Podcast 262: Herbalists’ Views on the Top-Selling Herbs (Part 9): Aloe & Flax + New Market Data!

This week we continue our investigation into the best-selling herbal supplements in the US. First, an update: the 2024 Herbal Market Report data is here!

The overall picture is very similar to the 2023 data, with most items on the lists simply changing position. The overall market had a 5.4% increase, topping out above $13.2 billion for the highest annual sales on record. Direct-to-consumer commerce – via websites like Amazon, for instance – continues to be the largest fraction of sales.

In the mainstream list, the biggest story is the increase for “mushrooms (other)”, which reached #26 despite not appearing at all in prior years. This listing includes lion’s mane, turkey tail, and other mushrooms – but not chaga, cordycpes, or reishi (those are tracked individually). Also of note, the sales numbers for saint john’s wort in 2023 were adjusted to the tune of a $20 million increase! This would place SJW at #17 on that year’s list, instead of being absent from it. This makes much more sense, since SJW has been such a popular herb for so long.

In the ‘natural expanded’ list, the most notable increase came for “algae (other)”, which would exclude spirulina & blue-green algae as well as chlorella. Sea moss / Irish moss (Chondrus crispus), as well as other seaweeds, are the big drivers of this increased interest in “algae (other)” – largely due to TikTok trends around ‘detox’ and ‘cleansing’. Mullein, moringa, milk thistle, rhodiola, chaga, and oregano also had >20% increases, while the biggest decrease in sales came for wheatgrass/barleygrass, continuing a slow decade-long slide.

Today’s herbs, aloe and flax, are both plants whose modern incarnations and sales points are quite different than their historical applications. In the case of aloe, the stimulant laxative effect of its latex was historically its most valued power. Today, it’s more popular for the gentle demulcent/emollient effects of its gel. As for flax: its oil is very susceptible to oxidation and was previously used in things like paint and varnish more than for human consumption. Today, cold-pressed & refrigerated oil, or fresh-ground seeds, can be a good source of anti-inflammatory omega-3s and other essential fatty acids.

24. Aloe – Aloe vera

• Aloe in King’s American Dispensatory (1898)
• Aloes in A Modern Herbal, M. Grieve (1931)
• Aloe vera at Herbal Reality

25. Flax seed / Flax oil – Linum usitatissimum

• Linum in The Eclectic Materia Medica, Harvey Wickes Felter (1922)
• Flax in A Modern Herbal, M. Grieve (1931)

Previous episode in this series:

• 1: Psyllium, Elderberry, Turmeric, Ashwagandha
• 2: Apple Cider Vinegar, Cranberry
• 3: Wheatgrass, Beet Root, Ginger
• 4: Green Tea, Fenugreek, Ivy Leaf
• 5: Ginkgo, Guarana, Maca
• 6: Saw Palmetto, Cinnamon, Echinacea
• 7: Tribulus, Pycnogenol, Garlic
• 8: Milk Thistle, Black Cohosh

Flax & aloe are two examples of soothing demulcent herbs, which can calm irritated & inflamed guts. Our course on Digestive Health discusses the effects of demulcents as well as carminatives, antispasmodics, vulneraries, and other key categories of herbs which can help resolve the whole range of digestive upsets. Hippocrates said “all disease begins in the gut”, and supporting this critical system is often key to unlocking chronic health problems.

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!

That course is one part of our Community Herbalist program. This program prepares you to support your family & community with holistic herbal methods.

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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 I’m going to be continuing the series on the herbalists’ views on the top-selling herbs, supplements, commercial products, things like that. This is going to be part nine of the series, so it’s been going on for a while. And it’s going to go on for a while longer, but we’re making some progress. Today I also have an update for you, because the new version of the market report has come out with data from 2024. So, I have a few comments on that. Before we get rolling though, I just want to give you a quick reminder of our reclaimer. That’s where we let you know that we’re not doctors. We’re herbalists. We’re holistic health educators. And that the ideas discussed in this podcast are not medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the US, and so what we’re discussing here is for educational purposes. I want to remind you that good health doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. Good health is not something that exists out there in the world as an objective standard. It’s influenced by your individual needs, experiences, and goals. So, I’m not attempting to present a single, dogmatic right way that you must adhere to. Instead we recognize that everyone’s body is different. That the things we’re talking about may not apply directly to you. But the hope is that they’re going to give you some new information to think about and some new ideas to experiment with and to research further. Finding your way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility. That doesn’t mean 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 whenever you’re considering making a change or a course of action, that’s always your choice to make.

2024 Report Updates: The Mainstream Channel – Psyllium & Mushrooms (Other)

Ryn (01:52):
All right. So like I said, the 2024 data for the Herbal Market report has come out. I’ve got a link right there in the show notes, so you can keep an eye on that as we go through. But a few changes that I wanted to highlight, right? You’ve got the kind of top line things, the big stuff saying that overall there was a 5.4 increase in herbal supplement sales in the United States over the previous years’ data. That the current total sales is the highest it’s ever been: 13.2 something something billion dollars total in sales of herbal supplements across all of the different markets and channels. And so that just reflects this trend that these continue to be of great interest to the public at large, and that people are spending a lot of money on these things. As has been true for many years now, direct to consumer sales- so purchasing through things like Amazon or other websites that ship the product straight to you – that continues to be the largest fraction of sales overall. No real surprises with that. When we get into the actual list, remember there are two. There’s the mainstream list is the major one that we’ve been working our way through in this series of episodes. There’s also the so-called natural channel list. And so there’s a couple of interesting notes from each one.

Ryn (03:08):
In the mainstream channel psyllium is still number one, elder is still number two. Most of the list really – the whole 40 – is basically the same. There’s been a little bit of reshuffling, some products moving up or moving down. But it’s essentially the same list all over. There is a couple of notable changes, though. One is that the biggest increase in sales for that group is on the list as mushrooms (other), right? So, this had not previously been on the mainstream channel list. You would see that entry on the natural channel list in prior years. But as far as mainstream products go, think about things you find on the shelf at Walmart or again, the top sellers at Amazon. Mushroom products in general or outside of a few specific performers hadn’t really been tracked individually. And so they were just thrown into this group. So, this group of mushrooms (other), that does include some that you may know, you may have heard of, right? That would include lion’s mane. That would include turkey tail, okay? But there are some that are tracked individually. So, chaga, cordyceps, reishi, those are tracked individually, and they have been for a long time. And they’ve been standard residents on especially the natural channel list. But also many of them have appeared on the mainstream list in the past several years. So, just to say that there is an expansion in the number and type of mushrooms and mushroom products that are out there and that people are interested in.

Ryn (04:51):
They had some information about what those products are being marketed for, like what’s the major health claim that’s being used there. And in these cases, it seemed to be primarily about cognitive health, mental health, or the category of things that would be referred to as nootropic, right? To support cognition, and mental function, and clarity, and smarts, and all of that kind of stuff. That was like the biggest fraction of sales for these other mushrooms. Beyond that it was like non-specific purposes or unknown, unspecified purposes. And then also of course, immune function, right, which is always going to be there with mushroom products of one kind or another. Another note on the mainstream channel, I find this one particularly interesting. So, it’s about St. John’s wort. And in the data for 2023 – the list that I’ve been working from as I create this series – St. John’s wort wasn’t actually on the list at all. And I found that kind of surprising because it is a popular herb. It’s a supplement, it’s an herb most people have heard of. It’s a very popular supplement. And so I was surprised not to see it on the list at all in 2023. In 2024 they’ve got some updated data. And they make a note about how there were changes in “private label coding” that led to this shift or this change. Essentially what they’ve done is they’ve updated the number, the sales number for St. John’s wort in 2023, where it had been at about six million. They updated it to 26 million. So, that would put it on the list. It would put it, I think, roughly at number 17 on the list for 2023. So, I’m not going to go back and insert it into my pod files here. But just to say that yes, St John’s wort remains a popular herb. It is actually one of the top sellers, even though for a moment the data didn’t quite show that, right? These kind of adjustments do happen most years. They’re not usually that drastic. This is, I think, the biggest single adjustment I’ve seen. But it does happen from time to time. So as always, trust but verify.

2024 Report Updates: The Natural Channel – Turmeric & Algae (Other)

Ryn (06:59):
Yeah. In the natural channel list again, most of it is the same, right, and especially the leaders. Turmeric still number one. Most of those top-selling plants are still up there at the top again. Turmeric did see some changes in the health claim or the promoted focus of the products that were being offered. And so whereas previously and primarily turmeric has been marketed for pain, for generalized inflammation, for specifics about joint health, or joint pain, or that kind of thing, what they were saying was that in this year’s data there was an increase in interest in turmeric products specifically for liver health. Which is fair enough. I mean, it is a hepatic herb. It is a hepatoprotective. It’s a mild cholagogue. It’s got some bitter elements to it. They get the bile flowing. So, it’s a perfectly rational thing for people to be choosing turmeric for. But it does reflect sort of a shift of focus, a shift of interest into that direction. And that may have been reflected in some of the other things on the natural channel as well, including this next one I wanted to mention, which was another big increase. And just like in the mainstream channel, it was kind of a weird catchall or leftovers category, right, mushrooms (other). Here what we have is algae (other), right? And so this moved up from number 20 on the prior year to number six on the new data. And so it’s a pretty significant increase in sales for that category. This is excluding spirulina, blue-green algae, and chlorella, as well as chlorophyll supplements that are derived from chlorella. Those are, I think, the major other algaes that are being distinguished here from algae (other). There are a few different seaweeds and algae that have become more popular. I personally think that the biggest driver here is a renewed or expanded interest among the populace in sea moss. Or Irish moss is a name that we would use for it fairly often. So, Chondrus crispus is a seaweed, an algae that has been taken in medicinal purposes for a lot of different reasons, and in actually a number of different cultures and regions of the world for millennia. But there’s been an increase in interest. We’ve even seen that just in the questions we get from students and from clients. And so it really does seem that sea moss has been popularized.

Ryn (09:40):
Even in the new market report, they make reference to TikTok trends and people sharing their little video about preparing sea moss, or the gel, or the polysaccharide slime that you can create from that for health purposes, most of which are oriented around detox, right? And so draw that connection to turmeric with this shift in focus towards the liver and towards intestinal movement. Here we’re seeing sea moss becoming popular. There’s a few other herbs that had increases including milk thistle as well. So, you see focus on what I would talk about as transformation, elimination, metabolism, but is usually summed up in the commercial context as detox functions. So yeah, so there’s a big interest there. Yep. Some other herbs also had significant increases in the natural channel, including mullein, moringa, milk thistle like I mentioned, and then rhodiola, chaga, and oregano as well. I look at that, and there’s a few different orbits of interest that you can see going on there. But things like fatigue, things like cognition, things like adaptogenic effects and the stress response overall. But then also some things that are oriented more towards like oregano is often sold with this halo of a home antibiotic. And I have a lot of bones to pick with that, basically a whole skeleton. But that is often the way that that’s marketed. So, you know, there’s some interest in that range.

Ryn (11:10):
There were some decreases, and I’ll let my bias show a little bit here. I was kind of happy to see that the slide in popularity continues for wheatgrass and barley grass. It’s actually been going on for about a decade now. It’s just kind of a slow slide of that one working its way down the list over time. And I’ve never been super impressed with those as remedies, and so I don’t think that’s wrong, yeah. All right, so those are the major updates that I saw when I was looking through that report. I encourage you to check it out and compare it with prior years. There’s some interesting stuff to find. For the purposes of this podcast series, I am going to continue on using the order and the data from 2023. I’ll make notes here and there where there’s a particular shift of interest, but that’s going to be the gist going forward. Yeah.

#24 Aloe: Parts & Laxative Action

Ryn (11:59):
All right. So, with that in mind, today’s herbs are going to be aloe and flax. And let’s just jump right in with aloe. So, aloe products turn up on the market today in a number of different forms. And they may be comprised of different parts of the original plant material itself. So you’ll find juice, you’ll find powders. You’ll find capsules, which might have a powder or a more concentrated kind of an extract inside of them. And you’ll also see gel, aloe gel, and that’d be for topical applications. Generally it’s like juice if you’re going to drink it. It’s a powder or some kind of capsulated thing if you’re going to swallow it. And it’s a gel if you’re going to put it on your skin, or your scalp, or whatever, some topical function. If you have an aloe leaf, you probably have seen them. Those cactus-adjacent succulent leaves kind of thick and with a hard, firm outer rind on the outside. If you take one of those leaves and break it off or chop it down the middle, you’ll see the clear gel portion. You’ll see a layer of yellow, that’s the latex part. And then the green rind, the real thick bit underneath that. So those parts act differently, right?

Ryn (13:18):
Basically, the simplest thing to understand is that any preparation of aloe, which includes the latex components, is going to have a stimulant laxative action. It’s going to increase intestinal movement and peristalsis, and it’s going to empty the bowels. If you have a product on the other hand that contains only the gel. Or the gel was separated out and then dehydrated to make a powder, right? Which usually you’re going to mix with water again and make it into a gel again afterwards, right? Anyway, if you have only the gel, or if it’s an aloe juice product, which has been filtered, then that will have a very, very mild laxative effect. In this case it’s really just due to some remaining bitterness in there. And anything bitter is going to stimulate all your digestive secretions: saliva, and stomach acid, and bile, and pancreatic juice. And that helps to move the feces along the inside of you to get them out of the way. There’s also the demulcent effect, right? Aloe, the gel parts, the juice you drink has a lot of polysaccharide content to it. Those are demulcent constituents. They’re mucilaginous. They’re slimy. They hydrate. They smooth. They’re slick. So, they do help to move the bowels along as well. It’s essentially like if you have the gel, or if you have a product that just doesn’t contain a latex, you do get a laxative impact. It does move the bowels along. It’s gentle. It’s mild. It’s more appropriate for most circumstances. If it includes the latex, it’s going to be – well it should be – labeled as a laxative. And it will have a stimulant effect. It’s much more powerful there. And we’re getting into the range of effects of things like cascara sagrada or like senna, right, other famous herbal stimulant laxatives.

Ryn (15:09):
All right. So, aloe juice. I’ve got to admit I had never actually tried aloe juice before this week. But I knew this one was coming up, and so I bought a jar. And I said all right, well, let’s sip it. I took some straight. I took some mixed into sparkling water just with that. I took some mixed into sparkling water with some honey that we had infused with autumn olive berries that we gathered ourselves. That was a little better. But I’ve got to say that the juice on its own, it doesn’t taste super amazing. It’s a little bitter. It’s got a little astringency to it. There’s a little acridity going on in there, and there’s a sour flavor. But it’s worth saying that the sour is probably coming from the concentrated lemon juice that this particular aloe juice product, and most aloe juice products I’ve looked at, include as a preservative, right? It is worth also saying at the same time that lemon juice is not an inert substance. Lemon juice is an herbal extract, right? Lemon juice does have herbal actions specifically as a cholagogue, right? Which is to say that it stimulates the liver to secrete bile. So, that is congruent with the action of the aloe juice itself. And, you know, I think that that’s fine. But just to note that that’s another reason why aloe juice can have a moving effect in the bowels, even though it’s not having the full representation of that latex. Yep.

Ryn (16:40):
Oftentimes the recommendation for the aloe juice is to put it into some much more flavorful fluid like juice in order to mitigate the question of taste and get people to be more willing to consume more of it. But that said, you do see this sold in gallon jugs. And so there are people who are buying a lot of this and drinking a lot of it every day. Oftentimes the recommendation is something like eight ounces over the whole course of the day. But you know, you keep that up for a while and buying it by the eight-ounce jar is going to get old fast. So, yeah. About those juices, most aloe juices that are sold these days are filtered with the goal of reducing anthraquinone content. So, the anthraquinones are constituents in the aloe latex specifically, which are yellow and give it that tint, give it that color. But they also serve as the major driver of that stimulant laxative effect. And in these aloe juice products, they’re often filtering them or processing them in this way to reduce the anthraquinone content to a minimal limit. It’s often set at below five parts per million. And at that point, you’re not going to get a significant stimulant laxative effect from your aloe preparation, right? You will still get the hydrating effect. That might move the bowels along, especially if they’re stuck due to dryness. But this is different than outright stimulating that movement. Yeah.

Mucilaginous & Historical Traditions with Aloe

Ryn (18:12):
Like any other mucilaginous and demulcent herb – like marshmallow root, like elm bark – aloe can soothe irritated and inflamed gastrointestinal organs, right? Even holding it in the mouth if you have inflamed mouth mucosa right in the gums or around there. In the stomach if there’s irritations up to and including an ulcer. Down through the intestines if there’s inflammation, irritation, damage all the way through there, then aloe can be soothing. Herbally speaking, this is a cooling, moistening, and slightly tonifying remedy in the way that it acts on the mucosa there. Yeah. And so you can understand this by comparison to marshmallow overnight infusions or slippery elm powder stirred into water and drunk down. Similar overall types of effects are coming when you consume that versus when you consume aloe. When we take it topically, aloe gel is really, really helpful in the formulation of topical remedies, like putting them together and making them appealing and effective to work with. Because aloe gel can offer this emollient action even in combination with something as stringent, right? So for instance, it’s difficult for you to combine marshmallow infusion that’s gotten really viscous and slimy and then combine that with an oak bark decoction. Because when you mix the two of them, you get these ropey, snotty slimes that form. And it’s not pleasant to work with. It’s not easy to handle the way you would want. But aloe gel blends a little bit easier, including with things that have some astringency to them.

Ryn (19:57):
So for instance, one of my favorite skincare products is… And I’m not getting paid by anybody to say this, okay, but it’s by this brand called Thayers. And they make a witch hazel extract that has rosewater and then also aloe vera mixed into them altogether. And so that feels very different on the skin than a straight witch hazel extract or a pure rosewater extract does. Because those can be very noticeably astringent to the skin. You know, you put it on. There’s kind of a tightening feeling. And then after that it feels a little extra dry. But when you include the aloe vera into that mixture, it has that astringency, but then on top of it is this kind of silky-smooth feeling. And it leaves the tissue being both toned – like tonified, shrink your pores a little bit – but also moisturized at the same time. So, I think that’s a nice combination, and it does make that remedy a lot more broadly applicable. So yeah, I really do prefer that. And you can prepare these kind of things on your own. You could buy the dried aloe gel, which is like a powder that originated with that gel, but it was dehydrated. You can mix that into something that you’re formulating to add a little bit of that smoothness, that silky feeling. That’s quite nice.

Ryn (21:15):
Historically speaking, let’s take the kind of traditional herbalist perspective on aloe. So, this is an herb that’s been commercialized in broadly speaking the west, okay, for more than a thousand years, right? We’ve got records back in 1000 and something in England where they were already importing aloes from North Africa and working with it regularly there. And a very popular remedy the entire time across, right? The majority of that work though, has been focused on the purgative and the cathartic actions, which are other words for a strong stimulant laxative agent, right? They’re going to empty you out. So, through that period of history up to fairly recent time, up to like the 1800s and so when the eclectics and the physiomedicalists were practicing, those folks distinguished between multiple different species of aloe for both quality and for effect. And they were in the habit of combining it when it was given often with other stimulant laxatives but also with different types of verbs as well. Moving a little bit forward in time up to around 1930, we see Mrs. Grieve writing in her classic book, A Modern Herbal from 1931. She recommended there that aloe not be taken by itself but rather taken with carminatives to ease the impact and improve the effectiveness of it on those digestive problems.

Ryn (22:41):
I also noted in her entry on it that she makes a very interesting note about popular herbal remedies in her period, in her day, in her time. She wrote there aloes in one form or another is the commonest domestic medicine and is the basis of most proprietary or so-called patent pills. So, she’s basically saying… Well, what she’s basically saying is that a lot of the cure-all, fixes everything, tonic for what ails you products that she was seeing around her were really just based on the fact that they would empty your bowels out. And I’ll tell you, it remains true to this very day that if you take a person who doesn’t feel good. And you give them something, and it empties their bowels out. Then they’ll probably be like ah, now I have done something good for my health. I am getting a remedy here, right? And so these things have been popular the whole time, and they continue to be popular to some extent in that regard today. What I would note is just that today, this shift towards juice, and gel remedies, and other things made from that designed to be consumed, even extracted, and concentrated, and taken in capsules, and so on, that is different. That is a shift, right? Moving away from the stimulant laxative quality of aloe over in the direction of the soothing demulcent activity of it. I think that’s appropriate. I think modern people don’t generally fare very well with strong purgative or cathartic treatments or processes. And that it would be way better for most people to get a little bit of aloe slime into them than a big aloe purge. Yeah, I think that’s the good way to go.

Ryn (24:25):
One other note. In older historical and, and even ancient herbal texts, you will see reference to aloe. Actually, this even applies to the Bible. You might find reference to aloeswood, or aloewood, or something like that. But that actually means a completely different species of plant. Nowadays in English it’s often called agarwood. The Latin here is Aquilaria malaccensis, okay? This is a tree. It’s not a succulent plant like aloe. It’s a woody tree. And the heartwood of that tree can be very resinous and make a nice incense. There’s something interesting though about this where it actually needs to be infected with a particular fungus that gets into the tree. And then the tree reacts to that fungus by making this resin. And then that makes the wood very aromatic, and it makes a good incense out of it. But again, that’s a whole separate thing. So, sometimes people get confused about that. And they’re like ah yes, there’s references in the Bible or references in this ancient Greek text to working with aloe. And you could easily get confused if you tried to make an incense out of aloe vera. It’s not an aromatic plant. It’s not going to burn. It’s not going to work for you that way. So, just a point of clarification there. Yeah.

#25 Flax: Fatty Acids & Keeping it Fresh

Ryn (25:44):
All right, let’s go ahead and talk about flax. So, this one in the Latin is Linum usitatissimum. And that’s where lin, Linum, that’s where linseed comes from, right? So, flaxseed and linseed, same thing, same plant, yeah. All right. So, nowadays you go looking for flax – on Amazon, whatever – you’re going to find whole flaxseeds. You’re going to also find flaxseed meal, right? And those are available for food purposes. They’re available for health nuts who like to buy these things and do stuff with them alone, okay? Yes. That’s us, yeah. But when we look for flax as a supplement specifically, you’re going to see products that are focused on the oil rather than on the seeds, or the fibers in the seed, or the polysaccharides, or demulcent features of the seed, or things like that. It’s all about the oil, right, when it comes to supplement preparations these days. So, flaxseed oil is marketed and sought out primarily as a source for plant-based essential fatty acids. Flaxseed, like a number of other seeds, does contain significant amounts of essential fatty acids including omega-3 at a pretty high ratio honestly, for a plant. We’re getting a decent amount of omega-3 here. It also contains omega-6 and omega-9s in addition. And these are all, as their name implies, they are actually essential for human health. Most of us have no problem getting sufficient omega-6 to meet our needs. In fact, most of us are getting too much omega-6 to the point where it can become a pro-inflammatory agent in our bodies. One of the best ways to balance that out is to increase your consumption of omega-3s while decreasing your relative intake of omega-6s at the same time. We accomplish that primarily through dietary alteration. But in some cases people do find benefit through supplementation. And there’s often this idea if I just get the right omega-3 supplement, then I’ll solve all my problems, and I’ll take care of it. Depending on your diet, depending on your exposure to omega-6s, depending on your access to omega-3s from food, that may or may very not be an effective strategy, right?

Ryn (28:07):
But because all of the essential fatty acids are involved in the inflammatory process, they’re also involved in the things inflammation does in our body. So, we’re getting into growth. We’re getting into wound healing. We’re getting into recovery from exercise, immune responsiveness, the pain process, the pain procedure, the pain… I don’t know. The sequence of events that occur in your body to generate pain and send it to your brain where you actually experience it. That whole thing? Yeah. All of those are influenced by the presence, the degree, and the extent of inflammation in your body as well as hormonal coordination, right? That too is influenced in this way. And so when we have a population whose omega-6 to omega-3 ratio and their inflammatory state as a result of that is wildly out of balance, wildly pushed towards elevated levels of inflammation, you can see the attractiveness and the rationale behind seeking out a remedy that gives you a whole lot of omega-3, right? And especially for people who have become convinced that plant sources should provide everything that we need for every one of us, then there’s a greater influence to go and search for that rather than get salmon, or sardines, or grass-fed meat, which is going to be what I would consider to be the major source of these in a human experience. In any case that’s what people are going to flax for, right, including the oil, or the seeds, or some kind of a concentrated extract capsule, or something like that.

Ryn (29:50):
Now, with this it’s worth saying that like other seeds, including milk thistle seed, hemp seed, borage seed, or the oils pressed out of those. Just like all of that, both flaxseed and flax oil need to be kept away from light, and heat, and oxygen exposure as much as possible. So, if you work with whole seeds, you want to buy them. You want to get them into the fridge as soon as you get them. You want to take out today’s dose, and run them through the grinder, and stir them into your food, and eat them and take them each day. Better that than grinding them all at once and leaving it in a clear plastic container on the countertop where it gets struck by the sun for four hours a day. That would degrade the quality of it very rapidly. It can oxidize the oil. Essential fatty acid oils are heavily susceptible to oxidation. They’re much less stable than saturated fats are. So, it means that like I said, if you have seeds, keep them in the fridge. Grind them fresh and take each day’s batch. If you have oil, then that should be in a very light block bottle, something totally opaque, or a very, very dark glass color. It should be kept cold from the moment that it’s squeezed out of those seeds to the moment you put it in your mouth. So, it should be in the refrigerated section of the store. If it gets shipped to you, it should be on ice. This may sound like a lot of work to go through, okay? But if you want this stuff to actually benefit you, you have to control for oxidation, and these are the major ways you’re going to do that. Okay.

Demulcent & Historical Traditions with Flax

Ryn (31:28):
Now, it’s worth saying that historically speaking, people did work with flax, and they did take the seeds and expose them to a bunch of heat by boiling them. And so making an infusion or a decoction of the whole seeds of the flax plant, it will form a very mucilaginous substance, which could then be drunk or applied topically as a poultice. And so as ever, when we’re talking about a demulcent agent, these are going to be soothing and cooling to inflamed, and irritated, and raw tissues. Whether that’s inside, like all through your whole GI tract. Or whether that’s outside, like you’ve got a burn, or you’ve got a scrape. Or you’ve got a cut that we’re working on healing, and it’s in a dry, irritated phase, right? That’s the effect of taking a flaxseed water preparation, a water extract. When you ingest that – again, like other demulcents, like marshmallow, like elm – when you ingest that, you drink it down, there is a reflex moistening effect on the lungs and even to some extent through the urinary tract. And so this is where you’ll see historical reference and application of flax tea essentially being taken for dry, irritated coughs, right? So, you drink it down. Your body responds to that polysaccharide bolus by telling the mucosa in the lungs to release some fluid. We’re going to be better hydrated now. We can hold on to this stuff. So, go ahead and release some fluid through the lung. Loosen up that phlegm, and crud, and dust that’s stuck on there. Cough that out, and then we can quell the cough. It’s no longer going to be necessary. Yep. And there is occasional reference in the historical data to working with flaxseed internally to try to soothe an irritated urinary tract as well. Again, it’s all about that reflex effect of our demulcents. And as I’ve been emphasizing in this episode several times, this does apply to other demulcent herbs we would work with as well. That means that we can choose the right one for the case at hand based on other effects that it has that are complementary or this individual’s preferences or dislikes. Things like that can be quite relevant. Yeah.

Ryn (33:38):
You may also be aware already that flax or linseed is where linen cloth comes from. Not from the seed though, but from the fiber of the tall stalk of the plant, right? So, that can be separated out and then woven together. And now we can make some nice, cool linen out of that. Yeah. Okay. I have some links in the show notes for you to some further references about each of these plants. About aloe I have a reference from 1898, one from 1931, as well as a more modern review. And then kind of similar ranges for the flax I’ve got some there. So, I encourage you to just check those out and see the way that the older authors and the tradition they were drawing from worked with these. And how that’s significantly different, I would say, from their modern expressions. Historically speaking, it was extremely difficult to squeeze all the oil out of your flaxseeds and then have it sustain itself across travel and time to get it to anybody and to make much profit off of it as a food item. This is why flaxseed or linseed historically has been used more for things like paint, and varnish, and stuff like that. To be an oil that goes into the preparation of those. So, because we have this capacity now to do things in an anoxic environment and then keep them refrigerated from the site of manufacturer all the way to the site of consumption, there is a change. Just like with aloe, there’s a shift in that capacity of the way that people are going to work with it. And kind of both of these reflect an interesting change over the course of history in the way that people will go ahead and take them. All right.

Ryn (35:18):
Cool. So, I’m going to leave it there for those two. In our next episode we’re going to get into valerian, and pumpkin, and goji berry. So, some cool stuff on the horizon for our tour of herbalists’ views on top-selling herbal supplements. So, you know, stick with us, and that’ll be coming along into your feed soon enough. That’s going to be it today for the Holistic Herbalism podcast. We’ll be back soon with some more. Until then take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea. And stay slimy – I guess – is the message today. Yeah, that sounds fun. All right, everybody. Good luck out there. Take care of yourselves, and we’ll be back soon. Bye.