Herbal Antibiotics: Natural Alternatives for Treating Drug-Resistant Bacteria (53 page)
Read Herbal Antibiotics: Natural Alternatives for Treating Drug-Resistant Bacteria Online
Authors: Stephen Harrod Buhner
Tags: #Medical, #Health & Fitness, #Infectious Diseases, #Herbal Medications, #Healing, #Alternative Medicine
Dried plants are usually tinctured at a one-to-five ratio, which is written 1:5. (There are, as always, exceptions.) That means 1 part dried herb to 5 parts liquid. Fresh
Echinacea angustifolia
root, for example, contains 30 percent water by weight. If you have 10 ounces of powdered root (dry weight) you would then add to it 50 ounces of liquid (liquid measurement). This gives you your 1:5 ratio. The tricky part for many people comes in figuring out how much of that liquid should be water and how much alcohol. In this instance you are wanting your liquid to be 30 percent water (fresh echinacea root's water content); that is, 30 percent of 50 ounces, which would be 15 ounces water. The rest of the liquid will be alcohol; that is, 35 ounces.
A formula for this particular plant tincture would look something like this:
Echinacea angustifolia:
fresh root tincture 1:2; dried root tincture 1:5, 70 percent alcohol. Dosage: 30â60 drops as needed. In acute conditions: 30 drops minimum each hour.
When your tinctures are done, and you pour off the liquid, the marc will still have some, often a great deal of, liquid in it. The marc needs to be pressed to remove the remaining tincture. Most people do this by hand. The best thing to use is a good-quality cloth with a close weave to itâI use the same surgical cloths hospitals do; they hold up really well. An herb press facilitates this immensely, though a cider press, depending on the style, will work very well, too. You will get a lot more out of a press than when doing it by hand, but they do tend to be expensive.
With fresh plants you can generally get out about as much liquid as you put in; with dried material, especially roots, you get out as much as you can. Sometimes this isn't much.
It is just
assumed
that you already know that all fresh plant tinctures at 1:2 will be using 95 percent alcohol. (Note: Everyone I know just assumes that the 95 percent alcohol they are using is 100 percent; no one I know takes that 5 percent into account in figuring this stuff out. Life is too short.)
Again, don't use tap water if you can avoid it. Powder the herbs you are tincturing as finely as possibleâmany people in the United States use a Vitamix for this. It is a pretty indestructible mixer/grinder, especially if you get a commercial-grade unit. (The demo video shows them grinding 2Ã4s into sawdust.) I have had mine for 25 years and have replaced the blades only twice in spite of the heavy use I've subjected it to.
Unless the herbs become tremendously hard when dried (as red root does), it is best to store herbs as whole as possible until they are needed. This reduces the cell surface area that is exposed to air. Oxygen degrades plant matter fairly quickly.
Dry plant tinctures, like fresh, are left to macerate for 2 weeks, out of the light, before decanting.
In spite of our aversion in the United States toward the metric system, all scientific glassware in the United States is metric. Most herbalists use a
graduated cylinder
to measure the amount of tincture they are pouring out (available from any scientific glassware company). Most herbal bottles, of course, are in ounces, while the measuring cylinders are in milliliters. Roughly, 30 milliliters is equal to 1 ounce.
As an example, if you were going to make a combination tincture formula for the early onset of colds and flu, a good mix would be 10 milliliters each of echinacea, red root, and licorice tinctures mixed together. This would give you 1 fluid ounce total.
You can mix something like this in the graduated cylinder, as long as your hand is steady, then pour the mixture into a 1-ounce amber bottle with a dropper lid. Dosage would be one full dropper at least each hour during the onset of upper respiratory infections. This will usually prevent the onset of colds and flu if your immune system is relatively healthy.
Tinctures should be kept out of the sunâa dark, cool room is good. Keeping them in dark or amber-colored glass jars is even betterâthough if they are in the dark you can leave them in clear jars as many of us do with our larger quantities of tinctures. Tinctures will, in general, last many years. However, you should know about precipitation, a very neglected area of herbal medicine.
The constituents that you have extracted from the herbs are held in suspension in a liquid medium. Over time, some of these constituents will precipitate out and settle on the bottom of the tincture bottle. Some herbs such as
Echinacea angustifolia
root are heavy precipitators, while others, like elder flower, are such light precipitators that you will almost never see a precipitate in the bottle. Unfortunately, there has been little study on this, nor has a chart of herbal precipitation rates ever been prepared (as far as I know; intent searching has never turned one up). Technically, we need one that shows both the rate of precipitation and the amount of precipitation for each plant.
Some herbalists will add 1 to 2 ounces of glycerine to every 16 ounces of tincture (10 percent to 15 percent of the total liquid) to help slow down or eliminate precipitation. It does help retard the precipitation of tannins; I am not sure how well it works for other constituents or over time but you might try it and see how it works if precipitation becomes a concern for you.
You will find that some herbs will produce an ever larger precipitate on the bottom of your storage bottles as time goes by. It is not possible to get that precipitate back into solution. Most herbalists simply shake the bottle prior to dispensing and suggest the user do the same before ingesting it. I do it this way and it seems to work fine, medicinally speaking.
There is, as yet, no data on whether the efficacy of a tincture is affected by precipitation. Certainly the ones that do not precipitate are good for decades if kept in a dark, cool location in well-sealed bottles.
Glycerine can also be used for making extracts; it has become a popular alternative for children's tinctures and for people who don't like alcohol.
Glycerine is technically a kind of alcohol, though most people don't know it (and when told they don't seem to think it evil). It is formed through the hydrolysis of oils or fats, usually animal or vegetable. It is a common by-product of the industrial production of soap. Glycerine is a relatively new substance (to people), discovered in 1789 and used medicinally only since the mid-1800s.
Glycerine is fairly viscous and very sweet; I've never had any undiluted glycerine go bad, even after years of being unrefrigerated. It is very stable, like alcohol, and possesses its own antimicrobial properties. It is not as efficient an extractive as water or alcohol; it won't extract gums, resins, or volatile or fixed oils, so its range of use is limited.
If you do dilute the glycerine, as you will have to do in making an extract, it won't hold up as well as an alcohol tincture. Most people add 10 percent to 15 percent alcohol to glycerites to ensure stability.
One of the very good things about glycerine is that it is moisturizing, demulcent, emollient, and soothing to the skin. I have found it to be exceptional for making extractions to be used for ear infections. Unlike alcohol, it won't irritate the inside of the ear but will soothe it instead while still carrying antimicrobial constituents to the place they need to go.
Glycerine is only about 60 percent as extractive as water or alcohol; glycerites will be 40 percent less strong than those other extractions. Glycerites should be dosed at one and a half to two times the dosage for tinctures. If you would normally dose with ½ dropperful (15 drops) of tincture, you would, with a glycerite, give ¾ dropperful (22 drops) to 1 full dropper (30 drops).
The ratio is the same as for alcohol tinctures, 1:5. The liquid, however, to better preserve the glycerine and to help the extraction be more effective, should contain at least 10 percent 190-proof alcohol, then 60 percent glycerine, and finally 30 percent water.
As an example: If you are starting with 5 ounces of powdered echinacea root, then you would need 25 ounces of liquid, of which 2.5 ounces would be alcohol, 15 ounces would be glycerine, and 7.5 ounces would be water.
It is more effective if you add the alcohol to the powdered herbs first and let it sit for 24 hours, then add the glycerine and water, mix well, and leave in a jar with the lid on for 2 weeks. Decant and store as with alcohol tinctures.
INGREDIENTS:
   1 ounce berberine plant
   1 ounce cryptolepis (or sida or alchornea)
   1 ounce echinacea
   1 ounce juniper (or other evergreen needles)
   1 ounce usnea lichen
2.5 ounces grain alcohol
 15 ounces glycerine
7.5 ounces water
Powder herbs well, place in jar, add alcohol, mix thoroughly, and let sit for 24 hours. Mix glycerine and water together, and add to powdered herbs in jar. Let macerate 2 weeks, then decant and strain. Store in amber jar. Use 1â3 drops in the ear up to six times daily for ear infections.
This is made with the usual 1:2 ratio for fresh herbs. In this instance, however, use 15 percent pure alcohol and 85 percent glycerine. So if you have 5 ounces fresh herb, you would want 10 ounces of liquid, of which 1.5 ounces would be 95 percent alcohol and 8.5 ounces would be glycerine.
There has been a tremendous resurgence of puritanitis in the United States and a few other parts of the globe (notably the United Kingdom) over the past 20 years or so. One object of attention of this spasming of the puritan reflex has been the evils of alcohol. Many on the right and on the left seem to think it is some sort of inherently evil substance that is going to destroy Western civilization or at least make God really, really mad.
Alcohol existed long before human beings emerged out of the ecological matrix of this planet. It is a highly natural substance, both inside and outside of our bodies.
All
living beings partake of it, including trees, bees, and elephants. (Not kidding.) All of them enjoy it. It facilitates the functioning of the body, enhances organ function in many respects, and reduces the incidence of many diseases. It is not an evil substance.
One of the continual queries about tinctures concerns the alcohol content. Many people are afraid to take tinctures because of the evil alcohol in them.
To be really specific: The amount of alcohol in tinctures is incredibly tiny. Less than you will get from eating a few pieces of bread (yes, bread does have alcohol in it, enough to produce a breathalyzer reading of 0.05 just by itself). If you are taking 20 drops of a 60 percent alcohol tincture
every
hour for an acute condition, you will get about 1/17 of an ounce of alcohol over the course of a day (less than 2 milliliters). If you are taking a general dose (20 drops three times daily) you will be getting about 1/30 of an ounce over a day. Again, this is less than you will get from eating two slices of bread.
If this truly is a problem for you, you can make infusions or use glyceritesâthough the glycerites really aren't as effective and the water extractions won't extract some of the more important alcohol-soluble constituents. Some people heat their tinctures to remove the alcohol; it doesn't work very well and I suspect the heat alters the quality of the tincture. I don't recommend it.
Honey can be used just like glycerine, following the same directions for making a glycerite. Make sure to use a good wildflower honey.
Nasal sprays are excellent for helping with the onset of upper respiratory or sinus infections. Simply take an herbal tincture and place up to 10 drops or so in a 1-ounce nasal spray bottle (available from pharmacies). Add pure water and spray up nostrils as often as needed.
INGREDIENTS:
5 drops cryptolepis tincture
5 drops bidens tincture
5 drops juniper berry tincture
5 drops usnea tincture
Combine the tinctures in a 1-ounce nasal spray bottle, add enough pure water to make 1 ounce, replace cap, and spray into nostrils as often as desired. (You could substitute 2 drops each of the essential oils of eucalyptus, sage, rosemary, and juniper for the tinctures if you wish.)
I don't use these much, but they have a long history of use in many different cultures. One of their strengths is that vinegar itself is a highly medicinal substance; another is that they don't go bad, no matter how long you keep them. Natural vinegars should be used; most people use an unpasteurized, organic apple cider vinegar. Make your tinctures at a 1:2 ratio if using fresh herbs, or 1:5 if using dried. You don't need to add any water to vinegar tinctures.
Not many people make their own fluid extracts any more, though a few herbal companies sell them. Herb Pharm's
Eleutherococcus
tincture is one of the better known. Essentially, 1 gram of fluid extract is supposed
to be equivalent to 1 gram of the herb. They are very concentrated alcohol tinctures. In the nineteenth century they generally contained other substances such as vinegar or sugar.
All
trained pharmacists could make fluid extracts in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They would make them in their pharmacies, in the lab in back, and keep them on hand for when needed. Most companies that make fluid extracts these days use specialized equipment to do so.
