Self-Heal - a MIGHTY little helper

Hello again my plant lover friends. Today I want to share with you a very special herb. This is one that grows all over the world and is very gentle and very safe. It has a variety of aspects it's been used for in medicine. It's been studied super heavily and it's quite abundant. So I'm going to talk to you today about self-heal. This is Prunella vulgaris and this powerful little plant has such a gentle mucilaginous taste that works for all kinds of things from gingivitis to wound healing to antiviral properties to allergies to immune supportive properties. And because it tastes so gentle you would never know that it could be useful for all these things. Plus with a name like self-heal this is one of those empowerment herbs. One of those herbs that is a plant medicine for the people of the modern age as much as it was for the people of the past. So let's dive deep into self-heal and look a little bit more at some of these gentle herbs like this and how they can be used as medicine. Before we get into the medicinal benefits of this plant let's take a step down to its level and ID this one for a minute. Because it's always important we have the right herb. Now this is an easy one to identify. These purple flowers are quite prominent and there aren't that many plants with that. But let's do a bit of ID to just check in make sure we got the right plant. So first off self-heal is in the mint family which means like all mints it has a square stem. This is a very easy to recognize thing. You just roll it around. Is it square? Yep it is. But like other mints it also has these opposite leaves which are really easy to identify too. They come out at opposite sides. They have in the armpits little branches that come out. But the thing about the leaf with self-heal is different from some mints is it's quite a bit longer, more lanceolate in shape. So you can tell by that. The other aspect is that there's not very many volatile oils. Most mints have this really strong aroma. This one doesn't at all. So if you were to take a little nibble of it you would notice that it's kind of a little more soothing, mucilaginous. This is a great way to tell it from other mints. And if you were to roll it up and give it a smell there's no aromatic qualities really. There are a few small aromatic qualities but you can't really pick them up with your nose. It's easy to tell self-heal by its flowers as well. It has this deep rich purple top lip and a lower lip that is a light purple. I also find that by looking at them closely you can really tell that it almost looks like a human mouth in that sense. Om nom nom. It's got lips. I love chewing on these flowers. They've got a little bit of nectar at the base like most flowers and they're just a nice one when you're pondering about herbs. It's often nice to just kind of put a little bit in your mouth and just contemplate. Almost like an act of meditation and that's what I love to do with self-heal. It's so low at this like one foot level that you kind of got to come down to its level to connect with it a little deeper. So anyway that's a bit about the ID of this plant and beyond that it's pretty easy to find. We see it along roadsides. It likes a little bit of wet feet but not too wet feet. It loves that disturbed soil which is one of the reasons why it's all over the planet. We see it in Asia. We see it in Europe. We see it here in North America. This one Prunella vulgaris actually came from Europe to North America. One of those people plants that traveled with us but there's another one here Prunella lancelota which is actually indigenous to this part of the world. So we see a lot of native use of this plant as well as Western and Asian use. So self-heal originally got its name its common name anyway as self-heal because of its capacity for supporting wound care and for supporting topical infections and working with cuts and all that types of thing. Another name for it is carpenter's herb which is similar to yarrow and this is partly because it's a styptic which stops bleeding. So you can use it as a salve or an oil or even just mash up the flowers put them on externally any kind of wound care. If you'll notice when you taste this plant which is how I like to experience plants is to work with the organoleptics and just taste it a bit you'll notice it's got a soothing mucilaginous cooling effect which really shows that it works with reducing heat in the system. So it's an anti-inflammatory. Part of the reason it works on skin issues like that is because it's got that anti-inflammatory effect. We'll also notice with this that it's going to pull the redness out of inflammation like psoriasis and eczema. I know a number of people who have had some kind of like autoimmune type rash or eczema that have used self-heal oil or salve on the skin and it's been really beneficial. But just like our skin is inflamed or can be inflamed so can our internal digestive tract. So here's another gentle herb with that mucilaginous quality that soothes inflammation internally. So this has been used for things like Crohn's, for irritable bowel, for any kind of inflammatory issues in the digestive tract especially things like ulcers or people who have taken too much aspirin or Tylenol or acetaminophen or that kind of thing and they get that inflamed gut. This is a great herb for that. I'll also say that because our society is naturally got inflamed gut this is a powerful gentle herb that almost anybody can work with if they're eating a modern western diet or some analog along that. So self-heal becomes a real empowerment herb for everyone and it's so safe. That's what's just so great about this herb. It's so gentle, it's so abundant when you find it in places like this all over that you can really start to just work with this at your own pace without any issues or counter indications. The only counter indication with this one which is very similar to a lot of herbs that have any kind of slight diuretic quality is that if you're on a high load of blood thinners you need to be monitoring that regularly because when you naturally have a diuretic it's going to naturally lower the blood pressure. So we want to just make sure that those are the only people that I would say hey if you're on blood thinners, diuretics, make sure that you're just monitoring that alongside working with herbs like self-heal. Otherwise old people, young people, any people can work with this herb. So even though this herb has a fairly gentle flavor there is some really useful and interesting chemistry in it. This has been studied quite heavily because of some of the claims and some of the ways in which it's helped heal people. So I'm going to talk about the chemistry for a second. Not that chemistry makes a herb but it's part of our understanding from a scientific perspective how a herb might work. So in this case there's a lot of what we'll call immunomodulating polysaccharides. These are similar to what's in the medicinal mushrooms and similar to what's in the things like astragalus and echinacea. So we see that in here we also see things like rosmarinic acid and oleolenic acid and a couple of other oils and things like that. We'll also find in a plant like this there's phenolic compounds and tannins and a bunch of this type of chemistry. Flavonoids, all these kinds of things that are mostly gentle on the body but they have that overall immune support. So that's going to give us a bit of an indicator of how this might be used in the body and some of the ways we can use it as medicine. Now like I said it's been studied very heavily so we actually have a lot of scientific literature to back up the claims for self-heal which I love because it gives that other lens that makes those people who aren't just looking at the folklore really start to dig deeper into plants like this. So first off one of the big ones that's been shown is its ability to stabilize blood sugars. It's actually been done in a way of working with mice and lab animals. Unfortunately this is how a lot of these studies are done but you know with high glucose induced mice this herb had the ability to reduce oxidative damage and stabilize the blood sugar. We've seen that in people too who drink it as a tea and so that's just a great way it can be used as a medicine but also we see allergy response. Same thing it's been studied to look at allergy response to calm down that inflammatory cascade in allergy response in lab animals and I've seen this used as a tea by a number of people. One of my favorite ways is just to drink this as a tea. I'll add it to things like nettles, maybe some yellow duck, maybe some other things that are going to help calm down allergy response like skullcap and reishi and these kind of herbs and I'll drink it during allergy season. I've done this a little bit but I've seen good results from just drinking this tea to calm down that kind of upper respiratory tract allergy infection. The real reason that it works that way is because it has a deep level of supporting the lymphatic system so it's been used for a number of different types of lymphatic issues and I think this is one of the biggest magical pieces of self-heal is its capacity to support the lymphatic system and most people don't give the lymphatic system enough credit. It's really our back alleys that remove toxins from the body. Any kind of damage that happens in the body it all ends up in the lymphatic system as like the garbage way that kind of moves it out of the body. So people with swollen lymph nodes, women with mastitis who are breastfeeding, people with varicose veins, all of these kinds of conditions, self-heal has been a great herb as a tea, as a tincture or used externally. So this is something to think about if you've got any kind of lymphatic congestion and I think that's also how it works in supporting the allergies and supporting the immune system in general. Now self-heal has been used all over the world and one of the things that is both in Chinese medicine and in First Nations historical literature was its capacity to support liver and kidneys to take the heat out of the liver, work on that detoxification process and move toxins out of the body. It's shown to not really pump the kidneys but to give more energy and vigor to the kidneys to kind of energize that part of the world in our bodies and from a TCM Chinese medicine perspective the kidneys are really related to bone and teeth health. One of my favorite herbal mentors Matthew Woods talks about how potentially it has the capacity to support protein metabolism and what happens in most people that have bone and teeth issues is there's a weakness in the kidneys related to too much protein and in the liver and detoxifying too much protein. So the concept he brings into awareness is that it helps to metabolize that protein better and the protein often binds to calcium as it moves out of the system therefore leaching calcium out of the body. So for just our general metabolism for supporting the liver and the kidneys this might be a great herb to work with in that way. There's been a number of studies showing how self-heal works with arterial sclerosis and this is really the hardening of the arteries. This transcends into all kinds of health issues including heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure, you name it and how the belief is that this works is it's got a good amount of triterpenes in it and some of the rosmarinic acids and other oils that help emulsify the fats and work as antioxidant capacity also supporting the liver to metabolize that better. So here's a little herb that I think could be one of the best ones for people to use as general tonic because it's so safe if they have any of this type of issue and this is one of the number one types of disease states in our western world especially due to the poor quality oils and the over inflamed liver situation that most of us have. So here you go again self-heal to the rescue healing the body from the inside out all through in like systemic disease in chronic disease. This is a self-empowerment herb and that's just what I love about it so much is even the name is like a mantra self-heal self-heal self-heal we are our own medicine heal thyself and I just I think that's probably one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this herb is because wow does it ever have a lot of healing benefits in that aspect. One way in which self-heal becomes really exciting as a medicine is its capacity to support viral overload and different viruses in the body. Now this is a gentle herb and you wouldn't think of it as a big antiviral but the studies have shown huge results around working with HPV working with the herpes simplex and even HIV. So this is one of those herbs that works in a gentle way very similar to elderberry it's a biofilm disruptor which means it disrupts the biofilm around the virus and protects the cell so the virus can't get in. This is a great thing to know about in the modern world especially when we have things like the coronavirus going around and we've got a lot of other viral implications that could affect our body. So studied pretty heavily around this whole viral biofilm disruptor capacity of it and some good results so it's one of those ones we might add into a salve or a lip balm if we've got herpes or cold sores it's one of those ones we might work with if we've got any kind of virus type thing as a sexually transmitted disease or any of those retroviruses like HIV. I believe that these types of biofilm disruptors really support healing the body and protecting it from unwanted pathogens so even though it's known to be antiviral to that capacity it can also work along with antibacterial herbs or antibiotics as a biofilm disruptor to really help heal the body faster and protect it from these kinds of damages and these kinds of pathogens. Like many other herbs that have immunomodulating polysaccharides self-heal has been used for cancer treatment it's been used alongside conventional cancer treatment and on alternative cancer treatment and a big way in which it's supported the body is just really healing the immune system and strengthening the immune system to work with that. So one of the studies done on estrogenic based cancers, uterine and breast cancer, show really good results using this alongside conventional treatment to heal the body and recover it much faster. This has also been done a few times in lab animals but this was actually a human study that showed a lot better recovery rate. So here's another one that we might add in for people who are working with these kinds of things. Again I'm going to keep repeating this self-heal. Heal the self. Bring us back into deeper alignment and this is something kind of that's unique to this plant. It's so gentle and small and non-intrusive but it has such a mighty powerful healing response in the body and that's just such a great thing. So when we look at it from an energetic perspective and we look at the flower essence which is that vibrational medicine of this and we see all of these flowers popping up in different places along the top and they kind of keep popping consistently throughout the season a consistent level of healing all through the year. This flower essence has been shown to be used for people who don't think they're going to recover. People with chronic issues whether it's mental emotional or physical that feel like they're never going to get back to normal never going to recover. I think that's a really powerful message. Our world feels pretty sad right now. It can feel a little bit daunting and overwhelming like we're never going to heal this planet. How are we going to get back to a place of living in I'll say the Garden of Eden in the bliss of being in symbiosis with our planet. Well I think self-heal flower essence to put it in everyone's water might help change that mode that mood that awareness place. So here's one of those power to the people medicines that really just brings everything in a really small package that's gentle it's non-intrusive it listens to us it shows up around us and it just has such a great capacity to support a variety of ways in which we might come into imbalance. All right that's self-heal my friends power to the people powerful medicine but gentle. Thanks for joining me in looking at this plant and I just am happy to share a bit more about it. Before I go though I want to just touch in a bit on making it as medicine just so that you have the capacity to turn this into your own medicine yourself. When it comes to harvesting self-heal I'm going to work with this whole flowering top. So essentially I'm going to use all of this bit that I have here including the flowering head. There's a lot of medicine in the flowers but also in the top leaves. It'll then also reproduce later. So this will be then dried out and I'm going to use the stem the leaves the flower in a tea to work with that kind of calming down the body whether it's allergies whatever it might be as a tea. I might add it to other herbs but it'll also make a bit of a tincture because this is a great one as a tincture. It has those triterpenes in it has some of those phenolic compounds some of those things that'll be alcohol soluble. So I'll do a one to which is a typical fresh tincture where one gram of my fresh herb to two milliliters of alcohol. I'll blend this up with about 75% alcohol maybe blend it in the blender or chop it up fine and put it in a bottle strain it after two weeks and shaking it up and voila we have a nice self-heal tincture. The other way is we'll dry it out or at least wilt it pretty well and then macerate it in an oil. This is for external uses so we'll put it in an olive oil or grapeseed oil or almond oil whatever your favorite is and then make that into a salve or add that to lip balms for herpes or skin inflammation eczema rashes all of this kind of stuff. So just like many herbs this can be simply put into some form of liquid whether it's alcohol water or oil and made into an easy to use remedy. All right that's self-heal in a nutshell. Thanks for joining me in learning about this plant if you want to learn about other plants or have any kind of ideas and questions around self-heal let me know tell me how you like to work with this plant what do you love about this plant what do you love about other plants. I want to hear from you on our channel and just share a bit more about growing the herbal revolution the green revolution around plants like self-heal these mighty empowering herbs that can bring us to a deeper level of connection with our bodies with our planet and with the medicine that is all around us in our hearts and in the environment. Ciao for now we'll see you soon.