’ve gotten a ton of the anti-inflammatory components out of there and into my drink. But it’s not so astringent that I’m getting some cramping. And I am actually one of the people I mentioned who’s kind of prone to that kind of thing. I’ve prepared tea in ways where it was giving me that kind of issue. But in general, for most green or black tea that I work with, five minutes is great. It is a little more astringent. It is a little bitter. But, you know, I’m an herbalist. I’m used to that. I even enjoy it. So that’s how I do it, for whatever that’s worth to you. I do want to make one other note though, that the long steeping like that, it’s possible… There’s some kind of back and forth on whether this really happens, but it’s plausible. And experientially I think it is real that when you steep it really long like that, the caffeine itself can bind up with some of these polyphenols. And it can slow down the uptake by your body of the caffeine.

Ryn (21:24):
This, I think, is one of the things that can contribute to a smoother stimulant effect of tea in comparison to coffee. Just not hitting you with all the caffeine all at once, real hot. And with coffee there’s also this issue of the impact of some other bitter components in coffee stimulating liver action but also slowing down liver metabolism of caffeine. And so it’s like when you work with coffee because of what else is in that drink, the caffeine hits you faster and stays with you a little bit longer. With green tea it moves into your system more slowly but at a nice, measured pace. So, you do get some stimulation, but you’re not as prone to being shaky, you know? And there’s another component in tea that contributes to that prevention of the jitteriness or the aah, agitated feeling when you get your caffeine from tea. And that is theanine.

Ryn (22:26):
And this is sometimes written as l-theanine or theanine. Say it however you want, right? This is a compound that’s found in these plants, in Camellia plants. And it’s actually sedative or at the very least anxiolytic. Now remember when I say sedative, I don’t mean it makes you sleep. I mean calms down agitation or over excitation, usually of the nerves, but it could be of another tissue as well, right? In this case we are talking about the nerves. Theanine is calming to the nerves. It quiets down their firing rate, how many zaps per second that they’re sending up, right? And so theanine can help you to feel calmer, more centered, more focused on what you’re doing. And in tea it mitigates some of the stimulant effect of the caffeine. It helps you to both be alert, awake, energetic, but also not distracted, not thrown off. Just present, right? And I am talking about mild to moderate doses of tea, right? When you drink a ton of it yeah, the caffeine is going to dominate, and you might start to get jittery, right? That’s real. People have varying degrees of sensitivity. So, some people might get jittery at a dose that someone else just feels calm and focused. That’s real, okay? But again, if you were to compare giving yourself the same dose of caffeine as tea versus as coffee. In general the dose of that through tea is going to help you to feel centered, focused, present, and alert, right? So, this is why I am always saying that if I’m going to go and do some physical activity, exercise, labor, whatever, then I’m going to have coffee. If I’m going to do thought work, if I’m going to write, if I’m going to read, if I’m going to study, then it’s time for green tea. That’s the way I kind of divide that personally.

Ryn (24:19):
Theanine and l-theanine again, is the way you’re going to see that written. You can find that as a supplement itself. That is an isolate, right? That is a single constituent extract of the plant. And those can have problems sometimes. This particular one is very safe, and it doesn’t really have adverse effects or side effects for you if you take isolated theanine. So, this is an example of an herbal isolate, which can be quite beneficial, and many people find it very helpful. So, feel free to work with that. But at the same time, and just for general education purposes here, there are some herbal isolates that are less helpful or less safe than the herbs that they’re derived from. We’re herbalist here. And in a lot of cases our perspective is you know what? Don’t go with that single compound removed from everything else in the herb. Go with the actual herb. There’s a lot of reasons, a lot of cases where that’s going to be the better choice. For this particular one, if you try a theanine capsule, and it helps you to feel calm and centered. That’s great. Go ahead and take that. Oh yeah, one other note on theanine. This does also seem to have some beneficial effects on what we call immune surveillance. The capacity of your immune system to recognize when there’s a nascent infection and to take care of it before it really develops. So, that’s another nice benefit in terms of immune function that we get there.

Theophylline, Antiseptic Qualities, & Taking Tea

Ryn (25:51):
Okay. Another compound found in green tea is called theophylline. And theophylline is structurally related to caffeine. It’s similar, but it doesn’t act in exactly the same way. Instead, it serves as a relaxant to smooth muscle. So, rather than having a tonifying effect, this particular compound has a relaxing one specific to smooth muscle. So, that’s muscle that could be found around the blood vessels. And this is one of the ways where even though the herb does contain caffeine, at moderate doses and over time it can help to bring down some blood pressure, right? But one of the more immediate places you would feel the effect of theophylline would be in the lungs. Because it can operate on the smooth muscle in the lungs themselves and in the bronchi, the little tubes inside the lungs, and help them to relax and to dilate, to open up. And that makes it easier for you to breathe and to get your oxygen. So, that’s found in green tea as well. And there are these respiratory benefits of working with that plant.

Ryn (27:02):
One other thing about tea, and this is one that you would definitely not encounter in any of the supplement products or any of their kind of advertising and that kind of stuff, is that tea is actually surprisingly effective as a topical antiseptic. Now, if you had a wound. And you were away from your home herbal apothecary, and you had to care for a wound. You could do worse than to get some green tea bags or some black tea bags, soak them in hot water for a couple of minutes. And then take the whole teabag all soaked and wet and put that right on the wound. The teabag is going to prevent the herbal powder from getting into the wound itself. But it’s a great, on-the-spot poultice, and it will combat infection. It will stimulate healing. It will enhance the efficiency of the local inflammatory process. So, it’s quite handy for that kind of thing. This is particularly good for soaks, and baths, and compresses where there’s a rash or some other kind of fungal skin infection. So for athlete’s foot you could prepare a strong foot bath of green or black tea and soak your feet in there. Be warned, you will get some transdermal uptake of caffeine. So, this is more of a morning thing to do than right before bed, okay. All right. Internally, the most relevant aspects here about antimicrobial effects of tea are going to be in the mouth and the stomach. So, if you have a dental infection, if you have a gum infection, if you have an abscess and you make some… This time make it really strong. Steep it too long to be pleasant to drink, right? Bitter, very astringent, but then take that and swish with it and spit it out. Or swish it and hold it in the mouth for a minute at a time and then go ahead and spit it out. And do that repeatedly through the course of your day. And that will help to combat the dental or the gum infection for you very effectively.

Ryn (29:00):
When you, when you drink green tea, it could potentially help with some stomach infections. Probably not lower in the GI tract, like all the way down in your bowels, okay? But in your stomach, yeah. And there’s some decent evidence about green tea as a drink being helpful for the infection called H. pylori. This is something that can contribute to ulcers. It’s often going to overgrow in the stomach as a result of lowered stomach acid levels. It’s not something that will just like appear out of nowhere in an otherwise healthy system, okay? And many, many people have H. pylori as a commensal. It’s one of the organisms that lives in their body, but it’s not causing a problem, right? So, I think part of the reason why green tea can be effective against H. pylori is that it will stimulate stomach acid production, okay? Anytime we work with a caffeine bearing plant, when it touches the stomach, it does stimulate stomach acid production there. Even as it’s being absorbed and acting on nervous tissue, and your brain, and your mind, and all of that, it is acting on all these local tissues as well. So, I think part of the benefit of green tea for an infection like H. pylori is both direct antimicrobial effect of the herb and its chemistry. And then also that influence of increasing stomach acid production there, which is like your own innate defense against microbial invasion. So, two for one.

Ryn (30:29):
One more note on tea. The framing for this episode in the series is about products you would go and find in the store. And for green tea extracts and products, they’re going to be capsules. Almost all of them are that way. There might be some green tea extract gummies available now or soon. And of course you can buy the tea, and you can just drink that. And that’s fantastic, and I love it. But I just wanted to make a side note for herbalists that you can tincture Camellia. You can tincture the tea plant. And it can be a helpful thing to have on hand for times when you need to be wakeful. I don’t know. You have to drive through the night. You have to stay up late and be the guard for the camp. Whatever it is that you’re doing. I’m not talking about every day. I’m talking about like an acute situation. I do need a stimulant. Probably it’s a case where you need it as soon as possible with not too much fuss. And so we often keep a tincture or a formula that includes some caffeine plants in there on hand for a circumstance like that. It is also possible to go ahead and make a tincture of your green tea and then take it in very measured doses. To take three drops, five drops, seven drops and see where your personal limit is. To be like I want just enough of a stimulation to keep me focused but not so much that I get jittery. Maybe you’re somebody who knows if you do drink a whole 8-, 12-ounce mug of green tea, that would actually be too much caffeine for your body, and you would get jittery, right? If you make a tincture, you can go a drop at a time. And give it an hour or two or a day between each dose level you try and see how it affects you, right? So, that could be a way that you could find your Goldilocks zone for that. Okay. All right.

#11 Fenugreek: A Traditional Digestive with Moistening Action

Ryn (32:22):
So, let’s move on here and talk about number 11 on the top seller’s list. That’s fenugreek: Trigonella foenum-graecum. A very fancy Latin name on this one. So, with fenugreek, the traditions around this herb are largely focused on digestive benefit. Fenugreek has both a bitter element in its flavor and a sweet element. And so this is an herb that can stimulate digestive movement and activity, resolve stagnations that are present in the digestive tract, but it can also be supportive and building. In traditional context the sweet flavor is associated with building the mass of the body, building resilience and stamina even, right? Remember, this was in context when sweet wasn’t as easy to come across as it is now, right? And we didn’t have isolated sugar, and candy everywhere, and all of that. So, traditional views on sweet-flavored foods, which would’ve included rice and other grains in those times and then also herbs like fenugreek, or licorice, or fennel. The sweet is seen as restorative or building to kind of baseline energy and mass in the body. And we’re going to see the way that some of those attributes manifest in fenugreek both in traditional perspectives and in contemporary ideas. So, the thing is though, modern products, modern capsules and supplements of fenugreek, they’re almost all focused on, and marketed for, or labeled to support endocrine health, hormonal health, hormonal balance.

Ryn (34:08):
Those are the kind of ideas that are floating around regarding this plant in commercial contexts. So, this would include both phytoestrogenic activity of this plant, which in this case is real and significant enough to matter. I’ll talk about that in a second. But also an effect of this herb to improve blood sugar regulation. And especially in the past decade that has become more and more what you see fenugreek marketed for. Or the presentation that is being given is about blood sugar control. It tracks directly with the increasing rate of blood sugar control problems that people are experiencing. All right. So, but again, in traditional practice, including culinary tradition – what people eat – fenugreek is taken as a spice herb. And you can take significant doses of this through food. This is one kind of like turmeric where it’s not impossible to imagine a single serving of this that has a whole tablespoon of the powdered herb stirred into it. It would be strong, but it’s not unusual for these kinds of recipes. Fenugreek has this flavor that’s almost exactly like maple syrup. The sweet element of its flavor is a maple syrup sweetness, not a white sugar sweetness, not an apple sweetness, not a honey sweetness. It’s maple. Maple is what it tastes like. So it has that. And again, it has that hint of bitter. You kind of have to taste past the sweet or beyond it to taste the bitter, but it is present. And so like I said, that’s going to get you some digestive stimulation. It’s going to get you some liver activation. That’s probably relevant to some of the action of fenugreek on hormones in the body.

Ryn (36:00):
The goal of improving hormone coordination and hormone balance, if you want to use that word, is achieved in many ways. Not only through forcing your body to make more hormones. Or introducing something from a plant that functions similar enough to one of your own hormones that we call it a phytoestrogen, or a phytoandrogen, or whatever, right? Those aren’t the only ways that we can improve hormonal coordination or hormonal health. Another major way is by enhancing elimination, right? And so that’s generally through liver and kidney function. If we can enhance the elimination of waste products or you can say hormones that have done their job and now they’re getting flushed out, then that can also make a really big improvement in terms of hormonal health. And so I think that’s at least a piece of what fenugreek is bringing in that regard. Fenugreek is also a moistening herb. And amongst our demulcent plants, this one is both sweet and also mucilaginous. So, there’s this kind of broad category of demulcent herbs that function in regard to moisture in the body. They enhance the moisture of your tissue. They enhance the uptake, and the utilization, and the distribution of fluids throughout your system. But there are multiple types of demulcents. We’ve got bitter demulcents, and sweet demulcents, and slimy demulcents, and even some astringent demulcents now and then, right? We’ve got a whole range of them. So, fenugreek is a slimy demulcent or a mucilaginous one. And that means that if we infuse it in water we can see it get thicker, have greater viscosity, has a velvety or even a slimy-ish feeling when we taste it, or feel it, or drink it down.

Ryn (37:45):
And that that’s really going to bring fluid into the body and help your body hold onto it and utilize it well. But then again, because of that sweet flavor, this is also a sweet demulcent. And in that regard, it’s similar to licorice and to fennel, right? And sweet demulcents have this kind of coating effect on your mouth, and your esophagus, and even through your stomach a little bit where they’re very soothing to those tissues. They’re calming down irritation, especially like these kind of dry irritations. And it just makes this herb really, really helpful when we want to improve hydration status, fluid retention, and fluid movement in the system. If you take fenugreek as a powder. And you take a significant amount of that like a spoonful amount of that into water or stir into a meal or something that you eat, then that can actually function as a gentle laxative. This would be what we call a bulk laxative rather than a stimulant laxative like senna, okay? So, a bulk laxative also includes stuff like psyllium, right? Number one on the list. You can see these are always popular with humans. And the same would go along for something like if you take marshmallow powder, slippery elm powder. And you’re stirring that and taking that in directly, right? We get that bulking effect, right? Actually fenugreek is best if you take it in combination with something like psyllium, or flax, or chia, or one of those guys. And it could just be the two powders stirred together, and then you have that in your jar. Take a little spoon, make that in a little glass of water, and drink that down in the morning. And then drink a lot more water after it to follow. Yes, that would be good.

Ryn (39:24):
So, I find fenugreek here to be a really, really helpful herb to combine with drying plants, particularly in somebody who has a dry constitution already. Like maybe somebody really wants to work with turmeric. They’ve heard all the hype. They’re like this is going to be great. I’m going to bring down my inflammation. My joints are going to feel better. My brain’s going to function great. This is going to be good. But they’re really dried out, right? And so what if they take two parts turmeric and one part fenugreek. And that’s what they’re going to dose themselves with instead of straight up turmeric. That can be enough to mitigate the drying effect of a plant like that, right? So, that’s a really handy case to think about working with fenugreek.

Hormonal Effects of Fenugreek

Ryn (40:05):
So about those hormonal actions, right? When you take this plant in significant doses. And in some cases for this to take effect, we’re talking about doses of half an ounce, like 15 grams, 30 grams, a full ounce of that per day or more, okay? Or more in order to get observable significant effects on hormonal activity in the body. One of the places that’s most traditional in that regard is around milk production, right? So, this is the galactagogue effect of our plants. Fenugreek in this regard is very similar to fennel, and in fact they’re often combined together for that specific purpose. One thing I want to point out about both of these plants is that although they do both have some degree of phytoestrogenic activity. And like I said, in significant, large doses consistently every day for some period of time. That can start to become real and a big contributor to what we’re seeing here, right? But before that we’re going to get the more immediate impact of the demulcent effect, right? The sweet demulcent, the mucilaginous demulcent, the absorption, the utilization, the movement of water in the body. And when we’re talking about milk production, that matters a lot. I think that matters at least as much as these hormonal effects of the herb that are going to come with a big dose and with sustained intake.

Ryn (41:29):
It is similarly necessary to get a pretty significant dose of this plant in order to have an observable impact on your blood sugar levels. So, when I say a significant dose, that could mean that we’re talking about making tea, right, but making a lot of it or drinking a lot of it and making it strong. If you have an ounce of fenugreek seed every single day, and you prepare that into, you know, a couple quarts of tea that you drink over the course of that day. That’s kind of the level where we’re starting to see significant changes in your blood sugar test, your little test strip, your little jab into the finger kind of a thing. So, that can be achieved that way. It can also be achieved in supplement products these days. Because they can concentrate a lot of the chemistry in the plant, and they can refine it down into a fairly small capsule for you to swallow. But that could give you a significant dose. It’s possible for a capsule of fenugreek to be the equivalent of several grams worth of plant material. So, if you’re taking those every day, and you’re taking them consistently, we could get there. The thing is these effects travel together. And so in some cases that means that fenugreek might not be the best choice for one or another of these actions. So, as an example, maybe somebody had a breast cyst, but it’s kind of been dormant. It was detected some years back. Maybe it used to be more irritating, but it’s kind of faded away. And then they were going to take an herb to try to bring down their blood sugar levels, right? And they took fenugreek, and they took it in big amounts. They were doing like the herb of the month kind of a challenge thing, right? A quart of strong tea every single day or more for at least that long period of time.

Ryn (43:25):
We’ve had students who were doing that and had that background with the dormant breast cyst. And they did find the level of fenugreek that brought down their blood sugar pretty significantly on those tests. But that they also kind of awoke the cyst and got it inflamed, got some more fluid stagnating in it and around it. And so it was swollen, and so it was painful again. All right. So, we’ve seen that or something like that happen to a few people who have been working with fenugreek at those elevated doses. So, just keep that in mind that if you’re taking a dose of fenugreek strong enough to bring down your blood sugar, you are probably also inducing a pretty significant phytoestrogenic activity in your body. And that might be something you’re hoping for, it might be something that you really don’t want, or anywhere in between. So, try to consider and understand your context there if you’re going to work with that herb. Now for culinary amounts, for spicing your food enough to taste a little maple syrup sweetness in there, that’s generally not going to reach you to those levels. And when we talk about taking fenugreek as a component of a formula, right? Like I have four herbs and then fenugreek in my tea blend. Generally the amount you’re going to be exposed to that way is not enough to have a real significant effect on your sex hormones, your estrogen levels, or that kind of thing. And it may not have enough potency either to really significantly bring down your blood sugar. Now, if you’re also doing several other things that are contributing to improvements in your blood sugar regulation, you might get where you’re trying to go, right? What I’m saying is that if you’re not relying on fenugreek as the only intervention, the only agent to help your blood sugar normalize, then it can be an effective part of a team. Even at levels where just all by itself with no other change to habit, it wouldn’t really move that needle. All right.

#12 Ivy Leaf: Moving Stuck Fluids (& Lice)

Ryn (45:29):
Good. Okay. So, next up, last herb for this episode today is ivy leaf. So, this one in Latin is Hedera helix. Helix like a DNA, right? Like the twining ladder, the curving ladder because it grows like that. It grows in spirals. So, ivy leaf is an interesting one from the perspective of this market report, this data about top-selling plants. Because according to the chart, sales of ivy leaf products declined by 28, almost 30% from the prior year. It’s possible and I think it’s likely that some of this change is actually due to a recalibration of the inclusion criteria. And by that I mean which products they included in their assessments, which outlets or stores that they included in their data gathering to determine which products were being sold at what level. I think that this is related to something that happened a few years ago where there was this herb called horehound. That’s Marrubium vulgare. Horehound used to be right up at the top of the bestseller charts, right? There were several years where it was number one, and then it disappeared pretty much overnight. And it turns out that wasn’t because of a massive crash in the sales of horehound products or cough drops that contain it or whatever. It was because they changed the inclusion criteria to exclude a bunch of products that do contain horehound extracts and used to be included in the data for the table, but then they moved it out, right? So, I mention that in part to give some context about ivy leaf here, but also to give some context about this investigation that we’re doing in our series, right?

Ryn (47:16):
When we’re thinking about this, you can’t just say here’s the data, and it tells me everything I need to know. You want to say where did that data come from? How has that data changed over time? Is the report I’m looking at today using the same data set as the one that’s from 10 years ago? And if it’s not, it can lead to changes that might mislead you if you don’t have that sense of context and that awareness about what’s going on there. This is true in lots of things when it comes to science, and math, and economics, and whatever. That it’s easy to oversimplify. And it’s easy to miss the effect of something that’s separate from the behavior that you think you’re tracking or that you think you’re documenting. Okay. But let’s talk about ivy leaf itself, right? So, ivy leaf is a respiratory remedy. And that’s true through the tradition of the herb. That’s true through the modern expression of the plant in the market. Nowadays cough syrups, and cough drops, and products like that are the primary things you’re going to find that include ivy leaf extract. Sometimes you do see single herb products for ivy leaf. You can find them in capsules, tablets, whatever. Yes. But most often it’s going to be in a formula with a bunch of other herbs. And the ivy leaf extract is in there to be an expectorant, to stimulate the expulsion of phlegm from your lungs. To get that up and out, to clear your lungs for you. So yeah, so these are often multi-herb remedies. Like I say, there are tablets. There are capsules. There are single herb ivy leaf syrups and other things available out there. But more often you’re going to get these combo products, right? And for my part, I do think that it’s better to give ivy leaf some friends when you’re working with it. It seems to function a lot better that way.

Ryn (49:06):
It is very reliable for that purpose. You have a phlegmy cough, not a dry one. Not a rattling one where you cough and hack, but there’s nothing in there coming out. There’s nothing coming through. But one where there’s gunk, there’s phlegm. It feels heavy. There’s a wet sound to the breathing or to the coughing, right? Those are the times when you want ivy leaf. Kind of similar indications for other stimulating expectants like horehound or like elecampane. Those are the same kind of reasons that you would go ahead and work with ivy leaf. Now, the tradition about this plant does include a broader array of applications than just respiratory stuff, right? The respiratory stuff is there but also some topical applications for things like an ulcer, like a skin ulcer, or various rashes on the surface of the skin, and then also for swellings underneath the skin, right? Like there’s especially a soft lump that has formed somewhere on the body. And again, maybe even more especially so for where the lymph nodes are swollen. In some of the older texts you see this just referred to as quote swollen glands, but they do mean lymph nodes, right? So, under the chin, or under the armpit, or under the breast tissue, in the groin area. Swellings in those areas are lymphatic stagnation. And people would take ivy. They would make a strong decoction of it. And soak a cloth and place that over those areas. And basically do a compress for some period of time or other methods of topical application to try to move that fluid from where it’s been stuck. To disperse that, to flood that away. So, all those kinds of issues of inflammatory irritation and stagnation on the skin and particularly fluid stagnation, right?

Ryn (50:59):
So, think of that and the respiratory thing in the same context. We have too much wet gunk stuck somewhere. We want to move it away and get it out, right? So, whether that’s in the lungs, or whether that’s somewhere stuck under the skin, you can work with the ivy leaf to drive that fluid out. All right. Historically strong decoctions of ivy leaf were also employed for little biting bugs in the hair, so lice and that sort of critter. You would again make a strong ivy leaf decoction. You would pour that onto your head. You would soak the hair in it for a while and massage it through. And it would drive away the bugs. It would also, by the way, dye the hair black. So, you know, be warned. There’s certainly easier ways to cope with lice in the modern world. But if we find ourselves post-apocalypse. And you remember me talking about this back in the era when we all had magic phones in our pockets. Then maybe you find some ivy leaf. Maybe you make a strong decoction. And maybe you have fewer bugs on your head for a night or two. That sounds pretty good to me. Yep, I going to keep that one in my back pocket.

Ivy Gum Resin: Astringent & Analgesic

Ryn (52:10):
I did want to note that everything I’ve been discussing here so far has been about the leaf of the plant, right? Historical practices also did include working with the resin or the exudate from the bark, right? So, you would need a pretty well-established ivy vine to find, right? But you could slit the bark, and there’s this exudate. It’s like a resin that comes out from a pine tree, something like that, right? This one’s softer. It’s not as thick. But anyway, so it’s an exudate. It is a gum resin, chemically speaking. It has astringent activity to it, and it also has an analgesic effect. So, you would see people working with this part of the ivy, and making little droplets or goblets of it, and putting those onto something like a toothache, right? Put it right inside on the gum, right up against the tooth that hurts. Hold it there. Let it kind of absorb in, and it would serve as a pain-relieving agent for that reason. Also, again, very astringent. So, this is actually making it kind of similar to something like myrrh resin. Many resins have these effects of tightening the tissue, oftentimes impacting the nerve in one way or another. In this case it’s to dull the sensation of pain. Some resins might stimulate your sensation. So just know not all resins are equal, but they share some overlapping qualities: tightening the mucosal tissue and doing something to the local nerve. Again, in the case of the ivy exudate, it would be for pain relief. This again is an historical practice. It’s not really one that I see herbalists speaking about in the modern context. And you certainly don’t find products oriented around that. But it’s interesting to know. And I think there’s a lot of aspects about the way people used to work with herbs that have changed over time. And when I think about things like that, I always wonder will that come back again? Will that cycle around again in some future society when people have more need of that kind of thing or when other items aren’t available? And ivy leaf is a pretty resilient plant. It seems pretty capable of keeping up with some of the changes we’re experiencing in our climate. So, hopefully this one will be around for a good long while.

Ryn (54:31):
All right. So, that’s our three herbs for today. I’ll put a few links for further reading and investigation into the show notes here. And I’ll put also some links to the previous episodes of the series. You can check those out if you haven’t already. Before I go, I wanted to remind you that in addition to doing this podcast, we have an entire herbalism school online. You can learn from anywhere. You can learn at your own pace. All of our courses are centered on video lessons, so it’s just as if you were in the classroom learning directly from us. We also make a lot of different ways for you to get direct contact with us – me and Katja, your teachers – and also our faculty members. So, every lesson in our courses has a discussion button. And you can open that right up while you’re still watching the video, type in your questions, and you’ll get an answer within a day. You can pop over to our student community, which is kind of like social media but just for herbalists. And you can post in your thoughts, and your experiments, and what’s you’re in enjoying, and what’s growing up in your yard. And get some other excitement and feedback from your peers. And we have twice weekly live Q&A sessions where you can just ask us questions right there in a Zoom chat. And any student enrolled in any of our courses is invited to attend those. So, you can find all of our offerings at online.commonwealthherbs.com .and I hope that you’ll check them out and find something that you’re excited to learn. All right. We’ll have some more Holistic Herbalism podcast for you soon. Until then take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea. And hey, it might as well be some green tea. All right. See you again. Bye.