MEDICAL MONDAY: Growing Herbs for Liver Health - Survival Gardening

Hey, y'all, welcome today's show. Today we are going to get into growing and using six herbs for liver health. Very important. Deliver is undermost constant assault in our modern environment, and not just from you know, having a couple of drinks or something. Tailenol is worse for your liver than alcohol. There is stuff in municipal water that's really bad for you. And we're also exposed to a lot of solvents in our daily lives, anything from you know, petrochemicals to cleaning fluids, soaps or even a solvent. A lot of plastics can have serious effects on liver health, even our air quality. So really good to grow a few herbs for liver and to know how to use them. And as we're continuing on this series, Rolling your Survival Herb Garden from my book Rolling Your Survival Herb Garden for Preppers, homesteaders, permaculture people, and everybody else, which you can find on Amazon or get directly from me if you like. So let's get into the first one. It's the big one, it's the most important one. It's the one with the most clinical studies. I assume actually it is. I shouldn't say I assume it would appear to be, if not the most powerful liver herb among the you know, the one or two most because it's actually been proven in clinical studies to prevent damage from omanina mushroom mushroom poison, which will actually liquefy the liver, it turns it into like jelly. And if milk thistle is taken soon enough after eating those poisonous mushrooms, the liver's protected. And it's been shown in clinical studies to help regrow severely damaged muscle tissue, perhaps damaged by the solvents and the alco and all that milk thistle can really help regenerate and protect the liver. It's so important. It has been so important since ancient times. It has religious significance. It's actually named after the blessed Virgin Mary. It was called Saint Mary's thistle. The Latin name is Siliabum marianum, which means Mary's thistle. Essentially, the milk this was biennial yielding seeds in its second year. The flowers are typical of thistles. If you've seen a thistle, you know what a thistle flower looks like a little art choke or something you know. Most thistles, in fact, are good for the liver. Thistles are really good plants, including art chokes and which is in that same family. And I cannot remember what the ancestor to artichoke is. It'll come to me at some point. It can grow it a little bit different climate, sinnarichow definitely worth looking into. But then you also have like bull thistle and different thistles that also have a very good effect. The flowers are pink to purple and tufted, you know that kind of grows like a tough from the top of a globe. They're prickly, they're spiny. The identifying feature of milk thistle's beautiful leaves. They literally look like leaves that have been splashed with milk. That's why it's called milk thistle. Most textually and visually, milk thistle is a dramatic inclusion of the garden. This is one you know, it's really going to catch people's eyes and it will grow around four feet tall space at about two to three feet apart. Milk thistles hardy from zone six A to nine B. Next, I would list a juga ripped tense bugle weed one of my favorite herbs. It's one I mentioned before as it's for its sedative and pain relieving qualities. It was said by old herbalists such as coal pepper. It does powerfully shrink the liver. It's very good for liver information. It's a bitter herb that helps with digestion, and really coal pepper in them. That's what back in this like you know, sixteen hundred and fifteen hundreds England, that would be the herb to go to for in flame liver, which is pretty common back then as well. They were using a lot of pretty harsh chemicals and things weren't always very clean. Milk thistle you really want to do an extract for the seeds, so it's a little harder to use. Buckle weed. You can just eat it. You can throw the leaves or the flowering flower spikes in your salad. I mean, it's really pretty easy now. It does have a cardiotonic effect, some somewhat like a weak digitalis effect. It slows and strengthens the heart rate. So if you eat a couple of flowering spikes of bugle it flowers in early spring, they will pro probably have about the same effect on you as a couple of beers. You know, very relaxing, but if you're taking cardiac medication, you don't want to be real careful with that or blood pressure medication because bugle weed will lower blood pressure. You can eat it, you can make a tea out of it, you can make a tincture out of it. Really super easy to use, and it's in the mint family, so it's super easy to grow. I am sure well in large amounts, bugle weed could probably be very dangerous. In fact, I'm sure it could be quite toxic. I mean, it has that effect on the heart. You don't want to slow down your heart rate and lower your blood pressure too much, obviously, But a little here and there, and you know, like I said, it's a mint, so it is perennial. You can grow it from seed, you can grow it from divisions. It's considered a weed. Actually it's a very pretty groundcover. It has roundish shaped leaves. It grows very low to the ground, unlike mint, but it sends up these flowering spikes of pretty blue flowers, just like you know mintwood, and it spreads. That's actually what the Latin name reptends means. So people consider it a weed. I consider it a wonderful, healthful herb, and if you have a neighbor that has some of their yard, they'll probably be glad to let you pull up as much as you want and just transplant it. If not, you can get it from a nursery. You can grow it from seed. It likes it likes sun. Yeah, it does do best in full sun of partial shade, and it does good. It does better in a good soil, but it will grow in poor soil as well. Really tough and hardy and easy to grow. Once you get it going, it's gonna come back every year and it's just gonna spread unless you pull it up. Gentien is really the classic liver herb. This was the herb used all throughout the Middle Ages, way back into Greek times, I mean before people really learned about milk thistle and all that. As far as it's liver protective and regenerative properties, Gentien was called the king of the bitters. It is a beautiful flower, Oh my gosh. Gentien comes in different shades from yellow to purple to blue. It is literally one of the prettiest flowers you're ever going to see. Beautiful plant and the bitterness. While it is strongly bitter, it's not unpleasantly bitter. I actually like the flavor of Genien and I use it interchangeably basically with Oregon grape root, which has berberin, which is very similar to the alkaloid in Gentien. And you know, Oregon grape grows a lot more where I live. But if I was looking for a perfect garden plant that would be liver supportive and stimulative, yeah, if you can grow Gentien, you will not regret it. It's mainly a mountain plant. It is perennial. It does well in full sun or partial shade. We have a few native varieties that grow here in the mountains of North Carolina, and you can actually grow the ones that come from the European Alps, which are just knockout flowers. I mean they really are. There's pretty as any rose or tulip or anything you think of when you think of a pretty flower, and actually probably more striking because you don't see them that very often. They should be spaced about, you know, foot and foot and a half apart. They're gonna grow two to three feet tall. They're you know, actually fairly large plants. Propagation is easy for root divisions, and that's really the only way to get a predictable flower color. If you're going from seeds, you don't know what you're gonna get. If you want that blue or purple gingiin which is just well, you know, stunning, you're gonna have to get it from a parent plant, and you can probably find those in a nursery, you know, any garden supply store, or you know, order them, get some from a friend, you know whatever. I don't really mind the color variation as far as you know, the interest being medicinal. And I really used manly our wild ones, so it's not a plant I grow. The seeds are so in late fall they need to stratify over winter. Of course, you can put them in the freezer and try to grow about. They don't have a high germination rate, so out of just you know, a bunch of seeds, like one hundred seeds, you're probably just going to get a few plants. So it really is easier with root division dividing up the plants. Gentien was so popular it was over harvested. Is actually the European varieties are protected in most areas, and so you may. If you want one of those specifically, you're going to have to get it from a plant cellar. Hardiness is from zone four to eight to seven B, so it's quite quite cold hardy and somewhat heat tolerant. Dandelion, you know, dandulins, classic dandi lens ubiquitous. Very few people grow dandelions purposefully, but I do. I like to grow some of the gardeners for the greens. They pop up all over my yard though, so it's not what I prioritize. But I actually do have some specific seeds I got from Baker Creek something I grow from that. They're a French variety that's less bitter, really quite tasty and the leaves have a purplish tend to them on the underside. A yeah, very attractive plant. I'm hoping maybe though at some point they'll kind of cross with the ones that are growing wild in my yard and everything will be a little more mild in the summer. When they you know, they bolt or they tend to get a little bit bitter. But anyway, there's time. Don't need to give you instructions on growing dandelions. They were growing poor soil, intense sign gravel driveways and cracks of sidewalks. You know, whatever, no problem. The dandelion root is excellent for the liver, very good for the liver. And in fact, whereas sometimes barbarier gentien can be a little too stimulative for a liver that's really kind of worn out, danduliine is soothing. It's actually what we call a cooling herb. So one of the common signs of liver damage is getting like eczema and psoriasis. And if you were to take a oregon, graperoot or gentian and it gets worse, you know your liver is over tax it's just exhausted. It's really been in a bad shape for too long to be stimulated. Dandelion and burdock have that opposite effect, and they actually support and cool the liver. As we say in herbo energetics, they support liver function without overstimulating it. So that usually works to calm down the skin condition caused by deliver inflammation. The great thing about milk thistle is it's going to help in both cases and can help repair hair and heal that liver. So I would not ever hesitate to use milk thistle in any case. But I would. You know, I'm going to look to see which whether you know, Oregon graperooit Gentien or dandylion and burdock has a better effect to decide which course I'm going to go. You know, when I'm kind of evaluating such as that danielions are hardy from three to eight to ten b so from basically from Alaska to southern Texas or you know, Florida keys, you can grow dandelions, So don't worry about that. Wild chickrie is very nice. It's basically, although it is a different plant, it's actually the ancestor of like ridikio and the Belgian endive or on dev it's wild. For me, it just looks like a blue dandelion and it's just really nice. The flavor is actually the root is a little bit better than dandelion. It's used as an additive or a flavoring agent, I should say. And coffee in New Orleans real creole coffee like community coffee. I mean, if you've had bad chickery coffee, you probably don't ever want to taste again. If you've had community coffee with a little bit cream and maybe a little splash and bourbon in there you basically had the best coffee on earth. So chickory is that flavor. The root is us just like dandulion, the plants are almost entirely interchangeable. Essentially, chickery is just a blue dandulion, and it is very pretty. Gris wild all over the place here in the mountains, hardy from four A to eleven, so it'll actually handle even a hotter temperature than dandelions. Burdock is the other one I mentioned. It's she had another weed. If you've dealt with burdocks, if you've had pets that have been covered in burrs and horses with birds in their mains, you probably hate it. Burdocks are great or very edible. It's actually the root has grown as a vegetable in Japan. It's called gobo. I mean it's good, it's quite good. The leaves I often use as a pot herb or to wrap up some trout and cook it of the coals by a campfire. It's great, and it's very weedy. It's just another's another one that's like nandoli that was brought here to be food and medicine, and it's probably grown wild where you wherever you are. If you need to plant it, I might put it in the garden in kind of space and apart and make it look like it was intentionally planted. It's not just a weed that popped up in the garden, because that's what most people are going to say. You could even put it in with like some elephant ear plants, you know, because the leaves would kind of complimenting each other in size and shape, even though the very different plants. Some of those that's actually taro, by the way, the elephant earplant is taro, which was the Polydnesian staple food. So you might want to grow some of those just as a food plant. But some are toxic and some aren't. So you're gonna have to look into that. And that's the show for another day. But you know, being weedy, it doesn't need a lot of care. It does need stratification, poor soil, shade to full sun. It does, okay, I mean, here are the mountains. It grows like right in the rockiest heavy clay soil is almost impossible to dig out down on the coast. When I was a kid, it was growing, you know, right along the ditches and the edges of the fields. And the sandy like worn out old cotton fields. It does fine. I mean it does fine. It's hardy from some four eight to ten b You don't want to plant the plants about two to three feet apart, and if you do want to try harvesting the root, it goes really deep. They're hard to dig. I mean, this is like it has a big root that it really anchors itself way out of the ground. Maybe try growing and raised beds, That's what they often do in Japan, so that they can just kind of then remove one side of the bed actually and just kind of dig them out sideways. That's actually the easiest way to get them out. You can. You cannot pull one straight up. I mean you need a winch. I mean, they would be really tough. And it's a delicious plant. It's a good food plant. And it's one of those like insurance policies to have in the garden against food scarcity. So yeah, I highly recommend growing burdock and dandelion for food. And without a doubt they're great food plants, not weeds, not to me anyway. And then you know, as I've said before, barberry is fantastic. Oregon grape You can use it as a hedge plant to keep out intruders and deer from coming to your garden, or keep I mean it's real spiky. You can keep some of your barnyard guitters end if you wanted a plant. It's like a hedgerow and has wonderful berries you can use to make wine and jelly with. They're very bitter. Actually you're gonnaant to sweeten them quite a bit. Of the flavors great and it can be definitely used in place of Gentien. But if you have the right conditions and you have some nice gent and I even go for it. It's a knockout flower, it really is. Your neighbors are not going to complain about that one. They probably will about burdock, but they're not going to complain about gingient. All right, Nod, I have a great week in I'll talk d next time. The information this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or condition. Nothing I say or write has been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not a doctor. The US government does not recognize the practice of verbal medicine, and there is no governing body regulating Herbless therefore, I'm really just a guy who stays herbs. I'm not offering any advice. I won't even claim that anything I write or say is accurate or true. I can tell you what Earth has been traditionally used for. I can tell you my own experience, and if I believe in herbs 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 of sensitivity and underlying condition that no one else even shares and you don't even know about. Be careful with your health by continuing to listen to my podcast or read my blog you read it, Be responsible for yourself, to your own research, make your own choices, and not to blame me for anything ever.