MEDICAL MONDAY: Antiviral Herbs with Judson Carroll

Hey, y'all. Welcome to this week's show. This week's show is turning out a little different than what I had planned. You know, I've been working through about a chapter at a time in my new book, Herbal Medicine for Preppers, Homesteaders, and Permaculture People. I'm going to talk in a few minutes about mRNA-type vaccines. That's a controversy I'm not going to get into, but I am going to do a little bit to try to explain what that is and why some people have concerns about overuse of mRNA vaccines. Once again, I'm neither pro nor anti-vaccine. I think it's your choice what to do with your own body. I am not going to advocate for one position or another. I will tell you my opinion and why I personally avoid vaccines. That's my choice. I have had COVID. According to Lancet, that's a medical journal, that gives me about 25 times more immunity naturally than if I had gotten one of the vaccines. That's up for debate. You know, Dr. Fauci says otherwise. World Health Organization says otherwise. Eventually, we're going to get out of the truth about the science. Keep your head and don't freak out. I've said it before. Remember, I got kicked off of YouTube for saying keep your head and don't freak out. These things run in cycles and patterns. And it looks like this virus is going to be with us for a long time, a very long time. Our health experts do not have a clue of what they're doing. And those that do tend to get shut up and shut down very quickly. I mean, Dr. Atlas, for one. Dr. Atlas is a very smart man. Dr. Atlas was literally shut out of meetings at the White House when he was trying to give his opinion. They just did not want to hear an opinion different from the party line. And, you know, again, not a partisan issue. And if you believe wearing five face masks and getting six vaccines is going to keep you healthy, you go right ahead and do it. I think that's your choice. See, that's your choice. Me, being an herbalist, I'm going to look at antiviral herbs. So that takes us to this week's topic, which is viruses and antiviral herbs. Now, many herbs have been shown to have antiviral properties. Viral infections cannot be treated with antibiotics. Viruses are not technically alive. I'll get into that in a little bit. But viruses are kind of creepy things. They're the oldest form of semi-life in the universe. But a viral infection can weaken the immune system or cause congestion that can lead to a bacterial infection. I think it's a good thing we go ahead and jump into this. And for that reason, you know, I'm going to ask you to share this podcast with friends and family. You don't want to be sitting there six months from now and think, maybe I could have done something and I did nothing. Well, yeah, granted, this time of year, a lot of people are not going to be able to start a garden and grow these herbs. But you can go ahead and buy some. There's some wonderful herbs. companies out there. They're wonderful herbal growers that sell these herbs, whether they're already prepared or in bulk form. You can learn to make your own tinctures. You can make your own capsules, teas, decoctions, you know. You can start taking these steps and just stock up on your herbal medicine cabinet, and your friends and family can as well. And sure, maybe I don't know, 8 out of 10 will ignore you. Maybe only about 2% will actually take proactive action to care for their own health and that of their family. That's kind of what we're taught to do in school is just to follow orders and not think for ourselves. Free and independent think groups tend to be controversial because we go against the grain of being herded like cattle and slopped like hogs. Just as you can tell someone, look, you know, this thing looks pretty contagious, and we're probably going to see some supply chain disruptions. We could potentially see some supply chain disruptions out of this. Why not just go ahead and buy an extra pack of toilet paper? You know, if you see ground beef on sale for like $ 2. 99 a pound. It actually was on sale here for $ 2. 99 a pound two weeks ago at Piggly Wiggly, my other favorite, my absolute favorite grocery store, actually. But yeah, I put three pounds of ground beef in the freezer. Make a lot of spaghetti sauce and beef stroganoff. That's just common sense. Just sticking a few things back. Your OTC meds, Benadryl, always good to have on hand. Mucinex. Mucinex, that's the name brand or the house brand. It goes under various mucus congestion relief formulas. Well, Fezin is the main ingredient. Any virus that hits the lungs real hard, yeah, you need to have some good expectorants on there. Aspirin. Aspirin has actually been shown to be one of the most life-saving, Things in this virus, one of the things that kills people to a significant extent with COVID is clotting, blood clotting. Well, aspirin is a blood thinner. I don't understand at all why doctors tell people to take Tylenol. Tylenol damages your liver and does nothing but lower fever and helps with aches and pains. Aspirin lowers the fever, doesn't damage your liver, and thins the blood and can help you not have a heart attack or pulmonary embolism or a stroke. To me, that seems a little more reasonable than having some people take a petrochemical derivative that destroys your liver. All right. But, hey, again, I'm a free and independent thinker, so I'm usually viewed as crazy, right? Let's get into this. Let's first of all, I'm going to talk a little bit about what viruses are and how we have to view them. All right. As I started this chapter, I had just been through the chapter on allergies and I had talked about how probiotics, You know, whether it's homemade sauerkraut or homemade yogurt or even, you know, a really good store-bought yogurt, water kefir, milk kefir, kombucha, various things can put the good gut bacteria back in our bodies, help maintain the gut bacteria that comprise a great deal of our immune system. You know, antibiotics kill the good as well as the bad bacteria. And we're just, American people are taking antibiotics like crazy for no apparent reason. I mean, you go to the doctor for a head cold, he's going to give you an antibiotic. Yes, that might help stop a secondary sinus infection, but it's not going to do a single thing to help you get over a cold or a flu. And it's developing antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which could be far more dangerous than COVID has been, really. That is the biggest fear of most medical researchers, is antibiotic-resistant bacteria. So on the one hand, we really probably want to start thinking about handling our own colds and flus and other viral infections with natural means because otherwise we're just clogging up the doctor's office. He can't do anything to help you. There's no cure for the common cold. I mean, you could take a flu shot. You could take Tamiflu. Tamiflu will shorten the duration of the virus. But eventually the viruses adapt to that as well. And if we can kind of toughen out ourselves and take natural things, that's really good. This is really a whole lot better. And any honest doctor will actually tell you that. And that includes getting a good night's sleep, at least eight hours to support your immune system and lower inflammation in your body. That means eating natural foods, lots of good meats and fats. Yes, I absolutely do not advocate a vegan or vegetarian diet. Your immune system, your body needs animal fat. That's what we're built to eat. We have teeth to grind up plants. We have teeth to eat meat. You know, good clean fish, fish from clean waters. Excellent. Definitely all the good fresh vegetables. Anything you grow in your garden and you know doesn't have a lot of chemicals on it is going to be the very best thing you can eat in terms of plant matter or something you forage from the woods. Lots of good mushrooms. Mushrooms are almost all mushrooms have some more immunosupportive capacity. Mushrooms are actually really, really good for us. And I mean, even the button mushrooms at the store. But if you can get, you know, if you go foraging like I do or you can grow shiitakes on logs in your backyard, definitely do that. I mean, they have antiviral antibiotic properties. They have immune supportive properties that really mushrooms are super good for you. Really, along with viruses, the fungi were the first life forms on this planet. So they've kind of been dealing with these viruses on their own long before we ever came along or discovered anything about medicine. I mean, they're viruses that are specifically attack plants. They're viruses that would attack fungus. And the fungi had to learn to adapt. And they actually produce their own antiviral and antibiotic compound. Absolutely amazing. You've never seen a petri dish of fungal kind of mushrooms here, right? I mean, or various other fungi. And you see, when you introduce a competing organism, you can see the immune response right in front of your eyes. You can see that fungus starting to produce, I guess you'd call them exudates, which begin to kill off whatever mold or something else is trying to invade that petri dish. It's, it's mind-blowing honestly and you know we've proven that the plants uh especially trees and such have what we call a mycorrhizal uh relationship with the fungi i mean when when you lift up say you lift up some pine straws you see all this like white thready stuff underneath it that's actually Fungi, that is the mycorrhizae. That's actually the bulk of the mushroom. What you see above the surface, the traditional mushroom gap, is the fruiting body. 95, 99% of that mushroom is growing under the soil, and it's tapping into the roots of various plants. It's actually helping keep those plants healthy, and the plants help keep the mushrooms healthy. Plants feed the mushrooms. Amazing, right? Well, the same thing actually goes on in our gut and actually in every cell of our body. If you were to take the human body under a microscope and get down to cellular level, we are more fungi and bacteria than we are the tissue that is actually us. Okay, we're actually more, not us, than us. So when you think about the insanity of taking broad spectrum antibiotics, kill off the beneficial bacteria, the beneficial fungi in our guts and in our lungs and in our nose and in every cell of our body. I mean, that is the worst thing you can do for your immune system because all those fungi and bacteria, we all grew up together. They learned to live within us and help keep us healthy for their own survival. That is a huge thing. And it's really the frontier of natural medicine. The more we understand that and the more we learn to, the better off we're going to be. Scientists are baffled when they show Amish kids have lower instances of asthma than non-Amish kids living a few miles down the road. Those Amish kids are drinking unpasteurized milk. Those Amish kids are eating homemade sauerkraut and homemade pickles. And they're not eating a lot of chemically laced foods, chemically preserved foods, and using modern medicine. So they actually have a stronger immune system, and it's not putting off that overreactive immune response that's causing asthma in the kids right down the road. But our health officials are so far away from acknowledging that, that just a few years ago, armed like a SWAT unit raided a co-op in Georgia. When I was living down in Athens, Georgia, I heard about this. Guns drawn. I mean, like a drug raid looking for unpasteurized milk. It's crazy. I mean, you know, humanity has consumed cow's milk and goat's milk and sheep's milk and even horse milk and everything for millennia. But about 100 years ago, we decided in America that it was going to be made illegal for you to drink unpasteurized milk for your own safety and good. Well, it turns out it may have not been for our own good, like many things, many things the government does. The best way to find a solution for a problem is to have 350 million people out there looking for their own solutions. Whenever we centralize power, whenever we centralize authority into a handful of people sitting at the top telling other people what to do, the chances of them being wrong It just makes common sense, right? That the collective wisdom of 350 million people trying and failing and learning as they go is going to be a whole lot better than 10 or 20 or 20,000 people trying to run the whole ship. So viruses are basically the opposite of the friendly gut flora we discussed under allergies. While certain fungi and bacteria evolve strategies to keep their hosts, that's us, healthy for their own good, Viruses evolve strategies to be as difficult to avoid and to be as contagious and hard to treat as possible. In order for viruses to replicate, they have to invade specific cells in the body. They have to get through our natural defenses, sneak through our immune systems, and invade those cells to destroy those cells. Viruses may use the specific qualities of mosquitoes or ticks that enable such parasitic insects to to delay our inflammatory immune response and through their bites. So we don't feel them right away. And the virus is able to sneak into our bloodstream and go to instance for the pancreas where it finds the specific cells it needs or to the brain in cases like encephalitis. Going specifically to those brain cells that they need as their host before they can replicate or they can reproduce. Everything in nature has its primary goal of reproducing. That's the first law of biology, right? Well, viruses are the same way, and they act in very specific ways. They have to really sneak past our immune response, and then they have to find those exact cells. They have a period of incubation. During that period of incubation, they don't present. They don't give us a fever. They don't make us feel sick. Because we would have an immune response that would kill them, that would help prevent them from replicating. They go into those cells and they incubate. They then cause those cells to swell and rupture. Other viruses require human-to-human transmission, quietly incubating in the lungs. Now, this is most of our respiratory viruses, all right? These cells get into the lungs. These viruses get into the lung cells, incubate in there until the perfect time to replicate, rupturing those cells, spiking the fever, causing congestion and coughing that allows them to spread from one host to another through saliva droplets and mucus. So sneezing or coughing is how that specific virus has learned to transmit itself from one human to another and replicate to create the next generation. That's how flus spread. That's why pneumonia is the main cause of death in the flu or in COVID-19. Other flus, such as the swine flu, attack blood cells, causing hemorrhage. Bleeding is their means of transmission. Common cold attacks the sinuses primarily, causing us to sneeze and our noses to rot. Viruses develop in one species, generally, and then develop strategies to jump from one species to another. picking up bits of DNA from their host and allowing them to mutate and adapt with amazing speed. In fact, viruses come in two forms, DNA viruses and RNA viruses. DNA viruses are slower to mutate. DNA viruses such as polio may be dramatically slowed and prevented with a vaccine. RNA viruses can mutate so quickly that we cannot keep up. This is why there are annual flu shots and a permanently effective vaccine for COVID-19 will likely never exist. The vaccines themselves can cause the flu to mutate. According to Dr. Sherry Markinson, as quoted in The Australian, viruses can even target ethnic groups. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, wrote about how different ethnic groups have different health concerns and respond differently to medical treatments in his first book on medicine. However, when our doctors and scientists decide that all human cells are identical things viewed through a microscope in a laboratory, as opposed to individuals with unique heritage, they kind of forgot that. Viruses did not. Viruses can attack a specific ethnicity until they've developed the ability to better infect another ethnicity. They find a way to take advantage of our weaknesses, in other words. And when the virus finds a weak link in a chain, it targets like crazy. Simply put, viruses have the most advanced survival strategy and the best ability to adapt to anything on Earth. Technically, they're not even alive. Viruses can survive in the ice of the Arctic and the lava of volcanoes. They can use plants and animals and fungi as hosts. There are trillions of unique viruses. Think about that. There are trillions of unique viruses mutating all the time. So what are we going to do? We cannot avoid every virus that infects us. We will never have effective vaccines to prevent all viral infections. Now, I said all viral infections. I'm trying my best not to be controversial here. I'm talking about COVID. I'm talking in very general terms. Quarantine is effective in preventing the spread of some viruses. Take HIV-AIDS, for instance. That could have been stopped and an epidemic prevented if the health officials at the time, which included the all-knowing Dr. Fauci, had used contact tracing in the early days of the disease and quarantined those infected people stop them from spreading the disease by preventing them from having sex with uninfected people or from giving blood. You know, that seems like common sense, doesn't it? There were only a handful of people, mainly in one region, that had AIDS. And it could have been stopped and a lot of lives saved. But they decided to just let it spread. I don't understand why. Okay? It was this big stigma. It was thought it was better to let the virus spread than to stigmatize a group of people who had the virus. That was a decision our health officials made that led to millions of deaths worldwide. Dr. Fauci, again, also seemed to think it was a good idea to fund the Wuhan Institute of Virology's development of novel coronaviruses with the intent of gaining a function to help them jump species from animals to humans. And I'm going to say, I don't think he's a very good public health official, but that's not my choice. As the old saying goes, if you think you can trust the government, ask any Indian. I honestly would say we're just lucky that so far our government hasn't given us a bunch of smallpox-infected blankets. But back on subject. In truth, we cannot avoid all viruses. We will likely all get COVID-19. Eventually, we probably will all get it in one way or another. An interesting fact of history, according to Stephen Herron Buhner in his excellent book, Herbal Antivirals, is that before the vaccine for polio and mass vaccinations, nearly every American contracted polio, but most were asymptomatic. Only about 8% of the population experienced symptoms of sickness due to polio. A much smaller percentage of children suffered severe results of polio. COVID-19 has approximately a 98% survivability rate. It targets the elderly and those already in poor health. But as I write this book, we're attempting, under the force of law, to eradicate an RNA virus through mass vaccination. Even though the inventor of the mRNA virus vaccine, Dr. Robert Malone, says this is impossible. That's the bad news. The good news is that as the vacation Bible school t-shirts little kids say, God didn't make no junk. We are infected with a virus. If we survive it, our immune system learns to recognize both that specific virus and similar viruses. From then on, we have a natural antibodies and an experienced immune system that the virus cannot fool or hide from. In other words, we develop natural immunity. Our immune system can learn just like our brain can learn new information and our muscles can be trained. For that reason, I'm thankful really that I caught both the swine flu and COVID-19 when I was young, healthy and strong enough to survive both. I can personally attest that COVID is a bummer. It was basically a bad flu that lasted for about two months. It was exhausting. It definitely targeted my lungs with herbs, OTC meds like Mucinex and aspirin. It caused me to have pneumonia and pleurisy. I mean, it was serious, but I was strong enough and young enough to survive it at only 43 years of age and being fairly healthy and outdoorsy. But let me tell you this. Even though there were a few days and nights during the time I had COVID when I thought I might die, COVID is nothing compared to the swine flu. Maybe you've not heard a lot about swine flu, but the epidemic of this virus, known as the Spanish flu, made the COVID pandemic look like nothing. At the close of World War I, this RNA virus jumped species from pigs to humans. It was the perfect conditions for the virus to spread in the trenches of Europe, in close quarters, with poor sanitation, and among weak and exhausted young men. This virus particularly targeted the young. Older people had already experienced a similar virus, but it was less deadly, and they had developed some natural immunity. These young men came home, stopping at ports along the way. The virus killed more than 50 million people. That's far more than actually died in combat in World War I, and that's far more than COVID has killed, really, literally more. This virus basically had no symptoms as it incubated, but then it comes on like nothing else. Healthy young men and women would get up in the morning, start the day as usual, and by noon they'd be sick, by 5 p.m. they'd be dead. Many would be dead by noon, hemorrhaging blood that infected others. I have done a lot of dumb things in my life, so I won't say this was the closest to death I've ever come. But my experience with the swine flu was as close as I've ever come to dying from a virus. That's for sure. One morning I got in my vehicle to run a few errands. As I came to a stop sign, I noticed my brakes were spun. My brake line had been cut. I have no idea why or by whom. It could happen maybe hitting a pothole. Maybe somebody was up no good. I have no idea. But thank God I was able to coast into a local garage without losing control. I spoke with a man who owned the garage. He was an older local mountain man, of course, had to give me a hard time, you know, ask me whose wife I've been running around with, you know, should somebody cut my brake line. That's just the way it is in the mountains. If people like you, that's the way it is in most of the South, really. They give you the business, as they say up north. I think they probably do the same thing. If they like you, they'll pick on you and give you a hard time. If they ignore you, it means you're not welcome. All right. So anyway, this is a pretty decent guy and he fixed my car. But as you know, we were doing that little verbal back and forth, insulting each other the way we do and laughing. I was really aware that I was responding slowly, like my mind wasn't sharp. Within 30 minutes, I mean, I did not feel good at all. After he fixed my brakes, I finished my errands. I had to run by the bank, I think. And I was home before noon. By the time I got home, I had the highest fever I've ever experienced. I was vomiting violently into the blood vessels, burps around my eyes, giving me black eyes. Then came diarrhea, which was also explosive. My bones and muscles and joints hurt beyond belief. I was chilled and so muddleheaded that all I could do was get in bed and say a few prayers, fully expecting not to wake up. I did awaken, though, when the fever spiked. Suddenly, blood was spraying from my nose. And I don't mean just dripping. or flowing, but spurting. I passed out cold. When I came to, the fever had broken. I was drenched with sweat. The bed was soaked in sweat. I was exhausted and shaking all over. All I could do was just get on my knees and thank God I had survived. It was over that fast. It came on that fast and it was gone that fast. And it nearly killed me at the age of about 30, as strong and healthy as I've ever been in my entire life. You know, that's scary, but the avian flu, such as H1N1, is supposed to be even more contagious and has about a 50% mortality rate. And we've been freaking out over COVID, which has about a 2% mortality rate. Keep that in perspective again. And remember a few years ago when Obama was president and anyone who complained or worried about Ebola was basically branded a racist? Boy, how times change, don't they? I had heard on the news before this swine flu outbreak, but I had no idea to come to my region. Had I known, there would have been several herbs I would have used for immune support and as antivirals. When the Spanish flu hit back in the early 1900s, there were no effective pharmaceutical treatment. There was one herb that saved many lives. It is a fairly rare member of the Artemisia or Wormwood family. It's called Sweet Annie. It's Artemisia annua. And that herb was also useful for malaria. The herb is a powerful antiviral and should really be grown by anyone concerned about the next pandemic or the one we're currently in. You can get seeds online. I think Strictly Medicinal Seeds and a few other companies have them. You should definitely be growing all the wormwoods, but specifically Sweet Annie or Artemisia annua. But all right, let's start with the basics of keeping the immune system strong. Sleep, good diet, reduce inflammation. As I said, sleep is so important and most of us don't get enough of it, especially in the Internet age. I mean, let's just be honest. If we get less than eight and a half hours sleep, it gets our insulin out of whack, essentially, and causes us to have a higher inflammatory response. It can lead to heart disease, diabetes, obesity. Lack of sleep is bad for your liver. Your liver needs time to cleanse the blood. But really that insulin response can be very inflammatory and can really weaken our immune system. It's very important to get all those probiotic foods that I was talking about. But it's also so very important to get natural sunlight. I mean, you can take vitamin D supplementally, but it is nowhere near as effective as just getting in the sun. one of the worst things that has happened in this country is to make people afraid of the sunlight. Yeah, don't get out there and burn yourself to a crisp. Don't get frequent sunburns and end up with skin cancer. I mean, come on. Use a little common sense. But vitamin D is essential for our immune system. And really just going out and taking a 30-minute walk in the sunlight with bare arms, you know, Anything, if there's some sunlight coming through your window, sitting in that sunlight for a while while you read a book or pray or meditate or whatever you like to do, take a nap. Hey, take a nap in the sun. That's probably going to help more than anything, right? But, yeah, vitamin D, super important. Natural diet rich in animal fats, plenty of vitamin C, E, A, et cetera. Remember, you want the widest variety of foods you can possibly get. Minerals such as zinc really help with the immune system. Zinc is found in a lot of your cruciferous vegetables, your greens, meats, especially grass-fed beef, oysters like crazy. Again, you can pick zinc supplementarily, but it's never going to be as good. as getting it in foods or in herbal teas. The minerals are actually far more absorbable, far more easily absorbed, taken in the form of an herbal tea. And they are taken most any other way. We've pretty much covered that. So let's get into the mushrooms. Certain mushrooms are immunosupportive. Basically all mushrooms are. And I'm going to tell you the ones that have really done a lot of studies are. Edible mushrooms, I should say. Obviously don't eat poisonous mushrooms. They're not going to do you any good. Shiitake has been proven in study after study in Asian and Western labs to be immunosupportive. You can pretty much get shiitakes in any grocery store now. I've even seen them at Piggly Wiggly. Yes, even at Piggly Wiggly. Garicus blazei, blazei, B-L-A-Z-E-I, blazei, yes. Immunomodulatory. Lion's mane is such a great mushroom. It also can help protect your brain. And that's really important with some of these viruses, too, because some of these viruses actually specifically attack brain cells. So a lion's mane mushroom, also called pom-pom mushroom, it's this kind of shaggy-looking white mushroom. Grows on trees. I've grown some myself on solid blocks. They're really delicious. May help prevent... ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, and Alzheimer's. This is one to look into for a lot of reasons, but it helps regulate the immune system and protects brain cells in cases of encephalitis. Very important, very important. Cordyceps, cordyceps are the weirdest mushroom on earth. They actually infect bugs and grow right out of them. I mean, you know, You can grow them in other ways too. You can grow them in another substrate. But that is one, that is a mushroom, a fungi that has developed survival strategies that are, you know, a sci-fi novel. But they stimulate natural killer immune cells called NK cells. These are the cells that the body uses to kill viruses. So cordyceps, very important. Maitake stimulates the immune system. Several other mushrooms are antioxidant rich, anti-inflammatory, and immune supportive, such as chaga. Oyster mushrooms, another one you can find in most stores these days. Another one I've grown on sawdust. You can grow great oyster mushrooms off your old coffee grounds. Super easy to grow. Mushroom Mountain, a company down in Easley, South Carolina. Highly recommend that company. You need spawn substrate if you want to take classes about learning to grow mushrooms. Mushroom Mount. Without a doubt, the best book on the subject is Radical Mycology by Peter McCoy. It's an expensive book, but it's also huge. I mean, it's huge. It's like a thousand pages. I mean, it's everything currently known about growing and using fungi is in that book. Paul Stamen's old books are all good, but I think McCoy's just blew everybody out of the water, honestly. Turkey tail. Turkey tail is so common. I could not walk out my door and be in the woods for five minutes without seeing more turkey tail mushrooms than I could harvest. Buckets full if I wanted them. Turkey tail supports the immune system. A lot of people say it has anti-cancer properties. I try to avoid talking about any cancer remedies because I don't like to give people false hope, and hey, until something's actually been proven, I can just tell you that some people believe turkey tail has anti-cancer properties. Same with lion's mane helping prevent Alzheimer's and ALS. It has been proven to have immunosupportive properties. These mushrooms can be used in several forms. Oyster, lion's mane, agaricus, shiitake, maitake, all these are often cooked and eaten. Raw mushrooms really don't do you any good. Your body can't really break them down and utilize them. So you want to eat them cooked or you can use them as most herbalist would. And especially this is true for your drier, tougher mushrooms. Reishis. Reishis are another really good one. I think I failed to mention. Reishis grow all over my area. Actually was once known as the herb of spiritual potency or the herb of immortality in Chinese medicine. Very powerful mushroom with some really great immunostimulant properties. It's woody. It's tough. So you want to make either a double or triple extract. The way you do that is you grind up that mushroom as fine as you can get it, and you make a tincture and throw in alcohol. After it sits in that alcohol for a month, drain off the alcohol and keep it. Take the mushroom, put it in boiling water, and make a decoction. Boil that water down by two-thirds. That way you've gotten all the alcohol-soluble constituents out and all the hot water-soluble constituents out. Combine the two together, you've got a double extract. You can go a step further using either water kefir or kombucha. You basically just let the mushroom ferment in that beverage. The fungi and bacteria that are naturally in the kefir and kombucha help pre-digest the mushroom juice. And they make yet more of those medicinal properties available in the beverage, which you will later drink. You would be drinking the kefir or the kombucha that you've had the mushrooms in. Very easy to do. You can also do that in wine. If you're brewing wine or beer, the yeast will help pre-digest that mushroom and make it more readily available. Then you make your tincture and your decoction, and you've got all three. And that's really what I call like Jedi-level herbalism. I mean, you can even go further than that if you really want to get into Peter McCoy stuff. But, yeah, it's easily doable in anybody's kitchen. And I've been making kombucha and kefir for years now. It's helped my immune system and my allergies wonderfully. And I think I bought my first kefir grains off eBay recently. from a real nice guy who sent me all kinds of great information for like four bucks. My first kombucha scoby, which used to be thought of as a mushroom, but it's actually just this conglomeration of all kinds of fungi and bacteria from another guy, I think, I think it was eBay too. Another great guy sent me a lot of wonderful information, really got me looking into standard capsules on fermentation. So maybe five bucks. So, I mean, it's just, you know, there's not a lot of investment in this whatsoever. And and these mushrooms are so easy to find these days really just at the grocery store And the rest of them I mean this is one you can look for in the winter the winter times when I go out looking for reishi and chaga We'll get more into that later, but in another show Fragilis astragalus is an excellent herb okay? Astragalus membranicus is an immune stimulating herb that also has some of the qualities of an adaptogen like ginseng helps the body deal with stress and Likewise, ginseng can help support immunity through its tonic effects on the body. Astragalus, you can grow in your garden. Ginseng is a little bit more difficult. It can be done, but it's a little bit more difficult. But you can get those seeds, and you can grow that in your garden, or you can grow it indoors in a pot. No reason not to have it. Rhodiola is another adaptogen-type herb. It supports the immune system. It tends to be much more potent at the higher elevations. The higher you go, the better it is. It's called stone crop. You can you can grow it in your garden. It may not be as potent, but it's better to have it on hand than not. You know, combining a formula with ginseng and astragalus easily. Elderberry is just classic, classic antiviral herb. What elderberry actually does is it kind of coats the virus and all those little spikes they use to attach to itself. prevents them from attaching. And if they can't attach, they can't invade the cell. They can't invade the cell. They can't make it sick. They can't replicate. Elderberry is wonderful stuff. And elderberry syrup or wine can be taken regularly to help prevent viruses from attaching to the cells it needs to infect. Mulberry is also an acceptable substitute. It's not as used. It may not be as strong, but they're both very good. And you can at least have them in your garden growing by the spring. It's going to be a couple years before they bear fruit. But right now, you can actually buy elderberry extract in tablets at Dollar General. I mean, in capsules at Dollar General. It's become that popular a remedy. So you can probably find this online and in the e-store. But I would say with all these, go ahead and act. You know, I mentioned before I have inherited asthma. One of the main herbs I use for my asthma is called Codenopsis. Chinese herb called Dangqian, Latin name is Codenopsis. Also called poor man's ginseng, by the way. When COVID hit two years ago, all Codenopsis disappeared from the shelf. Especially Chinese folks who knew about this as part of traditional Chinese medicine bought this lung supportive herb and wiped it out. I went a year and about a year and a half before I could buy Dengxian from my regular sources again. I learned a hard lesson. I'm now getting seeds to grow it. So go ahead and start trying to stock up on these things and start looking for seeds in case you need to start growing. And you have no one to blame but yourself if you don't. All right. All seaweeds. I did a great podcast with Tori Lee on seaweeds a couple months back. Pull it up. Seaweeds are antiviral. They can be used as a nasal spray. They help prevent that virus from attaching, much like elderberry. Especially good in that nasal spray for nasal viruses. Rhinoviruses are antiviral. Viruses, that's almond cold and others that actually replicate in the nose. So that's a great way to protect yourself from there. And seaweeds are antiviral and immunomodulated. Usnea is a lichen. It's also called old man's beard. It has antiviral and immune supportive properties. Lemon balm. Lemon balm is a very easy herb to grow. It's Melissa officinalis. It's in the mint family. You can grow it in pots. You can grow it in your garden. It contains rosmarinic acid that is antiviral. Likewise, monarda or bee balm. I've talked about that herb before. And obviously, rosemary is going to have rosmarinic acid in it. So common cooking herbs that have good antiviral properties. Echinacea has antiviral properties that work best at the first little tickle in the throat. or other sign of viral infection and help shorten the duration of the virus. Taking prior to contracting the virus, echinacea may help prevent infection. This is purple coneflower, but it's anything in the coneflower or rudbeckia, brown-eyed Susan family. Opinions over echinacea are mixed, though, basically as to how to take it, all right? I was always taught that it was good to take in just about any form. Capsules, teas, tinctures. I mean, echinacea is a go-to. Michael Moore, Southwest School of Botanical Medicine said, angustifolia and pallidia are the two primary root echinaceas. The aromatic parts stimulate white blood cells and are good to shorten the duration of a cold dramatically when one is coming on. It can be taken for a few days in large quantities for this reason. It also helps with tissue damage and limiting inflammation. It helps with trauma and injury. It's good for chronic tendinitis, sports injuries, etc. Let me skip over a little bit of that. It's good for people experiencing environmental stress or frequent illnesses. Flowers are good for the immune system, but the roots are better for tissue protection. Garden variety purpurea, that's purple coneflower, often planted as a landscaping plant, works fine for using the flowers. It's most potent if grown in a limestone soil. You can amend your soil by adding limestone powder to it, by the way. Wild grown in arid places have bigger, more powerful roots. But again, we're looking more at the flower here. But then... Susan Weed says akamesha builds immunity, but that purpurea, that's the purple coneflower, has to be used fresh and is useless if it's dried. She says that a dropper full of echinacea tincture a day has been proven to help prevent colds and flus. So very important. But then Stephen Herod Buhner disagrees. He says that purpurea is useless for preventing colds and flus and that only angustifolia works. He further says that the juice from the crushed stalks is the most effective and not the root or of flowers. I cannot tell you what's what on echinacea whatsoever. And that's why it's been somewhat of a controversial herb. It was popular as an antiviral for flus and colds. And then studies came out and said it's useless. Well, they didn't tell you what form they used it in. And then they didn't tell you what part of the plant they were using. And basically, I think traditionally the flowers have been the most used. Our tincture tea is probably the best way to go. But I would not hesitate at all to crush up some stalks in there. Take a little bit of everybody's advice. All right, so forsythia is a really common bush. It's going to be blooming. It's one of the first plants to bloom in the spring. I've done a video on it before. I've talked about this plant. Forsythia is a powerful antiviral. Common bush, often used in landscaping. The fruits of forsythia are strongly antiviral and have been traditionally used for colds and flus. Forsythia is usually combined with honeysuckle flowers, which are also antiviral. Common weedy plants that are all over the place, this is just honeysuckle, lanocera. It's the common honeysuckle. Please do not confuse it with Carolina jessamine or galsimium. A lot of people confuse those two plants. One can be highly dangerous, and one is perfectly fine. The honeysuckle that smells like honeysuckle, you know, when you were a kid, for you to grab the flower and suck a little bit of nectar out of it, that's what you're looking for. And this time of year, you probably still could find some honeysuckle in most places that aren't too high in elevation. And it probably wouldn't be flowering. So you need to identify the vine. I did see some flowering a couple of weeks ago. And for Cynthia, you could probably still find some fruits on the bushes. But I know you can buy these herbs online. dried, cut, and sifted. A lot more information on this combination in Asian herbal medicine than in Western. But from my research, this combination of resithia and honeysuckle may be one of the very best antiviral combos there is. So definitely look into that. Fresh juice of ginger is one of Buhner's primary antiviral treatments. Only the fresh juice from crushed rhizomes, not the powder you buy on the spice shelf, Taken as a hot tea every two to three hours during the course of colds or flus has been to significantly lessen their duration and reduce symptoms. Also very good for fevers. Licorice, the herb, not the candy, obviously, is an antiviral herb that is very good for lungs and kidneys. Another one of Buhner's favorites, tea tincture capsule of the root is used. Buhner cautions that licorice is generally safe for short-term use. but that large doses should not be used. It is also best combined with other herbs. Michael Moore found that licorice has a tendency to elevate blood pressure in people whose metabolism and build are considered anabolic. And these large framed people who are usually, you know, naturally strong, kind of aggressive, carry extra body weight, tend to have reddish faces, reddish complexions. I think, you know, football players, especially retired football players, are putting on a little bit of weight or, you know, big strapping pros from the cause of women with loud voices. That's the example he gave. So don't beat me up. He was a liberal. He can get away with that. You will want to read about this herb before deciding how or if to use it. Remember, Buhner is saying short-term and not in large doses. Chinese skullcap is really the variety of skullcap that's been mostly studied. This is another of Buhner's favorites. He says it's probably interchangeable with any other type of skullcap. Our native skullcap is called Mad Dog Skullcap. Because it was used against the bite of rabid dogs. So it probably is just as antiviral, maybe more so. So we need to really look into this. But Skullcap is an excellent antiviral herb. Traditionally, several varieties of Skullcap have been used as antivirals. Skullcap may be stronger, I cannot tell you. But the root is used as a tincture. Chinese skullcap is a broad-spectrum antiviral. That's very important. Broad-spectrum antivirals. I would consider skullcap one of the essential herbs to have in the garden. And I'll just tell you, Buhner's favorite seven antiviral herbs are Chinese skullcap, elder, that's elderberry, ginger, hotunia, which we'll get into in a minute, isathis, which we'll get into in a minute, licorice, and limacium, which we'll also get into. And his book discusses many other herbs that are either antiviral or help prevent damage done by viruses. I highly recommend it. Antiviral Herbs by Stephen Herod Buhner. You can probably pick up a used copy online for $ 5 to $ 10. No reason not to have that one on your shelf. And it's companion book, Antibiotic Herbs. So we'll just go ahead and put that out there. Now we'll talk about Unia Cordata. This is also called a chameleon plant because the leaves are variegated and the color changes when they grow in the sun or shade. It's a really interesting plant. It's considered invasive. It's kind of weedy. It kind of reminds me a lot of bugleweed, the way it can just really spread. But it's a great ground cover. Medicinally, it is strongly antiviral and supportive of the lungs. It is antibacterial and antifungal. It is also a good culinary herb. It's popular in Asian cuisine. Isatus is a member of the brassica family, along with cabbage and broccoli. It's not a very particularly good tasting or smelling member of that family, so a lot of people don't eat it, but it is eaten in some Asian cultures. Roots and leaves are a broad spectrum antiviral that inhibit viral replication. You don't want to grow this one in your garden, and as bad as it smells, worse than collards or cabbage cooking, you don't want to start putting this in your diet, especially as an antiviral. Okay, I mean, especially as an antiviral. You can think of isanus as one of the top. Lomatium, which is L-O-M-A-T-I-U-M, one of those words I have trouble pronouncing, is a herb in the same family as OSHA. OSHA is much more used in North America, but they have very similar properties. They're both antiviral. Lamechium is a little stronger than OSHA as an antiviral. OSHA is often over-harvested. OSHA helps up overreaction of the immune system, can help with anaphylactic shock. It's a little rare. I would, okay, if I was buying the plant's I would buy Lomachium. I think it's stronger antiviral and because it's not quite as rare to the best of my knowledge, at least it's the case in North America. For growing them, I grow both. And the Osha usually grows strongest at higher elevations, but I put them both in the park. Turmeric, that's curcumin, is just like its cousin, ginger. Turmeric is antiviral and anti-inflammatory. However, it is rarely used in America. It's in its most optimal form. Standardized extract of curcumin or cumin oil is much more effective than capsules of turmeric powder that most folks take. A turmeric tincture is also effective. However, all forms of turmeric should be combined with black pepper, some form of natural fat for absorption and effective use. Making without that combination does little of any good. Most cultures use cumin cooked into foods as a spice. So they're getting it, you know, the way it was intended basically. But, um, And, in fact, when I catch a cold or flu, the first thing I do is eat a hot, spicy beef or chicken curry with plenty of garlic and onions and plenty of cumin. And, you know, I think it really helps a lot, actually. But remember, any form of turmeric you take, put black peppers on top of that. It helps the liver identify it, process it, use it in its most effective form. I think John's Wort, one of my all-time favorite herbs, is an excellent antiviral. St. John's Wort helps with mood. It soothes muscle pain. It helps heal nerves. But as an antiviral, it is so good. You want a really dark red tincture if you're using a tincture of St. John's Wort. To have the best, you're really going to need to grow it and make it yourself. You want those fresh flowers. you know, picked in the morning. Just, you know, that's the best stuff. And you're going to know the potency by the redness. It's wonderful. This is a wonderful herb. All right. And then, you know, the big guys, garlic and the other alliums. I mean, you know, this is the old home remedy. This is the go-to. This is the one everybody knows, but We don't use enough of it, obviously. See, garlic and other alliums. That's going to include onions. That's going to include ramps. That's going to include leeks, shallots. They're all antiviral, antiseptic, and antibiotic, as well as being supportive to the immune system. For medicinal purposes, they can also be lacto-fermented, just like you would make fermented pickles. Those naturally fermented pickled onions are delicious. Really good for you. So is the garlic. They can be preserved in honey. Permanent garlic, whether it's in honey or unpeeled, what's known as black garlic, really good medicinal properties. Garlic is also known as what's called the four thieves tonic, and we'll get into that in just a minute. That's a great old remedy and one you should really have on your shelf. A few more herbs here. We have Ampelopsis brevipedunculata. That's hard to say. Maybe the hardest herb to pronounce I've found yet, but it's also known as porcelain berry. It's a very invasive weed from South America, and it's kind of classified along with like kudzu and honeysuckle. But this herb can help protect the brain from encephalitis. It's antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and analgesic. If there's some growing in your area, maybe you don't want to plant one of these, like kudzu or something that's going to take over your garden, or porcelain berry. But if there's some growing wild in your area, that's one to definitely look at. Sephora flavescens and strobilanthes kuzia, or herbs used in traditional Chinese medicines, antivirals. I don't know a lot about those, but I figured I'd throw them out there in case you have access to them. More common by far in America is boneset, boneset eupatorium. It has a long history of herbal use. Dengue fever was one of the main mosquito-borne viruses that our ancestors faced here in America, and it was a major problem, along with malaria and several flus. Several viral infections along those lines may have been known as break bone fever, but dengue is the leading candidate. Basically, the fever came on so strong that it felt like it was breaking their bones. Native Americans recommend this family of herbs to help break the fever as a cure for the virus. For most of the last century or so, Boneset was dismissed as a useless folk remedy, but recent research has shown Boneset to be, in fact, a powerful antiviral, antiseptic, analgesic, febrifuge, diaphoretic, and immunostimulant. So take that, modern medicine. This is one that grows wild all over the place, and you can definitely get it in your garden. Boneset or Eupatorium. Aptclaw is a really exciting herb. It comes out of South America. It's relatively new to Western herbalism. It's Oncaria tomentosa. Oncaria tomentosa. Research shows it is powerfully antiviral. We all need to be growing this vine, even if it means building a greenhouse or putting in potted plants inside. This one has a lot of potential, and it's really exciting. Andrographis is an herb from India. It's a green charette. It is considered to be one of the most bitter herbs on the planet. It is very good for the liver and has antiviral and immune supportive properties. Root is an old folk remedy. It's antiviral, but its main action is purging the lymph system. Poke, as I've discussed before, is toxic in large amounts. It can cause nausea, even in moderate amounts. But I'm including it here because when I had COVID-19, as the illness kept lingering on and on and on, I finally took some poke root tincture. I sweat, my urine turned very dark, you know. Fever broke, and the next day the virus was pretty much gone. Also a good expect, right? It's good for the lungs. Use with caution. You know, Michael Moore said a half ounce of poke root tincture could be fatal. I don't know how strong his tincture was. I actually just wrote and bit off pieces of it and ate it. I'm used to eating poke in form of poke green, poke salad. I probably build up a little bit of a tolerance to its toxicity. Most people have not, and I'm just going to stay cautious, but it's one that I would have on hand, and it's one that Susan Wade says was absolutely essential to prepare for COVID. Poke seems to hasten the conclusion or resolution of a virus. All right, red root, coanthus. Much like poke and its reaction on the lymph, but probably a little safer to use. Poke grows in my region. Red root does not. red root grows in your region, or if you can get in your garden, do so. Hot peppers. Just, yeah. Um, you know, like I was saying about that good, hot, spicy curry, uh, your hot peppers, your jalapenos, habaneros, especially you want to test the Carolina Reaper. I will not recommend that anything that hot. It's not something I want to mess with. And I like hot peppers. Uh, I like ghost pepper. Carolina Reaper is a little scary. Um, Hot peppers have long been used to help with colds and flus. They thin the mucus, they help break up congestion, they promote sweating, and help break fevers. It turns out that folk wisdom was right. They are also immune boosting. Viruses were not yet discovered by science in the era when much of German folk medicine was reported. However, those herbalists certainly knew about colds and flus. They didn't understand their cause. They found herbs to help with viral infections, just like all people everywhere on earth. Father Nape included a chapter on influenza in his classic work, My Water Cure. If tea from St. John's Wort and milfoil or sage and wormwood is taken in addition to the exterior application, the cure will be even more speedily accomplished. Father Nape's system of medicine was based on cold water plus earth. If you want to try it that way, it's a good alternative. It's a good thing to know. It's a good option to have. That book, My Water Cure, it was a major bestseller around 1870, so it's still pretty easy to find. He also recommended chamomile. Chamomile tea is used for colds, especially if they are attended by fever, for gripes, cramps, strong congestions, etc. St. John's wort, milfoil, sage, and wormwood. All very good herbs for colds and flus. Father Kunzel said the lady's mantle, well-boiled and drunk warm, relieves headache, heels cold in the head, eye infections, headaches, and toothaches by gargling in the mouth. Masterwort, chewed in the mouth, cures the cold in the head very quickly. Juniper. Juniper is the tree I've talked before about its antiviral properties. It is a medicinal plant of the first rank. Everything about it is medicinal. The wood, the needles, the berry, the bark. It has the power to warm up, relieve internal colds, cleanses everything, whatever it can reach, the stomach, the intestines, lungs, blood, and is therefore used in almost all herbal mixtures except for hot diseases. If you have a cold and cataract, this congestion, in the evening before you go to bed, drink a good portion of well-boiled, tea made from leaves of plantain, cowslip, ladies' mantle, and peppermint. If you do this at the very beginning when you start feeling the symptoms, you'll be healthy the following morning. If, on the other hand, you have missed the moment, drink this tea more often throughout the day, always warm, then usually you should be free of cataract by the evening. We often use mint that way, you know, at the onset of the cold coming on. Mint has good antimicrobial properties. It has some antiviral properties, too. Now, Father Kunzel then goes into a long story about the use of wine vinegar. We'll get into that a little bit more in a minute here with the Four Thieves tonic. He said specifically of flu, this disease takes hold of everything, the nerves of the head, the kidneys, the bladder, the lungs, often the heart and stomach. Flu tea can bring relief. The patient is giving a sip every hour. The main thing is that a lot of urine is excreted. If this is not the case, despite drinking the flu tea, then watch out. That means the kidneys will stop working. A simple remedy can help here. Take two onions and two garlic. Crush them and place them raw on both kidneys. Leave them for three to seven hours. It's a pulpous of alliums. The kidneys will usually start working again, and a lot of urine will come out, but the flu cannot develop into pneumonia. His tea for flu was wormwood, sage, alpine speed wheel, and a handful of licorice. So, again, we're seeing a lot of herbs we've already discussed here. He says take a handful every morning and evening to make a pot of tea. Protect against the flu. Those who are already with the flu should take a spoonful of it every half hour and usually recover in two days. For the aftereffects of the flu, he says, many people have not felt well since they had the flu. Some experience too little urine when compared to before, and they need onions and garlic, as described above. Others have a weak heart, and for those, I advise my mixture with creeping avens. That's a GM. But Maria Trevin tells us the common cold, also known simply as just a cold, is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory tract that primarily affects the nose, the throat, sinuses, larynx may also be affected. Signs and symptoms may appear in less than two days after exposure to the virus. Chamomile, again. Chamomile. She recommends chamomile, as others have. She says colds and maxillary sinusitis are soon better if chamomile steam is inhaled. After such a treatment, one must understandably remain warm. So she's recommending it as a steam inhaled as opposed to a tea. Wild thyme. Remember we talked about rosemary? Well, thyme all has a similar effect. That's the essential oil of thyme. An old herbal remedy for illnesses of the respiratory passages is thyme used with plantain. A tea made of equal proportions of thyme and plantain with lemon and raw sugar are added. It is effective for whooping cough, phlegm in the lungs, bronchial asthma. This tea is prepared fresh four to five times a day. If there is danger of pneumonia, a big sip taken every hour is effective. Luckily, many mothers have not forgotten time, but time is an excellent expectant. I put time in my allergy formulas, my cold formulas, and it's very good. It's quite good. Yarrow, she recommended for colds, back, or rheumatic pain. Yarrow tea is drunk as hot as possible in large amounts. The tea activates sluggish kidneys. It rectifies lack of appetite, dispels flash and stomach cramps. It is also beneficial for liver disorders, inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, and regulates the movement of the bowels. Well, Yarrow taken hot also promotes sweating. That can help as well. Viral diseases. She says they're very small infectious agents. They are made up of genetic materials such as DNA or RNA that is enclosed in a coat of protein. Viruses invade cells in your body and use components of those cells to help them multiply. This process often damages or destroys infected cells. A viral disease is any illness or health condition that can be caused by a virus. Obviously, she had a very good understanding of viruses. Stinging nettle. Since I know how valuable the nettle is, I have made it a habit to drink the tea prepared from young shoots for a four week period each spring and autumn. I drink one cup on an empty stomach half an hour before breakfast and I sip on two cups throughout the day. The effect is heightened if the tea is only sipped even before breakfast. After four weeks, I feel like a new person and able to work three times as hard. My family and I have not taken any medication for years, and I feel young and supple. But stinging nettle tea is drunk without sugar and does not taste too badly. Delicate natures can add a bit of chamomile and mint to make the taste better. In herbal medicine, stinging nettle tea is drunk for a four-week period. It is used for liver, gallbladder, and spleen disorders, even for tumors of the spleen, stomach cramps, ulcers of the intestine, congestion of the lungs or stomach, and lung disorders. Do not boil the tea as this would destroy valuable substances. Drink one cup a day all year round as a prophylactic. It is also beneficial for viral diseases and bacterial excretions. Depending on the virus and the person's state of health, various viruses can affect almost any type of body tissue from the brain to the skin. Calendula or Marigold. It is used for gastrointestinal disorders, stomach cramps, stomach ulcers, as well as inflammation of the large intestines, dropsy and blood in the urine. It is excellent for virus infections and bacteria in the urine. Since calendula is also beneficial for infectious hepatitis, it is an excellent remedy in disorders of the liver. Flowers, leaves, and stems are brewed with boiling water. The tea should not be sweetened. For the above-mentioned disorders, drink three to four cups a day, about a tablespoon every quarter hour. A tea made from one tablespoon of flowers to a fourth liter of water will expel worms. The juice of the fresh stems gets rid of warts and scabies, and the boiled infusion helps with herpes and glandular swelling. If the affected parts are bathed in it, the tea drunk regularly purifies the blood. The eyes bathe with an eye bath of lukewarm water. lukewarm tea or strengthen. Other herbs that have been found in treating viral infections or easing the symptoms of influenza by European and early American herbalists include peppermint. It has antiviral properties. White cedar. This is Thuja. It is a very good antiviral. Good for colds and flus. But needle oil is especially good for herpes. Water calla. The root bark is used for teas for flus. Angelica, very traditional Appalachian remedy used for colds and flus. It works well with licorice. Barro is good for fevers, helps colds and flus, and is much like Angelica, has been used traditionally for flu. Rabbit tobacco. This is one of those old folk remedies, really very, very effective for colds and flus. It's a good lung herb. Sweet Everlasting can be used similarly. Mullein can be used similarly. This is one that really helps for viruses that attack the lungs. Burdock seeds have been used for flu. Maidenhair fern has been used as a tea for flu. It is a particularly good lung herb for pneumonia and congestion, but I have to caution you that some people think it may be slightly partsogenic. I would definitely investigate that. Some studies have shown that it can cause liver damage. Others have shown that it doesn't, so I can't weigh in on that one way or the other. Mullein, obviously, mullein is a great lung herb. Fluorosy root is one that you should definitely have on hand for COVID and flu-like viruses that attack the lungs. Fluorosy root is just a wonderful expectant for the lungs, but also helps reduce inflammation and that swelling of the tissue. And now let's get into the four thieves tonic, the legendary four thieves tonic. Okay. Four Thieves Tonic is a traditional herbal formula used to prevent or shorten the duration of colds, flus, etc. According to legend, during the time of the Black Plague in Europe, four thieves would rob the houses of those who had recently died from the disease. Once apprehended, an inquiry was made into why these thieves never contracted the virus that was highly contagious and killing huge swaths of the population. The answer lay in a family remedy that has come to be known as Four Thieves Tonic. Controversy exists as to the original formula, but the oldest known documentation comes from the French chemist and scholar René-Maurice Gautier-Fossé. I guess that's how you pronounce that. I'm not the best with French. I'm part French. I never was very good with the language. He published the original recipe that is displayed in a museum in Old Marseille in 1937. In his book, Gatte Fossé' s Aromatherapy, he said, take three pints of strong white wine vinegar, add a handful each of wormwood, meadowsweet, wild marjoram and sage, 50 cloves, two ounces of campanula root, two ounces of angelica, rosemary and horehound, and three large measures of camphor. Place in the mixture in the container for 15 days, strain and express, then bottle. used by rubbing it on the hands, ears, and temples from time to time when approaching plague victims. You see, the original formula was intended to be used externally. Every modern Forthese tonic I've seen is internal use. The modern version, taken generally internally, about a tablespoon at a time, diluted in water is how most people take it, used herbs include garlic, rosemary, cloves, sage, juniper berries, thyme, and cinnamon. See a big difference in there is the camphor. While there's a little camphor in Swedish bitters, which are also a pretty good antiviral, camphor can be toxic in large amounts. That's why in the traditional four thieves, formula. We would use that externally. In the modern, we use it internally because we're not using camphor. The other one that is a pretty popular folk remedy is fire cider. Fire cider is really commonly used among herbalists. I think everyone has their own favorite addition or substitution, but the basics are pretty much the same. Here's Rosemary Gladstorff's formula. Rosemary is a great herbalist. I've taken several of her classes. One onion, several cloves of garlic, both peeled, chopped, or crushed. You have the hottest fresh peppers you can stand, chopped. The juice of a lemon, grated ginger root, grated horseradish root, turmeric, cayenne pepper, apple cider vinegar. Raw honey is added to taste after the cider ages. Both of these tonics should be prepared well in advance and age for one month or longer before using. And, of course, I would add to that Swedish Bitters, which we've done a whole other program on. Three tonics on hand, if you can do it, are probably going to help a whole lot in preventing catching viruses. Again, that's medical advice I cannot legally offer, but traditionally that's how they've been viewed. I know I've given you a ton of information. This is a long one. Back it up. Take notes. I think it's important to do that. This is a chapter for my book. I highly recommend you buy my book because it's got a lot more information than just this in it. And it's really a whole system for help using herbs and an independent lifestyle based on taking care of yourself and your family. But hey, you know what? Christmas is coming up. And wouldn't my book, Herbal Medicine for Preppers, Homesteaders, and Permaculture People make an excellent gift for someone in your family? I think it would. You can buy the paper copies on Amazon. Y'all, please stay healthy. And just remember, prepare ahead of time. Prepare ahead of time because we don't know where the next variant of COVID is coming from or when or how bad it's going to be. And we don't know when the next virus is coming along. We don't know when the next antibiotic-resistant bacteria is going in. We need to be prepared. We need the herbs on hand. We need them in our garden. We need them dried, cut, and sifted. We need our tinctures made. If things get really bad, we're not even going to be able to go to doctors. And things could get so bad in the supply chain that we couldn't get pharmaceuticals to the– We couldn't get deliveries made to our house. Things got really bad. So let's be proactive and take care of our health. And, y'all, I'll see you next time for a hopefully much shorter podcast. It's a little more like the usual. All right, y'all, have a good one. The information in 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 U.S. Government does not recognize the practice of herbal medicine, and there is no governing body regulating herbalists. 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 herbs have been traditionally used for. I can tell you my own experience and if I believe an herb has helped me. I cannot nor would I tell you to do the same. 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, a sensitivity, an 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 agree to be responsible for yourself, do your own research, make your own choices, and not to blame me for anything ever.