Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Senna

Hey, y'all, welcome this week's show. Today, we're going to get into an herb that's probably one of the most familiar to most people that don't even know much about herbal medicine. It's called sinna, and you may be very familiar with senna. A modern man, much like our ancestors, generally keeps a laxive herb in his medicine cabinet, whether he knows it or not. That for you, may be a senta product when it comes to mind, is obviously syennecoon. It may be a cilium products for the seed hucks of the plantain seed, maybe castor oil that is an extract from the castor being, the same being that also makes a deadly poisoned ricin, so it's processed in two different ways obviously. So Yeah, we still turn to herbs a lot for laxatives, and that's good because you know they're or gentle generally speaking than the chemical laxatives. And you know, every now and then, especially in hot weather, if you get dehydrated, you're probably gonna need one. And I see there any others No I mentioned Senecassia, scilium, plantain castor oil. Yeah, that's that pretty much covers. And I mean, of course there are other herbs. Rubarb, as I mentioned in a recent show, was once the most popular lax of herb, and recently you talked about safflower, which was also a super important laxative herb and maybe still found today. So you know, it's long been noted by herbalists and historians that different cultures seem to place different attention on certain maladies. The French prioritize liver health everything. You know, when you're talking reading a French erb, well, talking the French erblist is always good for the liver. Well, why that? Well, the French love their wines and liquors. Germans tend to place an emphasis on heart held again, why is that? Well, think about the classic German build. They tend to carry a good bit of weight, and you know, got to prioritize that heart help. For Chinese it always has been, and I guess always will be sexual function. I mean, I don't know if impotence is just rampant in I mean, like a hereditary issue for the Chinese, or if for some reason they've just been absolutely obsessed with sexual function for a good five thousand years. But that is one hundred percent truth for the English. Always well, let me start with yeah, okay, for the English, it's always been constipation. You think about traditional English diet, not big into raw vegetables, everything boiled, a mush, a lot of the herbs and spices they're used in much of Western Europe, you know, Italy, France, Spain. Nope, not in English food really until recently. They really didn't like garlic very much. Raw salads would be just absolutely not done. And obviously, you know, they had some issues a lot of sweets. The English love their sweets, always have. They don't need a lot of the sauer kraut and pickles that you get in a lot of like Eastern Europe and Central Europe, and even you know the Scots. The Scottish were obsessed with oatmeal. They didn't need all those laxatives. The Welsh were obsessed with leaks. They didn't need all those laxatives. The English food was what we call stodgy. That's not really meant as a criticism. I mean, I really do like English food quite a bit. Roast beef, bubble and squeak, shepherd's pie, cottage pie, pasties. I love a good pasty Scotch egg is delicious. If you never had one of those, there's so good with a beer. I mean, it's perfect pub food. You know. It's a boiled egg basically wrapped in well enveloped in sausage, basically breakfast sausage, you know, like Jamaica pattiout of You just kind of wrap it around the egg and deep fry it, and of course you can seize it with all kinds of different stuff. Really very good. Love my Yorkshire pudding, no doubt about it, real brown gravy, real beer, bangers and mash, nips and tatties, fish and chips, mushy peas, and especially the masterpiece. Know it's the full English breakfast. If you have not had a full English breakfast, you have not lived. So, however, let's just say that's not exactly good fair for a bathroom regularity. Now, in America, we tended to have the opposite issue for most of our history. Dyspepsia was called America's national disease. What does that mean? Stomach upset anything from burping to indigestion area And the reason was our water was bad and we didn't have refrigeration. Most meat that made. This town was spoiled. We didn't have a lot of ways of keeping things very long. And you know, America really did kind of grow up around the big cities that like you think of New York or Boston. These were places that were just absolutely filthy, filthy from really the seventeen hundreds, well into the nineteen hundreds, open sewers. Most people would try to keep a few chickens or a pig. You know. Horses were transportation, so there was manure everywhere. When I'm talking to even the cities, even tenements, I mean nasty apartments that had no running water or just cold water until nineteen hundreds, no refrigeration, all food essentially being brought in from miles out of the city by horse and carriage, you know, from farms. I mean people would have that's where they got their food. I mean, people crowded into these cities so they could work and make a living, and they had no means of producing their own food, and they didn't have the market systems in Europe. Like in Europe that have been cultivated for thousands of years. You know, it's very common, you know, even now in European city to go to the market every day and buy what you need. Even in you know, rather wealthy homes, they may just have a little what we would call an apartment refrigerator because they just buy enough for each day, or maybe you know, breakfast the next morning and it's fresh, it's very fresh, it's coming in. Those supply chains have been in place for a long time in America. Unless you lived on the farm, you were eating spoiled food. That's really the impetus for most of the American food industry behindz ketchup was invented to cover up the taste of spoiled meat. Our entire frozen food and canning industry that fueled the World Wars was invented because people had to have some kind of way of storing food. America is a big place. It spread out. You know, things were not fresh when they were coming to market, and you know, green meat and rotten vegetables and bad water and open sewers. People were sick a lot. That's why America pretty much invented the bottled drink industry. I mean it started with you know, mineral waters and such, which were popular in Europe as well. So when they found mineral springs here in America that became very big, and if you could afford it, you bought bottled water. And I'm talking even back in the seventeen hundreds. After that, it was the invention of SODA's. Well before then, long before them, bottled beer. Bottled beer wasn't really a thing in Europe. People would go down to the pub and get either drink there or bring home like a bucket of beer literally or a growler or a jug. Beer in England was usually served fairly flat and warm. In America, everything was being brought in from far away, and the beer would actually spoil before it could get to be sold. It was a big issue for a long time. And you can look at what paps and that's the one that made Milwaukee famous was the cores. I guess I can't remember the innovations they did in the brewing industry. Totally paved the way for soft drinks and sodas. But really we're almost no existent until the nineteen oh I'll just say thirties. I mean before then. I mean, obviously Coca cola and such goes back to the Civil War, but it was syrups that were sold and mixed with soda water didn't have to. There wasn't a lot of you couldn't buy a product in the bottle, That's what I'm trying to say until really about the thirties. So prohibition really you know, spurred that industry on, and then you know, people got used to drinking sodas more than they had in the past. And yeah, so anyway, and of course there was this huge bottling industry that had been in the production of beer and liquor, and they had to do something with the bottles, so that industry was born. But I mean, literally, our entire system of food comes from the necessity of preservation. And if you you know, you ever wonder why our American diet is so full processed and preserve foods, well, it has been really since mid leg seventeen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds, it really has been. It always has been. I mean even the early settlers and pioneers, I mean they were doing salted and smoked meat and such. You know, everything emphasized on food preservation, from your root seller to your you know, smoked ham or beef jerky or you know whatever like that. That's what our ancestors had to live on in the winter time. Especially so yeah, so the English had issues with constipation and the Americans had issues with dyspepsia as they called it. So let's move on to medicinal use of senna and John Gerard gave a very complete description of senna and his Elizabethan text from the fifteen hundreds. He said it voideth fourth, phlegmatic, and choleraic humors, also gross and melancholic if it be helped with something tending to that end. In other words, it helped with constipation, especially if it was gross and melancholic, which you know, hey, it probably was. It is a singular purging medicine in many diseases, fit for all ages and kinds. It purges without violent hurt, especially if it be tempered with aniseed or other like sweet smelling thing that anisin clove and such are also anti spasmodic, so obviously that would help reduce cramping or with gentle purging or lintive medicines that may be given in a powder is but commonly the infusion thereof is used, so a tea made from senna. The quantity of the powder is a dram weight and the infusion five or more. It may be mixed with any liquor. It is in the decoction or infusion tempered with cold things and burning agus. That means cooling herbs for fevers or other hot diseases. In cold and long informities firmies, it is boiled with hot opening simples and such like, so warming herbs or else. It is steeped in wine in like manner, and is familiar to man's nature. It draweth forth gently by the stool almost any kind of pain, crude and raw humors. For most Arabians committed the CODs, I have no idea what that means. Most Arabians committed the CODs, but our physicians the leaves rather, So I'm guessing the CODs would be the fruit. CODs also used in Old English for testicles, so I'm thinking the seeds or fruit something like that, But our physicians the leaves rather, for unless the CODs be fully right, they in gender win. So yeah, it's gonna be the fruit basically and cause gripings in the belly. Some think that senna is hurtful for the stomach and weakened at the same for which they say that ginger or some kind of sweet spices to be added, where by the stomach may be strengthened. Likewise, muse no mess, you oh mess. The herblis notice noted that it is slow in operation, and therefore it is uh. He combined it with stronger urbs. Okay uh. Notwithstanding, let's see for other persing things mixed therein. That is say, simple metams such as rhubarb and others make up various compounds that went by different names at that time. I'll skip over that the leaves of senna are a familiar purge to all people, but they are windy and do bind the body afterwards. In other words, they cause gas and could cause constipation after purgation, very much disquieting the stomach with rumbling and belching. For avoiding this, inconvenience, there must be added cinnamon, ginger, aniseed, and fennel or raisins dried in the sun, and such like that do break the wind and will better help his purging quality. Cena does better purge when it is infused or steep than when it is emboiled. For doubtless, the more it is boiled, the less it purgeth and the more windy it becometh. Take borage, bugloss bomb and comfumatory of each three DRAMs. Senna very well prepared and pounded, to strew the powder upon the herbs and distill them. The water that cometh thereof reserved for your use to purge those that live delicately, so people with a weak constitution. And he said to mix that with white wine, animalalle sugar. Let's see he goes on and on. I'm going to try to get some more modern use here. He does say. The leaves of scent and camma mill are put into baths, and to wash the head, good for skin issues. Essentially, Senna opens the inward parts of the body which are stopped, and its profitable against all griefs of the principal members of the body. Boyd does he go out for a while. Let's see Culpepper about one hundred years later, said the leaves which are hot and dry a pershing faculty. But afterwards the leaves have a binding quality. It opens obstructions corrected with caraway seed, aniser ginger taken in wine, l or fasting comforts and cleanses the stomach, purges me melancholy and collar and phlegm of the head and brain, heart and liver, and sween cleansing those parts of eagle humors. It strengthens the senses, procures mirth, and is also good in chronic agus or fevers. Cleanses the blood, and it cleanses, purifies the blood, and causes a fresh and lively habit of the body. It is a special ingredient, and diet drinks to make purging ale for clarifying cleansing the blood. Yes, did you know that the English used to make a diet ale. Yes, long before soft drinks, before they had diet cocon, diet pepsi, they had diet beer. The excuse me also mentions another form of senna called bastard senta, which apparently was much more powerful violently, works violently both upwards and downwards, offending the stomach and the bowels. So try not use the bastard sent. Lets see if we can get more specific that. Let's see misgrieve gives us some Some history says that the Arabians had introduced to the ancient Greeks. Sinna began to be cultivated in England about sixteen forty. Medicinal uses purgative, its action being chiefly on the lower bowl. It is especially suitable in habitual costiffness, it's frequent consipation. It increases the peristaltic movements of the colon by its local action upon the intestinal wall. Its active principle must pass out of the system in secretions unaltered. For when sinna is taken by nurses, the suckling infant becomes perched, So yeah, lactating mothers, it would cause diarrhea in the baby as well. It acts neither as a sedative, nor is the refrigerant, but has a slight stimulating influence in addition to the nauseating taste. It is apt to cause sickness and griping pains, so that you can take it alone. But these characteristics can be overcome or removed when it is well adapted for children, early persons and delicate women. All right, She recommends adding clothes ginger cinnamon, just as all the ancient writers did, and cinnamon senna. Senna was the key ingredient, along with gentien, a very famous and the rhindo let's see the right of Seville, orange and cardimen and coriander. You may have heard of the American medicine called the Black drafts. It was very very popular in in England, throughout the eighteen hundreds, probably well into the nineteen hundreds, very popular laxative. And she said the cinapods or dried fruits or were official in the British pharmacopia and said the effects are milder than the leafs. So okay. She gives some tell us how to make senna tea. I mean think we're good on that. A syrup of senna combined with coriander, another aromatic syrup including rhubarb, cinnamon, clothed nutmeg, oil of lemon, sugar, diluted alcohol. So all right, that's pretty much going to wrap it up. I mean, I think what more can you say about senna. It's a good lasaif not my go to by any means. I make kombucha, and kombucha is a probiotic beverage. You've probably seen it for sale in the stores. It's a fermented tea. Well basically that that's in the stores unfortunately has usually been pasteurized and will do you no good. If you buy kombuchi, you have to have unpasteurized kombucha or all your robotics have been killed. It makes a very tasty beverage and people think it's healthy. But yeah, you really do have to make it yourself. When senna, I mean when kimbucha is bottled un pasteurized, just raw kombucha, it will build up immense pressure in that bottle. It will continue to ferment, producing carbon dioxide. You know, usually they'll put the plaine kombucha in and add some fruit or something cap it off. That bottle can explode. So unless it's kept very cold, and even then after, you know, it's got a short shelf life because it's going to build up so much pressure it can rupture. So the vast majority of what you buy in the store is pasturized and you're doing you no good. You can make it at home. It's very easy, it's very inexpensive. You can get a starter culture from probably any health food store or order one online. Plenty of sellers on eBay and Etsy and Amazon have come bucha scobi's. They're called that stands for symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast. I believe, yeah, I believe that's right. And you just make a pot of strong tea, just regular lipins, losing in whatever you want to make, put in a bunch of sugar, mix it with some water. Drop your scobie in there and let it start doing this thing. It will ferment that sugar, the scobe will grow and it starts to look like sort of like a mushroom. They call it a tea mushroom. It takes about a week to twelve days and then just write a bottle. I recommend GAT some beer bottles that are reusable because, like I said, this stuff can't explode. If you want it fizzy, it doesn't matter to me if it's fizzy or not. But yeah, you put it in there, put in some fruit, some mimosa blossoms, you know, anything you like. That's one of my favorites. Anyway, just to cap it off in a couple of days. It's a very nice, mildly alcoholic carbonated beverage that's real, and about a cup of that is all you want. About a cup of that is going to be good for the immune system, good for gut health, and keep you regular. Two cups is an incredibly powerful active and it will creep up on you. So if you know you've had real kombucha, if you it's ever been a purgative, so we should say, you know, definitely something you don't want to take before bed. I think it was the comedian James Gregory that said. He said, have y'all see that that XAX commercially says it works while you sleep. I don't want that. I want to be up and ready to go. All right, y'all have a good one and I'll talk to you next week. The information this podcast is non intended to diagnose or treating any disease or condition. Nothing I say or right 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 herbless Therefore, I'm really just a guy. Who stays herbs. I'm not offering any advice. 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