Podcast 289: Do You Need Immune Boosting Herbs?
Immune boosting herbs are popular, and it’s not hard to see why. Everyone wants to avoid getting sick! It makes intuitive sense to a lot of folks that if you amp up your immunity, you’ll be more resilient in the face of germs – or I guess, more resilient to germs in your face! 🦠
But hang on. What does “immune boosting” even mean? Is immunity really a singular ‘thing’ that can be stimulated, like sliding a dimmer switch upwards? Is it all just a matter of stimulating white blood cell activity? As is always the case in biology and medicine, the truth is more complicated than that.
This is particularly relevant in the context of autoimmunity, where some of the so-called “immune boosting herbs” can actually have adverse effects. If you overstimulate an immune system that’s attacking your own body, you just intensify the attack. So the question arises: what can a person with an autoimmune condition do to keep their defenses up? If we can’t stimulate immunity, what can we do?
The answer is: a lot. And it’s all stuff that anyone can do, whether autoimmune or not. In our experience, it’s also a lot more important than the immune stimulant herbs, because it’s more foundational and more individualized than the “elderberry & echinacea for everyone!” one-size-fits-all approach.
We can start by changing our focus from immune stimulation to immune modulation. This isn’t just wordplay. Modulation of immunity means making multiple simultaneous adjustment in multiple directions, whereas stimulation is ALL AHEAD FORWARD. True immunity is a complex interplay of multiple organs, cell types, and signaling molecules in the body. Dialing everything up to 11 isn’t constructive, but a strategic nudge in the right direction at the right time? That gets the job done, and immunomodulating herbs – like mushrooms and seaweeds – can do exactly that.
Immunity is often discussed in martial metaphors: the pathogenic assault, the immune defenses, the combat between them. But if we follow this metaphor all the way, we should realize that logistics and supply lines are often what makes the difference in a real-world conflict, and this is no less true in our bodies. Lymphatics, nutritives, and sleep aid herbs can be much more helpful than immune-boosting herbs for this reason.
The best defense is… a good defense, actually. Better to keep the germs out than to let them in, let them proliferate, and then get your guns blazing. Maintaining healthy boundaries, quite literally, is a key strategy. These are your points of contact with the outside world: your sinuses, your lungs, your GI tract. And even if you’re autoimmune, you can work with demulcents, astringents, and vulneraries to keep their membranes functioning well.
Our brand-new Winter Health bundle is the best way to go deeper in this material – and there’s a lot further to go. (Yeah, this 90-minute episode is just an introduction to immunity and herbalism!) The bundle includes our Immune Health and Respiratory Health courses, and you get them at 40% off their standard pricing, a savings of $260. 😮
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Episode Transcript
Katja (00:00:03):
Hi, I’m Katja.
Ryn (00:00:05):
And I’m Ryn.
Katja (00:00:05):
And we’re here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts.
Ryn (00:00:10):
And on the internet everywhere, thanks to the power of a podcast. As required by contract. Yes.
Katja (00:00:19):
We did it. Check. Okay, so this week I posted on social media for people to pick the topic that we would talk about this week and to put questions in that they wanted us to cover on the pod. And I could not pick between two topics. There was a question about grief, and that’s going to be the next podcast. And then there was a question about when you have an autoimmune condition, and you get sick. This one was from Sam Fern on Instagram.
Ryn (00:00:52):
Thank you.
Katja (00:00:53):
Thank you. Sam, we will make sure that you get a copy of our all-new Stress Management course as the prize for being a winning topic.
Ryn (00:01:05):
And I mean, stress management certainly has relevance to immune function and to autoimmune survival.
Katja (00:01:12):
That’s true actually.
Ryn (00:01:13):
And lots of things. So yeah, hopefully that would be helpful.
Katja (00:01:16):
Now before we get started, I just want to let you know that we have created a new winter health bundle at a 40% off discount for you. And all the details about it are at the end of the episode. So, if you get busy and you don’t make it to the end, but you are interested in learning more about surviving winter illnesses and staying healthy. Then just pop to the end of the episode or use the link in the show notes and find out about the winter health bundle, which is 40% off. Okay, so here was the original text of the question. If you’re living with an autoimmune condition but you get sick, can you talk about navigating the stimulation of your immune system to fight off the ick but also not overstimulating and causing trouble for the autoimmune state? Okay, now listen. Before we go any further I want to be super clear. This episode is not only for people with autoimmune conditions. It is going to be relevant to anyone who has, yes, autoimmunity, or any kind of chronic illness, or any kind of elevated inflammatory baseline state. Honestly, the strategies that we’re going to talk about will be relevant even if you have none of those things, but you just are a person who gets sick.
Ryn (00:02:36):
Yeah. And also as a way to expand your intentions, and the kinds of herbal actions and effects that you go searching for when you think about building up your resilience against infections, which is for everyone.
Katja (00:02:51):
Yeah. And even maybe changing your vocabulary a little bit, not just the way that you speak, but the way that you think about the words stimulating and immune, to change that perspective a little bit as well. So if you’re out there thinking well, I don’t have an autoimmune condition, so this episode is not for me. Ho-ho, keep listening.
Ryn (00:03:21):
That is in the script, the ho-ho part. Yeah, just so everybody knows for sure.
Katja (00:03:25):
In case you think that AI writes any of our stuff, oh no.
Ryn (00:03:29):
Ho-ho. There’s some good stuff in here for you too. That’s why it’s here.
Katja (00:03:38):
I definitely just write exactly what’s in my mind right there on the page. You can always tell when I wrote the notes or when he wrote the notes.
Ryn (00:03:48):
Yes. Okay, so that’s an important reminder. And here’s another one. We’re not doctors. We’re herbalists, and we’re holistic health educators.
Katja (00:03:55):
The ideas discussed in this podcast do not constitute medical advice. No, for real, they don’t. No state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the United States, so these discussions are for educational purposes only.
Ryn (00:04:08):
That’s right. And we want to remind you that good health doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. Good health doesn’t exist as one objective standard. It’s influenced by each person’s needs, experiences, and goals. So keep in mind we’re not attempting to present a single, dogmatic right way that everyone must adhere to.
Katja (00:04:26):
Because everybody’s body is different. And so the things that we’re talking about may or may not apply directly to you. But we hope that they’ll give you some new information to think about and some ideas to research and experiment with further.
Ryn (00:04:39):
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 considering any course of action, whether it was discussed on the internet by your favorite internet herbalists or it was prescribed by your favorite local physician, it’s always your choice to make. So keep on making choices and make informed choices.
Katja (00:05:05):
Yes.
Ryn (00:05:06):
Yeah, that’s what we’re into.
The Problem with “Immune Boosting”
Katja (00:05:08):
All right. So in the online world, when people talk about getting sick and herbal support, and they put those two concepts together, the words that come out most frequently are immune boosting or immune stimulating. Now, both of those concepts are going to be a problem for a person with an autoimmune condition, or a long-term chronic illness, or elevated baseline inflammatory state, et cetera.
Ryn (00:05:39):
Yeah. There’s this idea contained in that that I got sick because my immune system was slacking off. And in order to get better, what I need to do is give it a little kick, set off some alarms, charge into the place, and make everybody active and start doing a lot of things. And then that’s how I’m going to resolve my infection. Or it also comes up in this context of if I don’t want to get sick, then what I need to do is I need to boost my immune system from the time that the leaves start to turn until the green plants come out of the ground again. I’ve got to get in there, and I’ve got to find some herbs that are going to do that. Whether I believe – me, the person in this discussion – whether I believe that that happens from elderberry syrup, or echinacea, or poke root, or whatever it is that’s coming to mind.
Katja (00:06:30):
The thing is that that concept… Oh, there’s two things here, and they’re happening simultaneously, but you can only hear one of them at a time. So listen to one and then listen to the other and mush them together. Okay. So the first part is that that concept is really backwards if you think about it, because if you really are thinking about immune boosting, and I’m making this little turn it up movement with my fingers. If you’re thinking about immune boosting, what does that really mean? Turning it up, increasing the sensitivity, increasing the vigilance. That’s a hypersensitivity state. That’s actually a problem. And so this concept of well, I need to be boosting every single day throughout the fall and winter, what that really is is I need to be creating a hypersensitivity state. Okay, so that was one thought. Okay, now we’re going to merge this thought into it. Ready? The immune boosting, or stimulating, or turning it up portion of immune support is insignificant in terms of herbal strategies for helping you recover from being sick. If you never did any immune boosting, and you just went with other strategies that we’re going to talk about today, you’d be fine. If you never dialed it up to 11, you would still recover. So arguably we don’t even need that concept of that hypersensitivity of that dialed-up aspect. It’s not actually doing the job. It is selling a lot of elderberry syrup, and that stuff’s not cheap. And I’m not knocking elderberry syrup. It’s lovely, but it’s not cheap. And this concept of constant boosting, it’s a marketing concept.
Ryn (00:08:43):
Yeah. In herbalism we work with stimulants in a number of different ways. And I use that word here on purpose because if we’re talking about immune activation, immune boosting, the clerical way to talk about it would be immune stimulation. We’re thinking of a particular function or system of the body, and we’re saying let’s activate that. Let’s heat that up in the sort of energetic sense of increase activation, increase movement, increase whatever that thing does. Let’s make it do more of that.
Katja (00:09:12):
Do more. Yeah.
Ryn (00:09:14):
So we can stimulate the heart if we take cayenne. We can stimulate your nervous system if you take an herb that has caffeine in it. We can stimulate your liver if we take some bitter herbs. And stimulation can be helpful, but it’s not something that we’re going to do indefinitely. We’re not generally saying oh, well, we just need to keep stimulating you every day for the rest of your life. We would say…
Katja (00:09:41):
I mean, that is what we do with coffee as a culture.
Ryn (00:09:43):
Yeah. Well, there are certain…
Katja (00:09:44):
But that’s not very successful.
Ryn (00:09:46):
Right, right. But you also don’t drink coffee, I hope, all day, straight up till bedtime, from the moment you wake up until it’s about time to go to bed at night. Okay, I know a lot of people do it, but do they think it’s a great idea? Probably most of them don’t. There’s outliers, whatever. But we sort of recognize there’s times when it makes sense to stimulate yourself or to stimulate something specific inside of your body. But you wouldn’t want to just go and be like all right, I’m going to keep amping up my liver production of bile, or for that matter my stomach’s production of stomach acid all day, all the time, every day for long periods at a stretch. We’re going to work with them when they’re indicated, whether that’s in the right time of the day, or for the right period of the course of an illness, or for the right period of that time in your life.
Katja (00:10:37):
This is the reason that I hate the word balance so much. Whether…
Ryn (00:10:43):
This is the reason?
Katja (00:10:45):
Okay, there may be more than one reason. But when people say I want to balance my hormones, or I want to whatever it is that people want to balance. Or if you’re trying to do work-life balance, or if you’re trying literally any kind of balance. If it is not gymnastics, if we’re not walking across a log, then I hate the concept of balance because humans are not supposed to be balanced. We are supposed to fluctuate just like day and night. There are rhythms, there are cycles, there are these fluctuations, and everything in nature fluctuates. Nothing is stimulated all the time. Nothing is relaxed all the time. Nothing is… And so if we are thinking in terms of this constant stimulation, then what we’re really trying to achieve is balance into hypersensitivity. It’s like oh wait, that doesn’t actually make sense. That’s not the place I want to be balancing. You need to be in that cycle of when I need to do the thing, I’ll do the thing. When I don’t need to do the thing, I’ll chill out.
Ryn (00:11:59):
Yeah. So to come back to the idea of immune stimulation or immune boosting the way people tend to talk about it and think about it, there’s either some sort of nebulous idea of immunity that is not further investigated. And we’re just going to amp that up because clearly it is failing me. And that’s why I’m sick, and we’re going to amp it up, and that’s going to fix the problem. So it’s a simplistic, oversimplified view of what’s going on. Other times people will frame it and be like well, it’s all about the white blood cell activation. And then they’ll go and be like well, yeah, but look at these scientific test results that showed that when you take echinacea at the right dose, then you can see a significant increase in white blood cell activity. That’s going to be great if I’ve got an infection going on. I’m going to really want that. Probably that’s the only thing that’s going to help me to get better. And so that’s generally the kind of thought process that’s going on, whether people recognize that at the front of their mind or not.
From Stimulation to Modulation
Katja (00:12:58):
So that’s a thing that could be problematic. So to get back to our topic, that’s a thing that could be problematic for people with an autoimmune condition or the other things, chronic illness and high inflammatory state, whatever. And so instead of thinking in terms of stimulation, instead of thinking in terms of boosting, what am I supposed to think about? What’s the other thing? Let’s replace those words with immunomodulating.
Ryn (00:13:25):
Right. And it’s not just a vocabulary shift to be more – I don’t know – up-to-date, or hip, or whatever. You’ll see the word immunomodulatory appearing on some products, and some functional drinks, and whatever out there in the world, and that kind of thing. If they put a mushroom in it at some point, they’ll probably slap that word on the label somewhere if they can fit it in. That’s fine, but it does have a significant meaning. And part of it is in the idea that immunity is not one thing that can either go up or down. Immunity is really complex. If you don’t believe me, go to the library and find the biggest book on immunology you can get. And it will probably be in six volumes, and you can stack them up on the table higher than your head because there’s a lot of elements to it. It’s not just white blood cells. It’s all the different kinds of white blood cells and all of their different jobs in the body and the helper cells. And then it’s all of the signaling molecules like cytokines, and interleukins, and things like that. And some of them are pro-inflammatory, and some of them are anti-inflammatory.
Katja (00:14:31):
And neither one of them are good or bad.
Ryn (00:14:33):
Right, yeah. And which one your body produces more of in response to infection or can be driven down by the manifest action of a particular infection, all of those things are in play there. And one of the fundamental good things about herbs is that they too are complex. And they interact with our bodies not in monotonic ways, not in one effect on one thing. You’re describing a drug if you think about that. And this is even true for herbs that are super famous as immune stimulants like echinacea. And we’ve also talked about this in the context of elderberry. That elderberry is not just stimulating to all immune cells, and molecules, and signaling compounds, and organs at the same time. It stimulates some things that are pro-inflammatory and some things that are anti-inflammatory, and it happens to do it in a really nice balance that tends to be beneficial for us. Again, even echinacea has a complex effect once you get down to that microscopic level. So the idea of the immunomodulator is, I think, powerful at least in part because it introduces that idea of complexity and nuance.
Katja (00:15:51):
If you are thinking about immune stimulant or immune boosting, then you’re kind of thinking of a light switch. I am going to turn it on, or I’m going to turn it on all the way full power on my dimmer switch. It’s not going to be turned on dim, it’s going to be turned on 100%, whatever. Whereas immunomodulatory, you might know the word modulate from music, or sound engineering, or frequency, or physics, or any of that kind of arena. And so because my brother is a sound engineer among other musical things and has in his living room… He kind of has a couch a little bit, but what he really has is a giant sound mixing board. And if you’ve ever seen one of those, it has those 10 million sliders that go up and down. And whenever I think of modulate, I think of those huge mixing boards. And if you start to think of the immune system in the same way, each one of those little sliders on a mixing board is talking about a different aspect of the sound of the thing that you’re making. But if we think about it as the immune system, each one of those little sliders is representing one of the kajillion facets of immune function, and there are so many of them. And every single one of them could be dialed up a little, dialed down a little, left to neutral. How is that in relation to the other thing that’s right next to it? All that stuff, it starts to get very, very complicated.
Ryn (00:17:30):
Yeah. And what the board doesn’t have is if you push this slider up, the other one kind of nudges itself even though you didn’t touch it on purpose.
Katja (00:17:38):
Sometimes two of them will be connected, but not as complex as it is in the body.
Immunomodulatory Mushrooms, Seaweed, Codonopsis, & Astragalus
Ryn (00:17:46):
So this idea of immunomodulatory as an action that we’re going to be interested in, we’re going to seek, maybe the greatest benefit in this context of somebody who’s got an autoimmune condition going on is that the immunomodulatory herbs aren’t going to overstimulate the parts of the immune system that are attacking your own body. Ah, okay. And so that makes them very safe and reliable to work with whether you have an autoimmune condition going on or not. And now if you’ve been, like I said, noticing the word immunomodulatory or immunomodulation turning up on any products, or kombucha drinks, or whatever out there, you probably noticed they were the ones that contained the medicinal mushrooms in them, the medicinal mushrooms like reishi, like turkey tail, like shitake and maitake. And even lion’s mane even though most of the discussion around lion’s mane these days is about nerve growth factor, and neurological health, and brain health, and attention, and so on.
Katja (00:18:51):
Lion’s mane has niched down. Yeah.
Ryn (00:18:54):
Yeah. But no, no and yes. Lion’s mane is absolutely in the group of the immunomodulatory fungi. In fact, so are portobello and button mushrooms, believe it or not. They contain the complex polysaccharides, including the beta-glucans, but also some other components that play along that serve that effect of being immunomodulatory. Even when you look at this from the lens of phytochemistry, there’s a group of constituents that we just label for functional purposes immunomodulating polysaccharides. And the cool thing is that those are not only restricted to the mushrooms, you also find them in seaweeds. And so now we’re thinking about broth, and soup, and foods where they’ve been cooked with some moisture for a decent long time. Because honestly, those are the best way to take your mushrooms and your seaweeds for these kinds of effects.
Katja (00:19:52):
Broth is going to come up several times over the next however long it’s going to take us to tell you all this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ryn (00:19:59):
Yeah. And you’ll see products where they have extracted and isolated the immunomodulating polysaccharides and some other friends. And then they put them in a capsule, or they put them in your drink, or they put them in the whatever it is. Okay, that’s fine. But traditionally speaking, and again in my opinion for best effect, put it in soup, put it in food, get them in that way, make it a regular habit. Rather than something you think about like oh, I’m just going to grab this because I’m starting to get sick. This is a slow-moving kind of an action. This is something that you want to ideally have built into your habits already.
Katja (00:20:37):
Hey, so if you are thinking about immune boosting in terms of something to do every day from the beginning of fall until the beginning of spring, okay, broth is the thing to be thinking about. Broth with some mushrooms and some seaweeds. Cook it a while, cook it a long time. You can’t have mushrooms raw, and you can’t have seaweeds raw. Well, you can try it, but you can’t get the stuff that you want out of it that way. Plus, it’s really hard to crunch seaweed when it’s raw, like actually raw. Yeah, it’s very tough.
Ryn (00:21:06):
You’ll be chewing a while. I mean, I guess if you need a jaw workout, that’s fine.
Katja (00:21:10):
So this everyday aspect, this is that nutritive, cumulative, build it up in your body, make sure you have the materials you need to do the stuff you need to do kind of modulate. It’s not going to push you too far. It’s just making sure that you are resourced.
Ryn (00:21:32):
Yeah. All right. So mushrooms, seaweeds, whichever ones you like, whichever ones you can get into you, but make it a consistent thing. That’s the way to go with these. Yeah.
Katja (00:21:43):
So then we can think about some adaptogens here as well. And often when we think about adaptogens, we are thinking about oh, my coffee, my caffeine replacement. I’ll just take ginseng and rhodiola. And it’s no caffeine, so it’ll be fine. And that’s not the kind of adaptogen we’re talking about. Adaptogens come in a broad spectrum, and they are not all stimulating. So here I’m thinking about codonopsis and astragalus. The two of these, they are not stimulating, but they are long-term building mechanisms that help support the work that your immune system is going to do when it needs to do work and also helps support the whole hormone communication cascade. We think about when you say the word hormone, usually people are thinking about estrogen and testosterone. But hormones are just messengers to deliver messages throughout the body, and it’s all kinds of messages. It doesn’t just have to do about your menstrual cycle, or your lack of menstrual cycle, or whatever. You use hormones, your body uses hormones to send all kinds of messages about start this, stop that. Oh, we’re starting to get full now. Oh, we’re starting to this other thing. And some of that signaling is part of the immune response process. So when we can keep that whole signaling cascade flowing freely, when we can. And all the words that we usually use to describe this, they come back to balance. It’s always like keep your hormones in balance. And again, that’s not where we want to be because they need to fluctuate. Like oh okay, we’ve got enough hormone telling me this message that it means I’m finally supposed to do something. Okay, now it can go back down again because I’m doing the thing just like you told me.
(00:23:43):
So we want that fluctuating cascade to happen, and we want to support that. And the immune response has, if we think of this as a giant orchestra, then the immune response is like the French horn section. I don’t know, it’s like the bassoons or whatever. So when we’re thinking about codonopsis and astragalus specifically, it’s not just about their influence on a well-tuned hormonal cascade, but also about the way that they specifically interact with the things that your body needs to produce an immune response. They also have some of those same polysaccharides. They have all kinds of other nutritive aspects and signaling aspects that are just going to help your body be prepared. And they are also long-term. They’re going to work better if you’ve been taking them for a little while. And they go great in broth. So you could take your mushrooms, take your seaweed, take your codonopsis, take your astragalus. Put it all in the broth, simmer it, drink a cup every day at whatever kind of time of day you would like to have a savory beverage, and let that replace your concept of immune boosting with this immune modulating aspect. And what you’re really doing is making sure everybody is resourced and ready to go when they’re needed, but nobody is on high alert right now.
Ryn (00:25:21):
Yeah. And I got to put in a note here though that codonopsis and astragalus both are herbs that you can just chew on. You can get the dried plant material. Sometimes the astragalus will come in these slices. And you can just kind of gnaw on it until it’s soft, and then you have a little bit of herbal gum that you chew on.
Katja (00:25:43):
Like kind of fibery, gummy, yeah.
Ryn (00:25:46):
But if you chew that until it doesn’t have any flavor left and then for another minute or two afterwards, you’ve actually done a real good job of extracting the medicinal virtues from that. And both astragalus and codonopsis have a little touch of a sweet flavor to them. They’re quite nice. So if you’re not a broth drinker, and you probably aren’t going to start, then this could be a way to, again, just work with the whole herb in a minimally manipulated format.
Katja (00:26:15):
If you’re like no thanks, I’m not going to chew on fibery gum, you also can decoct these. They make a very mild-tasting, sort of mild, sweet-tasting decoction. You can toss some cinnamon or some ginger, whatever you like in there with it.
Ryn (00:26:32):
Yeah. I mean, it blends fine into a chai spice blend or an herbal, not exactly coffee blend, or a root beer flavor blend, or all kinds of different directions you could go with that. So when we talk about herbs that we want to incorporate into our daily habit and over a long term, we’re often looking for ways to not let that be hyper monotonous, so we don’t get sick of it and fall out of the habit or whatever. So yeah, these are real flexible in that way, super handy.
A Military Analogy: Logistics & Support (Not Attack)
Katja (00:27:00):
All right. So in case we haven’t yet convinced you to shift your thinking from stimulating to modulating. Stimulating, hey, that could be a problem for autoimmunity. Modulating, oh, everybody here is resourced, right? Okay. In case we haven’t convinced you yet, here’s another example. Not that I love military examples, but I’m about to make one.
Ryn (00:27:24):
And they’re always used in the context of immunity. You’ve got to ramp up the attack, you’ve got to sound the alarm sirens, right?
Katja (00:27:29):
Right. Well, that’s the thing. Even if you don’t love a military example, it’s the immune system. That is where people always use these examples. So just like any military campaign, logistics and support are way more important than the actual guns. All of the people with the ammunitions can’t do anything if they don’t have food, and water, and porta-potties, and all the other, a place to sleep, and transportation to even get where they’re going. And I don’t really think people should be shooting at each other, but the reality is militaries exist. People think about the immune system like a military, so we’re going with this example.
Ryn (00:28:23):
Yeah. And I think that we live in the world, and we’re aware of, to some degree, whatever personal degree of what’s going on. And I think we’ve also had ample chances to observe that just throwing bombs and missiles at a problem doesn’t make it go away, or solve it, or change conditions for the better for basically anybody. And so if we’re thinking about inside of our own bodies, maybe we shouldn’t only focus on strikes and invasions.
Katja (00:28:52):
Yes. Yes.
Ryn (00:28:54):
Yeah.
Katja (00:28:54):
Oh, turn off this. Back it up like however many rounds of 30 seconds you need to, and just listen to him say that again. That was so nice. That was good. That was good. Okay. So let’s stop thinking in terms of attacks, and let’s start thinking about logistics and support. And the cool thing is the majority of herbs that you have ever heard of for immune support or sickness support actually do fall in that logistics and support arena. Maybe if we’re thinking about a thyme steam, okay, there is some actual attacking going on there. Like an antimicrobial action topically in the lungs, because you’re breathing that into the lungs. And yes, there is a little attack going on, although there’s also some support.
Ryn (00:29:50):
Yeah. And you wake up your own humoral immunity, you activate your defenses in that sense. Okay. But also in that case, you’re oh, you’re getting your weapons to where they need to go.
Katja (00:30:03):
It is logistics.
Ryn (00:30:06):
You’re not just launching some kind of carpet-bombing idea into your body by being like I’m going to take this herbal germ killer thing. And it’s going to go everywhere and get everything that’s bad out of me all at once. You’re like okay, I know what kind of infection I got. I know where it’s localized. I understand that the cold virus or the flu virus hasn’t penetrated into every cell of every tissue of my being. It’s in specific parts of me in the respiratory tract. And I can get the thyme and the aromatic essential oils and the thymol right to that spot, and I can get the kind of effect that I’m looking for. Okay.
Katja (00:30:39):
Or oregano, or sage, or rosemary, or any of those strong, smelly mints, monarda, whatever. Okay, that’s a time when those are herbs that are doing a little bit of attacking at that antimicrobial level. But you are getting them right directly to the tissue in the lungs because you are delivering them through a steam. And so if you are a person with autoimmunity, et cetera, that’s no problem because you are not using that to ramp up your attack system, your innate attack system. It is not dialing your immune system up. It is – another terrible example – spraying Lysol inside your lungs. It is directly providing a little antimicrobial action in the specific location where the problem is without dialing up white blood cells and all that kind of stuff and supporting your barrier function. That’s what humoral immunity is. Humoral in this case doesn’t mean the four humors kind of action. It means innate immunity, like barrier function. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more in a minute.
(00:32:00):
All right, but aside from that, and maybe a little bit echinacea. Or yes, echinacea, but only one aspect. Echinacea does other things too. Most of the herbs that you may have ever learned about supporting you when you’re sick actually are not doing carpet bombing. They’re not attacking. They’re not the air raid siren that puts your whole body on high alert. Good, because we don’t actually want that if we’ve got autoimmunity and all the other things. And honestly, we don’t actually want that even in a healthy person because that can go too far. So instead of thinking about all that stuff, we are going to start thinking on purpose in terms of logistics and support. Let’s get the food there, let’s get the beds there, let’s get the porta-potties there. Let’s get all the stuff that our body needs so that our body can do the job.
Lymphatics: Self-Heal, Red Clover, Erigeron, & Parsley
Ryn (00:32:59):
Dig the latrines, man. You can’t neglect the waste products. And in the context of an infection that your body is fighting, that includes defeated pathogens. And that also includes your own response cells and components that have done their job and now need to be cleared away. That mainly happens through the actions of the lymphatic system. And you may have direct experience of that if you’ve ever had swelling right under here when you get sick, or in your lymph nodes around the chest, or wherever it happens for you. Because it’s evidence that that part is working harder. And it’s swollen in part because it gets a little inflamed, and in part because there’s more fluid there, and in part because things are a little stuck, and we want to help them to move along. And so we turn to lymphatic herbs for this.
Katja (00:33:52):
My favorite of the lymphatic herbs is self-heal. That’s Prunella vulgaris. The only problem, and I want to be upfront about this, is that it is not always easy to purchase.
Ryn (00:34:05):
Sometimes a little pricey but for good reasons. For good, completely understandable reasons once you look at the growing plant.
Katja (00:34:13):
Yeah. However, it is easy to grow, and it grows in such a wide range. Basically anywhere that you live almost, you can grow it.
Ryn (00:34:26):
Yeah, and the shade tolerance is handy too.
Katja (00:34:28):
Exactly. It grows in the full sun, it grows in the shade. It really will grow just nearly anywhere. And if you are growing some for yourself, then because it is a mint, and it just keeps flowering again and again. Every time that you cut all the flowers off, it just grows more flowers. If you have a four by eight bed, you can grow pounds of self-heal for yourself. Yeah, harvesting it is a little bit of a pain in the butt. Okay, fine. Okay, so we have established that this is not impossible to buy. Mountain Rose herbs has it in stock sometimes, it just sells out quickly. So do yourself a favor. In fact, it is September right now. This is the perfect time. Buy self-heal seeds now, put them out, and they will sprout next year. They need to be in the winter. They need to get cold so that they can sprout in the spring. So if you just throw them out there now, they will grow for you for next year. All right, so now that we have had that little asterisk on self-heal, let me tell you why it is so worth it, so worth it. Hey, it moves the fluids everywhere. It moves the fluids at the tip of your toes and at the top of your head. So if you’re a person who retains fluid in the bottom half of you and gets edema in your lower legs, or puffy in your shoes, or whatever, no problem. Self-heal will help you. And if you’re the kind of person who has stagnant fluid up in the top of your body or in the chest around the breast area, or if your armpits are always a little bit swollen, okay, no problem. Self-heal’s got that too. And if you’re always feeling brain foggy because you have stagnant fluid. Your brain has its own lymphatic system – it’s called the glymphatic system – and so you can get stagnant in there too and the fluid not moving. And self-heal works even there. Self-heal is one of the most studied herbs anywhere, but not in the US. Most of the studies come out of China where it is a very, very popular herb. And it’s kind of amazing because if you put in, to Google Scholar or whatever, self-heal or put Prunella vulgaris and whatever. Alzheimer’s, whatever it is you’re concerned about. They have probably done a study on it in China, and a lot of them are fascinating. So if you ever need a rabbit hole to fall down, studies on self-heal, go right ahead. But the big key here is that it really is a full-body mover. Yeah.
Ryn (00:37:11):
Another handy thing about self-heal is that like a lot of plants in its family, it’s really flexible in terms of how you can prepare it. This is one that you could take as tea, easy. You can do tinctures. You could do an electuary with the powder of it if you want. You’re not constrained to only one preparation method.
Katja (00:37:36):
And the flavor is quite neutral. So if you wanted to put it in broth, you could. It wouldn’t be weird. I mean it would be a little weird because we don’t normally think of putting flowers in broth, but flavor-wise it would not be weird at all. But it makes a fine tea, and you can just drink it how it is. Okay, but self-heal is – like I said – sometimes hard to find. So red clover blossom is a really good analog. Red clover also has that same lower body, upper body aspect and a lot of affinity for the kidneys. And it’s easier to purchase. But I do want to say that we are talking about the flower here and not the leaf. Sometimes you will see red clover herb or red clover leaf. Those are not the ones that we’re talking about. We’re talking about red clover blossom, the flower. This is also super easy to grow and really easy to if you have a yard, and you don’t want to mow it, just make it all red clover. But it is easier to purchase.
Ryn (00:38:42):
Yeah. A really lovely herb, mild flavor, a little grassy, but not to the level of nettles. So again, it’s easy to formulate with other things and make something tasty. Or to make many variants of tasty things so that again, you don’t have to have just the exact same tea forever. One with a little stronger flavor, but really worth considering, especially if it grows around you, is fleabane or Erigeron species. We work often with Erigeron canadensis in particular.
Katja (00:39:16):
I much prefer it. I much prefer Erigeron canadensis over Erigeron annuus, which is the daisy fleabane.
Ryn (00:39:25):
With the very tiny, little eyelash petals on it.
Katja (00:39:27):
Yeah. The flowers on Erigeron canadensis are one-tenth of the size of the flowers on Erigeron annuus. So daisy fleabane has much larger flowers, even though the flowers are small, much larger flowers than Canada fleabane. So that can help you in the identification. Also, the structure is very different. If you just search for images of those two plants, you’ll see that the flowering structure is drastically different.
Ryn (00:39:57):
Yeah. The fleabane’s interesting. It’s a complex herb. I mean, really all these herbs we’ve mentioned so far are complex. They have other actions and so on. We’re focused on a particular thing of lymphatic and fluid movement here. Erigeron though, even more than self-heal or red clover, it’s not only the lymph. It’s also helping with blood circulation and with blood quality here.
Katja (00:40:22):
That is a big, important part for me because I do tend towards stagnancy, and to fluid retention, and just slow fluid movement. And I have had varicose veins since I was in high school, possibly even junior high school. It is just like in my family everybody has wicked varicose veins. If I had known sooner, there’s a lot I could have done, but you can’t go back in time. So the point here is that I already know that I have limitations in my cardiovascular and especially circulatory function. So the fact that Erigeron is really helpful in terms of clotting and micro clotting. And that is such a big factor in COVID and potentially other illnesses too, but we really started focusing on it in COVID. But that makes it really important to me to make sure that I’m getting stuff in my body. And now listen, all of the lymphatic herbs are going to help with that to some extent. It’s just that Erigeron canadensis, okay, it has been studied for it. The fact that they have studied it is not the gold standard necessarily. It doesn’t mean that that’s the only one that does it. It doesn’t mean that it gets the stamp of approval and the other herbs don’t. It’s just that oh look, we do have this data. That is interesting. And combined with it does a really good job at it. So if you are a person like me with a lot of stagnation, then that could be one that’s really worth adding to your apothecary. This is another one that it’s not super easy to purchase. But if it grows anywhere near you, and it grows in a very wide range of climates, it’s wicked abundant. And you don’t even need to harvest that much of it because each individual stalk has so many leaves. So just harvest it before it goes to flower.
Ryn (00:42:37):
Right. Yeah. For this one we’re not focusing on the flowers the way we do with the red clover and also with the self-heal. Right. Yeah. Interesting herb, interesting flavor to it.
Katja (00:42:52):
Very similar to goldenrod. And I don’t normally put Erigeron in that vulnerary box, but there’s definitely crossover vulnerary action there, which we’re going to get to later.
Ryn (00:43:07):
We’ll come to that one.
Katja (00:43:09):
One quick addition here though is parsley. Now, parsley is not my first choice as a lymphatic mover. Although somebody out there is listening and saying are you kidding? Parsley is totally my first choice as a lymphatic mover. So whoever you are who just thought that, that’s for you, you’re awesome. It’s not my first choice because I like those other three so much. But it’s easy to get because you can just go to the grocery store, and usually it’s pretty cheap. So if you are sick, and you are somewhere that isn’t where you normally live, or you’re away from your apothecary, or you just don’t have an apothecary built up yet, or you do, but there’s no lymphatics in it or whatever else, get some parsley. Eat a lot of it. I know some people don’t like how it tastes. Hide it in something that has a strong flavor. But do eat a lot of it if you want to get this action. But it definitely will do the job. And especially when you don’t have anything else, it’s almost always available.
Ryn (00:44:16):
Yeah. So when we’re thinking about lymphatic herbs here, you’ve noticed that we haven’t mentioned poke root, or poke berry, or whatever, right?
Katja (00:44:27):
Or red root or any of those really strong, super-drying… Yeah.
Ryn (00:44:34):
Right. And the point is that it doesn’t have to be those. Although if you go looking for immune stimulating herbs, those will be on somebody’s lists. They’re going to turn up in that context. It doesn’t have to be at that level of intensity to be helpful. And to be honest, when we do work with those herbs, when we do include poke in a formula for somebody or include red root in a blend or whatever, it’s always going to be in a formula with gentler herbs, often the exact ones we started out with. Like a tincture blend that’s 90% self-heal and 10% poke I think is way more appropriate for way more people than just giving them a tincture of poke and saying you’re going to count out X many drops. And not only because some people’s hands shake, and it’s hard for them to do one drop at a time. That’s a significant reason all by itself. But also I feel like the poke is better received by the body when it has a gentler friend to take the rough edges off of their soulful graces. Yes. Right.
Nutritives: Berries, Alliums, & Broth
Katja (00:45:41):
All right. So if we are thinking about logistics and support, lymphatics covers logistics. So now let’s get some support, and we’re going to do that… Well, there’s other ways we could do it too, but the two ways that I want to talk about or that we want to talk about are nutritive herbs and herbs that will help you sleep. Because in my mind those are the two most important support factors in recovering from getting sick or in preventing you from getting sick to begin with. Literally, if you are getting consistently decent sleep, I honestly believe that is the number one factor in whether or not you get sick if you get in the elevator with Dave from accounting, and he’s sneezing. So I suppose somebody could fight me on that, and we can have a big debate. But for right now I’m just going to go ahead with my hot take that sleep, if you had to pick one, it’s the most important factor. But before we get to the sleep aids, let’s talk about some nutritive herbs that are going to help nourish you, but specifically help nourish the parts of the body that you need when you get sick.
Ryn (00:47:02):
And this is actually a place that we can bring in elderberry. And we can change our understanding of elderberry from this is an immune stimulant herb, to this is an herb that provides support to the body so that it can cope with infection in a nice, efficient way.
Katja (00:47:19):
I never learned elderberry as an immune stimulant back in the day. And that doesn’t mean that there is no older book that calls it that, though now I want to go back through all the books and see. But I never learned to think of elderberry that way. I didn’t start seeing people talk about elderberry as a stimulant, as an immune stimulant, until buying elderberry syrup became a popular thing for the mainstream, until big marketing campaigns about elderberry syrup.
Ryn (00:48:01):
Yeah. I mean, in an older context a lot of the discussion would be about the broad idea of the alterative impact.
Katja (00:48:07):
Right, right, right.
Ryn (00:48:08):
Which is connected to what we’re talking about here, because alterative is a big umbrella of actions that the end result of them one way or another is to improve the quality of circulating fluids: blood, lymph, extracellular fluid, all of the oceans of your body. And you can do that by providing nourishment, by enhancing digestion and absorption, by improving circulation and distribution of things inside of the body, by enhancing metabolism and transformation, and by improving elimination. So any of those is going to contribute to the overall alterative effect, and plants like elderberry actually hit several of those points altogether. Yeah.
Katja (00:48:50):
And reference the podcast episode that was from September 5th about elderberries and elderberry syrup, because it’s not just elderberries. Actually, all of the berries will give you the majority of the actions that you will get from elderberries. And a lot of those berries are way more cost-effective than elderberry is. So if you didn’t catch that episode, then don’t worry. Ryn will put the link in the show notes.
Ryn (00:49:29):
Yeah. Yeah, berries, they’re fantastic, right? You’re getting those dark-colored pigments like blue and red and purple. And they’re anthocyanins and proanthocyanidins and whatever, and they all contribute to your body’s efficiency and clarity of inflammatory process. To make sure that you’re able to accomplish that where it’s required, but no longer than it’s required so you don’t get… It’s going to be collateral damage, it’s going to be friendly fire. And again, particularly important in the context of autoimmunity. If that’s the background status for somebody, you don’t want anything that’s going to contribute to that. You want things that are going to make that less likely, less severe. And all of these pigment compounds from our berries are really, really going to help in that direction along with other benefits like enhancing the integrity of your blood vessels, which some of these viruses attack.
Katja (00:50:24):
Yes.
Ryn (00:50:24):
Hi, COVID. It’s you again.
Katja (00:50:27):
I mean, it may be others too. It’s just that we found it in COVID. I would love to see people go back and start studying other viruses. And see oh, are they also impacting the endothelial linings of the blood vessels and everything else? They might be. Yeah. Right, so berries are keeping inflammation in the Goldilocks zone. They are cleaning up places where there’s too much inflammation. And they are supporting places that need a little inflammation to do the next step in the job at exactly the right amount and not too much. Yeah.
Ryn (00:51:06):
Yeah. All right. Another nutritive concept or affinity group to put in here would be our alliums. So onions, garlic, leeks, what’s the other ones? Scallions, sure. Anybody who tastes like that, that’s what we’re talking about. And the nourishment here is not the kind of nourishment that people often speak of, like macronutrients, carbs and fats and proteins to run your basic processes and build things in the body. Or vitamins and minerals because you need to have those coming in through your food. You can’t build them out of your own substrate already, right? That’s normal nutrition, but we want to expand it a little bit and take the whole world of plants into account. And recognize that we get a lot of things from plants that are very important to our body, and that our body on some level expects. Or maybe a clearer way to say is that we thrive more effectively, we thrive better when we have these things in our lives.
Katja (00:52:09):
I mean again, it’s like vitamins. We don’t produce that stuff for ourselves. Or sometimes we can, but we don’t do it in quantities. Because throughout history, we most of the time were already in constant relationship. We were already getting it from those plant sources. So there was no need for the body to develop expensive pathways of self-synthesizing those compounds because they were coming from our environment.
Ryn (00:52:38):
Yeah. Basically, any mustard family plant is going to have some sulfur compounds of one kind or another, probably several kinds together in them. And so whether it’s broccoli or whether it’s garlic, those probably seem really different. And they are really different in terms of potency and all that. But there is some consistency to what they provide, and it’s really valuable. And it’s also possible today for people to never encounter any mustard family plants, whether it’s wild greens, whether it’s garlics or onions or other things like that, or to only get little touches of them here and there.
Katja (00:53:09):
Like a garnish. Yeah.
Ryn (00:53:11):
But these can be very supportive not only to the direct immune response to an infection. Garlic is famous for that. You’ve got phlegm, and you’ve got crud, and you’ve got infection in your lungs. And maybe it’s viral and bacterial at the same time. And you can work with garlic, and you can get garlic breath, and that’s going to directly fight the infection right there. That’s all true. But at the same time those silver compounds are enhancing your immune function globally, not stimulating, but enhancing. They are modulating the way that inflammation plays out in your system. And again, very, very valuable and very handy to have in the mix.
Katja (00:53:54):
It’s like tuning a piano. You can play a piano that’s out of tune. You could play the whole piece. You could play every note correctly. It’s going to sound awesome, but you can do it. But then if you get the piano tuned. And you play the whole piece, and you don’t make any mistakes, and you play every note perfectly. Wow, it’s going to sound so much better. Okay, that’s the immune system I want, but that’s not stimulation.
Ryn (00:54:21):
Yeah, that would be like only tuning them up.
Katja (00:54:23):
Yeah, everything will be sharp.
Ryn (00:54:25):
Everything goes up.
Katja (00:54:26):
Yeah. No, that is simply good maintenance. And then lots of practice so that you don’t make mistake,
Ryn (00:54:33):
Whatever. Okay. Yeah. So the garlic and the onions, and also yeah, some proteins are beneficial while you’re sick and while you’re fighting off because you got to metabolize and transform some proteins and make them into immune responders. And if we also snuck back some of our friendly seaweeds, and some of our friendly mushrooms, and maybe some roots into there as well. And we put them all in a pot together and boiled it for a minute, we would have broth again.
Katja (00:55:04):
Yeah, we’d be to soup.
Ryn (00:55:05):
Hooray.
Katja (00:55:06):
Yeah. And so even though broth is not an herb. I mean, you could make vegetable broth, but here bone broth is really going to be the best. Because also bone is where… Your bones are a critical part of your immune system. We don’t usually think about them that way, but they are. And so if we are making food that is boiled-down bones, then good. That’s good for your immune system. But we don’t think about that as an herb because it’s food. But maybe we should start thinking about it as an herb or at least as an herb carrier.
Ryn (00:55:46):
Yeah. Well, I think the concept that I’ve wholesale adopted from Paul’s work, Paul Bergner’s work, is in the herbal paradigm. So he has material on nutrition in the herbal paradigm. If protein were an herb, if magnesium were an herb, we would give it these actions, and we would put it in these categories, and describe…
Katja (00:56:06):
We would think about it in these ways. Yeah.
Ryn (00:56:08):
And so if you just think of all the things that go into broth, and treat it as an herbal formula, and also include the medicinal benefits of the meat, and the bone, and all of that kind of stuff in there as well. You can conceptually work with it the same way you think of a tincture formula, or a tea blend, or something like that.
Katja (00:56:27):
Plus it is fluids. And when you’re sick, you need fluids to keep your kidneys going. Ultimately, you have to… Flush out can be a problematic term, but I’m going with it. But please everybody understand it the right way. We need to flush stuff out. If we are talking about keeping the lymphatic system moving. But we’re getting dehydrated because you’re sick, and you don’t want to drink stuff because you’re just laying there and not doing anything. Okay, well then everything’s going to get really gummed up, and that’s not going to help either. So we need a lot of fluids so that we can be circulating a lot of fluids. So drink your broth is what I’m saying. And also when you’re sick, often there’s some nausea. Even if it’s not a stomach bug, but your guts just don’t feel very good. It’s hard to eat sometimes. Sometimes you get the kind of sick where ravenous, fine. But sometimes you don’t, and then it’s really hard to eat at all. Being sick expends a lot of calories, and so if you are having broth instead of water, better.
Ryn (00:57:42):
Yeah. Hence nourishment with minimal effort on the part of your body, on the part of your digestive functions.
Katja (00:57:48):
Yes. Which is good because all that effort is going into all the other things going on right now.
Sleep as a Key Support Strategy
Ryn (00:57:53):
Yeah. All right, so drink some broth and then go to bed.
Katja (00:57:57):
Yes.
Ryn (00:57:57):
Yeah, yeah let’s get some sleep. This one is super helpful, and people often forget about it. One of our assignments for one of the capstone assignments for one of our courses includes you’re going to make an immune support box for your family. And you’re going to help you get through the cold and flu and COVID season. So tell me what you want to put in there. And people almost always hit the elderberry syrup, and maybe the fire cider, and maybe some other preparations as well. But my most frequent feedback is going to be don’t forget about sleep. Find some sleep remedy that you can rely on that’s helpful and effective for you and the people you’re taking care of and include that in there. Because poor sleep lengthens an illness, and good sleep shortens it dramatically. So let’s get that.
Katja (00:58:44):
Even if we look back at the 1918 flu pandemic, one thing Paul Bergner talks about this a lot too. One thing that was observed was that the people who were able to get in bed and stay there… So that was the people who had someone to take care of them and also who had a livelihood that allowed them to take the time off to get in bed and stay there, right? Okay. But the people who were able to get in bed and stay there for the duration of their illness recovered better and faster than the people who could not, who sometimes did not recover because it was the 1918 flu pandemic. Yeah, you got to go to bed, and nobody wants to do that. People just go to work sick. They go wherever they go sick. They go to the movies sick. I think so much of that comes from a culture where our jobs for so long have not supported taking care of yourself. If you need to miss work because you’re sick, you either have a job where you have sick days, so you have to budget like oh, how many sick days can I afford to take right now? Or maybe you have the kind of job where you have to bring in a doctor’s note in order to be allowed to take time off to be sick, which is just draconian. And nobody is like hey, when you start to feel like you’re sick, you should just stay home. Don’t come in. Let’s not get everybody else sick, and let’s get you better faster. That would actually be better for business, but employers don’t do that. So if you are listening to this, and you are an employer, consider this as a policy. If your employees are getting sick, tell them to stay home and get in bed before it gets bad. I promise they’re going to be more productive if you put this policy in place.
Ryn (01:00:51):
You tell them. All right. So sleep aid, sleep support herbs can be, first off, do you already have some friends, right? Yeah. Do you already have some herbs that you know are helpful for you when you have trouble sleeping, maybe from pain, maybe from anxiety, maybe from whatever other kind of physical or mental discomfort? Well, start with those.
Katja (01:01:11):
Yeah. It doesn’t have to be anything different than what helps you sleep on a regular Tuesday, right? Okay. But what if you don’t usually have trouble sleeping? And now you’re sick, and you’re like well, this is not my time for experimentation. I don’t really know who’s going to help me sleep. We do have some suggestions. So I would start here with chamomile, not just because I feel like chamomile could fix everything for everyone. But I need to draw a giant chamomile. Okay. But because chamomile is relaxing to the body, relaxing to the mind and nervous system, especially relaxing to the guts. And so if you are crampy or just feeling cruddy in your guts, which just so commonly comes along with any kind of being sick, chamomile really can help with all that stuff and just make sleeping more comfortable. But this is not your stick-your-pinky-finger-out, pale, yellow chamomile tea kind of chamomile.
Ryn (01:02:24):
One tea bag, five-minute infusion. No.
Katja (01:02:26):
No, no, no, no, no. This is make a quart size jar, put an inch or two of chamomile in the bottom. And of course that will fluff up when you get it wet, but okay, whatever. And let it steep until it’s dark brown.
Ryn (01:02:42):
Covered.
Katja (01:02:43):
Yes, covered. It’s going to be bitter. Not that bitter, a little bitter. But if you don’t like bitter things, or if you’re unfamiliar with bitter, it may feel bitter for you. But it also still has the chamomile flavor. So if you toss a little bit of honey in there, it’ll taste better. But the point here is get it in you because it really is going to help. But in order to get that antispasmodic action, that relaxing action strong enough that it is helping to relax the tension in all your muscles. Because when you’re sick, you do tend to get tense in all your muscles. Especially if you kind of have a fever but not really, and so you have the chills. In order to get all those actions, you really need it strong. So don’t forget that part.
Ryn (01:03:34):
Yeah. This could also be a place that skullcap, or passionflower, or betony can be helpful. These are gentle relaxants and mild sedative herbs for the nervous system that just take the edge off, help you to wind down, help you to release a little bit. And sometimes that’s enough to get you there, especially if you’re already tired to start with.
Katja (01:03:57):
Yeah. I would add blue vervain to that list also. And I think the one really special thing about this category is that because our society makes it so hard to take sick time, makes it so hard even if you have sick time available to actually use the sick time because culturally that’s not cool. People save up, and have years’ worth of sick time, and just never take it because that’s not the culture at their job. So because even when we have it available to us, we have such a culture in our society of don’t take sick time. If you are taking sick time, then you’re probably worrying about who’s replying to the email to that customer? Who’s going to cover my whatever? What kind of pile of work am I coming back to when I’m done with this, whatever? What deadline am I missing? And skullcap, and passionflower, and betony, and blue vervain all are not just relaxing and a little sedative, but also helping with that mental merry-go-round carousel thing of all those negative thoughts that are stressing you out and making you feel like whatever. I’m just going to work because it’ll be worse if I stay home. And all of them a little bit differently. So for example, the skullcap and passionflower are really helpful when it is the hamster wheel or the carousel spinning around and around, and you can’t stop it. Whereas the blue vervain is really helpful when it is like you can’t let go of control. You actually have a coworker who’s covering for you, but they’re not going to do it like you would. If that is the problem, then blue vervain is going to really help. And in general the betony helps when you’re just stuck in your head. And you need to get out of your head, and just stop the spinning up there, and allow yourself to just get in the bed. So really that psychological aspect, that mental carousel aspect of having trouble sleeping, yes.
Ryn (01:06:18):
Nice. All right. And one other herb, and obviously this is not the end of the discussion of herbs that can help with sleep, but another key one to think of and one we often turn to when there is an acute illness like this and we’re trying to aid sleep there is the plant wild lettuce, so Lactuca virosa and some other species and friends. So wild lettuce is really helpful in large part because it’s a stronger sedative than these others that we’ve mentioned. We have this kind of schema where there’s mild nervines that are mostly relaxant, a little stronger that are more directly sedative but with a broad range of potencies there. And then at the higher end we get hypnotics, and hypnotics are strongly sedative. They can make you feel sleepy even if you’re not already tired. But they’re especially helpful when you are feeling tired, but you can’t quite fall asleep. Maybe that’s from pain, maybe that’s because you are having fevers and those are keeping you up, something like that. But wild lettuce is very, very cooling. It relieves pain and discomfort. And it can make it easier for somebody to fall asleep. and to sleep well, and to really rest, and to feel recovered in the morning. So yeah, that’s a really good friend for us around here in that purpose.
Katja (01:07:35):
All right. So certainly there’s more herbs for each of those categories, but that is a big chunk of work that you can do in the logistics and supply category. Anybody can do that work even if you are autoimmune. Even if you’re autoimmune and in a flare, these are all fine. They’re not going to push you into a flare, and they’re really supportive, so we like them.
Better Barriers With Astringents & Demulcents
Ryn (01:08:01):
We like them. All right, cool. Now we can also think about defense, about building better barriers, I suppose. Or yeah, we get caught up in the language with this, right?
Katja (01:08:15):
We’re still military here. We don’t love it, but it is the primary metaphor for the immune system.
Ryn (01:08:23):
Yeah. And we do want to improve our barrier function, but that doesn’t mean to lock everything down. That would not actually be the most functional mucous membrane in your sinuses, or in your eyes, or inside of your lungs. This would become a serious problem, right? So functional barriers, healthy barriers are flexible, and they’re not too far in one direction or another. Particularly not too dry because that makes them actually more susceptible to microbial penetrations. But also not too lax, too open. Same thing, more likelihood of a bacteria or a virus particle or whatever to get in there, get a foothold, and initiate a real infection for you.
Katja (01:09:15):
Again, this is like when you’re thinking of what should I be doing every day from fall until spring, this is it. Actually, you could do this all year round because in the spring it’s going to be allergy season, and you’re going to need the same work. Your barrier function, it’s your skin. It is your mucous membranes in your respiratory tract. Well also your eyes, they’re not part of your respiratory tract, and your ears, and the lining of your GI tract. It is every place where we are up against the world. Your liver does not come in contact with the air or whatever else. Anything that’s getting to your liver is filtered through your digestive system, right? Only the approved items will pass, at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Ryn (01:10:03):
It’s supposed to happen.
Katja (01:10:05):
It works that way when your barriers are healthy. They let the good stuff through, they keep the bad stuff out. And so that is just basic human maintenance that isn’t even. There’s nothing here about stimulating, there’s no air raid sirens, there’s no attack. This is just making sure that the paint isn’t flaking off your house and then the siding starts to mold.
Ryn (01:10:32):
Yeah. It is a physical interaction here, but it’s also a biological one. You have components of your immune surveillance system that live in these mucous membranes and in these barrier sections of your body. They function better when the tissue that they’re embedded in and surrounded by is not too dry, not too damp, not too lax, not too tense, but in a nice Goldilocks kind of a situation. So you can think of that as how can I improve immune efficiency at the first point of contact where the virus or the bacteria tries to get into me? It’s by making sure that those membranes are working well. And fortunately herbs are really, really good at this. So if things are too dry, guess what? We want some moistening plants. We want some demulcent herbs. We want things like marshmallow, or linden, or sassafras leaf, or whatever your favorite demulcent is, whatever your local demulcent is. They are going to help your body to move fluid to those tissues and to maintain a proper degree of hydration and fluidity within them.
Katja (01:11:47):
And so you can visualize this actually. If you have really dry skin, and you start to see the cracks in between. And there’s redness in between, and the redness is in little lines, like those plates that have the cracks in them. That is dryness. And when that happens, that’s compromised function. Each of those little red lines is a place where bacteria has the opportunity, or viruses or fungus or whatever, has the opportunity to get inside of your body. You can also see this inside your nose. Okay, well, you would need special equipment. But don’t worry because you can feel it so strongly that it becomes visual. When your nose is super dried out, and maybe it’s red around the base of your nose, but the inside of your nose is so dried out that every breath you take feels sharp and scratchy. You can’t see inside your nose, but it feels like there’s giant cracks like in the desert when it hasn’t rained, and there’s those giant cracks everywhere. It feels like that on the inside of your nose because it is that. And every one of those cracks is a place where some kind of pathogen can get easier access to inside your body. So that’s why if stuff is really dried out, you are at risk. And in the winter so many of us have dry heating systems, so it dries out the house. Even if you’re a person who normally isn’t super dry, your environment is becoming dry, your interior, your house environment, or your work environment. And so you need to take extra care that the inside of your respiratory tract and everywhere else is staying lubricated so that those big cracks in the desert are not opening up inside your nose.
Ryn (01:13:47):
And things can go too far in the other direction also. They can be too wet but in a drippy way. So it’s not the ideal mucus that is just enough to catch the little particulates, and virions, and pathogen bits, and whatever and capture them in the phlegm. And then you blow them out, and they didn’t get a chance to get into you. But when the mucous membranes are lax, they’re often going to be drippy, Unless your body is fairly dehydrated, and then maybe they’re just lax and kind of open. But again, it’s a compromise to the integrity of the barrier.
Katja (01:14:22):
And it’s that drippiness that’s clear like water, clear and thin. It’s not like drippy, yellow, mucousy snot. Okay, well that’s crud that is getting expelled from your body. It is that little runny faucet kind of mucus.
Ryn (01:14:40):
Yeah. And so in this case what we’re looking for is astringent herbs, and there’s really a lot of astringent herbs, more than demulcent herbs, honestly. So a couple of favorites of ours for these kinds of indications include agrimony. Lady’s mantle, which is not just for pelvic floor issues, and definitely not just for women’s pelvic floor issues. But anybody who’s got one, you can work with that. But it does have the typical effects of an astringent, which is going to manifest itself on several mucous membranes inside of your body, including your respiratory ones, your digestive ones, and get those into a nice condition. Meadowsweet is really nice as well. Meadowsweet is another herb that gets pigeonholed as a headache remedy or a delivery system for salicylate compounds. But it has this astringent quality to it, and so that can be very helpful. Now these are all ones where you can drink them as tea, and then you can experience these effects in your sinuses, in your lungs. It’s going to be happening through the GI tract. So it’s also pretty simple to take and to get the impact that we’re looking for with these guys. Do note that in neither case is it like oh, if I want to have good immune defense, I’ve got to drink demulcents all the time, or I’ve got to drink astringents all the time. It’s responsive to your constitution. So me, I tend to run dry. I more frequently am going to benefit from demulcents than from astringents.
Katja (01:16:11):
And yet I run damp, and I have extra fluid everywhere. But when it’s winter and the heat’s on, well, my nose is going to dry out too. Even though I retain water in lots of places in my body, my nose is still breathing in the dry air, and that will dry out my nose regardless. So your constitution is one thing. And in your case your constitution demands that you preemptively pay a lot of attention to this and even give it a running head start. But for me it means that I just need to be aware that hey, if I start feeling dry, I should take action right away. And I should not assume that I’m never going to feel dry in my nose just because I have plenty of fluid in my ankles or whatever else.
Ryn (01:17:00):
Yeah. You respond to what you observe. And it can also be that over the course of one round of illness that your need changes. For a lot of people, especially if they haven’t encountered it several times, their first exposure to COVID, their respiratory infection experience, that portion of their COVID journey can often manifest with a lot of dryness. And so that could call for some demulcents. But maybe later on after a while your body starts to react, and maybe you do start to make some snot, and then you blow your nose a bunch. And then maybe that happens for several days, and then now the mucous membranes are kind of irritated. And they’re kind of open and lax at that point, and now they get dirty. And now maybe you need a touch of some astringency to go in and correct that state. So you respond to what you see, and you acknowledge that it may change as things play out over time.
Katja (01:17:56):
We’re modulating again.
Ryn (01:17:57):
We are doing it, aren’t we?
Katja (01:17:58):
Yeah, it never stops.
Ryn (01:18:00):
All of our sliders.
Choosing Vulneraries
Katja (01:18:02):
Yep. All right. And then the last category here that we’re going to talk about today is vulneraries. Vulnerary is an old word that means it heals thelial cells. So that will be your epithelium, your skin, and your endothelium. That is the lining of your GI tract, the lining of your lungs, but also the lining of your blood vessels, the lining of your bladder, the lining of so many things in your body. So making sure that all of that lining tissue is not too leaky, not compromised, so that it lets only the good stuff through and not the bad stuff, that’s where the vulneraries are important. Literally, just like if you get a cut on your arm, and you put calendula salve on it because that helps the cut heal faster, that can happen inside your digestive tract, inside your lungs, inside any part of you that has these endothelial cells.
Ryn (01:19:06):
Yeah. For modern people, a lot of times our main focus on vulneraries is going to be through the GI tract more so than maybe the respiratory tract. Because maybe there’s an outright ulcer, like a stomach ulcer, or an ulcerative colitis thing, or something else going on. But maybe there’s also this manifestation of increased permeability or hyperpermeability, which we mostly just call leaky gut. And that’s super common, and that traces back to chronic inflammation that can absolutely be a part of somebody with a chronic inflammatory problem. A chronic autoimmune health problem can very strongly manifest in this way. And getting a more integral barrier through your GI tract is super, super helpful for lots of reasons above and beyond your response to pathogens, but totally containing that.
Katja (01:20:03):
All right, so some of our favorite vulneraries, listen, there are a ton of vulneraries. But some of our favorites, goldenrod I think is right up at the tippy top, even though you might’ve thought I was going to say calendula first. Well, I’m going to say it second. But goldenrod, the Latin name of goldenrod, Solidago, it means to make whole. I really love the flowers of goldenrod, and I harvest them preferentially over the leaves. The flowers have more of that aromatic action. The leaves have more of the bitter action. So if you need more bitter in your life, go with the leaves. If you need more of those aromatic actions, which is also going to push it towards the kidneys, and the bladder, and any kind of urinary stuff, which is also going to support elimination and lymphatic function, then the flowers are going to be what you want. It’s getting easier to buy goldenrod in commerce, but typically when you do it’s mostly leaf. So if you want to emphasize that flower part, then it’s better to harvest it yourself. On the other hand, it’s pretty abundant in a lot of regions, so it’s not too hard to harvest yourself.
Ryn (01:21:18):
Another amazing vulnerary that I can’t let the topic go by without mentioning is St. John’s wort. Now, this is one of those if and only if kind of herbs, right? You’re only going to take this if you don’t have pharmaceutical drugs in your life with which it could interact. Somebody coming at this from an autoimmune background may already have some medications going on for their autoimmune condition. Those may interact with St. John’s wort. And in that case, no, we’re not going to choose this for this purpose.
Katja (01:21:47):
In that case go with calendula, go with goldenrod, go with even chamomile.
Ryn (01:21:51):
Yeah. And don’t forget plantain leaf, and don’t forget marshmallow, and don’t forget Erigeron. And don’t forget really a lot of plants can have this kind of impact. And so it’s not quite to the level of just get some herbs into the person, but it’s pretty close to that.
Katja (01:22:08):
Okay, now listen. Getting the herb to the problem is a big part of being successful with herbalism. So if we are trying to get the herb to the digestive tract, or even to the lungs, or to internal endothelial cells, okay, tea is going to be a really great way to go. But if the vulnerary action you need is inside your nose or even around your nose because you have been blowing your nose so much, and your whole nose is just on fire all of the time. Don’t drink tea for that. Just get a nice salve
Ryn (01:22:46):
No, you get a cup of tea. And then you just stick your nose in it, and you leave it there for five or 10 minutes.
Katja (01:22:51):
I mean, that actually probably would work. Just don’t breathe it and just breathe through your mouth.
Ryn (01:22:56):
Oh, you’re breathing through your mouth. I was going to hold my breath. Okay, I get it.
Katja (01:23:00):
Oh, well okay. That would work too. Okay. But so in this case a nice salve that’s goldenrod, or calendula, or chamomile, or any of the vulneraries, plantain, and just put it on a Q-tip, put it in your nose. It’s okay.
Ryn (01:23:13):
She doesn’t use a Q-tip y’all. She just puts it on her finger. She does wash her hands after, but let’s be honest here.
Katja (01:23:20):
I do.
Ryn (01:23:23):
It’s fine.
Katja (01:23:25):
Things you know when you’re married. Y’all didn’t need to know that. Okay. But another option is a hydrosol, like a chamomile hydrosol is really nice if you just spray it right under your nose and breathe in. You can get one of those nose spritzer things too. That’s totally fine. I don’t have one. I don’t know why, I just don’t have one. But it works great if you just spray the hydrosol on your face. And listen, at that point your eyes are probably dry too and everything else. So just spray it on your face and breathe it in. And that also can be really helpful. So if you don’t want to put a Q-tip in your nose with salve on it or your pinky finger, then you could go with the hydrosol route instead.
Ryn (01:24:09):
All right.
Katja (01:24:11):
Aren’t you glad you listened this long?
Ryn (01:24:13):
This is your reward.
Katja (01:24:14):
Yeah.
Ryn (01:24:16):
All right. So just stepping back, we’ve been saying it’s not just about immune stimulation. We want to build up resilience. There are many facets to that. We can work with herbs and foods as well to help to modulate our immune response so that it gets the inflammation where it needs to be for the amount of time it needs to be and not everywhere else and not for a long stretch of time. We’re thinking about moving fluids with our lymphatic herbs. We’re thinking about nourishing the body through nutritive effects, making sure you can sleep well, and taking care of the integrity of the parts of your body that come into contact with the outside world. So that is our answer to what does somebody with autoimmunity do when they want to boost their immunity? There you go.
Katja (01:25:00):
A nice, short answer, which we’re known for. Yeah.
Ryn (01:25:06):
She’s not kidding. This is sort of the short version. So if you want the long version, check it out. We’ve got a deal for you.
Katja (01:25:13):
Yes. So the long version is our Immune Health course and our Respiratory Health course. And what I have done for you is I have combined those two into a bundle. I’m calling it the Winter Health bundle. Normally if you got those two courses, it would be $650. But I am pricing this at 40% off if you get it in the bundle. So it’ll only be $390. There are – I don’t know – I think it’s close to 80 hours of video. It is very in depth, understanding immune function and immune herbs and how to put all that together. Understanding hypersensitivity, autoimmunity, inflammation, all that stuff, how to make herbal choices for it. And then also in the Respiratory course it is, okay, all of our regular respiratory information, all the different herbs, and the ways that you would get them into you, and stuff like that. But then really going through all different kinds of respiratory problems from a cold, to COPD, to everything in between and looking at how do we build strategies for that person to help them recover and stay healthy. And also all of our cold and flu and COVID strategies are in there as well. So, this is tons of material for 40% off in this bundle. You aren’t going to need even a coupon code. I’m going to price this bundle special for you. And so just grab that Winter Health bundle. Ryn has put the link in the show notes. And that’s what you can do for fall and winter is spend your time instead of binging Netflix or whatever, binge herbal information, and you will never get sick again. No, you probably will, but you will know what to do when it happens.
Ryn (01:27:09):
Yeah. And as is usual with all of the courses that we offer, this is a self-paced video-focused program. You take it at your own pace. There is no time limit on this. You have access to the material for as long as there’s an internet and we are on it. Yeah. And when you get these courses or any of our course materials, you get access to twice weekly live Q&A sessions with me and/or Katja. You get access to our private student community where you can chat with your peers and your friends and share all your successes, and beautiful herb harvests, and every other cool thing that you come across. There are study guides, there are quizzes, there are capstone assignments, so you can really prove to yourself mostly that you learned what you learned.
Katja (01:27:54):
Although when you turn in your capstone assignment we read it ourselves, and we send you feedback on it. So you’re proving it to yourself, but also we are in discussion with you about yes, you have this. You did it. Yeah.
Ryn (01:28:08):
You’re not here learning on your own. You’re not reading a PDF and then trying to figure out if you learned anything. You’re not just watching a video and then moving on. We are here to help you. And we have lots of different ways for you to reach out and to get direct contact with your fearless faculty.
Katja (01:28:25):
Also, if you are listening to this in your ears instead of listening to it with your eyes, and you think oh, video. I don’t know. I really like podcasts. No problem because every video file has a corresponding audio file. So if you prefer to learn by listening maybe while you’re going for a walk, or doing chores, or whatever else, you totally can. You can just listen to the audio version of every video and learn that way. We try to make it really flexible for all different kinds of learning styles, and we think you’re going to love it.
Ryn (01:28:56):
That’s right. Okay, that’s it. That’s it. We did it. Thanks for listening. And we’ll be back soon with another episode of the Holistic Herbalism podcast. Until then, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea.
Katja (01:29:11):
Drink some tea.
Ryn (01:29:12):
And stick some salve up your nose. Why not?
Katja (01:29:18):
Bye-bye.
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