Detoxing for the New Year

Hey dears!

How is all the prep for the holiday season going? How are you feeling? Are you making sure you get some #refreshme time in everyday? If so, awesome :-). If not, no worries – I’ve got another great suggestion for you on where to start.

This week I want to talk about herbal teas – specifically two that are perfect for this season of bustle, delicious food, and healthy doses of ‘run around’ stress.

These are also two of my favorite herbs, some of the first ones I learned about during my herbal medicine apprenticeship many years ago now :-). They are Burdock root and Dandelion root.

The  often hated Dandelion :-(.

Have you heard these names before? Dandelion surely. This tenacious little plant isn’t generally looked favorably upon since it’s considered an annoying weed.  Burdock too is a common weed, mostly considered annoying. Ever walked through a field and found sticky ‘burrs’ on your pants and such? Those are the seed pods of burdock. Annoying right?!

Well in today’s post, I’m going to challenge that view of these plants and hopefully get you to appreciate them as much as I do.

The Burrs of Burdock. Recognize these?

Two things prompted my choosing this topic – one, I’ve decided that I want to be more active with toning my body and getting back to a more optimal weight. Even us dancers and naturalistas can struggle dearies ;-).  And two, since it is the end of the year, thinking about old things to shed to make space for new things to come through is a perfectly fitting theme. These herbs work in this sort of way.

When you see Dandelion root and Burdock root, especially together, there will usually be some focus on detoxing. That’s because both of these herbs work with the liver. Your liver is one of the most important organs for your overall health. When I taught my herbal medicine classes, we spent an entire session on this organ and the herbs that help it function healthfully. In Chinese Medicine, your liver is considered the General, orquestrating the movements of all the ‘troops’. It is responsible for the balanced flow of qi through the body. The liver performs hundreds of tasks to keep your body healthy and basically processes everything that you eat – either sending it off to be used by your body or eliminated by your body. So it’s very important to keep it operating smoothly and this is one of the ways that Dandelion root and Burdock root work their magic. They provide a gentle cleansing and optimizing action on the liver.  

Dandelion root for instance, contains bitter constituents and fiber that stimulate the digestive system, filter toxins from the blood stream and out for elimination, balances intestinal flora, and soothes the digestive tract.

Burdock root is considered a blood purifier – this is how it helps liver functioning. It aids the liver in metabolizing fats and proteins and encourages the removal of waste products. Also, its high concentration of antioxidants is thought to heal and protect the liver as well when it’s been damaged by heavy consumption.

And this isn’t even the whole of what they do. In short, these are two of my favorite wonder herbs.  I promise I will tell you more about them soon!

So how do you get them into your life?

Well luckily the world has caught on to the fact that these herbs are pretty awesome and now you can find them pretty much in any local grocery store. You still want to buy a reputable brand however – I would suggest Traditional Medicinals or Alvita. Also, you might want to experiment with steeping two tea bags instead of one because the amount in teabags in general aren’t enough for real therapeutic benefit. The last important thing is that you must steep your tea with something capping your tea cup or else you will lose all of the beneficial components of the herb in the steam ;-). Oh and the last last thing, steep it for 10 minutes – at least! Especially because these are roots, it takes some time for the heat to fuse through the herbs and release the ‘good medicine’ into the water.

These herbs are tonics (we’ll talk about what a tonic is more later) and so they work over time. Because their action is so gentle, you can take both of these together as a tea 3xs a day for at least a month, preferably 3. That may seem like a lot, but trust me, after drinking this herbal mix consistently for a month, you won’t want to stop ;-). You’ll be feeling so much better – more energy, clearer skin, less bloating, even a little slimmer ;-). 3 months is good amount of time to give a tonic to make a difference and then you can start drinking it whenever you feel the need for a detoxifying boost.

So what’s on your grocery list for this week? That’s right – Dandelion root and Burdock root baby!

Get some!

And as always, any questions, ask away in the comments or via email – I’d love to answer them!

Cold and Flu Symptoms - what are they good for?

So it only seems appropriate this week for me to talk about cold and flu remedies, since I’m currently getting over a bad cold and spent most of last week sick in bed :-D. Yes, I could have stopped it BUT being a bad herbalist, I didn’t have the right herbs on hand and I had a LOT going on this week and so, um yeah..sick in bed it is :-D.

BUT I have been taking really good care of myself and for that I am grateful. I’ll tell you all about how you can avoid being in my situation this season in just a bit, but first I must share my beautiful news :-).

Aalayah Ramel - my beautiful new niece :-).

The big event of last week was the birth of my beautiful niece Aalayah Ramel! Crazily enough, I was actually there the exact second she was born. OMG my friends, talk about a magical moment. I’m sure many, or at least some of you, have shared similar moments. Looking past the obvious pass out factors, it’s a beautiful beautiful beautiful moment. I feel so blessed to have been lucky enough to be there for my sister and to see Aalayah enter our world. WOW doesn’t even describe it!

So that was a big part of my week – helping her get settled, getting to know the new baby, and keeping tabs on my other niece and nephew as well.

Needless to say by the time, Thursday, came around – my body revolted like – 'yeah, you need to spend a lot more time in bed. Lot more chickee. Try all day.'

And so I did. A good mix of guilt and gladness there, I must admit, lol. Who else feels guilty when they stop and make time for themselves. Crazy of us right?!

In any case, I finally have gotten back around to taking care of myself the right way – so let’s get back to that.

 

 

Knocking out that cold, the natural way.

I’m actually going to talk about cold and flu remedies over a couple of posts. This is going to be one of many series that I do when there is a lot of information to share. I know how hard it is to carve out even 15 solid minutes to read these days, so I’ll try to always keep my posts to a 5 minute read or so.

Coughing, sniffling, sneezing. UGH!

Otherwise known as symptoms, these typical signs of a cold/flu are more than just inconvenient. They sap you of energy and are downright irritating to say the least. If you can get rid of them, why not right?

Wrong dears! Let me tell you why. The reason is because symptoms have a point. They don’t happen just to make you miserable. They are actually immune system responses engineered by your body to get rid of the virus that is causing your cold/flu.

Here are three common symptoms and what they are actually designed to do.

Fever: When a virus is present, your body temperature will rise in an attempt to kill the virus. We are familiar with this concept in our everyday lives. We wash our hands with hot water. We boil things to sterilize them. Your body is doing this same thing by “heating itself up” in an attempt to kill as much of the virus as possible and “sterilize” your system. 

Chills: Chills are a sign that your body is in the process of killing off the virus with heat. As your temperature rises, you naturally perspire. As this perspiration evaporates, you lose a bit of heat as well, leaving your skin feeling cold and this is what gives you chills. It’s just an indication that your body is in combat mode!

Coughs and Sneezes: Coughs and sneezes are one of the ways your body expels the virus out of your system. Cold and flu viruses enter your body through your nasal cavities in most cases. As they begin to cause irritation, your body responds by trying to push them out, hence coughs and sneezes. This very same thing is what accounts for runny noses as well. Your body is attempting to rid itself of the invading virus. 

Makes you think a little differently about symptoms right?

Symptoms are NOT a bad thing at all and as much as you can, your focus is better spent on helping your body defend itself and NOT on suppressing symptoms. The symptoms will naturally subside once the virus has been effectively fought off (think about it – we don’t have a cold forever do we? Why does it eventually go away?).

So instead of using our go-to over the counter medicines that suppress symptoms – why not use medicines that help your immune system rock out its job better??

I thought you’d agree on the wisdom of that  and in the next post, I’ll give my top 5 natural remedies for cold and flu season. You definitely don't want to miss out on that one because in the Midwest, it's already snowing and here down south our breezy 48 degree days aren't feeling too warm either! 

Be on the lookout for it and it you want to make sure you don't miss it, be sure to join my email list. I always send out notices when I post something new. 

Until then,

Keep living it up the natural way!