The Nutritional Herbalist

Here's what I've learned since I taught the omega-6 story the way most of us learned it. I have changed my mind about part of it, and the part I changed my mind about is the part that makes this easier to live with. The version I taught went like this. Omega-6 fats are inflammatory. Our diets are flooded with them. So the work is to bring omega-6 down, cancel it out with omega-3, and restore the balance. I have kept studying, and I want to hand you a better version. The advice at the end barely changes. The reasoning behind it changes quite a bit, and I think the reasoning matters, because it is what you will still have when the next headline comes along. The trouble is not that omega-6 rose. It is that omega-3 fell away. Beginning with what omega-6 actually is Linoleic acid is an essential fatty acid. We cannot synthesize it, so we have to eat it. Deficiency is a real thing, with real effects on the skin barrier and on growth. It belongs in the diet. It is a...

Welcome Learn the plant before you buy the bottle. That is the whole idea, and I am going to spend a while explaining why it matters more than it sounds like it does. Here is a thing that happens constantly. Someone tells me they are having trouble sleeping. Before I can ask a single question, they show me their phone. On it is a list of nine products, screenshotted from somewhere, that they are planning to buy. They want to know which one to start with. And I always want to ask the same thing back. What is the plant in number four? Not what is it FOR. What IS it. What part of it are you swallowing. Where did it grow. What does it do to a person who takes blood thinners. Almost nobody knows, and that is not their fault. Nobody told them. Every place they went to learn was actually a place selling something, and the selling was doing a very good impression of teaching. Why this order matters When you learn the plant first, three things happen. You stop buying things you...

Gluten free beyond food You read every food label in the grocery store. You have a dedicated toaster. You still get glutened, and you cannot figure out why. Let me show you the cabinet nobody checks. I have been gluten free since 2008. For the first several years of that I was careful about food and completely careless about everything else, because it never once occurred to me that my supplements were a problem. They were. Here is where gluten hides in an herbal and supplement cabinet, roughly in order of how often it catches people. 1. Capsule fillers and excipients This is the biggest one and the least visible. Capsules need something to hold the powder together and keep it flowing through the machinery. That something is frequently starch, and cheaper supplement lines still use wheat starch or list an unspecified "starch" with no source. Look for: wheat starch, modified food starch with no source named, dextrin, maltodextrin from an unnamed source, and the ...

Essential oil safety Six bottles in a standard collection will burn skin at ordinary dilutions. I want you to know which six, and I want to be honest that I taught one of them badly for a while. Let me get the confession out of the way first. Years ago I taught oregano oil the way most people in this community taught it. A drop here, a drop there, applied close to neat because it was strong and strong seemed like the point. I watched someone develop a chemical burn on the bottom of her foot from doing exactly what I described, and I have taught it differently ever since. So. The six. The hot oils Oil Maximum dilution Cassia 0.05% Cinnamon Bark 0.07% Clove 0.5% Thyme (thymol type) 0.5% Oregano 1% Wintergreen 2.4%, and lower is wiser Look at cassia again. Zero point zero five percent. That is not a typo and it is not me being precious. That is roughly one drop in a full ounce of carrier oil. What "hot" actually means These oils are dominated by const...

The Nutritional Herbalist How Your Body Actually Works A plain-English library organized by body system. What each one is built from, what the research supports, and where the evidence is thinner than people say. This isn't organized by diagnosis, and that's on purpose. I'm not here to tell you what to take for something you've been diagnosed with. That belongs with your doctor. What I can do is explain how a system works and what it's made of, so you can think about your own food with better information. Every entry has a section called What this doesn't show. Read those first if you want to know whether to trust the rest. Search a system or a nutrient This library is organized by how the body works, not by diagnosis. I can't tell you what to take for a diagnosed condition, and I wouldn't want to. That conversation belongs with your physician, who knows your history and your medications. What I can do is help you und...

100 Ways to Take Your Balance Oil For my Balance Oil girls 100 ways to take it when straight off the spoon isn't happening. If you have been dreading your oil every morning, you are not being dramatic and you are not doing it wrong. Some people genuinely cannot do it straight. So let's find your way instead of white-knuckling someone else's. Here is what I want you to know before the list. Consistency matters more than method. The oil you actually take beats the oil sitting in your fridge because you dread it. There is no gold star for suffering through it. Start with the troubleshooting below. It fixes the problem for most people in about a week. Then pick something from the list that sounds good to you. Two rules that apply to every single idea below 1. Never heat it. No cooking, no baking, no frying, no stirring into a boiling pot. Heat oxidizes omega-3s, which wastes the oil and makes the taste worse. Everything here is cold or barely warm. If y...

Correcting the record If you have dermatitis herpetiformis, you have probably been told to replace every product in your bathroom. I want to save you that money, because the advice is backwards. Let me start with what dermatitis herpetiformis actually is, because a lot of people have it and were never given a clear explanation. DH is celiac disease showing up in the skin. Same autoimmune condition, different address. It appears as intensely itchy blisters and bumps, usually symmetrically, and usually on elbows, knees, buttocks, lower back, and scalp. A dermatologist confirms it with a skin biopsy taken NEXT to a lesion rather than through it, looking for a particular antibody pattern in the tissue. Now here is the part that gets taught wrong constantly. DH is driven by gluten you EAT, not gluten you touch. The immune process starts in the gut and shows up in the skin. A gluten containing hand lotion, foundation, or shampoo will not produce a DH outbreak on contact. Which...

Technique You have been drinking nettle tea for a month and you feel exactly the same. I promise the problem is not the nettle. It is the four minutes. Here is what most people do. A teaspoon of dried nettle in a mug, hot water, steep four or five minutes, drink. It tastes like mild green water. Nothing much happens. After a few weeks they decide nettle is overrated and move on. What they made was a beverage. What they wanted was a nutritive infusion, and those are two genuinely different things. The difference Beverage tea Nutritive infusion Herb 1 teaspoon 1 full ounce by weight, roughly a large handful Water 1 mug 1 quart, boiling Time 4 to 5 minutes 4 hours to overnight Vessel Open mug Quart jar with a LID Result Pleasant Dark, thick, mineral, faintly like broth The minerals in nettle are not in a hurry. Calcium, magnesium, iron, and the rest need time and volume to come out of the plant material and into the water. Four minutes gets you flavor. Four hours gets ...