Where:
Buffalo Gardens
728 NE Dekum St.
Portland, Oregon 97211

Next class:
Wednesday, Sept. 1 from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

For more information contact:
Buffalo Gardens:
503.288.0220
Buffalogardens@gmail.com

Celilo Natural Health Center:
503.335.9479
celilo@celilohealth.com

beans and oregano.

The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (460-377 BCE) famously said “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.”

Gardeners know the best way to get your veggies is fresh and organic, ideally straight from the farm or garden. But beyond simple nourishment, scientists are finding some foods specifically help prevent or reverse certain diseases. Published research from the past few months alone has shown fruits and veggies protect your heart, brain and eyes, and help fight asthma, cancer, swine flu, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis.

Much of the research looks at isolated constituents in the foods, although of course there’s more to fresh fruits and veggies than the isolated “active ingredients” scientists have identified so far. All the components in the plant work synergistically, and do more than just one thing.

Here’s a short list to get you started.

Eat the rainbow

Maximizing diversity is not only good for native landscapes and gardens, it’s good for your internal ecosystem, too. And it turns out the differently flavonoid colors have different health-promoting strengths. To integrate this wisdom into you diet, remember to “eat the rainbow.”

Some of the most actively healthy bits of foods are flavonoids, which color food naturally: the purple in berries and potatoes, the red in beets and blood oranges, the orange in squash and carrots. Flavonoids generally function as antioxidants, which mitigate the effects of destructive free radicals in your system. This can help protect your heart, your brain, your eyes and reduce the risk of cancer.

To make sure you’re getting enough, work toward filling half your plate with veggies at every meal. Fold them into morning omelettes, fill up the stew pot, blend them into a morning smoothie or try them under sauces instead of pasta.

Beautiful brassicas

The brassica family is a medicinal powerhouse, with members including broccoli, kale, collards, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and mustard greens. Much of the medical research into the family has looked at its ability to regulate hormones that can lead to cancers, but its strengths don’t end there.

Cabbage, specifically as raw juice, is an old-time cure for ulcers in the digestive tract. It works by stimulating protective mucous secretions, and possibly through direct action on the bacterium Helicobacter pylori implicated in many cases. The recommended dose is one cup of fresh, raw juice four times daily for 10-14 days. Some sources suggest the powdered form may also help, but this shortcut doesn’t seem to hold up to scientific or clinical analysis.

Two particular constituents in this family, indole-3-carbinol and diindolylmethane (DIM), both work to balance and promote healthy breakdown and excretion of hormones, especially estrogen. I3C and DIM are prescribed in capsules or as specific measures of cooked vegetables for enlarged prostate glands, uterine fibroids, hair loss, fibrocystic breasts and hormone-sensitive cancers including breast and prostate.

Sulforaphane, especially abundant in broccoli and broccoli sprouts, recently was found to target breast-cancer stem cells. That’s important, because standard chemotherapy drugs can’t reach those earliest cancer cells.

Finally, some of the fibrous component in these vegetables (and many others) are converted by gut bacteria into butyrate, which in turn feeds cells in the colon and reduces the risk of colon cancer. Fiber generally helps reduce cholesterol levels, fights asthma and diabetes, and helps bind toxins and get them out of your body.

Tomatoes:

august's bounty.

There’s not much better than a perfectly ripe tomato plucked from your own garden, still warm from the sun.

Beyond that bliss, the lycopene found in tomatoes reduces natural inflammatory chemicals and circulating immune cells associated with allergies and asthma. Lycopene also can help reduce risk of prostate cancer. And this is one case where processing makes a nutrient more available: Tomato paste has four times more absorbable lycopene than fresh tomatoes.

Lycopene also is found in many red fruits and veggies, including watermelon, sea buckthorn fruit, goji berries, rosehips and red bell peppers. Unfortunately, cherries and strawberries are not good sources.

Grapes and berries

Grapes have much to recommend them from a gardening perspective: Easy and productive, they thrive in poor soils and don’t pull toxics into the fruit. They also contain resveratrol, which supports heart health, lowers inflammation, help fight cancers and may reduce high blood-sugar levels. Resveratrol even helps boost blood flow to the brain — that’s the same way Ginkgo is thought to improve memory.

And, as with all the colorful fruits, grapes are high in antioxidants —in fact, they’re one of the best sources. Trendy Açaî, a berry from Central and South America, get a lot of press for its antioxidant content. Good old red grapes have more than twice the antioxidant anthocyanin content,  and wild blueberries aren’t far behind. Chokeberries and purple corn are the big winners in this category, but even and cherries outpace Açaî.

A version of this story originally appeared in In Good Tilth.

By Christine Dionese, LAc

Meyer lemon tree flowering in Christine's San Diego yard.

If your back yard looks anything like mine down here in sunny So-Cal it’s ripe for the pickin’. The peaches are falling by the second, and the scent of the blooms on the Meyer lemon tree fill the early a.m. air. If I beat the bees to it, I’m lucky enough to pick a few lemons for a delightfully soothing and aromatic afternoon tisane! To my white peony tea I add the exotic scent of jasmine flowers, the zest of a Meyer lemon along with the oily leaves, the fuzzy skin of a peach, a few colorful miniature rose buds and a small handful of gummi goji berries.

Want to make this soothing tisane in your kitchen? Simply combine the mix in a glass or ceramic teapot (or glass pan), pour boiling water over the mix and cover for about 10 minutes to allow steeping. Glass or ceramic should be the vessel of choice to ensure nasty chemical reactions are avoided in the cooking process. Now sit back, put your feet up and sip away!

Rosebuds make a tasty addition to your herbal tisane.

Packed with several longevity-boosting antioxidants, this medicinal tisane will gently nourish yin and blood, move qi, astringe heart qi, and soothe shen for a relaxing afternoon. These Chinese phytoceutical principles are referred to as mutual accentuation. As blood and yin become nourished, hormones begin to align and qi will begin to flow more properly. The methods of astringing heart qi and soothing shen are what bring the heart and mind together. This will calm anxiety and the mind while simultaneously lifting spirits and mood!

These Chinese medical principles are reflected in western physiology by providing antioxidants, minerals, B-vitamins, essential oils and plant sterols. Together, these compounds help regulate insulin and blood cortisol levels, act as anti-inflammatories that relax vessels, reduce stress to the immune system and improve overall circulation and lymphatic flow.

Christine M. Dionese specializes in integrative medicine, medical journalism and is the VP of marketing at WellWire LLC. Visit her wellness and lifestyle blog, Reaching Beyond Now.

]]> http://gardenmedicine.com/?feed=rss2&p=295 2 http://gardenmedicine.com/?p=284 http://gardenmedicine.com/?p=284#comments Wed, 05 May 2010 03:04:34 +0000 admin http://gardenmedicine.com/?p=284 Weed Lover: Unintentional Medicine from Evolution’s Winners

Back in the late ’90s and early aughts, a small but information-dense ’zine circulated in the Eugene area called “weed lover.” The premise was that weeds offend gardeners by growing where they’re not wanted, but that they nevertheless offer great value by way of food, medicine and pulling nutrients up from the subsoil to feed neighboring plants. They also may be physically useful: one gardener tied her tomatoes to their cages using bindweed.

One of the very best things about using weeds for medicine is that you rarely have to entertain the usual worries about overharvesting. It’s an interesting exercise for an ethical wildcrafter to try: Find a field full of an unkillable weed and keep picking it for a while after you feel like you’ve done too much. (Don’t worry, you can always find an herbalist who can use some, or mulch your garden with the extra.)

I’ve tried this exactly twice. The first time was picking blooming yarrow on a friend’s land in the Columbia Gorge. The second was picking St. John’s Wort on an Okanogan land trust. In that case, the plant wasn’t even native, but rather a European invasive. It techinically wasn’t even overharvesting, but arguably just a feeble attempt at restoration.

Weeds are survivors in the game of evolution for many reasons. Here let’s consider a few that help humans be survivors, too.

Dandelion (Taraxicum officinale):

I love to please the neighbors in early spring by “cleaning up” my front yard dandelions — then steaming lightly and adding a squeeze of lemon and maybe some local feta. Dandelion greens have long been a dietary staple for good reason. Aside from being prolific, one cooked cup offers a third of the daily value (the new RDA) of vitamin C and a whopping seven times the daily value of vitamin K. It also provides 144 percent of your daily vitamin A needs, 10 percent of your daily calcium, 12 percent of your manganese and 10 percent of your iron.

Dandelion leaves are used medicinally in tea, vinegar or tincture as a bitter, taken before meals to improve digestion, and as a simple diuretic to reduce excess water in the system. The root is used in similar fashion as a bitter and also to nourish and optimize function of the liver, the body’s most important detoxification organ.

Chickweed (Stellaria media) and cleavers (Galium aparine):

Among the first garden plants to really take off as the days begin lengthening, I use these for internal herbal spring cleaning. Both are mild herbs supporting the lymphatic system — the back channel of circulation and also where much of the immune system resides. A daily tea of the above-ground parts in season will help improve circulatory sluggishness after the relatively sedentary winter season. Preserve these in vinegar, brandy or vodka to have on hand the rest of the year.

Plantain (Plantago spp.):

Absolutely ubiquitous in Oregon, it’s easy to overlook the power of plantain until they day you need it but can’t find it. That happened to me in the remote town of McCarthy, Alaska, when I needed an astringent to reduce swelling and suck out infection in a friend’s foot.

Plantain is a wonderful simple astringent, which, as Eugene herbalist Howie Brounstein explains, “dry, draw and shrink swollen tissues.” (Blackberry fighters take note: blackberry root is a great simple astringent, too.) Muddle the fresh plantain leaf as you would mint for a mojito. either with a mortar and pestle or chewed a bit, and apply directly to the site. You can add to hot water for a soak or wash or take internally for  mouth sores or persistent diarrhea — after checking with a doctor to figure out the cause!)

Common mallow (Malva neglecta):

Sometimes, however, one needs the opposite of an astringent. And that’s where mallow shines. The weedy relative of both marshmallow and hollyhocks, mallow root’s soothing and cooling demulcent properties are useful both topically and internally. Think of mallow externally for dry, itchy skin or to help a sun or other burn. Internally, mallow can help cool burning stomachs and acid reflux, protect and heal ulcers, moisten lung tissues and ease constipation.

To use mallow as a demulcent, make a cold infusion by adding cold water to some root in a cup or jar and letting it sit until the water starts to get slimy. That slime is the medicine you’re looking for.

A note of caution for weed gardeners: If you tend to encourage the growth of plants you love, you might want to think twice when it comes to the weeds. There’s little reason to fear you’ll eradicate your dandelions, but coddling them will just make it harder to achieve other garden intentions.

A version of this story appeared in In Good Tilth.

Fall-blooming goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) is a common allergen.

It’s that season again, when a young plant’s thoughts turn to pollen — making an estimated 60 million people in the United States miserable.

While farmers and gardeners have greater exposure to seasonal allergens, they also have great tools to prevent and treat its symptoms: fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants.

If you know of seasonal trigger for your allergies, approach that season like an athlete preparing for a big sporting event by getting into shape. Starting four to six weeks ahead of the season with your garden’s tools can make a big difference when the pollen strikes.

1. Eat simply.

Your body is on high alert during allergy season, so everything you do to minimize physical stressors can help. For example, many very common foods are also common allergens — things like wheat, dairy, soy and corn. Sugar and caffeine also work your body harder. And saturated fats, especially from meats, can be tough on the liver.

While you may not notice symptoms when consuming these, they can lead to a higher baseline level of inflammation. That means you’ll be more reactive to pollens you encounter.

For the weeks before and during your difficult season, focus your diet instead on cleansing spring foods like steamed leafy greens with whole grains. It’s the perfect time for kale, chard and dandelion greens. These are also rich in allergy-busting antioxidants like Vitamin C.

Emphasize soups and herbal teas. If you’re clearing weeds in preparation for planting, remember that many are medicinal. Simple infusions of chickweed or cleavers support the liver and lymphatic circulation, helping reduce allergy symptoms. Or try some bitter dandelion root. It’s extra tasty when toasted.

And make sure you drink plenty of water to keep your body’s eliminatory systems working well.

2. Nettles

The spring weed, growing in luxurious and prickly stands along streambeds or other low, wet places, is one of the region’s top tools for fighting allergies. The fresh plant’s sting comes from hairs shaped like hypodermic needles filled with a substance similar to histamine, which may be one way it helps folks with hayfever.

Like the other spring greens, nettles (Urtica dioica) are high in anti-inflammatory Vitamin C as well as protein, B vitamins and many minerals. These support both the immune system and the adrenals, reducing your body’s reactivity. Nettles also are mildly drying — great news generally in the Northwest and even better when the waterworks won’t stop. Nettles make a great addition to soups and stews, and after light steaming make a fabulous pesto.

Medicinally, it’s best to start taking nettles well in advance of your hayfever season, usually four to six weeks before you typically experience symptoms.

To make a tea, put one ounce of fresh or dried nettles in the bottom of a quart jar, cover with boiling water and let it steep for four hours or longer. Drink throughout the day.

Some practitioners prefer the freeze-dried capsules, which preserve some of the constituents believed to be mosteffective for allergies. Two to four caps three times daily helps many people.

A tincture of nettles and dandelion root taken thrice daily is another good way to prepare for allergy season. Add eyebright (Euphrasia officinalis) if problems arise when the pollen comes out.

3. Quercetin

Onions, especially red ones, have good amounts of quercetin in their skins.

One of the most potent anti-allergy prescriptions is quercetin, a constituent found in foods including onions (especially red ones), leafy greens, citrus, apples, broccoli, and many berries (including the nitrogen-fixing sea buckthorn, Hippophae rhamnoides). And here’s a case where organic is definitely better: A 2007 study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that organic tomatoes had 79 percent more quercetin than conventionally grown ones.

Quercetin works by reducing inflammation. People take up to 1,800 mg of the purified product daily in capsules to relieve acute symptoms.

4. The dope on honey

Many people tout raw honey or bee pollen as a cure for seasonal allergies. Some researchers have found certain varieties to be high in quercetin, which may account for some of the effect.

But I’m not a big fan of honey for this purpose, and in fact have seen it actually worsen symptoms — sometimes dramatically. This observation is supported both by scientific research and experienced practitioners, including renowned herbalist Michael Moore.

The idea is that taking honey is like getting a vaccination to local pollen species. But if you are very reactive, physiologically the exposure just gets more immune cells primed to release histamines and leukotrienes (the chemicals that make you feel lousy) when the pollen exposure occurs.

The bees often feed from flowers other than the ones that cause allergies, or conversely may expose you to new allergens, giving your body one more thing to react to.

The most important things, of course, are always eating a rainbow of vegetables, drinking plenty of water, getting sunshine and regular exercise. Add a few spring powerhouses from your garden and flowers can be your friends again.

A version of this story originally appeared in In Good Tilth.

Bush beans and oregano.

When we learn about Permaculture — or any kind of gardening, for that matter — we often see that certain plants are listed as medicinal. But do you ever wonder what part of the plant to use? When to pick it? What kind of health issues the plant medicine is used for? Would it be handy to get some ideas about this before spring planting?

It’s one thing to know that plants have medicinal functions, but Permaculture education rarely includes the body of knowledge needed to actually make use of plant medicines.

Join the Portland Permaculture Guild at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 15 when herbalist, Permaculture designer and naturopathic physician Orna Izakson will discuss the functions and uses of many garden medicinals. The Garden Medicine slideshow draws from Orna’s extensive study of herbal medicine, with an eye to Permaculture functions and practical ideas for putting the people’s medicines back into the people’s hands.

To learn more about Orna, see GardenMedicine.com or CeliloHealth.com.

PPG meetings are held at Pacific Crest Community School at NE 29th and Davis (2 blocks N of Burnside) in Portland, Oregon. The meeting starts at 7pm. Please enter at the North door (Davis), or the door from the parking lot.

Today I found out that GardenMedicine.com made it onto Best Green Blogs! It will help spread that word about what you already know — that we’ve got lots of resources to help people sustain their land and their health.

Thanks for checking in here, and commenting when you’ve got something to say. There are lots of exciting projects in the works, including upcoming talks and workshops, articles on WellWire.com and programs through Celilo Natural Health Center!

Hmm. Cut off a little bit on the left there...

—Orna

By Orna Izakson

Gardeners have a big advantage during deep darkness of a northwest winter: We get to pore over garden books and catalogs that offer shards of sunlight and whiffs of spring. Dreaming about striped tomatoes, salivating over the prospect of a fresh melon, imagining the thrum of a snapping pea, gardeners know that their dreams and will be rewarded with a well-stocked kitchen when the sun returns.

While curled up by the fire or the space heater with your summer hopes this winter, consider adding the flowerful, textural and healing world of growing medicine along with your food. The results will improve your garden — many medicinal plants also support beneficial bugs while confusing problematic pests — and improve your health.

It is absolutely irresponsibly unfair to ask any herbalist to narrow their favorite herbs down to a measly ten, and reasonable people will disagree heatedly about how to go about trying. This  particular list is intended as a general top 10 list of medicinals that are easy to grow from seed or starts. This article is not intended to substitute for medical advice, as each person has a specific history and specific needs.

1. Thyme  (Thymus vulgaris)

This familiar salad-dressing herb is actually a medicinal powerhouse. As its most common use suggests, thyme aids digestion. It also kills bacteria, fungi and parasitic worms.

Carpet of thyme at Avena Botanicals' demonstration garden.

One of thyme’s less-known uses is as a respiratory aid. It soothes the lung’s mucous membranes, limits spasms, fights pathogens and helps you cough out accumulated gunk.

Steaming is a great for this purpose: Take a large handful of fresh or dried herb, put it in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Then, with your head over the bowl and under a towel, breathe deeply to get the herb’s wonderful aromatics into your nose and lungs.

Use thyme externally as a skin wash or soak to help fight or prevent infections. Internally, thyme promotes excretion through the urinary tract, and can help disinfect on its way out.

The low-growing aromatic plant is easy to maintain in a garden or on a window sill.

2. Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

The Greek story of Achilles offers clues to the medicinal nature of this plant. The hero’s mother,  the nymph Thetis, dipped her newborn son in the River Styx to make him immortal. His only vulnerable spot was his heel, where she’d held him.

The herb named for him is most famous for staunching bleeding in wounds. It also is a bitter tonic aiding digestion, decreases inflammation, tightens lax membranes, helps relieve pain, and kills bacteria and fungi. Taken hot it stimulates sweating; taken cold it stimulates urine flow. As a flower essence yarrow is a favorite for emotional and spiritual boundaries. Alaskans rub the flowers on their skin to ward of mosquitoes, with some effect.

Yarrow loves sun, tolerates shade, and is very drought resistant once established.

3. Garlic (Allium sativum)

This is one of the plants that, given a choice, I’d have to have with me on a desert island. It has shockingly broad medicinal uses, tastes great, deters garden pests, grows easily and is very space efficient. What’s not to love?

It’s a must-have herb during the winter for its broad antimicrobial effects. Not only is it effective at fighting viruses and bacteria, but it also knocks out parasites and fungi including Candida albicans. This makes it useful for infections almost anywhere in the body, taken internally in food or applied topically to an infected site.

Garlic also lowers bad cholesterol while raising good cholesterol, and helps lower high blood pressure. It prevents dangerous blood clots, lowers high blood pressure and has been shown to help limit cancer growth.

4. Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis)

The plant marshmallow is all about the smooth. Suede-silk leaves grow in tall, upright, space efficient plants. The medicinal variety’s small white flowers are delightful, though not especially showy.

Marshmallow is a simple but powerful medicine, providing nutritious, soothing slime to help almost condition that’s dry or raw: lungs, burns,  constipation, burning from bladder infections and even peptic ulcers.

The medicine comes from the root, so grow a patch of marshmallow to ensure continual harvest. Add a handful of the dried or fresh root to cool water an let sit for at least 15 minutes and then drink. Instant slime!

5. Calendula (Calendula officinalis)

Cheery calendula’s prolific yellow and orange flowers are good for both the garden and the gardener. The plant deters pest insects much like their marigold cousins and offer a bright contrast to their neighbors.

The sticky resin on Calendula’s edible flowers is terrific for healing wounds and soothing membranes, externally and internally. Used internally, calendula combines well with drying herbs for respiratory infections. Dried flowers can brighten wintertime teas—you can eat the whole flower as it floats around in your cup.

As few as two or three of the sun-loving plants will give provide more flowers than a gardener can easily keep up with picking, self seeding prolifically so the garden is always blooming.

6. Artichoke (Cynara scolymus)

Many people have heard about milk thistle as a miracle herb for the liver. What you may not have heard is that its near cousin artichoke has the same benefits while being far more space efficient — and much less invasive. While artichoke plants may be relatively low yielding of the flower buds we eat the dinner table, the plant is extravagant in the leaves it offers as medicine.

Artichoke has an affinity for the entire digestive system. The bitter taste of the leaves help promote proper digestive secretions, which help people get the most from their meals. The liver is also where the body makes cholesterol, so it’s not surprising that artichoke helps lower cholesterol even in the face of a poor diet. It’s also handy if your idea of eating artichokes involves lots of melted butter.

Some research even suggests the herb can lower blood sugar, helping stem a tendency toward Type II diabetes that is increasingly prevalent in the United States.

7. Lavender (Lavandula spp.)

Best known for its perfume, lavender is also a remarkably versatile medicine.

Lavender is a traditional ingredient in the seasoning Herbes de Provence, where its floral and bitter qualities help improve digestion while protecting the diner from pathogens.

The chemicals that make lavender so wonderfully aromatic also make it a potent pathogen fighter. The name comes from the French word for washing; the earliest antimicrobial soaps were made with lavender. The flowers fight bacteria, viruses and fungi, and its essential oil helps heal wounds and burns.

Lavender is also deeply cheering in cases of sadness or mild depression. A hot cup of lavender tea, brought to you by a friend, is wonderful for alleviating a broken heart.

8. Passionflower (Passiflora spp.)

Passiflora cerulea.

This lush, tropical vine does remarkably well in western Oregon, thriving in sun even with substantial neglect. They can climb almost anything, from a trellis to window screens. And because they’re climbers, there’s more space on the ground to grow other things.

The varieties that do best here don’t usually produce much by way of fruit, but prolifically offer their unusual and beautiful flowers — the part used medicinally.

As prolific as they are, medicinally passionflower is about calm. Taken internally as tea or tincture, passionflower reduces restlessness and anxiety, relaxes spasm (including the tightening of blood vessels in high blood pressure), limits inflammation and helps promote sleep.

9. Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra)

Licorice is one of the power-house medicinal plants, offering such a broad spectrum of health effects that many herbalists consider it good for just about everything. It’s a garden power house, too: It’s in the pea family, and like its relatives also fixes nitrogen from the air to make it available to nearby plants.

The medicine is in the root, so plant a patch to keep a steady supply on hand. It grows very easily from seed.

Licorice root is famously immune supporting and anti-viral— it has been shown to help with conditions including hepatitis C. Like marshmallow it has soothing properties, and so is often used for irritation in the digestive tract, urinary tract and the lungs. Licorice supports the liver and the adrenals, making it very useful in many cases of allergies and asthma. It also helps the lungs by reducing spasms and inflammation while supporting healthy coughing to expel mucus.

10. Something you plant for the sheer joy of it

Few gardeners face the problem of too much room to plant. And with so many plants performing multiple functions, it can be hard to justify growing something just for the joy of it.

Consider this a doctor’s prescription to do just that.

Joy is critical to a person’s whole health — it’s on every treatment plan I give to every patient. Sometimes a plant comes along that you just adore even though it’s not edible, or it only flowers for a few weeks once a year, or it takes an unconscionable amount of space.

Contorted mulberry, Morus bombycis.

My joy plant for many years was lilac, and it took great effort to give myself permission to plant one. My new joy plant is a contorted mulberry (Morus bombycis). It has a beautiful shape in the winter and lush foliage in the summer. But it’s a complete knock out in the fall when its leaves turn a brilliant clear yellow that glows even in moonlight.

I see my mulberry every time I go to or from my bedroom. It reminds me of the beauty of the world and my part in it. And after all, isn’t that one of gardening’s biggest payoffs?

Looking for plants? Check out my favorite seed companies, plant companies, local Portland gardening resources and my book recommendations.

NB: A version of this story originally appeared in In Good Tilth.