ICFA: The Herbal Medic Sam Coffman on Fire Cider and Cold Remedies

[00:00:00] It came from the archives.

[00:00:53] I would like to discuss a few subjects about the cold and flu season and dealing with that using herbs and nutrition and even lifestyle. Now I know that I have discussed some of these subjects in the past.

[00:01:16] If you go to my archives on Prepper Broadcasting, of course you'll find there's a podcast on viruses and herbs. There's a podcast that is more specific towards the cold and flu type stuff, upper respiratory type stuff.

[00:01:30] So I know that some of this will be a little bit of a repeat but I'm going to add some stuff in here that you haven't heard before. One of the things I'm going to talk about is going to be the concept of fire cider

[00:01:41] and how good that is for the immune system especially in cold and flu season, how warming it is and sort of the energetics behind it. The energetics behind cold and flu, working with cold and flu illnesses, acute viruses especially the upper respiratory tract, coughs and runny nose, etc.

[00:01:59] I'm going to talk a little bit more about things I haven't talked about in the past relating to sinusitis. So you're going to get new material here. This isn't just a repeat of the stuff I've done in the past.

[00:02:10] I want to specifically talk about fire cider too because I think there's sort of a political storm that's brewed in the herbalist world about fire cider and I think it's important to bring that out.

[00:02:21] I'd like to share that and I'd like to share some of my own personal, of course, opinions not only on that matter but also on the actual ingredients in fire cider itself and share with you how to make your own fire cider.

[00:02:36] It's very easy to do and many of you already may know this, know how to make it but I want to share some ingredients that I use that you might not use and that most people don't.

[00:02:47] And then also a couple of fire cider makers who I think are really good. They do a great job with some really good quality fire cider and then I kind of want to do a shame, hollow shame type of thing as well for another maker that's really

[00:03:04] done something I think is very, they've really done a disservice not just to the herbal community but to everybody by pulling sort of a Nestle corporation type thing where they try to try and to trademark a concept or train

[00:03:18] mark something that's been around for thousands of years and this is a similar thing too if you're familiar with Nestle trying to trademark the usage of nettles leaf for instance and other herbs as well. Not the plant because they can't get away with that but they're trying

[00:03:33] to trademark the usage of it and say you know what only we can use this herb in this particular way, you can't. So this is really kind of a similar concept except it's a small company, relatively small company and it's people that should know better.

[00:03:49] And so I think it's fitting to do kind of a hollow shame thing on that as well. I try not to get negative about things and usually on my podcast I try not to talk smack about other people but I think these people really need,

[00:03:59] you need to hear it because as a general public I want to tell you what my opinion is to warn you away from that product because I think that the strength in herbalism for all of us and the strength in herbal medicine that

[00:04:10] I'm trying to share with you, the reason it's strong is because we realize it's open source, you know it's nature's version of open source. It's for everybody. There is no such thing as my herbs not your herbs.

[00:04:23] Now I make people pay me for my time because if I didn't I couldn't I couldn't do what I do. If I had to work full time doing other things I could never be anything close to what I'm doing, what I'm able to do.

[00:04:34] So because of that you get my information and you get as much as I can give you for free but if you were to consult with me I have to have, you have to pay for my time.

[00:04:42] If you come to my school of course you have to pay for my time. Granted my costs I try to keep them very affordable and I try to be the lowest cost of what anybody does. I'm right there.

[00:04:52] Right there we calculate it by actual class hour per person and it comes out usually ranging somewhere between $7 to $10 per class hour per person for all of our courses. Depending on the materials fees and such.

[00:05:04] So not to get involved in a big cost thing but my point to this I don't want you to think well yeah sure Sam it's free for everybody but how come you're charging? My answer to that is well I have free podcasts everywhere. I have free YouTube videos.

[00:05:18] I have free downloads that you wouldn't believe. You go to the AHG, the American Herbalist Guild, herbal medics chapter, free downloads. We have free webinars there and these are classes by not just myself but by other professional herbalists free.

[00:05:34] There's no charge whatsoever and it's not because we're trying to sell something although I wouldn't have anything against you buying my book and buying my things. But what we're trying to do is make sure that this isn't open. This is the medicine of the people.

[00:05:47] So as little as it takes for me to make sure that we survive and we're able to do this full time, that's how much it takes for me. Everything else is you got my time and this is all I do every day.

[00:05:59] The moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed and usually I dream about it, all I work with is the stuff we do at the school, whether it's survival, whether it's my courses and most of the time it's all about herbal medicine.

[00:06:10] Because that's a lifetime of study and I'm always immersed in it and I always have been and I always will be. So that is the mentality I think of herbalism and that's what we all owe I think to each other.

[00:06:22] If it's the people's medicine then it has to be that way. It can't be something that we categorize and say only you only I'm allowed to call this my herbal concoction. This is my proprietary blend. You're not allowed to use those plants.

[00:06:38] I mean if you look at even my herbal first aid kits, I have all the ingredients of my herbal first aid kits are open for anybody. You want to download and make your own, please do. That's why they're there.

[00:06:49] If you want to take my first to buy my first aid kit, which is really not much over the cost it takes to make it, and you want to use it as a springboard to do your own learning, do it.

[00:06:58] If you never show up in a single class, I mean that's mine. That's fine. My only goal is to make sure that herbal medicine is used by everybody and everybody has the free will. They have the right. The constitutional right as an American and the human right

[00:07:15] as somebody who lives on the planet, they have the right to their own medicine and their own plant medicine, their own relationship to the plant world. We have to have that or we're not going to survive as a species. We have to have that connection to the planet.

[00:07:28] This is one part of it. Secondly, we also have to have that right to be able to use our medicine as we see fit. In order to do that you need to be informed. You have to have an informed, you'll be able to make informed decisions.

[00:07:40] That's what I feel like is my little soap box that I get on and whenever I'm doing a podcast, really that's at the heart of the matter for me. It just really kind of goads me into being a little bit, you know, maybe politically incorrect to some degree,

[00:07:56] maybe not being quite as not as positive as I like to try to be. I try to keep it really positive on all my podcasts. Maybe I get a little bit off track on this time because it's really something that really bothers me

[00:08:09] and I feel like I want to share that information with everybody. I'll share it right up to the point that I, you know, that I get a cease and desist letter from an attorney or something like that. There's nothing I'm going to say

[00:08:20] that would qualify that to happen. But I'm just sharing my own opinions. So that's what we're going to do today. Mostly it's going to be information on the cold and flu, and then there's going to be quite a bit of information as well about Firesider and Firesidrotonic

[00:08:34] and how to make your own. Some of my favorite ingredients that aren't really ingredients you see in a lot of them, and then we'll go ahead and I'll talk about Firesider as a trademark brand versus some of the ones

[00:08:46] that are out there that I think you should buy. So that's what I'm going to share with you today and I'll talk about it with somebody else is what you should look for. So let's take a quick break, hear from our sponsors,

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[00:10:56] Learn more about the most resourceful tool that you may ever own. See all the exciting things that Wondermill can do for you and what you eat at thewondermill.com. Alright we're back and let's start off by talking about preventative medicine in regards to cold and flu season.

[00:11:12] In doing so I think what we should start with actually is more of an energetic approach. So energetic medicine and we would be able to borrow from some of the different energetic medicine disciplines around the world. One of them places I like to go for this

[00:11:24] is of course as you probably already know is to Chinese medicine. And I think where we can borrow something that's very useful from Chinese medicine would be in the area of the concept of seasonal change. When the seasons change any time the seasons change

[00:11:40] you find that we are more vulnerable energetically to becoming sick. And what this means generally is of course from spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter, winter to spring. But mainly where we really see it I think especially in our culture in America

[00:11:54] is going from the warm months into the cold months. So it can be fall to winter or even summer, the end of summer into fall or that portion where we start to get enough temperature change that we now get a change in the temperature in the air

[00:12:10] and which can be part of this. But also in terms of our behavior culturally. So we find ourselves spending more time inside we're not outside in the sun as much there may not be as much sun less vitamin D which is very important

[00:12:24] and integral part of our immune system not just getting the vitamin D through the sun but also the fact that you not only get the sun in your skin but you can't wash it off. This is one of the big problems we have in our culture is we

[00:12:38] shower too often. That's related to why we don't get vitamin D the way that we need to along with sunscreen and other things that we've done. But if you you know vitamin D has become one of those things that's kind of a big buzzword in

[00:12:52] mainstream medicine now. So if you go in for a checkup with a doctor more than likely he or she is going to ask you or do a check or find out what your vitamin D levels are. But the funny thing of the matter

[00:13:05] this is that we just don't get enough and when we do get enough we wash it off our skins it takes about 24 to 48 hours for that vitamin D to metabolize through our skin that we get from sunlight. So this is one of the things we don't get from

[00:13:17] as we go into the colder months in more enclosed areas we are more exposed to people who are coughing so whenever there is a virus of this in the air it's much more likely to be a higher concentration around the areas where we are.

[00:13:33] So it becomes something that spreads very rapidly usually. Usually they're respiratory and so that's what we're going to focus on today really is the respiratory aspect of them. So how do we prevent this? How do we just keep our body strong? Let's talk about that first

[00:13:45] and I think the standard things that you already are fairly aware of the fact that you need to have your body has to you have to get some sort of exercise and this is not just because you exercise to help your cardiovascular system and all the other things

[00:13:59] that we know about exercise but also because of the fact that we need to reduce the adaptogenic or the adrenal input or effect on our body through stress. Uncompensated stress so raised cortisol, raised adrenaline raised, nor epinephrine type influence on our body

[00:14:21] is going to lower our immune system that's a fact it will lower our immune system. So if we're constantly under stress and we have no outlet for that stress and it's uncompensated by uncompensated I mean there's no physical activity to compensate for that stress

[00:14:39] if we have a fight or flight type of reaction to something then the stress is happening and we're going to be able to do that again and we're going to be able to do that again and we're going to be able to then the stress is happening

[00:14:57] a couple of different ways the physiology of it starts in the hypothalamus and either through our central nervous system directly down to our adrenal glands we get a nervous response we get a nerve system response a CNS response or through hormones from our hypothalamus to our pituitary

[00:15:15] and then down to our adrenal glands we get a hormonal response we get both of these things both of these things affect cortisol in our body that's going to be moving through our bloodstreams and affecting every cell in our body the effect of the amount of adrenaline

[00:15:33] of norepinephrine so basically what we would consider a sympathetic fight or flight response to stress it's going to happen on a constant basis if we are constantly under stress and so what happens is our adrenals become fatigued after a while

[00:15:51] and we get a sense of the hormonal stress the hormonal presence throughout the bloodstream similar to another issue we have in this first second this seems like a tangent but it's not but another similar analog to this is the presence of insulin constantly presence of insulin

[00:16:11] in our bloodstream if we overeat all the time we're overeating all the time because we don't get enough nutrition because our food is not nutrient dense anymore so we have a lot of weight in absolutely idiotic manners and so we really have 30-40%

[00:16:25] less nutrient density in our food now which means we need more of it and also because of stress we eat more I think also because we're emotionally dependent on food because we're disconnected from the planet we eat more and our body continually needs more insulin

[00:16:43] as we eat we raise our blood sugar and what happens as a hormonal as an endocrine hormone and we have to excrete more of that in order to be able to act on the raised glucose levels in our blood so that our cells can take in

[00:16:59] the glucose and use them to do the things that our cells need to do to keep us alive so the problem is that we build up a tolerance to that over time and this is what type 2 diabetes eventually becomes is our body keeps releasing more insulin we become

[00:17:13] hyperinsulinemic that means we have too much insulin in our blood on a consistent basis and we become tolerant well I think the same thing happens in stress hormones we get too many stress hormones consistently because we're always under stress

[00:17:27] and our body becomes stress to become tolerant to it and pretty soon we build up sort of a resistance almost to the adrenal hormones or to other hormones in our body as well that are related to stress and so by doing so we no longer have the

[00:17:45] kind of pulsatile type of patterns that we need to be healthy in our body whereas where hormones go up hormones go down right hormones go up and our body uses whether it's the way that our adrenal glands affect the way that we use our blood sugar

[00:18:03] which that is part of it too or whether it's the way that our pancreas respond all of these different hormones are pulsatile and so what happens is instead of a pulsatile up and down and patterns that are what we would consider normal cyclic patterns

[00:18:19] that we have to go through just like anything else in our life we sleep, we're awake, we eat we do all these things in different patterns that are cycles instead of that we get more of a flat line it's just a constant a hormone constantly out there

[00:18:35] so this is what I mean by uncompensated stress this affects our immune system greatly it weakens our immune system so this is one thing another reason we need to exercise is because it affects our lymph system what drives our lymph in other words the lymph that's flowing through

[00:18:55] our lymph nodes and all of the things that are related to lymph and our immune system which is our innate immune system our macrophages dendritic cells and neutrophils all the way to our T cells and B cells and lymph nodes so the actual flow the movement is necessary

[00:19:18] to be healthy I always say this now, I always say static and this is not just me this is a theory across the board across the board in many different many different approaches to healing are you a vetic and traditional Chinese medicine

[00:19:34] and in the old traditional grief medicine all would say the same thing when you have a static system that's not moving that is when you start to have disease something other than health that is when you start to have a stagnancy you get sick

[00:19:52] if you have constant flow and movement through these systems whether it's your blood moving through the vessels in your body whether it is your lymph moving through the lymph vessels in your body whether it is extra cellular fluid whether it is your pulses of that

[00:20:06] whether it is your fluid in your spinal cord with this moving it has a cycle as well all of these different fluids moving and out and through the same compartment in and out of other compartments and all of this movement is very important your urinary tract

[00:20:24] if you were to stop the flow of urine that comes from your kidneys down to your bladder through your ureter being able to not after it is already in your bladder but even before it gets to your bladder if you were to stop the flow of urine

[00:20:40] for even a short period of time you are very likely to start getting an infection in that region so you have to have that movement that's how we keep things clean that's how we detoxify we take things in and we excrete them and through that process

[00:20:56] we metabolize and use some energy and we detoxify or get rid of other things and the constant flow has to be that ebb and flow so if that ebb and flow is gone then we are going to start getting sick so that's what I mean by seasonal stuff

[00:21:08] we have an ebb and flow of seasons as well that we have to be aware of and then the lymph when we are talking about exercise for the lymph we have an ebb and flow and a movement of lymph this is related to the movement

[00:21:20] of what we would call our voluntary or striated muscle that's our muscle tissue that we actually have control over striated muscle our muscle like our biceps if we pick something up and we are doing curls for instance that particular motion that would be biceps

[00:21:38] we are doing pull ups biceps and triceps and traps and all the different smooth muscle striated muscle all our different voluntary muscle groups around the body one of the ones that is most affected most affects our lymph is the diaphragm so breathing full body exercise

[00:21:58] swimming I always say grappling things that take use of your whole body yoga, stretching all of these things are things that are very important to do on a consistent basis when you start to get through seasonal changes you should do them anyway

[00:22:14] but especially when you start to get into seasonal change so exercise and getting enough sleep getting enough rest throughout the day if that means being able to take a nap and get enough sleep and good sleep at night getting rid of all the lights in your room

[00:22:30] so you are not sleeping with lights that are on blue light, in other words computer type light or phone lights or clock digital readouts if you want to get rid of that light you will sleep a lot better for that 8 hours of sleep if you can

[00:22:44] hopefully 8 hours of sleep is really what you need to be healthy you really even more but 8 hours of sleep and then of course nutrition our breakfast when we break the fast is some kind of whole food nutrition not going to get into nutrition in this talk

[00:23:00] because it's an entire talk on its own and more it's many podcasts on its own but basic whole food common sense stuff you don't get up and eat junk food do not get up and eat donuts don't get up and go buy yourself a McDonald's breakfast

[00:23:16] and drink a Coke these are things that are going to they are absolutely going to be destructive to your immune system and if you are on the borderline of getting sick, you are going to get sick if you can tell your body

[00:23:30] you have to be aware of your body if you are going to use herbs and you are going to be into holistic health you have to be more aware of your body now if you are in a situation where you feel like you are getting sick

[00:23:40] and we all should know what that feels like you should be able to just say oh you are into yourself wow I feel like I am getting sick I know that feeling and that happens ask yourself when you are starting to get sick

[00:23:52] and you are really starting to feel sick how your body would feel if you went and you bought a candy bar you just went out and ate something that had almost pure refined sugar and by candy bar I am not talking like quality chocolate I am talking Hershey's

[00:24:06] or Snickers bar something that is basically crap to put it mildly something that is refined sugar ask yourself how would I feel if I ate that and see what your body responds you should be able to feel this you should be able to feel your body

[00:24:26] reject that concept and say no way now if you are absolutely starving because you didn't eat any breakfast you didn't eat any lunch and now you are succumbing to the propaganda of a television commercial you saw that said hey you should eat a Snickers bar

[00:24:40] it fills you up then you are in that point where you have forced yourself into a situation where you are so hungry you will eat anything it doesn't matter you will eat any kind of junk to satisfy that hunger craving so don't put yourself in that situation

[00:24:56] eat high protein if you are trying to lose weight eat high protein don't get those huge glycemic spikes not saying you have to go on an an AdKids diet or anything but just have more protein in your diet and have less of the sugar craving

[00:25:10] and don't eat the dessert right after you eat food you have got to get that sugar rush what happens is we become addicted to the hyperinsulinemia we need that we feel like we need that we are addicted to starches we are addicted to breads and pastries

[00:25:24] and those kinds of things and have to have the ice cream after the dessert after the meal so those are the unhealthy habits that you have to get rid of to try to stay healthy especially if you are being exposed to disease like cold or flu

[00:25:40] or any other disease so that is sort of the basis now let's talk about the herbs herbs in general anything that is going to help your circulation is good anything that is going to help what I call your skin eliminative channel

[00:25:56] which we call diaphoretics in orthodox pharmaceutical terms even though it is much more than just a diaphoretic it is not just an herb that makes you sweat although it will do that too it is an herb that increases the memory I just talked about

[00:26:08] in the last instance out of your body you need herbs that help your body do that the herbs that do that are herbs that heat you herbs that heat you are herbs like ginger horseradish anything heating cayenne obviously would do that prickly ash is a beautiful one

[00:26:24] it is an excellent one yarrow will do that these are herbs that you can use to do that if you can take internally to do that or you can actually put them in a bath a yarrow bath will heat up your body like nothing else

[00:26:40] so if you are in that state where feeling like you are getting cold or let's say a flu rather you have poor circulation you are just kind of chilled all the time by all the time I say let's say you are at work everybody is sick

[00:26:56] or has been sick and you just suddenly feel like you got it and you are feeling chilled and you just can't get warm your skin is kind of cool and clammy you know if you probably know what I am talking about

[00:27:10] if you have ever had the flu that you have felt that feeling a yarrow bath you don't even have to submerge yourself in it really just even halfway up your body will get your those channels of elimination like nothing else it will get everything flowing

[00:27:24] this is good for people who have like chronic cold feet type of you know syndromes even renowned syndromes they are you know a lack of circulation for whatever reason a lack of circulation in the extremities that is a good way to do that too

[00:27:42] and then of course drinking as a tea as a hot tea especially so any of these skin eliminatives or what we would call your heating herbs are more heating if you can take them hot so a hot tea is a really good way to take that

[00:28:00] and that is because of the convenience of it in a first aid standpoint but from home if you can take the time to make a tea out of it or whether you make a tea out of the tincture

[00:28:10] or whether you make a tea preferably out of the herb itself great way to take it so you can put these herbs and these are herbs that all really go well together a great ginger tea is one of my favorites for if you want a hot ginger tea

[00:28:22] you just take some ginger root you don't have to know nothing fancy just some ginger root that you bought from the store and put it on a cheese grater give yourself about a tablespoon full of that nice and packed in put that in the bottom of a glass

[00:28:36] pour some boiling water on top of it put in about another tablespoon of honey and a couple slices of lemon squeeze in there for the lemon fresh lemon and stir that up let it cool enough to drink it but drink it hot

[00:28:56] and get a good skin eliminative that tastes good you could put any number of other herbs in there that are heating herbs that we just talked about prickly ash is arguably one of the better ones in yarrow and another one that's not a heating herb per se

[00:29:08] you wouldn't think of it, it doesn't heat it's not a hot but it is a great skin eliminative for flu and for viral infections and it also tastes good, it's elder flower now you can use elder berry as well but elder flower in my opinion is even better

[00:29:24] I also like billberry which is the vaccinium martillus, it's a cousin to blueberry it's called fortilberry it's a European it's in England you find it in England and Europe more but you can grow it here it's like typical blueberry, it likes really acidic soil

[00:29:42] but you can grow it here and the berries are smaller than blueberries but they're really packed with their nutrient dents there I use the berry and that's kind of a heating herb too that will heat you up when you drink a billberry tea

[00:29:56] and you can buy the billberry stride they're kind of expensive but if you're not growing them which I don't even try anymore it's because it's so hard to I can't even water them with the water on our city tap the pH is almost at 8

[00:30:10] so I have to use rainwater it's hard to keep the rainwater here too because we're constantly in drought or acidify the water in order to even be able to raise blueberries but if you can if you're at the advantage where you can grow

[00:30:24] a billberry then you're in luck otherwise you can buy them but they are kind of expensive buy them dried like from Starwars or from Mountain Rows or wherever Pacific botanicals might sell them to I'm not sure but that's a good heating herb too the berry itself

[00:30:40] so you can throw in other herbs or you can throw in adaptogens that kind of help along with that like your ginseng something like your ginger it goes well together prickly ash and Siberian ginseng go together really well yarrow and elderberry go really well another really good

[00:30:58] skin-eliminative but it's not very tasty but it's a little bit on the bitter side but it's really, really good skin-eliminative is your bone set that's your eupatorium for fully autumn and that is phenomenal phenomenal cold and flu type herb to help heat you up as well

[00:31:18] plus bone set does something that canacea does also which is it raises your white blood cell count so it raises urinate immunity which is really good to have it helps stimulate your immune system and prickly ash does the same thing by the way

[00:31:32] so prickly ash, bone set, elderberry for instance has a great combination elderberry yarrow is a great combination but keep it in mind what we were talking about originally helped heat us up with now I'm going to come back to that in a second

[00:31:48] because we're going to talk about fire cider which is really the ultimate way to do what we just talked about but before we do that let's just talk briefly about the mucosal tissue by that I mean the mucosa of your upper respiratory tract that would be the lining

[00:32:02] inside your mouth, inside your nose your nasal pharynx back in the back in the throat behind your nose your oral pharynx behind your throat behind your mouth all the way down into your respiratory tract all the way down into your lungs that's your mucosal immune respiratory mucosa

[00:32:18] now when we have when we get a respiratory illness like a mucovirus some kind of respiratory virus like a cold or flu the first place that attacks is the mucosa that attacks the mucosa of our throat or our sinuses somewhere in our mucosal tract

[00:32:36] so what we need to do aside from the heating side of things we also need to have something that's really what we would consider cooling and not so much, not because it's cooling but just by the nature of the types of plants

[00:32:46] that work really well with the mucosa they tend to be cooling and sweet those would be for instance your marshmallow root or common mallow root that would be alfio-oficianolus or common mallovolgaris it's malva, malvavogaris in the marshmallow in the mallow family basically

[00:33:10] all of the mallows really are good very good dimulsans and very good for the mucosa to help the mucosa regenerate to strengthen it to tone it and to stimulate the lymph beneath the mucosa what we would consider the basement membrane beneath the mucosa itself these are a polysaccharizer

[00:33:32] mucopolycaspaccharize it that stimulate lymph movement beneath the mucosa they stimulate lymph tone it, toneify the lymph and gives a lymph polysaccharize to help rebuild as well they help that tissue itself because if you think about it if you were to look at it in a microscope

[00:33:52] if you were to see where a virus for instance attacks your mucosa if you had a sore throat and you were able to somehow if you could take that live tissue out and put it underneath a microscope and look at what's going on in your body

[00:34:10] in vivo not in a test tube but not on the slide but if you look at it in your body you would see that the mucosal cells are damaged they're being attacked their damage is causing what we would consider almost a lesion it would be similar

[00:34:24] to almost a way an abrasion would look on your arm indeed you can see that if it gets bad enough if you look in the if you say ah, I'm looking in the light in the mirror down your throat you'll see that there's a big red patch

[00:34:40] or red patches in your throat and those are areas of tissue that are highly inflamed because they're under attack and if you were to look at them in a microscope those cells are damaged they're being damaged what we're trying to do here with the mucosal vulnerability like Marchinault

[00:34:56] is we're trying to repair that and we're giving it an herb so some of those herbs again would be anything in the Malo family Cida is another good one our wire weed and our Cida species that's our Cida Acuda Cida Rhombophilia Cida Beautifolia they're considered almost a weed

[00:35:16] and it's really difficult unless this is something you're not going to probably find online you're not going to find anybody who's selling Cida we might but it's unlikely it's not a common weed it's not a common herb of commerce but it is very much a common herb

[00:35:32] all over the place it grows as a wild weed in a lot of places it's more of a tropical in southern US but it does grow all over the place now this is a good one in the Malo family as well but another good one for our mucosa

[00:35:48] is of course Licorice root we are always to be aware of the fact that we don't give that to somebody who's got a real problem a severe problem with high blood pressure but in general the Licorice root is very good for the upper respiratory tract as well

[00:36:04] very soothing very toning slippery-elm or any of the elms as well will do the same thing or very soothing to the upper respiratory tract these are all what we would consider dimulsants dimulsant herbs very good for that there are others but there is also a good dimulsant

[00:36:26] is a Pluricy root or Butterfly weed it's also called Sclipius tuberosa very good one as well those are just things we are going to take care of as much as we can I should mention Prickly pear cactus now we could use the actual

[00:36:46] slimy part of the inside of the cactus which is really very dimulsant but the best part of this is really the flower the part that comes out on top of the tuna on top of the fruit when it blooms in the spring that's what we want there

[00:37:00] so these are really good dimulsants for the respiratory tract I think I need one myself right now I just need a glass of water that's the second thing I wanted to talk about now let's go and talk about finally, I'd like to finish off by talking about

[00:37:16] the concept of Firesider and where that can help with your immune system because it's really a great thing to make and this is something you can make at home you can make all by yourself you get online and look up recipes

[00:37:28] you can go off of what I'm telling you here and use my recipes whatever you want to do or you can buy it as well let me first describe how you can make your own Firesider now Firesider might be called something else by most herbalists

[00:37:42] which would be an oxymel OXY-MEL an oxymel would be a mixture of sweet and sour it is a cross between honey usually and apple cider vinegar on the other side and this doesn't have to necessarily be what is in Firesider but it usually is

[00:38:00] bear in mind that the recipes for Firesider are they're a legion there's many recipes for Firesider as the number of years it's been around which is probably well over a thousand I mean it's probably dates back to Hippocrates it was called during the Middle Ages

[00:38:16] it was called Thieves Vinegar which people would use they would drink and put on their body as well because they would claim that it helped keep them from getting infected by the plague and especially Thieves Vinegar grave robbers and thieves because there were so many dead

[00:38:36] that some people would try to make a living robbing there was no chance to bury every individual dead person so it was easy to rob the dead so Thieves Vinegar was one way that they would protect themselves and it may very well be

[00:38:50] that it is even some of the recipes we have today would be somewhat repellent to fleas which is of course how a bubonic plague was spread let's talk about the general the ingredients and how you go about making this so first of all the ingredients you need

[00:39:08] to begin with just a base ingredient or honey as I mentioned organic apple cider vinegar like the brands that even still have a mother that you can make more vinegar from that are very much as pure as possible, as organic as possible

[00:39:26] one of the people who makes this that I would highly recommend they use organic apple cider vinegar from the oldest organic apple farm in the United States and they're up in Maine but we'll talk about that in a second but first let's just say so apple cider vinegar

[00:39:44] and then honey are going to be necessary in there now you can do a couple different things you can do all of this together or you could infuse honey by itself and you could infuse vinegar by itself and then you could strain and mix the two together

[00:39:58] but let's just do it the way that I would normally do it which is about I like about a one-to-one ratio it can be a little less honey than vinegar but normally about a one-to-one gives you a pretty sweet version of it as opposed to being

[00:40:12] really more on the vinegary side now the ingredients that you're going to want in this are going to be things that are usually fairly spicy and hot so onions, garlic horseradish ginger, turmeric jalapeno even a little bit of cloves is okay though you definitely want to have

[00:40:32] things that are very spicy cayenne things that are going to definitely make you sweat and you need to open up that skin channel of elimination, it's very important so those are things I just talked about earlier in terms of herbs any of those herbs could go in there

[00:40:46] you can put any herbs you want in this and so what we're going to do is we're going to chop that up chop up those herbs grind them up, slice them up you can put them in the blender with the vinegar if you want to

[00:40:58] and we're going to put them in the vinegar and what this is generally what I'll do is I'll do the vinegars first and then I'll add the honey afterwards this is just one way to do it so we put these into the vinegar

[00:41:08] now things that I would add in there I like to put in rosemary fresh rosemary I like to put in thyme, especially because of its expectant properties and it's a very good flavor I like to put in oregano also a little bit of an expectant

[00:41:22] and also somewhat antimicrobial I like to put in echinacea echinacea and gustafoilia especially but perparea and gustafoilia I like to put in astragalus which is a little more on the sweet side that helps sweeten it I like to put in demulsums as well sometimes

[00:41:40] so I'll put in a little bit of marshmallow root and I'll put in licorice which will also help sweeten it and then I put in a lot of the spicy stuff horseradish is one of my favorites for instance I'll put in a lot of ginger

[00:41:52] I love to put ginger in there I'll put in prickly ash I'll put in spalantis spalantis also is a very good not so much spicy but will definitely make your tongue tingle the way that prickly ash does and it's somewhat heating as well I grow that

[00:42:10] so I put that in fresh when I do this put all of these into your vinegar put it in a blender for a couple minutes blend it up really good and then let it sit you want to super saturate the solids in there just barely

[00:42:24] so it's going to look like when you put all this together in the 4th mason jar you put in just enough vinegar to cover it in the 4th mason jar so it's really going to be strong blend it up, make sure that it's covered that it's completely covered

[00:42:40] shake it up a couple times a day just like you would a tincture a maceration tincture shake it up a couple of times a day and then after a couple of weeks of doing that a couple of times a day you strain it off and that's your vinegar

[00:42:54] now what you can do is you can just heat it that's your final product so about a one to one mix you can just do it to taste some people like less honey than one to one than 50% honey, 50% vinegar but I liked about 50% each you can do that

[00:43:08] you could put the honey in first if you want to make less you wouldn't have as much when you're done but you can put the honey and vinegar in half and half and you can put the herbs in there it's going to be thicker of course

[00:43:20] which you can do the same thing you can infuse the honey separately you can do that with and that's very easy to do it's basically the same thing you put the herbs in the honey and just turn the honey jar upside down a couple of times a day

[00:43:36] just so that you've got movement through there with your herbs and keep it in the window sill where it gets some sun you just want to warm it, you want it to warm you never want to get it over about 110 degrees

[00:43:48] but you want to try to keep it warm you could put it in the attic you can put it in an electric blanket to keep it kind of warm and you want to do that for a couple of weeks so most people do this during the summer

[00:44:00] do it in the window sill and just warm it that way so you can do that and then you can either strain the honey which is a little hard to do because it's thicker but you can put it into a metal colander or you can just use powder

[00:44:12] and then just let it sit in the herb that's fine if you do strain it and you end up with the leaves all the honey out that you can through a colander or through a strainer then you're going to end up with the leaves

[00:44:26] and they're still going to have some honey of course on them in the metal strainer that you use or whatever kind of strainer that you use which you can do is scrape those leaves out put them in just a little bit of water

[00:44:36] and heat it up pretty good bring it just barely to a boil and then what you can do is you can strain that again and that'll get all the honey out of those leaves and put that, what you strained out is going to be a little bit watery

[00:44:46] but you put that into the final mix of the honey too so you could do that separately and then have infused honey you can infuse your vinegar separately and then strain it and you can mix those two together so you have infused honey and infused vinegar

[00:44:58] and if you do that that way then you're going to have honey that is separate that you can use separately too for instance one of the things I like to make is I like to make a garlic honey so I'll take garlic and like I just talked about

[00:45:12] I'll crush the garlic up real good and let it sit in the air for about 10 minutes because what that does is it helps the alantone come out the alanto and then you're going to it's one of the really heavily antibacterial constituents of the garlic

[00:45:24] put that in with the honey and then do the same thing that I just talked about you can do that with honey I usually will put in an echinacea with that as well I'll put in bone set with that as well

[00:45:34] because even though it's a bitter it'll be sweetened by the honey quite to a great degree you can put in any kind of a good antibacterial herb if you want to in that so you can do that again

[00:45:46] and mix it back in with your vinegar when you're done so there's a couple of different ways to make this just in terms of the actual the process of making it in terms of the herbs you're putting in there those are my favorites that I just gave you

[00:45:58] all of the spicy ones and then plus a straggler's I like to have in there as well as a good immune stimulant as well as being a little bit of sweetener and of course echinacea as well now if you want to buy this

[00:46:10] let me tell you a place that I would go to buy it I would go to Herbal Revolution and buy their Firetonic you call it their Firetonic number 9 and they are just they have a great absolutely awesome set of herbs

[00:46:26] not just this, I mean they make a lot of very cool mixtures and you find them at Herbal Revolution www.herbalrevolutionmain.com they're up in Maine the state of Maine so www.herbalrevolutionmain.com and Herbal Revolution Firetonic is really really good they're the ones I was talking about

[00:46:48] that use the oldest Apple Cider Vinegar Farm in the US for their base Apple Cider and then they get it straight from this guy they're good friends with him they have horse radish and onions and garlic, hot peppers, birdock root dandelion root, Hyssop

[00:47:04] which is a very good respecterant thyme, rosemary and pine nut they also use all organic ginger in there they use turmeric and they use lemon in there so that's their recipe and they have the recipe online if you go to their site

[00:47:22] I think they've got a couple other recipes as well now let me just tell you who not to buy this from do not buy this from Shire City Herbal SHIRE City if you do, you're supporting a group of people who are making fire cider

[00:47:38] and they're giving grief to every other herbalist out there who's been making fire cider for years Rosemary Gladstar arguably one of the most who has been doing this longer than anybody else out there she was doing this before the kids at Shire City Herbal

[00:47:54] she was doing it before they were born she was making fire cider but they say that it was passed down to them from their grandparents and they put out a trademark thing and nobody even knew it was happening so nobody disputed it

[00:48:08] so they've managed to trademark the term and they've had a lawyer whisper in their ear this whole time now this is a term fire cider and this is an actual concoction again that has been around for thousands of years so the term that's been used since Rosemary Gladstar

[00:48:24] and earlier than that since the 50s since the 60s is something that they're trying to say so they are they're not herbalists not a single one of them is what I would consider to be an herbalist they're just their business folks who have managed to get good success

[00:48:46] and good distribution of this particular product however not a single one of them has any clinical experience in herbalism not a single one of them has any kind of respect of any herbalist that I've ever heard of or have ever known of

[00:49:00] and I'm going to go back to that so what I'd suggest is the first thing is just to make this for yourself go and get some from the health food store get yourself some good organic apple cider vinegar and follow this recipe that I've talked about

[00:49:14] if you have any questions feel free to email me Sam at thehumanpath.com if I had time I'd put a recipe page up myself I used to have one I think I may still have one on my blog if I do I'll put it up on my

[00:49:28] I'm not sure that I do though so I may check in actually too when this podcast is being aired tomorrow because I'm not teaching tomorrow night so if I do and I find one I may check in the chat and actually post it too

[00:49:42] but I need to go find them and see if I do but that would be your first choice, second choice if you're going to buy it from anybody that's out there except for Shire City Herbal so if I could recommend that and I highly recommend

[00:49:54] again the folks at Herbal Revolution and that's HerbalResolutionMain.com I know those folks and I think they're just absolutely awesome and so if you have any questions again feel free to email me this has been I'm running out of time here but hopefully this was useful for you

[00:50:10] in terms of working with herbs and nutrition and basic health ideas to help stave off and prevent yourself from catching the cold or flu and do the same for your family stay safe, stay sound, stay healthy and until next week this has been Sam Kaufman goodbye

[00:51:00] 1, 2, 3, 4, join APN 1, 2, 3, 4, join APN or APNGold.com

[00:52:20] Thanks for watching!