Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Mints

Hey all, welcome this week's show. Today, we're going to talk about really one of the biggest families of medicinal ain culinary herbs. It's the mint family. But specifically I'm going to really talk about the mints that taste like mint today. Mints are really a huge family. You know, identify mints. They have square stems and opposite leaves. The flowers are usually bluish or whitish. They're usually very aromatic. There are a few that are not aromatic. We all need to smell of mint. I'm talking like peppermint or spear mint such as that, right, But there are other mints that you may not think about of as being mints because they smell nothing like mint. Among those would be like catnip or cat mint, lemon, balm, basil basils of mint. Oh, there's so many. It's a skull cap is a mint. I mean, it doesn't have really much of a scent at all. Gosh, there really are so many. I could probably sit here and just name one hundred plants that we use medicinally or culinarily that are in the mint family. I always usually when I'm taking someone out teaching them to forage or gather wild herbs, usually try to start with something in the Met family because they're really easy to identify and they're generally speaking, very safe herbs. Now, why don't I say generally speaking, well, some members of the met family can be extremely strong in volidle oils. The too strongest are water mint and penny royal. The only documented death by herbal medicine in the past one hundred years or so in the United States was a woman trying to induce an abortion. She took an essential oil of Penny royal and blood to death from every orifice for body. So mints can't actually be extremely potent. Some of them can be strongly sedative, like your skull cap or well lemon balm. Actually, if it's in a very concentrated fresh plant tincture, can absolutely knock you out. Other members of the mint family bugle eed, very strongly sedative. Another member of the mint family you might even think about is parilla or Japanese beef steak plant. That one comes to mind because they both have a purple tinge to them and are considered to be more weeds than something you want to plant. I love them both. I use bugle weed medicinally, and the perilla has this like cinnamon clove type flavor to it. It's just amazing. I mean, it's great to add a few leaves to a jar pickles if you're doing like a you know, like sweet pickles or sweet and sour pickles, bread and butter pickles, really really good and such of that really good added to a salad just to perk it up, and yeah, you can eat it just like a vegetable. It's it's really pretty nice. We've got some great expectant properties. It's really good for digestion. All the mints really are fall into those categories, some more so than others. Obviously. It's just they were just about everywhere. I mean, when we talk about herbal medicine, I would say probably seventy five percent of the herbs we use, and this is true culinarily as well, fall into three categories. The mints. The Apaha family, that's your umbiliferous. That's a hard word to say, but you would know these plants. Okay, it's carrots, it's deal. It's anything that has that like umbul of flowers. Some of the members of that family are quite poisonous, like poison hemlock and poison Oh, what's the other one, water parsnip or something. It's not coming to my mind right now, but anyway, poison hemlock is very easy to mistake for wild carrot. For instance. You want to be really careful with your patia family even though there's so many I mean salaries in the family. There's parsley and cilantro or in the family. There's so many members and we use so many of them. And the others are your sages and wormwood's. There's a little overlap between those two families. You take those like three families and learn them to start with, and you've got like seventy five percent of what you know. And that's why I always when I'm teaching to somebody about herbal medicine, I'll always start in the kitchen. Then we go to the backyard. It's really that simple. I teach them those like three families, and then we start talking about trees and shrubs, and then we start talking about the more unique plants that we use in herbal medicine, the ones that like gen sing or something. You're not going to find a whole lot of genzing growing somewhere golden seal or touch me nots. I mean, so many things that are not common in the grocery store, you know, are really often very uncommon in a herb shop or a health food store. But so I like to start with the basics, and it's pretty hard to get more basic than mint. Okay, lots of wild mints grow all over the place the well where I live. I think probably the most common is apple mint. You'll often find apple mints growing in old orchards. It's a very mild, mildly scented, mild tasting mint that has almost a little furry texture to the lead. Spear mint is also very very common where I live. People used to grow it in their gardens. They grow both of these in their gardens, but they also grow wild, so they will have you gotten off of an old homestead and they'll be just growing, you know, regrowing in the same place and gradually spreading for centuries, or you know, you find them wild. Peppermint is far less common. Peppermint really is almost a hybrid. It is as a hybrid. It was bread specifically to have that very strong minty flavor. So it's when we don't grow from seeds, you want to get a cutting of a strongly scented, good tasting peppermint plant, and so you're not gonna find that one as much in the wild. If someone was growing it in their garden, it may have spread. As you may know, mints spread, They spread through their roots underground. They also spread by seeds. Birds spread the seeds, the winds spread the seeds. So I mean they can really take over. And that's what people always say, don't grow mint in your garden. I never say don't grow mint in your garden. I say grow it in a place where it's not gonna spread. You can hedge it in by putting it, you know, in an area that's got maybe a concrete walkway around it. They mint does not like wet feet. If you've got an area of your yard that's more damp, it's probably not going to spread into that area or spread very far out of that area. If you can get to take root there. You can certainly grow it in containers and pots. Mint does well in full sunlight or kind of partial shade. It does not do well in very shady spots. You can also use that to keep it from spreading. If you want to just keep an eye on it. You can get your like edger and go around and just trim the roots every year, and it's not gonna spread out that area. I don't have a problem with mint at all, but some people are like, oh no, don't take don't plant mint, it'll take over. I honestly don't mind if it does. I let it grow pretty much wherever it wants to grow, and then I just harvest it and continually have mints. I use mince and cooking. You'd be very surprised to know how well mint goes with tomato. You know, we think of combining like basil with tomato, or rosemary another member of the mint family, or regano another member of the mint family with tomato. Mints fantastic. I put it into like eggplant palm, chicken palm. If I'm doing something like that, shrimp creole often use mint. Most people would use bay leaf. I prefer the flavor of mint. It's actually somewhat inner, changeable aromatically, and I much prefer the flavor of mint. It's less bitter, for sure. You can use mints and salads. You can do mints with you know, cheese and olive oil. I mean mints don't have to be candy and ice cream, but they certainly can. You know, throw some drop up some mints and throw it into your chocolate cake or your brownies or your ice cream. It's fantastic. Of course, you can make candies and syrups, and there's a thousand ways to use mint. I mean, so when someone says mints take over, I'm like, I wish they would. I mean, there's so many things growing in my yard that if the mint would crowd it out, I would be more useful for me. Now, one of the wild mints that grows in my yard is self hell or prunella, and it's everywhere in my yard. I don't mind it at all. It's kind of great. As the name implies, self hell or prunella has great herbal medicinal value. It's a good nutritious plant. It's bitter, it does not have much air aromatic flavor. It's not when people grow intentionally. It's one of those white old mints. There's a ton of them, actually really, And of course you can make a mint jewelip. I do not like mint jewlips. I think that's a waste of good bourbon. But if that's your thing, go for it. I don't like sweet drinks, that's me. But mint and what a moheedo. You know, you take your rum and your mint and your lime juice, and that's pretty good. But again it's too sweet for me. It's you know, if you like gurly drinks, enjoy your gurly drinks. I'm not gonna judge you. But if I could bourbon, I want to straight absolutely no ice. Don't ever serve me bourbon over ice if I've paid for it. If I'm in your home, feel free. But if I go to a bar and I order bourbon and they put over ice, I say no, I did not ask for ice, take it back, and they get all angry and everything. You know why they do that because the ice takes up space in the glass and they can pour you less than you paid for. That's a bartender's trick. By the time you've had half the drink, half the ice is melted, and you don't know they shorted you want of your bourbon. So you know, I don't really frequent bars. When I played music often, did you know, I mean I was being paid to play at the bar, and sometimes they'd pay me with a couple of drinks instead of money. That was never ideal. I wanted the money, but you know, sometimes they give the performer a discount on a drink or something. But you know, or when I was dating, i'd take a girl out. But yeah, I'm telling you, if a bartender or waiter hands me a drink with ice and I'm like, take it back, well we can't take back drinks. I'm like, I'm not paying for this. Sorry, you can drink it yourself or throw it out. I am not taking a glass of anything I paid for that has ice in it. I'm actually the same way with I don't care if it's iced tea or a coke. I don't want ice in there. And in that case, it's not so much of being a cheapskate, which you know, maybe it is to a point, that's my nature. I am part Irish anyway, predominantly Irish. But no, the ice kind of hurts my teeth. I have sensitivity to cold with my teeth, so I don't like ice in my drinks. Just if it's a refrigerated soda, that's fine. And I don't drink a lot of sodas and don't put ice in my beer or why would I put ice in a soft drink? It doesn't make sense to me. But anyway, moving on, I will say a little bit about self hell parnella. It's going to be coming up in the next month in your yard most likely, so you're gonna want to identify this first fold for the square stem, opposite leaves. Get a field guide, pull up prunella or self hill on the internet. Pretty hard to go wrong with it. Plants for Future says. Selfhill has a long history of focused especially in the treatment of wounds, ults, sores, et cetera. It was also taken internally as a tee in the treatment of fever's diarrhea, sore, mouse internal bleeding. In Korea, it's used to treat edema, nephritis, grophul and goiter. The whole plant is alternative that means gradually brings you back to health. Antibacterial, antipyretic means it helps well with bad breath and some digestive issues. Antiseptic, anti spasmodic is stringic carminative sets upset stomach, diuretic febrifuge it means it can help flower fevers and the mints. Most of the mets have that property of helping fevers. Hypotensive means that lowers blood pressure. Somatic stiptic means it stops bleeding. Several of the mint families do. A juga riped tanse Bugo eight was one of the soldiers herbs people would carry with them and they got cut. It can be used to shrink those capillaries and stop the bleeding. Tonic vermafuge. Vermafuge means it helps get rid of intestinal parasites like worms. Pregnant women should never have medicinal dosage of any member of the ment family, or really any member of the sage and wormwood family, or any member of the Apahia family, because they all have vermafuge properties. That's why our ancestors use them a lot to preserve meats and to get rid of intestinal parasites. To make water drinkable. One of the things about spear mint, water milt, peppermint, anything like that, a good aromatic, strong smelling mint. If you have to drink some water out of a creek and you don't know if it's clean, chewing up a little mint and taking that with a sip of water can help disinfect that water. I'm not recommending you do that. I'm going to recommend you carry a life straw or something, but an emergency could probably save your life. And that's probably how our ancestors really started using these. It has an antibacterial action inhibiting the growth of Pseudomonas Baxillis typhi and E. Coli bacillis. That's the typhoid bacteria, okay, and the pseudo monas I cannot remember what that is. But E. Coli we all know. It's also anti bacteria toward Mycobacterium tuberculi. That's tuberculosis virus. Well, I guess it's not a virus. Actually, that's a bacteria anyway. It can be used fresh or dried. For drying best harvested midsummer. The plant is experimentally anti tibiotic and hypotensive. As for mints, they have been used for as long as man has used rbs. The Ebers Papyrus that's an Egyptian document dating to about fifteen hundred BC, list mints Egyptian. Let's see, they used it in Egypt Ancient Egypt to soothe flatulence, to a digestion, to fresh and breath, and to stop vomiting. The Gospel of Matthew list mints as a tithe for the Hebrew people, showing the herbs important in the Middle East. In this area, in other words, it was used almost interchangeably with money. Let me get simple water here, all right. Mint was well known to the ancient Greek and Romans. Roman herblis Theophrastus and his Inquiry into Plants makes frequent mention of bergamot mint. We may assume this is manarda Manarta is also called bee bomb. I have done well. I'm not sure if I've done it yet. I will do an entire show on manarta I know I have on my longer podcasts Southern Appalachian herbs one of my favorite herbs, and he used it. He also use mints as food as a potter. Discordes makes mention of several mints in Demitaria of Medica. Of the more fragrant mints, he wrote, they are warming and stringing and drying. As a result, the juice that has taken with vinegar stops blood, kills round words, and encourages lust. It was considered to be an aphrodisiac. Two or three little sprigs of mint taking a drink with a juice of a sour pomegranate. Sue's hiccups, vomiting and bile. Applied with polenta, it dissolves suppuration, so they make a poultice out of it. Essentially, polenta for them really wasn't what we would think of it now like grits, right, corn meal. It was more like cream of wheat. But anyway, we're gruel and imium that was a big part of the ancient Greek diet. Applied to the forehead, it eases headaches, and yes, mints are really good applied to the temples and such for headaches, including migrades as such, Sue's swelling and extension of the breasts, and with salt it is a poultice for dog bites. That would be that antibacterial quality. Again, the juice with honey helps earaches. Applied to women, yeah, we're talking against sore breasts and such. Rubbed on it makes a rough hungue smooth. It keeps milk from curdling, and if the leaves are steeped in it, and again that's the antibacterial properties in it, it's stopping that fermentation. Essentially, Finally, it's good for the stomach and fit for sauce. It is also called mintha. And did you know that mint sauce with lamb actually goes back to ancient Greece. Yes, it does, very popular. In fact, let's see, let's get to Pliny the Elder. He gave forty one remedies for mint. I'm not going to try to read off forty one of them. We'll see, buddy. Kind of the way he said a lot of things that diascordi, he said he liked it. Administered in honeyed wine. Uh, Skipping a head. Skipping a head good for diseases of the liver, prescribed in pot so eaten for spitting blood. That would be tuberculosis. And as we've just read, it has some anti tuberculosis properties. Admirable remedy for ulcers of the head, the trachea if it's irritated, juice of mint taken. Its good for the voice. I love the way it's written when a person is about to engage in a contest of eloquence. So they debated a lot, and people would use a little mint and honey get loose up the voice and keep from getting horse. Also employed with milk is a gargle and for swellings of the uvula, and in a dish with the addition of ruined coriander with alum, it was good for tonsils and sore throat and alum is very stringent, so that would make a lot of sense. You get the antibacterial of the mint, you get the anti viral properties of the mint, then you get the alum to bring down the inflammation. Mm hmm. Good for hiccups and vomited. The juice of mint inhaled is a remedy for affections of the nostrils, with vinegars, a cure for cholera and fluxes of blood. Yeah, as liniment applied for deflections of the eyes and all eruptions of the head, as well as maladies of the rectum. Mint is an effectual preventative to for chafing of the skin. I is said too, that this plant will cure affections of the spleen if tasted fresh from the garden consecutively for nine days. Interesting. Interesting, all right. So mint was one of the herbs of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, or to be grown in monastic gardens by the eighteen hundreds. The Benedictine abbot Walfrid Strabo wrote in his book of poetry about Plants, a really neat book meant I shall never lack a good supply of common mint, and all its many variety, all its colors, all its virtues. One of its kind is thought to be good for the voice. If a man who is often troubled with hoarseness wets his dry throat with the jewlip of mint, the roughness will go and the tone come clear. Another kind there is, with a different scent and a rather harsher taste, which grows thick and full. It spreads of leaf casts. It's spread of leaf casts no mean shadow. It aims high on its strong stems and stretches its wings. And I like what he says here he finished, But if any man can name the full list of all kinds and all the properties of mint, he must be one who knows how many fish swim in the Indian Ocean, how many sparks Vulcan sees fly in the air from his fast furnace at Etna. You know, it's a delightful little book, written gosh, almost two thousand years ago, and it's a neat one, been out of print in English for almost one hundred years. I was able to find a copy of it, and in several of my books I quote from it, because you know, it needs to be preserved. Without a doubt it was written he wrote both in Latin and Old German, so even Germans can't read it, and the yeah, I can be hard to find a good translation. So Saint Hilgard van Bingen wrote around eleven hundred spearmint is of moderate and sharp heat, although it is a little bit temperate. One whom one whom is gitched, one whom the gitch is harming, should pound this mint. We now, again Old German, We've had to do a lot of research to try to figure out what the gitcht is. It can be anything from what we call stitch in the side to paralysis and palsy. Arthritis was often called git called gitcht in other words, it's a somewhat of a debilitating, painful inflammation. We'll just go with that. She said, One whom gitched is harming should pound this mint and strain the juice through a cloth and add to it a bit of wine. In the morning, evening and bedtime he should drink it, and the gitch will recede, just as salt tempers all food. If too much or too little is add to food, it is bad. So too, Spearman added moderately to meat, fish, purets, and other nourishments, offers good flavor to that food, and is a good condiment indeed eaten, so it warms his stomach and furnishes good digestion. It's actually very sound advice, even today. I mean, you know, a thousand years later, you're just as accurate. Gerard and the fifteen hundreds I wrote to the virtues of mint, he said, men, is marvelously wholesome for the stomach. It stayeth the hicket. That means hiccups, vomiting, and scouring of corolaric passion. I don't even know what that means. It stop at the casting up of blood being given with water and vinegar, as Galen teacheth, and in broth, sayth Pliny. It stayeth the flowers, and as good against the whites as mintreal discharges. He said against his Pliny teachers, it doth take away the headache being applied to the forehead in temples. It is good against the watering of the eyes. And all men are breaking outs of the head and the infirmities of the fundament. It is poured in the ears with honey water for ear infections. He said. It was taken inwardly against the bites of seaworms, sea scorpions and serpents. I don't know if they had a lot of that and Elizabethan England, but thank goodness, I have never encountered anything like that, and hope never to do. He said. Good applied with salt against them. Bitings of mad dogs. Now that probably comes from Beiz Cordes, who did not say mad dogs. He just said dogs. But one member of the mint family is skullcap, which used to be called mad dog because it was considered to be the go to remedy for rabies. I don't know that it has any effect on rabies whatsoever, but that was believed to be the case historically. It is anti spasmodic. It may have helped with symptoms. I don't know. Garden mint taken and drink or in meat warmth and strengthen the stomach. Yeah, mintz mingled with leaves of parts barley. We're good for tumors and hard swellings. The water of mints is of like operation and diverse medicines. It cureth the trenching and griping pains, the bellion bowels, appeaseth the headache. Stay at the yexing and vomiting. You know what yexing is, it's gagging. It is singularly good against gravel and stone the kidney, That's true. It is one of our herbs we use for stones and for urine retention. Stranger as they call it, a demo, whatever you call it, being boiled and drunken wine also laid to the stings of wasps and bees. And yes, mint is one of the good herbs we can put on insects stings. It pulls out some of the inflammation and numbs them. A little Colepepper writing about one hundred years later, and a bit better and more able plainer language, that's what I'm trying to say. He's it's again, hiccups, vomiting, cholera, swollen hardened breast, soreness, bitings of dogs. And he said that it was good for combined with meat and honeted water to take away the pains of the ears. Let's get into some more modern use. He goes on for quite a while, but he mainly repeating a lot of the same stuff. He does mention that smelled it would help stimulate the memory, which it does seem to do. Has been used traditionally for that, and there's been some modern research that says it's good. Letu'st see miss Grieve writing in the nineteen thirty so we're jumping ahead several hundred years here. Well, she talks a lot about how the mints were brought to England by the Romans when they conquered England. By fifteen sixty eight, it was just called garden mint and spear mint, and so that's when it was actually named spear mint. Yeah. Interesting Parkinson wrote about it, which I'm still going through the history. She's got a lot of interesting history here. Fourteenth century mint was used for whitening teeth, and its oil is still used to flavor toothpaste, et cetera. Obviously we know that, and that was one of the reasons it was included in chewing gum as well. Originally to be good for your teeth and breath. Mint would counter the smell of tobacco sometimes mixed with tobacco. Actually that's a kind of nice and a pipe tobacco. Application of a strong decox of spearmint is said to cure chapped hands, mice or so averse to the smell of mint, either fresh or dry, that they will leave untouched any food where it is scattered. Wow, huh, I didn't get that a try. We get a lot of mice in the mountains of North Carolina. Mm hm, garden mint. Yes, yes, she's still going through varieties here. Let me get to medicinal uses and actions. Spearman is chiefly used for culinary purposes. The property of spearmint oil resembles those of peppermint. The sealed water would leave hiccup and flatulence settled, upset stomach, et cetera. Peppermint, she goes in. Peppermint was apparently developed in ancient Greeks. In fact, Greeks and Romes would crown themselves with peppermint at their feasts. But, like I said, it's one of the oldest hybrid plants known to man. They wanted a nice, strong, aromatic mint, and they began breeding this plant thousands of years ago. Literally, she says, peppermint oil and the herb itself good for the stomach, good for dyspepsia and flatulence and colic pains and cramps of the abdomen. Okay, uh huh. Peppermint water good for flatchments and colic et cetera, et cetera. So she mainly used it as a digestive herb, but she also said it was good for influenza. Peppermint tea also used for palpitations of the heart. Interesting, interesting plants well, which you know, gosh, we've covered this so much. I want to go and wrap us up. Let's just go ahead and see what plants for the future. Says spearmint. He said it says. Spearmint is a commonly used a messa herbal remedy, a tea made from the leaves has traditionally been used to treat fevers, headaches, digestive disorders, and various minor ailments. The herb is antiemetic, means it helps prevent vomiting. We've talked about that, anti spasmonic, carminative, diuretic, restorative, stimulant, and stomatic. Leaves should be harvested when the plant is just coming into flower. It could be dried for later use. The stems are machurted and used as a poultice for bruises. The essential oil in the leaves is antiseptic, though toxic, and larger dosages both the essential oil and stems are used in folk remonies for cancer. A polpetus prepared from the leaves is said remedy tumors amazing. Huh So mint, I mean you may know mint and candies. You may have had a cup of mint tea or mint jewlip. I'm telling you a thousand ways to use mint, both the medicinal and culinarily. And there are so many varieties of mint. It's just yeah, get as many of them as you can growing in the garden. And next week we'll talk about another member of the mint family. As I promise, Minarta be Bom one of my absolute favorite wild flowers and medicinal herbs, and it's gonna really surprise you with all its uses. All right, y'all have a great week, and I will talk the next show. The information of this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or condition. Nothing I say or write has been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not a doctor. The US government does not recognize the practice of verbal medicine, and there is no governing body regulating herblens. Therefore, I'm really just a guy who studies herbs. I'm not offering any advice. I won't even claim that anything I write or say is accurate or true. I can tell you what Earth has been traditionally used for. I can tell you my own experience, and if I believe in herb has helped me, I cannot nor what I tell you do to say. If you use an herb anyone recommends you are treating yourself, you take full responsibility for your health. Humans are individuals, and. No two are identical. What works for me may not work for you. You may have an allergy of sensitivity and underlying condition that no one else even shares and you don't even know about. Be careful with your health by continuing to listen to my podcast or read my blog. You to be responsible for yourself, to your own research, make your own choices, and not to blame me for anything ever.