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“Guido has written a classic. What is most masterful about Guido’s teachings and writing
is the way he weaves folklore, tradition, and science flawlessly together, making a sensible,
cohesive argument for the daily use of these common and important plants.”
rosemary Gladstar, herbalist and founder of United Plant Savers and
author of Rosemary Gladstar’s Family Herbal and Planting the Future

“I highly recommend this book not only for its content but also because, like Michael
Pollan’s Botany of Desire, Guido Masé’s book is a joy to read and is interspersed with
exquisite herb photographs that capture the spiritual essence of the plants he describes.”
micHael tierra, author of Way of Herbs and Planetary Herbology
and founder of the American Herbalists Guild
As people moved into cities and suburbs and embraced modern medicine and indus-
trialized food, they lost their connection to nature, in particular to the plants with which
humanity coevolved. These plants are essential components of our physiologies—
tangible reminders of cross-kingdom signaling—and key not only to vibrant physical health
and prevention of illness but also to soothing and awakening the troubled spirit.
Blending traditional herbal medicine with history, mythology, clinical practice, and
recent findings in physiology and biochemistry, herbalist Guido Masé explores the
three classes of plants necessary for the healthy functioning of our bodies and minds—
aromatics, bitters, and tonics. He explains how bitter plants ignite digestion, balance blood
sugar, buffer toxicity, and improve metabolism; how tonic plants normalize the functions of our
cells and nourish the immune system; and how aromatic plants relax tense organs, nerves, and
muscles and stimulate sluggish systems, whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. He
reveals how wild plants regulate our heart variability rate and adjust the way DNA is read by
our cells, controlling the self-destructive tendencies that lead to chronic inflammation or cancer.
Offering examples of ancient and modern uses of wild plants in each of the three
classes—from aromatic peppermint to bitter dandelion to tonic chocolate—Masé pro-
vides easy recipes to integrate them into meals as seasonings and as central ingredients
in soups, stocks, salads, and grain dishes as well as including formulas for teas, spirits,
and tinctures. Providing a framework for safe and effective use as well as new insights to
enrich the practice of advanced herbalists, he shows how healing “wild plant deficiency
syndrome”—by adding wild plants back into our diets—is vital not only to our health but
also to our spiritual development.
GUIDO MASÉ is a clinical herbalist, herbal educator, and garden stew-
ard. The cofounder and codirector of the Vermont Center for Integrative
Herbalism, he is a professional member of the American Herbalists Guild,
the American Botanical Council, and United Plant Savers. He lives in South
Burlington, Vermont.
HEALING ARTS PRESS
ROCHESTER, VERMONT
www.HealingArtsPress.com
Cover design by Peri Swan
Cover photographs courtesy of the author
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Wild Medicine
Solution
t
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“A twenty-first-century herbal filled with the wisdom of authen-
tic herbalism. Not only are vital skills of herbalism imparted in
a friendly and grounded way, but the book is brimming with
insights and wisdom from an herbalist who truly walks his talk.”
David Hoffmann, FNIMH, RH, medical herbalist
and author of Medical Herbalism
“In The Wild Medicine Solution, Guido Masé presents a beauti-
ful tapestry of writing that weaves together the colorfully rich
tradition of herbal medicine around tonics and bitters, which
are among the most important classes of botanicals for human
health. Great information. A delightful read. The real solution to
the health care crisis!”
Roy Upton, RH, Doctor of Ayurvedic Medicine,
executive director of the American
Herbal Pharmacopoeia
“There are those who incorporate everyday plants into their diet,
knowing this is herbal healing at its best. Guido Masé goes one step
further. Here’s the science that makes clear why direct plant medi-
cine rocks. Tonics, bitters, and aromatics enliven our meals as well
as stimulate our life force. Read this book and dare to be healthy!”
Michael Phillips, author of The Holistic Orchard
and The Apple Grower
WiMeSo.indd 1 2/22/13 10:07 AM
“Whether you are an aging boomer looking for the best ways to
stay healthy; a prepper worried about the end days; a sage femme
guiding women toward wholeness during pregnancy, birth, and
menopause; or a surgeon curious about integrative medicine, you
will find ideas here that may overturn your current conceptions of
health. This book is a short course on a deep matter, with plenty
of practical, do-it-now examples to support your own health and
engage in true preventive medicine. It is a gift of green blessings
to us all.”
Susun S. Weed, author of Healing Wise
and A Wise Woman Herbal
“Since ancient times we have been told that bitter and aromatic
herbs can improve our health and well-being, but most Westerners
avoid these beneficial herbs. Guido Masé, on the other hand, gives
us convincing historical and scientific reasons for using them as
well as simple recipes to help us enjoy them.”
David Winston, RH, author of Adaptogens: Herbs
for Strength, Stamina, and Stress Relief
“In The Wild Medicine Solution herbalist Guido Masé elegantly
weaves human history and biology with the history of herbal
medicines, offering readers compelling reasons to reharmonize
with nature and reintegrate herbs as medicines into their lives. A
good read and a beautiful presentation.”
Aviva Jill Romm, M.D., herbalist, midwife, and author
of Vaccinations and Natural Health after Birth
WiMeSo.indd 2 2/22/13 10:07 AM
Wild Medicine
Solution
Healing with Aromatic,
Bitter, and Tonic Plants
Guido Masé
Healing Arts Press
Rochester, Vermont
•
Toronto, Canada
t
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WiMeSo.indd 3 2/22/13 10:07 AM
Healing Arts Press
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
www.HealingArtsPress.com
Healing Arts Press is a division of Inner Traditions International
Copyright © 2013 by Guido Masé
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher.
Note to the reader: This book is intended as an informational guide. The remedies,
approaches, and techniques described herein are meant to supplement, and not to be a
substitute for, professional medical care or treatment. They should not be used to treat
a serious ailment without prior consultation with a qualified health care professional.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Masé, Guido, 1975–
The wild medicine solution : healing with aromatic, bitter, and tonic plants /
Guido Masé.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-62055-084-7 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-62055-151-6 (e-book)
Summary: “Restoring the use of wild plants in daily life for vibrant physical,
mental, and spiritual health” — Provided by publisher.
1. Materia medica, Vegetable. 2. Medicinal plants. I. Title.
RS164.M287 2013
615.3'21—dc23
2012032804



Text design by Virginia Scott Bowman and layout by Brian Boynton
This book was typeset in Garamond Premier Pro with Caslon and ITC Avant
Garde as display typefaces
To send correspondence to the author of this book, mail a first-class letter to the
author c/o Inner Traditions • Bear & Company, One Park Street, Rochester, VT
05767, and we will forward the communication, or contact the author directly at
www.vtherbcenter.org or aradicale.blogspot.com.
WiMeSo.indd 4 2/22/13 10:07 AM
For Uli
WiMeSo.indd 5 2/22/13 10:07 AM
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
introduction 1
1 A Cuisine for Medicine 10
2 Aromatics—open and Flow 34
Peppermint 83
Lemon Balm 90
Linden 96
Ginger 102
Garlic 107
3 Bitters—turn on and Challenge 112
Wormwood 161
Dandelion 168
Burdock 173
Yellowdock 178
WiMeSo.indd 7 2/22/13 10:07 AM
4 tonics—nourish and Balance 184
Chocolate 229
Astragalus 235
Red Reishi (Lingzhi) 240
Hawthorn 245
nnn
epilogue 251
notes 256
Bibliography 268
index 301
WiMeSo.indd 8 2/22/13 10:07 AM
ix
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for Jovial, whose endless support and enthusiasm are
always welcome and who loves the plants, looks to the stars, and works
hard on the front lines.
I am grateful for Rosemary, who provided encouragement at the
beginning of this project, helped point me in the right direction, and
has always been a friend.
I am grateful for the editorial staff at Inner Traditions • Bear &
Company, all of whom have been a pleasure to work with, professional,
and dedicated.
I am deeply grateful for my colleagues, students, friends, and cli-
ents at the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, where we work
together and learn together every day. Gratitude goes particularly to
Rachel, who provided crucial help in compiling the first manuscript
and bibliography, and most especially to Betzy, Larken, and Laura for
everything they do in service of others—both plants and people.
Finally, I am most grateful for my family. Joe and Mary Anne and
Michael and Mary Clare have always done everything in their power
to support my work. I would not be who I am without my father, Gigi,
the scientist; my mother, Carolyn, the humanist; and my sister, Lisa,
the culinary poet. And with a full heart I am most grateful to my wife,
Anne, who first knew me when I was young, and my daughter, Uli,
who helps me in so many ways. I love you.
WiMeSo.indd 9 2/22/13 10:07 AM
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1
introduction
These days, almost any store that sells food also offers a large selec-
tion of pills, extracts, powders, and other combinations that are neither
medications nor food. Marketed as dietary supplements, the sheer vari-
ety of these compounds, while perhaps intimidating, often rivals that
seen at nineteenth-century fairgrounds in the United States. Generally
speaking, they contain substances that may be extracted from plants
and food (or maybe not), they are perhaps concentrated to a certain
degree, and they purport to address dietary and physiological deficien-
cies. Or they may have some form of nonspecific therapeutic effect that
is due to their special processing.
There seems to be a great need both to identify what is missing
from what we eat (and, to a larger extent, what is missing from our
lives in general) and to employ the most recent discoveries in bioscience
to drive that investigative journey (to say nothing of attempts to profit
from those discoveries, which is a whole other story). We are learn-
ing more and more details about our physiology almost daily, and it is
exciting to think that the latest advances represent a potent and effec-
tive way to help us feel better, more whole, more comfortable.
Of course, this is usually not the case. It takes years to develop
a framework and context for any discovery and, even then, effective
therapy may never materialize. Additionally, as we have seen with the
WiMeSo.indd 1 2/22/13 10:07 AM
2 n IntroductIon
Western diet’s heavy reliance on highly processed, nutritionally reen-
riched foods, it can be problematic to translate laboratory science into
safe and healthy ways to feed ourselves. Our food is not cheaper, cannot
seem to be produced sustainably, and certainly has not succeeded in
making us healthier (or even keeping us as healthy as our parents).
So back in the food store, are supplements that are primarily made
from combinations of isolated chemicals really the key to enriching our
lives? Can they truly correct the deficit that is making us feel tired,
unfocused, sad, empty? After observing the growth in this market over
the last twenty years, we might be tempted to answer, “Maybe, but
only until the next thing comes along.” To me, this is troubling and
indicates that we may never understand what promotes “wellness” by
pursuing this approach.
How, then, do we get there? Certainly, at baseline, we have to
begin by eating real food. There is a growing consensus on this point.
In Vermont, where I write as summer begins, farmers’ markets and res-
taurants bring us real vegetables, meats, eggs, milk, grains, breads, and
more every day. This makes it easy, as Michael Pollan asks us, to “eat
food, not too much, mostly plants.” This is actually happening all over
the United States, and the rebuilding of a whole-food cuisine is helping
to improve not only our health, but also our culture, our community,
and our environment.
But perhaps this is not quite enough, because it seems that the
stores selling the most of this whole, local food also have the largest
sections devoted to supplements. As we think about creating a new
Western diet, we might need to identify whether or not there are any
specific components, other than whole sources of protein, fat, and car-
bohydrates, that are essential to the healthy functioning of our physi-
ology. Admittedly, this is what nutrition science and the supplement
industry are trying to do—but I am skeptical that they will ultimately
succeed in a comprehensive way.
What might we be missing, and could we add it to our lives in the
context of a whole-food, local, sustainable diet? This is the central ques-
WiMeSo.indd 2 2/22/13 10:07 AM
IntroductIon n 3
tion of this book. And the answer will turn out to be surprisingly sim-
ple, because all traditional cuisines and healing systems have laid it out
for us: consume certain kinds of plants, every day or almost every day,
sometimes less, sometimes more, as part of your eating and drinking. To
be more specific, I will try to define three simple classes of plants that
can easily be added to whole-food diets as part of daily life, but that can
also be employed in more directed ways for safe, understandable, and
effective preventive health. In the end, we may find that a less complex
approach to reaching wellness actually turns out to work better.
How can we be certain it is even possible to arrive at a concise
summary of how to incorporate plants into our life in an intelligent
and effective way? After all, around the planet there are thousands of
species that are employed “medicinally,” or with an eye toward prevent-
ing or treating disease. The subject matter may seem daunting. The
first chapter of this book will provide a framework and rationale for
the idea that there are only three broad classes of plants human beings
require consistently. To do so, I will draw on ideas from traditional
herbal medicine and from an analysis of patterns of interconnection in
human physiology.
Those who work with plants for improving health (typically called
herbalists) are an interesting lot, representing a diversity of interests
and cultural backgrounds. Some spend days exploring wilderness and
gathering herbs; others have amazing gardens where they harvest raw
materials; still others may dispense precise blends to clients or impro-
vise flu remedies for the neighborhood kids. There are storytellers,
mystics, scientists, and naturalists. And in every herbalist there is prob-
ably a piece of each of these, and more.
Practicing herbal medicine is a generalist’s pursuit. The ability to
hold knowledge of botany, pharmacy, physiology, and medicine along-
side mythology, spirituality, psychology, and ecology isn’t simply useful—
it’s a necessity. As an herbalist with a particular attraction to the flora
of the Northeastern United States, I have had the opportunity to work
with living botanical medicine in the forest and field, as well as in our
WiMeSo.indd 3 2/22/13 10:07 AM
4 n IntroductIon
community clinic. I have learned how to grow, harvest, prepare, and
administer these herbs, and have explored the physiology of the people,
plants, and environment in this area. Thanks to a lifelong interest in
myth and magic, I have seen how the stories human beings have always
shared weave their way through both the ancient and modern aspects of
what I have learned. Perhaps the stories, still so applicable today, are a
living expression of the generalist’s art. They cut across disciplines and,
in doing so, may reveal more than a specialist ever could.
This is important in the day-to-day—when I sit in my office with
a client, talk about her health, observe her, and feel her wrist pulse or
listen to her breath. I have found that being well-versed in the language
of myths and dreams helps me put the process of healing into context
for myself and my clients, giving it meaning and approachability. But the
herbalist’s interdisciplinary style has even more to offer: in a world where
information is almost limitless but knowledge is increasingly fragmented,
we may need more people who choose to slowly deepen a broad range of
knowledge. In health care as in other fields, system and network theories
are showing us that we may also need to shift our attention from the
pieces of the puzzle to the connections between them.
Traditional herbal medicine plays a crucial role here by identifying
some important ingredients: whole plants, a long history of safety (for
the most part), and extremely simple preparation. This framework pro-
vides an immediately accessible alternative to the endless quest for the
next supplement. It features plants that have been in people’s kitchens
for a very long time, and which are usually considered weedy or at the
very least ridiculously easy to grow. All these elements will help us find
plants that are safe, have a track record of usefulness, and can be easily
and sustainably brought into our lives. Simple preparation techniques
will provide clear ways to employ them in the kitchen: cooking daily
meals as the chef; creating teas and spirits as the bartender; and craft-
ing more complex formulations as the alchemist.
Each subsequent chapter of this book will include practical exam-
ples of how to use the plants we examine. In the kitchen, recipes will
WiMeSo.indd 4 2/22/13 10:07 AM
IntroductIon n 5
focus on using them as part of meals, not only as seasonings but also
as central ingredients in soups, stocks, salads, and grain dishes. For
beverages, there will be formulas for simple teas and for fresh herbs
preserved in alcohol (tinctures). And the alchemist will discuss blend-
ing and dosing the plants for when a little more than just daily use is
required.
To pick our specific plants, I will attempt to isolate key elements
of how we work by exploring simple patterns in our physiology. Herbal
medicine has something to contribute here, too, but I will primar-
ily rely on concepts from system and network theory, coupled with
modern biochemistry and physiology, to observe how we work on a
more general level (though not necessarily a more macroscopic one).
This broader perspective will help us identify key “hubs” in activity
and interrelationship: places and processes in the system where good
function is crucial because if something goes wrong, many other areas
become affected in turn. It will come down to the level of activity and
tension in our nerves and muscles, the functioning of digestion and
food metabolism, and the expression of genes deep inside the nucleus
of every cell in our bodies.
We are constantly exposed to influences that, through our organs
of perception, can have a substantial impact. Stress can result. Over
time, ongoing pressure and overstimulation (or lack thereof) alter
our behavior, emotional patterns, and perhaps more. Nerve-to-muscle
feedback changes the overall level of tension across our bodies, in our
organs, in our minds. While consistent, vigorous movement seems to
be the most important way to balance these signals between nerves,
muscles, and hormones, there may be some plants that can help as well.
I contend that digestion, which includes the liver’s function of
chemically altering individual molecules once they’ve been broken
down and absorbed, may be the most directly understandable physi-
ological hub: we all have an intimate relationship with our bellies.
Additionally, the importance of healthy digestion, absorption, and
metabolism in preventing and reducing inflammation throughout the
WiMeSo.indd 5 2/22/13 10:07 AM
6 n IntroductIon
body cannot be overstated. Much like a clean-burning furnace, strength
in this system reduces by-products and irritants, smoke and smolder.
While we’ve known for some time about DNA and its role in pro-
viding the instructions for almost everything that our cells do, we are
just recently beginning to understand how different subsets of these
instructions can get turned on and off, and the implications appear to
be far-reaching. There are connections to inflammation, aging, regenera-
tion, and cancer. And as we learn more, it seems that plants are uniquely
attuned to adjusting how the instructions are read, helping us unlock the
right pieces for survival and control our own self-destructive power. This
isn’t a coincidence, and it isn’t a result of laboratory analysis. We came of
age as a species in a plant-filled world; our genetic instructions are what
they are partly because of the influence of consuming lots of plants daily.
We will see that some plants have a distinct ability in this area, and con-
suming them should probably become a daily habit once again.
Based on these key areas in human physiology, we will take
another look at traditional herbal medicine and identify what kinds of
plants might fit the bill. Oftentimes, systems of healing that have been
around for a long time use the idea of taste to classify their medicines,
and our approach mirrors this. Ultimately, three kinds of plants will
emerge: the aromatics, the bitters, and the tonics (which can be both
sweet and sour).
Aromatic plants usually contain oils that enter the air as vapors
and reach our noses, providing a unique aroma. Certainly these have
been forever prized as spices and are one of the first kinds of plant that
children will spontaneously identify as interesting and perhaps medici-
nal. These same oils generally have a relaxing quality on organs or tis-
sues that are in spasm, tight, or irritated, but they can also stimulate
an overly sluggish or depressed situation (think of ginger, for example).
What may be less obvious is that balance in this general level of tension
can also mean balance in mental and emotional health—and employ-
ing this effect could perhaps buffer key aspects of the “modern mal-
aise” syndrome. Aromatic plants open and relax us.
WiMeSo.indd 6 2/22/13 10:07 AM
IntroductIon n 7
Bitter plants turn on the digestion, at all levels, and improve the
metabolic function of the liver. As such, they may stoke a fire in the
belly, but they actually reduce inflammation in the rest of the body.
Additionally, they provide an important missing element to the
Western diet: a challenge. Since industrialization and the centraliza-
tion of food processing, we have been trying to make our food easier
and easier to taste and consume. We’ll see how this has led not only to
overconsumption but also to stagnation, lethargy, and diminution of
overall health.
Tonic is a concept unique to herbal medicine. It presupposes
that you might be interested in doing something to enhance your
health, even when you’re not feeling any obvious symptoms or read-
ing concerning test results. All these plants can normalize how our
cells process the instructions in our DNA. Additionally, they seem
to impact the way the immune system works and how it handles
potential threats. And because changes in these systems take time to
manifest, we will find that habitual use of tonics is vital. Thus ton-
ics are generally nutritive and usually consumed with food or during
mealtime.
In focusing on bitter, aromatic, and tonic plants in daily life, some
may argue that I am overlooking the salty, mineral-rich greens and sea-
weeds that are often important components of traditional cuisines. I
set these aside primarily for two reasons. First, the Western diet may be
lacking a lot, but it certainly isn’t lacking in saltiness. Second, a whole-
food approach to eating usually contains a good measure of green, leafy
vegetables, which tend to be the preeminent examples of the salty fla-
vor in herbal medicine. My goal is not to provide general guidelines
for eating, as I believe this is being well addressed already. Rather, I
advocate for some of the flavors and plants that might be overlooked
as we develop new ways of cooking and eating. In addition, I strive to
provide an understanding of why you see plants one might call bit-
ter, aromatic, and tonic in the recipes of almost all traditional cuisines.
This is not a coincidence: these are plants we are meant to be eating,
WiMeSo.indd 7 2/22/13 10:07 AM
8 n IntroductIon
tasting, and benefiting from. Our physiology matured in the context
of consuming them.
Plants that provide us with healthy oils are another important
subset that may seem to be conspicuously absent. The right balance of
fats in our diet is now recognized as an important factor to consider
when thinking about inflammation, heart disease, mental health, and
more. At the very least, we as a culture are becoming less afraid of fat
and this gives me hope that healthy, plant-based oils and animal-based
fats already have a growing place in the new Western diet. For this
reason, I will set aside that discussion (with the understanding that we
may not yet have heard the end of it).
In conclusion, this book is not designed to provide a guide for cur-
ing complaints, nor is it designed to be a compendium of medicinal
herbs (though you will certainly find a lot of them within its pages).
Rather, it strives to define a clear and understandable framework for
using plants mindfully in daily life, based both on thousands of years
of safe use and also a reasoned argument that draws on modern under-
standing. It focuses on what is easy and safe, and on what brings us to
a state of more vibrant health while also connecting us to the world all
around us. It seeks to provide ways to build and nourish, for prevention
rather than for treatment. Therefore, it does not mention many of the
“famous” plants on store shelves today. For these important additions
to the three basic classes, see your local herbalist or other botanically
minded health care provider. But, hopefully, if aromatics, bitters, and
tonics feature prominently in your kitchen and garden, this will be a
more infrequent occurrence.
The final point I hope to make is that the exploration of how
plants work in our bodies may help us regain some trust in our skepti-
cal lives. Certainly, a skeptical posture has served us incredibly well,
and I do not mean to say that our first reaction to a new experience
should not be a questioning one. What I will try to convey is an appre-
ciation for how the interconnections found in nature have shaped us
WiMeSo.indd 8 2/22/13 10:07 AM
IntroductIon n 9
and a renewed acceptance of some of what our ancestors determined
was important for a happy, healthy life. So skepticism, yes—but tem-
pered somewhat by a heart willing to consider some of the old ways of
doing things. This attitude may yet open our eyes to valuable knowl-
edge as we probe deeply into the workings of medicine, physics, and
ecology. But, in the short term, it can make for some exceptionally
tasty and enlivening kitchen alchemy.
WiMeSo.indd 9 2/22/13 10:07 AM
10
1
A Cuisine for Medicine
The challenge we face today is figuring out how to escape
the worst elements of the Western diet and lifestyle without
going back to the bush.
Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food
While I was growing up in Ferrara, Italy, my father would pick up my
sister and me from school almost every Wednesday in a small, yellow
Fiat 500. This was usually right before lunchtime (school days were
short in Italy, but you didn’t get Saturday off). We would bump along
cobblestone streets for a while and then stop outside a small shop that
sold fresh-made pasta. I remember the smell of flour, and you could
see some cooks in big white aprons mixing it with oil, eggs, and a little
water to make noodles, lasagna sheets, or hand-shaped cappellacci (“bad
hats,” usually filled with squash). Others were grinding whole cuts of
prosciutto to mix with herbs and parmesan cheese. This would serve
as the filling for cappelletti, a delicious dumpling similar to tortellini
that was a local specialty. It was for these we had stopped. We would
pick up a pound or so, wrapped in waxed paper, take it back to the car,
and head home.
For lunch, the cappelletti were cooked in a vegetable stock my
WiMeSo.indd 10 2/22/13 10:07 AM
A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 11
mother had prepared ahead of time (she taught English on Wednesdays)
by simmering carrots, celery, onions, and garlic. Sometimes we’d eat
the leftover vegetables—soft and juicy, barely holding together, but
delicious and salty—as part of the meal. Other times, we just ate the
pasta in a steaming bowl of broth, seasoned with a little grated par-
mesan. There would often be a salad, and my dad might have a glass
of wine. Dessert was a cup of sweetened chamomile tea. We would
talk or listen to the radio and all clean up together. All simple things,
really—but very meaningful. Nothing too special, either: variants on
this ritual were taking place all over the city.
Cuisine means “kitchen.” Kitchen, as opposed to restaurant.
Kitchen, as opposed to supermarket. Kitchen, as opposed to gas sta-
tion (where all too many find their food these days). By extension, cui-
sine is a set of kitchen habits that yield meals—meals usually prepared
from simple, whole ingredients. Cuisine has matured over thousands
of years and connects us to food, family, and our environment as few
other things in life do. It is heartening to see a powerful movement in
the United States that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century,
seeks to reawaken (and reinvent) a strong, rooted cuisine that marries
old ways of cooking with great new ideas on food production, distribu-
tion, and preparation.
One of the strongest voices articulating the case for a plant-
centered, omnivorous cuisine in the United States is Michael Pollan.
In The Omnivore’s Dilemma he explores how we manufacture what
we eat, visiting farms that embody the pinnacle of modern industri-
alized agriculture and also farms that offer a much more diversified,
organic vision of how to produce and consume food. His analysis gives
us clarity: in order to achieve good health, we need not focus on the
complexities of food refining, processing, and nutritional reenriching
(based on what Pollan calls “nutritionism”). Rather, we need to eat real
food and prepare it in real ways, ways that involve simple recipes with
simple ingredients. In the end, we get to health without overthinking,
because, as we’ve found out, when it comes to nourishing ourselves,
WiMeSo.indd 11 2/22/13 10:07 AM
12 n A cuIsIne for medIcIne
overthinking the process hasn’t been at all helpful. And once we build
a cuisine back into our lives, all sorts of other things change as well.
You can’t find the best tortellini without getting to know the shop-
keeper. The best vegetables come straight from a farmer at a market
stand, not from a regularly misted cooler. You’ve got to spend some
time hanging out and talking with your kids while you make and share
a meal. All these changes foster relationship and connection, and the
results become evident in our environment, in our villages and neigh-
borhoods, and in our homes.
I am particularly keen on this analysis because it comes from some-
one whose perspective includes the idea that, somehow, plants are driv-
ing human behavior and culture. One cannot read Pollan’s account
(in The Botany of Desire) of the tulip craze that swept Holland in the
1630s and not marvel at how these organisms, which have no feet and
certainly no brains (as we know them), have employed us to serve their
ends. They harness our desires. So when Pollan advocates for plants as
a major, important component of cuisine, it’s coming from a person
who knows that they are our active partners and not just commodities.
Again, we see a relational view of the world.
The “Slow Food” movement (proposed as an alternative to a com-
mon type of restaurant) began in Italy and has become another lead-
ing voice advocating for a real cuisine. Carlo Petrini started this global
phenomenon by standing up to McDonald’s in an effort to prevent it
from opening a restaurant in historic, downtown Rome. Since then,
the idea of regional food that celebrates traditional cuisine and is pre-
pared with care has swept the Western world. In the United States
there are myriad local chapters of Slow Food USA. They share reci-
pes, gardening tips, and dinner-party schedules. At a national level, the
organization is active in shaping legislation that affects food, such as
the farm bill. It is a tangible manifestation of a shift that is happening
in modern Western cuisine.
Another conscious food choice many people are making involves
where their food is grown and made. The locavore movement seeks
WiMeSo.indd 12 2/22/13 10:07 AM
A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 13
to support local agriculture and production, both for fruits, vegeta-
bles, meats, and grains and for value-added products, such as breads,
sauces, cheeses, and beverages. Part of the concern here is the heavy
investment in petrochemicals that centralized food production
entails. But local food doesn’t just have a smaller carbon footprint.
If you support local production, you support smaller farms, farmers’
markets, and local employment. You foster a community that comes
together in the central square instead of the big-box-store parking lot.
You might even get to know your farmer personally—or start raising
chickens in your backyard. Nourishing ourselves with the plants and
animals that breathe the same air, drink the same water, and walk on
(or grow in) the same land as we do might have crucial repercussions
for our individual health, too. Ultimately, the locavore movement
strives for connection between people, land, and food—relationship-
based eating at its best.
Our culture’s understanding of the importance of real, whole food
and where it comes from is increasing, and a new cuisine is being born.
But I also hope to convince you that we might need to use some of
these same ideas in our approach to achieving health and treating dis-
ease. Why do so many folks who buy all their food at the farmers’ mar-
ket also purchase dietary supplements that are packaged in plastic and
shipped from far-flung corners of the country (or the world)? To say
nothing of the centralized, industrialized production of conventional
medication.
Our food certainly is the foundation of medicine, to paraphrase
Hippocrates. But throughout history, human beings (and animals, too)
have supplemented their diet with a range of substances to prevent ill-
ness, treat disease, and feel vibrant, inspired, and connected. It’s some-
times hard to draw a line between what we eat and the medicines we
use. Was that cup of chamomile tea at the end of lunch part of the
meal or was it a therapeutic intervention? If you know anything about
chamomile and its power to calm kids down, you might lean toward
the latter categorization, but that’s not necessarily a given. Other times
WiMeSo.indd 13 2/22/13 10:07 AM
14 n A cuIsIne for medIcIne
the distinction is clearer. No one would consider a simmered pot of
willow bark tea, perhaps used to treat arthritis, to be food or even
a pleasant addition to a family meal. And it might even be lethal to
approach a substance such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) with the same
relaxed attitude on dosing that we see with carrots.
These, then, are my questions: Might there be a cuisine for medi-
cine? Can the kitchen serve as a pharmacy, a place where we cook
up what keeps us healthy alongside what keeps us fed? These are not
unreasonable questions, nor do they imply that modern medicine is
something we need to eschew. I support local food systems, but I still
love a well-made cappuccino. So while a good meal is the foundation of
health, I think that we can take the concepts of whole foods, organic
foods, and local food production and apply them to medicine as well.
In so doing, we might uncover safe, effective, and easy strategies for
managing the malaise of modern life, empower ourselves to become
more involved in our well-being, and discover local, whole remedies
we can grow and prepare ourselves instead of consuming a machine-
manufactured pill.
TradiTional Herbal Medicine
Of course, such a “cuisine” for medicine already exists: it is called herb-
alism. This practice of using whole plants as medicine is actually the
dominant form of primary care around the world. Three-quarters of
the global population relies on herbs to treat disease.
1
Modern innova-
tions, such as surgical procedures and pharmaceutical agents, are useful
complements to this age-old way of doing things, but in the United
States they have supplanted it almost completely, much as the Western
diet has supplanted real food. I think we can, and should, strive for
a model where modern health care technology is used to supplement,
rather than replace, traditional plant-based “slow medicine.”
On every populated continent, there are ways of healing that are
driven by the local flora, and they are as diverse as the cuisines with
WiMeSo.indd 14 2/22/13 10:07 AM
A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 15
which they share a kitchen. Some have coalesced into nearly mono-
lithic systems, though every valley still has its own variant on the clas-
sic recipes. Even in Europe, where, in the sixteenth century, Paracelsus
began applying solvent extraction techniques to plants and may thereby
have started us down the path to modern pharmaceuticals, traditional
whole-plant remedies are still widely used. So modern medicine is not
simply today’s version of traditional European herbalism; it is a com-
pletely new and different phenomenon.
In the short term, contemporary medicine is unrivaled. Powerfully
life-threatening imbalances, infections, and trauma are tended to sys-
tematically and effectively in ways that would have seemed magical
or miraculous in Paracelsus’s time. The process of research associated
with modern medicine continues to generate new insights into and
understanding of physiology, biochemistry, and pathology—all the
while providing the tools for the effective management of more long-
term, deadly diseases, such as cancer, HIV, and advanced heart disease.
Babies born prematurely, some weighing less than two pounds, can
survive and go on to full, healthy, engaged lives. Diseases such as polio
have been eradicated—eradicated!—from vast sections of the planet.
I cannot comment on the long-term ecological implications of these
changes, but no one can doubt that their public health impact in the
twentieth century has been huge.
The purpose of incorporating traditional herbal medicine into
modern life is to try to find an accessible system for addressing much
more common (and less scary) complaints, a system that is understand-
able and can be easily implemented. As we shall see, herbalism satis-
fies these criteria while also positing a relational approach to healing
and, more importantly, to health itself. In this sense, it is much more
like cooking: something we all can learn, something that connects us
to the garden. Pharmaceuticals are often like sledgehammers swatting
mosquitoes; I am simply proposing that there may be a point to the
techniques of more traditional medical models. For some of the more
complex diseases of twenty-first-century life, these techniques may
WiMeSo.indd 15 2/22/13 10:07 AM
16 n A cuIsIne for medIcIne
offer real solutions where modern medicine all too often lacks a gentle
enough touch.
People will always desire some measure of involvement in their
health. Even the most uninterested among us still practice basic
hygiene (mostly). I hope to convince you that simple herbal medicine
offers an effective way to enhance health and that when it is used
this way it poses no risk, while yielding real benefits. These qualities
make it useful as a model for the modern consumer desiring health
care empowerment. It reconnects us to a whole-plant ecology and pro-
vides clarity in a sea of “nutritionism”-based (to borrow Pollan’s term)
supplements, megadose vitamins, and druglike extracts. Its remedies
stem from plants. They are real, they grow out of the soil, and they are
alive. As we explore these plants, it will be worth examining the folk
traditions to see what they have to say—both to get some guidance on
how to best employ the herbs and also to see if traditional applications
resonate with our modern understanding. In so doing, we might get
some new ideas about what health really means.
One of the key strengths of a traditional medical system is the simplic-
ity of the preparations that are used. Sure, there are some exceptions—
just as there are in cooking. But crafting a simple distillation apparatus
to make herbal spirits is just about as complex as it gets and certainly
requires neither a chemistry lab nor analytical tools. A good souf-
flé might actually be more difficult to execute (at least for me). This
immediately makes such a system accessible to a wide range of folks.
You can grow, or often find wild, many of the remedies you might
need for simple home care. And after you harvest them, it is very easy
to prepare them for use.*
First and foremost, herbal medicine is interwoven into cuisine
itself. Thyme, often used to season fish and seafood, warms the diges-
tion and improves the “feel” of the meal as we assimilate it. Chicken
*Full details are beyond the scope of this work. See Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes
for Vibrant Health.
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A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 17
soup with a lot of extra garlic supports the body when it’s struggling
with a respiratory infection. The roots of Astragalus and burdock,
along with mushrooms, can be simmered into that same soup stock along
with chicken bones and vegetables to promote resilience and help speed
recovery from illness. And chocolate is divine taken hot in water, with
a little local honey, and perhaps a pinch of cayenne pepper. Are these
medicines or foods? Both! These few examples give us a feel for the
role that medicinal plants have played in food preparation and should
immediately give food lovers a new and exciting frontier to explore:
recipes for our favorite dishes can be amended to include ingredients
that have an application in keeping us healthy, vibrant, and inspired.
Beyond that, it might be interesting to those who are passionate about
their heirloom recipes to find that there is a strong physiological and
medicinal basis for using the spices and combinations those recipes fea-
ture. It’s not just about flavor.
Though I’ve been lucky enough to sample some tasty lemon balm–
lavender cookies, these plants are usually reserved for another type of
preparation that sits in the gray area between food and medicine—the
infusion, or tea. More than just a beverage, tea can have profound
effects when taken habitually, week after week.* This is another incred-
ibly simple way to bring plants into your life. Herbs are harvested and
dried, or purchased dry, and four or five tablespoons are steeped in
a quart of hot water, covered, for anywhere from five minutes to five
hours (it depends what you’re going for). The infusion is then strained
and taken with or without a little honey, hot or iced. Couldn’t be
easier—and many of the plants I’ll explore in detail make delicious tea.
A more medicine-like preparation, though still quite simple, is the
tincture. From the Latin tingere, meaning “to turn color” (the root
of our word tint), it is simply an infusion that uses high-proof spir-
its instead of water. Herbs are steeped in 100 proof vodka and sealed
*One of my favorite arguments for the herbal infusion is from Susun Weed’s Healing
Wise. This book contains discussions for specific infusions throughout, but general
thoughts start on page 261.
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18 n A cuIsIne for medIcIne
tightly in a mason jar for three or four weeks (herbalists usually wait
one full cycle of the moon). Then they are strained out, the fluid is
retained, and it is taken at doses that range from a few drops to a tea-
spoon or so. This is certainly a little closer to a pharmaceutical (and
just one hundred years ago, that is precisely what it was). But these
preparations still cross over into cuisine, primarily behind the bar, and
we are starting to see them used in custom “medicinal” liqueurs and
cocktails that claim to be useful for digestion, mental health, coughs
and colds, and even spring allergies.*
All these simple ways of using plants can be incorporated into daily
rituals that are performed in the kitchen. A drink before dinner may
be custom-blended from a homegrown apothecary to suit the mood
and complaints of the day. Afternoon tea may be a medicinal expe-
rience. And family meals can do more than simply nourish us with
vibrant, local foods. With just a little attention to the recipe, they can
help restore health and keep us well, using special ingredients that grow
side by side with the tomatoes. It isn’t hard to do, nor, as we shall see,
is medicinal activity tied only to one rare, exotic, magical plant. There
is broad crossover between species, and this fact leads us to one of the
central arguments of this book: even if you only learn to use one of
each kind of plant (an aromatic, a bitter, and a tonic), you will experi-
ence benefits. Though the full science and art of herbal medicine may
be quite complex, it is also incredibly simple to get started and begin
to see results.
Just as cuisine brings friends and family together and gathers
threads of local food production, terroir (the unique flavor of the place
where food is grown), and history, using herbal medicine opens up a
relational view of health and well-being that ends up changing how
we see the world. For example, it is hard to go back to store-bought
produce once you’ve tasted a caprese salad made from your garden.
*Again, full details are beyond the scope of this book. See Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal
Recipes for Vibrant Health. For a more recent take on the use of tinctures in medicinal
cocktails, see Proville and Blunts’, “Spring Medicinals.”
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A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 19
Tomatoes still warm from the summer sun, hand-picked whole basil
leaves, and thick slices of an almost-sweet, juicy, fresh mozzarella make
all else pale by comparison. Experiencing this food makes you more
mindful about future food choices, and once you’ve tasted homemade
pasta dumplings in vegetable broth, it’s hard to swallow the dehy-
drated, processed tortellini on the grocery store shelf. Similarly, once
you’ve experienced better digestive health from the regular use of bit-
ter plants, it starts to seem a little strange to use antacids, laxatives, or
weird pink syrups to address the same symptoms.
Once you adopt a real food cuisine, your attitude toward food
begins to change. How important then to start using medicine that is
also based on traditional methods. There is a cultural (and biological)
wisdom to these practices that has evolved over millennia to keep our
day-to-day lives running smoothly. This wisdom also necessitates per-
sonal involvement, just as real food does. If we could get more involved
in promoting our own health, the repercussions would be dramatic. I
envision less stress on our overburdened primary care system; a greater
range of preventive and curative strategies for the chronic diseases of
modern life; and rich, abundant gardens where we cultivate both food
and medicine. We can make this vision a reality by adopting strategies
that are time-tested, often clinically studied, and effective. And instead
of relying on “flavor-of-the-month” supplements, we can do it all using
local, wild, easy-to-grow plants we’ve gotten to know personally—truly
a cuisine for medicine.
WHaT Kinds of PlanTs and WHy—
a sysTeMs-based conTexT
Herbal medicine may have its strengths, but just because it’s been
around for thousands of years doesn’t make it inherently valid. Certain
examples come to mind—such as the use of kidney-toxic aristolochia
2
—
which remind us that we can’t just assume that traditional ways of
doing things are automatically safe and effective. But my goal is not to
WiMeSo.indd 19 2/22/13 10:07 AM
20 n A cuIsIne for medIcIne
use herbalism as a starting point for our investigation of plants; rather,
I hope to use it as a touchstone for putting some of the botanicals in
the following pages into context.
All in all, aside from a few cases (some of which involve adultera-
tion or inappropriate use), herbal medicine is extremely safe. As Simon
Mills and Kerry Bone, English and Australian medical herbalists,
respectively, note: “Considering the vast usage around the world of
plants as medicines, it is remarkable that there is so little epidemiologi-
cal or clinical evidence that this is a harmful activity.”
3
Indeed. Beyond
this, I have chosen the safest examples to explore in this book, with
only one (wormwood) being contraindicated in pregnancy. All the oth-
ers are extremely benign plants—so you can begin working with them,
confident that they will cause no harm.
But what about the overall efficacy of plants as medicine? This is
a more difficult question. In order to arrive at an answer, I propose to
start with physiology. Plants, after all, are complex, living systems inter-
acting with the complex living system of the human being. This interac-
tion takes place at multiple levels and is difficult to quantify completely
using the tools of modern biochemistry (such as drug- receptor effects,
for instance). If we can organize human physiology into broad patterns,
we can see if plants might have an impact by examining how they inter-
act with those patterns. We would thereby try to answer the question of
efficacy by taking a relationship-based approach. This makes sense for a
system of medicine that is so akin to cuisine.
How can we even hope to describe a broad system whereby herbs
relate to human physiology? The sheer number of chemicals in a single
plant, let alone all the plants used as medicine, is overwhelming. The
genetic instructions, enzymes, cellular processes, organic functions, and
integrative pathways in the human being are equally complex and, in
many cases, appear disorganized or disconnected to our limited under-
standing. So what to make of this vastness? Let’s start by examining an
insight from Warren Weaver, a mathematician, scientist, and scholar of
probability and complexity, writing in 1948.
WiMeSo.indd 20 2/22/13 10:07 AM
A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 21
What makes an evening primrose open when it does? Why does
salt water fail to satisfy thirst? . . . What is the description of aging
in biochemical terms? . . . [These] are all problems which involve
dealing simultaneously with a sizable number of factors which are
interrelated into an organic whole. They are all, in the language here
proposed, problems of organized complexity.
4
The system as a whole has an organization, a quality we can under-
stand, that emerges from the interrelationship of its individual com-
ponents. We may not fully grasp how each piece works, but that may
not be absolutely necessary. This insight into how to understand com-
plexity underpins a branch of scientific research now known as systems
theory, which is essentially a study of reality based on broad patterns
of interaction and interconnection in an ecosystem. Right around the
same time, in the mid-twentieth century, Ludwig von Bertalanffy
articulated the mathematical and theoretical underpinnings of systems
theory as we know it today, in his classic paper titled “The Theory of
Open Systems in Physics and Biology.”
5
Theoretical physicist Fritjof Capra studied in Austria but has lived
in Berkeley, California, for many years. The deep level of both inter-
connection and uncertainty evident in the world of subatomic physics
led him to seek new ways of understanding; as a result, he has become
one of the world’s leading systems thinkers. His articulation of systems
theory is one of the clearest I have encountered. In essence, it describes
a way of looking at a living ecology that allows us to more quickly
grasp the important patterns of Weaver’s “organized complexity”: how
to describe and predict its behavior without knowing all its individual
parts. This is a departure from the driving thrust of human inquiry.
Since we started using the scientific method, we’ve most often tried
to break an ecosystem down into individual pieces to figure out how
the whole works. In The Web of Life, Capra’s model of systems theory
offers a different view.
First, a system shows what are called “emergent” properties, qualities
WiMeSo.indd 21 2/22/13 10:07 AM
22 n A cuIsIne for medIcIne
that cannot be predicted by its individual parts. We often refer to this
quality in our daily experience as “synergy,” and that underscores the
importance of taking a step back and looking at the broader system.
Without doing so, we might miss key features.
Second, all systems have multiple levels of organization. A city,
for example, has a pattern of daily activity, with its inhabitants mov-
ing around in predictable ways, inputs flowing in, and waste and heat
flowing out. But an individual neighborhood has its own pulse, too.
It has particular centers where the community gathers, hubs of activ-
ity. And, of course, a home is its own little system, both in terms of
its structure and its inhabitants. Individuals are distinct ecologies, too.
You get the idea—organization exists at both the macro and micro
levels. This fact, coupled with the mathematical counterpart of fractal
geometry, which shows that systems exhibit similar patterns of orga-
nization at all levels,
6
comes together in the concept of holism: there
exist complex, self-similar structures and relationships at all levels of
life. When we look at life on a small scale, it looks and behaves in a
remarkably similar fashion to life on a grand scale. This is actually a
very old concept, though somewhat forgotten, perhaps best articulated
by the hermetic philosophers. As rendered by Sir Isaac Newton, it goes
something like this: “That which is below is like that which is above.”
7
Third, as we saw with cuisine and herbal medicine, systems theory
focuses on the relationship and connection between components of a
system. As Capra puts it, “In systems science every structure is seen as
the manifestation of underlying processes.”
8
A city is what it is because
of how its inhabitants organize themselves into neighborhoods and
how those communities interact with one another, more than because
of its buildings and streets. The literal shape and structure of its build-
ings and streets is a reflection of those patterns of interaction. This
firmly shifts our understanding of urban ecosystems into a fluid con-
cept of life, rather than an abstract, fixed framework. This is evident
in new urban planning ideas. No longer do we segregate our living and
working arrangements into separate districts: downtown, shopping
WiMeSo.indd 22 2/22/13 10:07 AM
A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 23
malls at highway exits, and residences in the suburbs. Mixed-use, walk-
able neighborhoods that focus on the patterns of daily life are now in
vogue.
9
One of the classic examples of systems-based thinking is the Gaia
hypothesis, developed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. In a sem-
inal paper published in 1974, titled “Atmospheric Homeostasis by and
for the Biosphere,” they advance the notion that “early after life began
it acquired control of the planetary environment” (page 1)—truly a
radical notion at the time! The argument that the long-term control of
atmospheric oxygen and temperature is due to a global web of microbes
and algae was hard to swallow. It implied that there is a greater and
more powerful biological “organism” at work on planet Earth than the
human being, and that our very survival is contingent on this being and
its ongoing health. Drawing in part on systems theory, Lovelock and
Margulis examined the gaseous composition of Earth’s atmosphere,
going back billions of years,* and noted that levels of greenhouse gases
(such as ammonia) fluctuated based on solar energy output in just the
right ways to maintain conditions favorable for life.
Thus Gaia exemplifies the qualities of a complex, self-regulatory
system as defined by Capra (and others). First, if taken as a whole, it has
an emergent property. It can control atmospheric temperature and oxy-
gen balance (not obvious when we examine its components— bacteria
and blue-green algae). Second, it possesses multiple levels of organiza-
tion, from the individual microbe and its cellular respiration to tidal
pools, oceans, and the planet as a whole. Third, it is the response of
the biological components to different temperatures and gas concentra-
tions that truly defines the system, more than any absolute amount of
either one. As ammonia and CO
2
levels go up, temperature rises and
microbial metabolism decreases. This balance, this relationship, is the
crucial point more than the bugs or the gases themselves.
*Lovelock’s previous research had focused largely on the complex soup of atmospheric
gases and what we can learn from altering it. For instance, see Lovelock and Giffen’s
“Planetary Atmospheres.”
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24 n A cuIsIne for medIcIne
Another interesting application of systems theory is in the field of
economics, where it is used to analyze and explain events that at first
blush might appear unrelated. Some of the more interesting examples
were collected by Albert-László Barabási, a physicist and systems the-
orist who has worked at Notre Dame and Northeastern University.
Barabási takes systems theory one step further by using mathematics to
analyze the systems themselves, delving into the relationships between
their components. His focus is on the network of connections between
the components of a system, and his research uncovered an important
characteristic of such life webs.
10
Essentially, he proves that networks
in systems like the living cell, ecosystems, cities, economies, and even
the World Wide Web are characterized by a few, highly connected
elements (“hubs”) and lots of pieces that have only one or two links
(“outliers”).
Two interesting implications of this research relate to the global
economy in recent years and how systems and networks function.*
Right off the bat, it is easier for hubs to get “more”—more connec-
tions, more information, more resources. This process quickly snow-
balls. In our society, we see this embodied in a simple principle: the
rich get richer. Not only do the rich control the vast majority of capi-
tal resources (they are hubs in the financial network, where the rest
of us are outliers), their connections allow them to accumulate more
resources at a much greater rate than everyone else.
†
Additionally, a threat to a hub, which at first might seem to be
of limited concern, can have much wider implications due to the high
degree of interconnection the hub has with the rest of the network.
A case in point is the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September
2008. Here we have an extremely wealthy financial institution disap-
pearing, essentially, from the ecology in which it was a major player.
And while, rationally, one might have expected it to be dissolved in
*For details on network theory applied to economics, see Gabaix et al.’s “Theory of
Power-Law Distributions.”
†As evidenced in the story of Vernon Jordan, retold in Barabási’s Linked, pages 202–4.
WiMeSo.indd 24 2/22/13 10:07 AM
A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 25
an organized fashion, exactly the opposite happened. Its collapse suffi-
ciently disturbed the network to cause global repercussions in bankers’
ability to move money and finance business. Immediate ramifications
were felt from North America to Hong Kong. Long-term effects reso-
nated for years across the financial markets worldwide.
As with Gaia, these are also examples of living systems. Economies
behave in a complex fashion and display elements of synergy (witness,
for instance, the corporate merger). They have self-similar (as above,
so below) organization at all levels, from individual finance to fami-
lies, corporations, sectors, and the world. And the importance of the
connections over the components is clearly evident in events like the
banking crisis of 2008. But when we look at these systems more closely,
we see that they also exhibit the network characteristics described by
Barabási. There are crucial hubs and, if something goes wrong—even if
it seems like something small (a rumor on the stock exchange, say)—it
reverberates throughout the network.
The point I want to make is that human physiology, which com-
prises the set of processes and functions that constitute the living
human being, is a networklike system. It has all the characteristics
of the open systems described by Weaver and von Bertalanffy. It has
emergent qualities, such as consciousness (we still have no idea where
that comes from);
11
it is broadly self-similar and highly organized at all
levels, from the whole person to the individual cell; and it is all about
the relationship between functional subsets, such as brain and heart, or
liver and food. Most likely, physiology also demonstrates networklike
behavior, where certain hubs are more connected than others. And, as
is the case with nature itself, it exhibits characteristics of all living sys-
tems: spontaneous “breakthroughs” into new levels of complex emer-
gent properties (so evident, I feel, in the development of young human
beings) and sensitivity to small, habitual, insidious perturbations (such
as those from diet).*
*Capra summarizes this well in The Web of Life, pages 192–93.
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26 n A cuIsIne for medIcIne
Some physicians and researchers have already begun to develop
models of the human being as a system, seeking to address disease
by looking at processes and patterns of activity, rather than the static
anatomy of the body. One example is put out by the Institute for
Functional Medicine.
12
It stresses the importance of identifying the
context in which the patient lives, the processes (such as assimilation
and metabolism, defense and repair, and communication between sub-
sets of the system) that take place, and “personalizing factors” (such as
sleep, exercise, nutrition, and relationships) that modify the way the
processes behave. From these factors, we can see some disease as emer-
gent qualities of a complex system, and attempt to intervene using gen-
tler “perturbations” that might have safer, longer-lasting results.
Of course, one need not look to twenty-first-century science to
find a description of the human being that relies on function and
broad patterns of activity, rather than a dissection of our anatomical
components. This has, in fact, been the language of traditional medi-
cine all along. It speaks of moisture and dryness, of a fire in the belly
both burning our food for energy and circulating vitality through our
core, of tension and tone across multiple organ systems, of ecological
context. This is a language of weather, of seasons, of flux and change.
It speaks in allegories that may actually be amazingly accurate descrip-
tions of process-based emergent qualities in the organized chaos we
call life. And, crucially, it proposes an idea that is absent from a sys-
tem of medicine based on disease analysis: that health, and life, can be
fostered, encouraged. Through this lens, well-being is not a state that
exists in the negative, occurring once all disease is removed. Rather,
well-being is the result of positive nourishment. It is something we can,
and should, work to create.
THree Key PHysioloGical “Hubs”
If the human being comprises a networklike system, what are its crucial
nodes? Traditional systems of physiology have some interesting notions.
WiMeSo.indd 26 2/22/13 10:07 AM
A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 27
For instance, the Galenic four humors, based on Hippocratic ideas and
evolving into four “temperaments,”
13
are energies, or states of being,
that can commingle and whose balance affects personality and physiol-
ogy. Similar fluid- or energy-based models are also used in Ayurveda, a
system of healing from the Indian subcontinent.
14
Paracelsian alchemy
reduces life to three basic processes: the sulfur, a kind of personality/
soul; the salt, our physical organs, muscle, bone, and sinew; and the
mercury, the common thread uniting the whole. There are numerous
animist healing practices around the world that rely on spiritual pow-
ers being present in places, plants, waters, and more—and through
their interactions, fostering well-being.* And classical Chinese medi-
cine relies on five processes, which also represent states of change, to
summarize the human system.
15
What’s most intriguing to me is that we can even devise such a
simple way of viewing the human being. After all, medical under-
standing is extremely broad and deep, and superficial knowledge can
be extremely dangerous. You have to know how all the details interact
before you can proceed safely. The complexity of physiology makes it
seem unapproachable to the layperson.
Yet perhaps this isn’t really the case. There are a few problems with
the whole notion. The first issue is that we will never know all the
details of human physiology. Wide areas of understanding, ranging
from consciousness and thought to the expression and regulation of
our genome, are still elusive. No matter how complex the description,
it will always remain incomplete. Traditional, systems-based under-
standings aren’t any simpler (lifetimes are spent on the details, just
as in biomedicine), they just have a better-characterized top-level net-
work. The second issue is that danger only seems to arise when you
take a single, isolated substance and apply it at a specific level of the
physiological system. Traditional herbal medicine has never had this
option (aside from a few well-known poisons, of course). It has always
*For an ethnobotanical overview of many of these traditions, see Grossinger’s Planet
Medicine.
WiMeSo.indd 27 2/22/13 10:07 AM
28 n A cuIsIne for medIcIne
employed complex chemical cocktails (i.e., plants) to treat the complex-
ity of human physiology. Could this be part of the reason behind its
safety? Ironically, the tools of biomedicine might be more dangerous
because they get too deep into a piece of the network.
To illustrate, consider the example of the yohimbe tree,
Pausinystalia yohimbe, which grows in West Africa. Its bark is tradi-
tionally used as an aphrodisiac, and an alkaloid it contains, yohim-
bine, has been extensively researched clinically and found to be quite
effective.
16
It works by dilating the arteries and improving blood flow
to erectile tissue—but biomedicine clearly warns us that it also “turns
off the brakes” on our adrenaline response. Under the right circum-
stances, this might raise heart rate and blood pressure. This could be
dangerous in someone with heart disease—and you’d never be aware
of this fact unless you took the time to understand “the nature of
the hypothalamic response to alpha-2-receptor antagonism.” This, at
least, is the basic argument.
Traditional herbal medicine has a two interesting responses,
and both show systems thinking at work. First, you’d be unlikely to
give someone yohimbe if he already had heart disease, even without
knowing anything about alkaloids, receptors, or blood pressure. The
medicine from the yohimbe tree, so the story goes, is like an August
afternoon—hot, potentially oppressive, sweaty.
17
It’s not going to mix
well with a person who is red, maybe angry, overstressed, with a fast
and full pulse. You might choose a range of other aphrodisiacs, thus
avoiding any potential danger, thanks to a crude, energy-based assess-
ment of the situation. Second, even if you did decide to use yohimbe
(some people with high blood pressure are cool, quiet, and have weak
pulses—though in my experience such an individual is rare), it would
be administered as a whole plant, not as the isolated constituent. The
bark you’d use has a wide range of other chemicals in it, including the
alkaloid ajmaline,
18
which reduces high blood pressure while calming
and steadying the heartbeat.
19
I’m not trying to say that all plants are
danger-free, though, certainly, the vast majority are. This example just
WiMeSo.indd 28 2/22/13 10:07 AM
A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 29
serves to illustrate how using systems theory in our approach to physiol-
ogy and treatment might uncover useful, safe, and—most important—
understandable methods.
Now, rather than borrowing a traditional system for our explora-
tion of how to define a “cuisine for medicine,” I’d like to take what
we’ve learned from our exploration of systems theory, networks, and
their applicability to health and come up with a very basic, top-level
organization for biomedicine. Once we have a solid but straightfor-
ward framework in place, we can assess how medicinal plants fit in
to the modern perspective on physiology. It comes down to this: we
need a simple network that describes Western physiology (and pathol-
ogy) in crude enough terms so that we can begin to see how a crude
plant might fit into it. And what we’ll find, ultimately, is that looking
at the kinds of plants people have always used frames the physiology
fairly well. System to system, we can tame complexity and reveal useful
information along the way.
The first hub in our physiological network is the ongoing balancing act
known as neuromuscular tone. This refers to the collection of processes
that occur in our body and mind and relate to how tight our muscles
are and how active our mind is. Too tight, and we literally get tension,
spasm, blockage, and poor circulation. Too loose, and we have slug-
gishness, fatigue, and poor motor and mental response. Interestingly,
because nerves from the body connect to the brain, tension and lax-
ity are reflected in the mind as well—producing anxiety in the former
case and depression in the latter.
I propose that, when taken as a whole, the nerves and muscles of
the body act as a sort of “pacemaker” of activity, helping us respond
effectively to the world’s changes by adjusting internal tension as
needed. Making sure this hub is functioning well is extremely impor-
tant. Not only does an imbalance in neuromuscular activity impact
physical tension and mental health, but through our hormonal system
it exacerbates chronic pain, poor digestive function, blood pressure
WiMeSo.indd 29 2/22/13 10:07 AM
30 n A cuIsIne for medIcIne
disorders, and heart disease. And we can all relate to how powerfully
our mood plays into everything we experience.
Neuromuscular tension is, ultimately, about how we deal with
stress. How we process and internalize stress ultimately makes the dif-
ference in how we feel. Exercise may be the best intervention for rebal-
ancing this hub of physiological activity—it improves mental health
but also addresses cardiovascular disease.
20
Additionally, key botani-
cals can play an important role as well. The hope is that by addressing
the level of tension in our body and mind, we can buffer the impact
of stress on our physiology, and perhaps reduce our reliance on anti-
depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, stimulants, and sedatives, the use of
which has become so pervasive in our society.
The second hub in the physiological network is digestive and meta-
bolic activity—the combined set of processes that deliver nutrition and
energy from what we eat to our cells. There are many components to
this hub, starting with digestion but involving other organ systems
along the way—most notably the liver and the pancreas, key chemical
processing centers and balancers of blood sugar. We will find that there
are important connections between all these constituent parts and that
the whole process of digestion, absorption, and metabolism weakens
other areas when it’s not functioning well. For instance, big swings in
blood sugar figure prominently in type 2 diabetes; elevated blood sugar
levels lead to inflammation in blood vessels and cause premature hard-
ening and dysfunction of our arteries.
21
I propose that what has been called metabolic syndrome—a com-
bination of high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes
22
—is an imbal-
ance in the function of this physiological hub and that the imbalance
begins in the digestive system, its rate of movement, and its secretions.
It continues in and is perpetuated by dysfunction in the liver and pan-
creas. Obviously, dietary modification is the key intervention in this
area, and here the efforts of Pollan as well as chefs like Alice Waters of
Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, have helped enormously. There is
also an important and storied class of plants that positively affects all
WiMeSo.indd 30 2/22/13 10:07 AM
A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 31
the elements of digestion, absorption, and metabolism. Here, we will
see how everyday digestive complaints (for which modern medicine
has little to offer) and blood sugar imbalance are buffered by botanical
medicines. They can allow us to live in a more toxic world, surrounded
by petrochemicals and processed foods, without our physiology suf-
fering. As a result, good food and some key plants might reduce the
massive impact that metabolic syndrome has on primary care in this
country—all in the context of the kitchen.
The third and final hub in our physiological network is a bit harder
to describe, as it involves functions and activities taking place in each
cell of our body. In essence, it is the collection of processes that takes
our genetic instructions (encoded in DNA) and turns them into real-
ity. We are becoming increasingly aware that our genetic blueprint is
by no means set in stone. Rather, its translation into the phenotype
(our physical structure and, by extension, all the emergent properties
that come with it) is quite flexible and intimately connected to the
surrounding environment.
This hub of the network, though evident at a smaller scale, has the
most profound and wide-ranging macroscopic impacts. Most notably,
the regulation of gene expression ties in closely to immune activity and
inflammation, key components in the etiology of cancer but also the
perpetuation (or resolution) of chronic inflammatory diseases. Tissues,
made of cells, respond as a whole and behave according to how each
cell behaves—so alterations in gene expression are visible in such dis-
parate organs as respiratory mucous membranes, bone marrow, and the
brain. Again, diet plays a key role in balancing this hub, too, but the
dietary elements that seem to be involved appear to come from more
wild plants than, say, potatoes or tomatoes. Chemicals, such as biofla-
vonoids and other polyphenols, are getting a lot of attention as regula-
tors of gene expression, and they are abundant in medicinal herbs.
By examining these botanicals, we will find a deep connection with
the natural world that reverberates through our entire physiology, from
the tissue to the cellular nucleus (and probably beyond—we just haven’t
WiMeSo.indd 31 2/22/13 10:07 AM
32 n A cuIsIne for medIcIne
explored those levels yet). The hope here is that their reintroduction
will lower cancer rates, address immune dysfunction, and minimize
the impact of chronic inflammatory disease (from “simple” ailments,
such as osteoarthritis, to more complex conditions, like lupus). These
plants resonate through our history as a clear tone rings through an
open space, and bringing them back into our lives may be one of the
best ways to deal with (or prevent) the mysterious ailments that con-
tinue to haunt us, and for which modern medicine has, at best, pallia-
tive drugs and, at worst, outright poisons.
How can we be sure that these three “hubs”—neuromuscular tone,
digestive/metabolic activity, and genetic expression—are truly a com-
prehensive enough “top-level” description of the human physiological
network? In a practical sense, the answer to this question makes no
difference. If anyone could propose a viable system that would posi-
tively impact stress and mood, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, can-
cer, and chronic inflammatory disease, then I would respond with a
resounding “Let’s get started!”
Taken together, these diseases have a huge impact on modern pro-
ductivity and quality of life. They are also the areas where modern
medicine, despite its stunning successes elsewhere, has fallen short—
which is not surprising, given how hyperspecialized the discipline has
become. We are ready for new (or is it old?) ideas to come into play.
These three hubs cover most of the areas of health that a layperson
could hope to treat safely at home. Massive infection—forget about it.
Broken bones—take me to the emergency room. Kidney disease and
pneumonia—though a skilled herbalist might have something to offer,
both of these are relatively rare conditions nowadays, and areas where
modern medicine excels. Given how strongly immunity and inflamma-
tion figure in all disease processes, adjusting the function of our third
metabolic hub might help in these more dire cases, too. One final area
that may be an exception is fertility and reproductive health. There
are interesting options in traditional plant-based healing modalities
that might have a role to play here as well. I do not address them spe-
WiMeSo.indd 32 2/22/13 10:07 AM
A cuIsIne for medIcIne n 33
cifically, not only to maintain simplicity and clarity, but also because
the rebalancing of our second hub—metabolic function (vis-à-vis the
liver)—affects reproductive hormone status. If you are interested, there
are numerous resources available.*
This simple, three-part network provides a way to understand and
relate to physiology that is accessible and practical, and one with which
we can all identify because we see and feel its effects daily. Additionally,
it offers a context within which we can assess the effectiveness of tra-
ditional plant remedies by highlighting their strengths: systems inter-
acting with systems. So, in the end, the case to be made is that these
plants, which are simple to grow and prepare and yet quite complex
in their nature, can affect these three physiological hubs in powerful,
predictable, and consistent ways. I hope to show you that such a case
can successfully be made, and that the implications underscore the
importance of bringing traditional medicine back into the cultural
mainstream in order to cope with the vicissitudes of modern life.
Taking up our wild weeds, let us walk into the field and forest
together, mindful that, when we return to our homes and communi-
ties, we will be changed, more entangled, more infused with the green
blood of our botanical companions. What this will do to our culture
I cannot predict, but I hold great hope that the benefits far outweigh
the risks.
*Among the best are DeLuca’s Botanica Erotica and Green’s The Male Herbal.
WiMeSo.indd 33 2/22/13 10:07 AM
34
2
Aromatics
Open and Flow
Let the fragrance of the Eye of Horus adhere to thee.
Fire of incense.
O Pharaoh, I have come, I have brought to thee the Eye of
Horus,
That thou mayest equip thine face with it, that it may
purify thee,
That its fragrance may [come] to thee.
The Pyramid Texts,
“Ritual of Bodily Restoration of the
Deceased, and Offerings,”
Lines 18d, 20a, 20b ca. 2300 BCE
In darkness, or perhaps faint candlelight, deep in the vaults of the
pyramid, an Egyptian royal embarks on the journey to the afterlife.
His priest—who has already overseen the elaborate preparation of the
ruler’s body through ten weeks of disemboweling, bathing, curing, and
anointing with highly scented plants—has lit the incense and a warm
smoke begins to rise in the cavernous space. The recipe for this incense
WiMeSo.indd 34 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 35
has been closely guarded for many years, a precise mixture of pine resin
and honey, frankincense and myrrh, juniper, cypress, calamus, and cin-
namon.* It is everyone’s hope that, after the priest utters the spells of
reanimation, the pharaoh will take his place in the underworld and
continue his rule under the influence of Osiris. As the smoke from the
aromatic plants permeates the hall, memories are evoked, consciousness
is shifted, and all participants begin to occupy a space that is not just
physically, but also psychically, different. Without being intoxicating,
the incense nevertheless has an effect.
The smells in this ritual are carefully orchestrated for the express
purpose of evoking this shift in consciousness. They serve as a message
to the gods above (smoke always rises) as well as those of the under-
world. They tap into deep-seated patterns of association, linked to a
unique fingerprint, while relaxing the body and focusing the mind on
the task at hand. For the pharaoh, the aromatic oils and resins used in
mummification literally ensure near immortality (of his physical tissue,
at least) by sterilizing his body and helping to preserve it for thousands
of years.
Later, after everyone has left through narrow, tortuous passage-
ways, the participants of lesser rank will speak in hushed tones about
the experience and about the indescribably magical air—its feel, its
smell—as the pharaoh embarked on his journey. The entire ritual will
be forever embodied in the aromatics, and a chance waft of calamus
reed and spices in the marketplace might immediately bring them back
to it, if even for a moment.
But before beginning his ceremony, the priest may have consumed
a special brew made with many of the herbs he used to prepare the
incense, steeped perhaps in a little of the best wine. I can imagine the
same aromatics first entering his stomach, where they are warmed and,
like the incense, try to rise upward. Finding nowhere to go, they make
their way onward through the narrow, tortuous passageways of the
*There are many recipes for this famous incense blend known as Kyphi. For example, see
Manniche’s Sacred Luxuries.
WiMeSo.indd 35 2/22/13 10:07 AM
36 n AromAtIcs
small intestine and into the priest’s blood, through the tangle of the
liver, to the heart, and, from there, finally, to the cavernous chambers
of the lungs. Here, as the rooms shrink and expand in a great, synchro-
nized, rhythmic pulse, the aromatics find an outlet, rise up and out of
the warm blood, mix with the great and swirling winds, and rush out
on the breath.
Is the use of plants necessary to bring one to the trancelike, fluid state
of consciousness so often sought in traditional rituals and religious
ceremonies? Certainly not. Many of the same effects can be achieved
through meditative practice, either using the mind, the body, or both.
Zazen achieves this. Martial arts achieve this. Running achieves this.
The list goes on and on. But it has always been fascinating to me that
traditional cultural systems feature some form of smell, some use of
aromatic herbs, in their most important rituals. Frankincense will
forever be associated in my mind with the high, vaulted cathedrals
of Catholic Italy. Native people of the Western Hemisphere employ
Artemisias (sagebrush), cedar, and other highly scented plants in their
ceremonies. In East Africa, citrus peel and cinnamon are mixed for
nerves and palpitations.
1
Aboriginal culture in Australia often uses aro-
matic plants, especially in rituals to drive away “evil spirits” and evil
influences. Eastern cultures, from India through Indonesia, China,
and Japan, feature elaborate incense blends that employ the abundant
resinous and aromatic plants found locally.* Oftentimes, some or all of
these blends are also consumed as part of meals or special brews. What
we will find is that there are very good reasons for this similarity of use
across the world and that it often comes down to dispelling harmful
influences on the mind and body, helping to relax and attune people
who consume them to the flow of events around and within them.
Ceremony marks change, marks transition. We set milestones in
*For an excellent overview of aromatherapy, consult Lis-Balchin’s Aromatherapy Science.
The first two chapters provide a brief overview of the history, definitions, and traditional
ethnobotanical uses of scent in many cultures.
WiMeSo.indd 36 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 37
our lives not only to remember important events, but perhaps even
more to acknowledge that our existence is changing, moving into a
new phase. So we pass into adulthood, marry, celebrate the birth of our
children, ritualize the deaths of our forebears, and perform countless
other ceremonies, both in our community and in private. They range
from the very simple (a cup of tea on a bright, cool morning and an
intention set for the day’s work) to the elaborately complex (I’ve been
to some incredible weddings). Something special happens during these
times, something akin to the shift experienced deep inside the pyra-
mid, something that attunes us to the flow of events around us. We
turn to ceremony during these peak times because attunement to the
flow of events simply makes us feel better, more connected, and more
at peace with the tumult of change. And we almost always include aro-
matic plants in these ceremonies.
It’s a good thing that we have learned to do this, because in nature
we see constant tension. One could argue that our entire environment
is in a near-permanent state of change, pushing and pulling between
poles of flux. The Chinese, among others, recognized this long ago,
detailing the interactions of yin and yang, the one growing, wrestling,
struggling, and eventually changing into the other. Seasons move from
cold and dry to hot and moist, with transitions characterized by rapid
oscillations between the extremes of each and usually accompanied by
intense winds. Inside us, different levels of tension and tone character-
ize different periods of our lives: waking and sleeping, activity and rest,
adolescence and senescence. The whole of our internal milieu is a liv-
ing ecosystem in and of itself. We have our own tensions, seasons, and
fluctuating populations. Big upheavals in our lives are reflected in this
internal environment. Just like storms and hurricanes in meteorology,
traditional systems of medicine liken these upheavals to a sort of inner
“wind,” often troubling the mind and the belly, or manifesting as areas
of shifting tension in the body.
Instinctively, plants with strong smells seem connected to wind, or
at least to the air. Their presence may be noticed on the breeze before
WiMeSo.indd 37 2/22/13 10:07 AM
38 n AromAtIcs
you even see them. So perhaps they could have a connection to the
internal “wind” that arises during times of tension and change, and this
might help explain why we so often turn to them in our ceremonies of
transition. The Chinese text Neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of
Medicine; I recommend Maoshing Ni’s translation), which was most
likely composed between 400 BCE and 200 BCE, tells the story of
Huang Di, the yellow emperor, a mythical figure who was well-known
as a child prodigy and brought ideas about divination, Taoist philoso-
phy, and medicine to the empire. He is found in his court, or outdoors
near rivers and in the forest and countryside, looking at tortoise shells
and discussing matters that relate to life, health, and balance with his
ministers and advisors.
One day Huang Di asks Qi Bo, one of his most trusted counselors,
what the secret of preserving health is. Qi Bo, in his usual piercing
wisdom, replies: “Every individual’s life is intimately connected with
Nature. How people accommodate and adapt to the seasons and the
laws of Nature will determine how well they draw from the origin or
spring of their lives. . . . When one can manage the polarity changes of
the Universe, one will have clarity and not be confused by any disor-
der.”
2
But how might we go about measuring how well we are manag-
ing? How can we quantify our state of internal tension, so we can see
how aromatic plants might affect it?
HearT raTe VariabiliTy, or THe case of THe
HaPPy feTus (and THe HaPPy HearT)
The method of divining people’s internal physiological state by listen-
ing to their hearts or feeling their pulses has a long and storied history.
In China again, pulse reading has been elevated to a fine art.* Other
*For an accessible and clear description of pulse assessment in traditional Chinese medi-
cine, see Ted J. Kaptchuck’s The Web That Has No Weaver. This book has lots more there
than just pulse diagnosis, but it’s one of the most easily understandable ways to approach
this subject without actually holding the wrists of hundreds of people—and it includes a
great story of a Tibetan pulse-reader making an accurate diagnosis on the cardiac ward.
WiMeSo.indd 38 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 39
branches of Asian medicine have also valued more about the pulse
than simply its speed. Ibn Sina (more commonly known as Avicenna),
the brilliant eleventh-century Persian doctor who brought European
medicine out of the dark ages and gave us the concept of clinical trials,
wrote extensively on the pulse in his Canon of Medicine, emphasizing
how it changed and moved in response to different stimuli.
3
Beyond
the historical context, one hears recurrent stories of traditional prac-
titioners holding a patient’s radial artery for five, fifteen, or thirty
minutes and obtaining the same, accurate diagnoses that require lab
and imaging work costing thousands of dollars in a hospital. While
I make no such claims in my practice, I often examine the character
and quality of blood flow in my clients. When I feel the pulse cours-
ing through someone’s wrist, I note its obvious characteristics first, but
then “settle in” for a while and try to get a feel for how it changes,
moment to moment and minute to minute, in an attempt to get a han-
dle on its variability. All these exemplify traditional ways to gauge a
person’s internal state of tension, her attunement to and comfort with
the changes that are molding her life.
European medicine has its own history of exploring how the heart-
beat varies moment to moment, and what this may mean. The bio-
medical model has actually become quite sophisticated in its ability
to assess the internal state of health and psychological tension in an
individual by examining the heart rate. As usual, however, it’s a bit late
to the party and relies on mathematics and machinery rather than a
visceral understanding. But the results are no less fascinating or impor-
tant. The story begins in Europe.
Eighteenth-century England was a time and place of great intel-
lectual ferment: James Watt was developing steam engines to drive
the mining industry; Erasmus Darwin (Charles’s grandfather) was
practicing medicine with opium, heavy metals, and newly discov-
ered “alkaloids” from plants as his mainstay pharmacological agents;
Josiah Wedgwood was creating new kinds of pottery based on tech-
niques brought from China; and poets, such as William Blake, were
WiMeSo.indd 39 2/22/13 10:07 AM
40 n AromAtIcs
documenting the spirit of this romantic era. Widespread, methodical
scientific discovery was in its infancy, and advances from this time
(such as the recognition that air was made of multiple gases) would
end up powering the industrial revolution. Additionally, the state of
understanding was such that “generalists” (those who dabbled in many
fields of research) could still make substantial breakthroughs. It was an
exciting time in European history—a period when the potential and
promise of scientific inquiry was burgeoning.*
In this environment Stephen Hales, a parson, chemist, plant and
animal physiologist, and inventor (many were inventors at that time),
performed his research on the changes in heart rate observed in ani-
mals; horses in particular. His experiments were very simple and cer-
tainly crude by today’s standards; nevertheless, he provided us with
the first scientifically documented example of a heart rate variability
(HRV) pattern. That is to say, he came up with the first description
in Western medicine of how the changes in beats per minute of the
heart mirrored other physiological processes consistently and predict-
ably. His discovery has been expanded on substantially but remains
important today.
†
Hales documented what is now called “respiratory sinus arryth-
mia” (RSA), which basically means that he observed pulse rates in
horses increasing when they are breathing in, and returning to a nor-
mal baseline when they are exhaling.
4
This happens consistently and
is something you can easily observe in yourself. Feel your pulse for a
few seconds, just to get an idea of your “normal.” Then take a big, deep
breath. Your pulse rate will increase, reach a peak just before your lungs
fill completely, and come back down again. This fluctuation occurs in
most mammalian species and may not seem like much of a revelation.
If you are like me, you may immediately think that there is a simple
explanation for what is happening, something along the lines of extra
*See The Lunar Men, Uglow’s thoroughly entertaining and personal glimpse into mid -
eighteenth-century England.
†For a biography of Hales, see Clark-Kennedy’s Stephen Hales.
WiMeSo.indd 40 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 41
pressure in the chest “squishing” the heart and making it beat faster
when the lungs are full of air. But it turns out that the real answer is a
bit more elusive and interesting.
Medical science began work on what would be three separate
fronts, attempting to characterize what was occurring during RSA:
(1) the physiological research front tried to explain the causes for the
effect; (2) in the clinic, physicians began to explore what types of ill-
nesses might be related to the same physiological basis; and (3) eventu-
ally, those interested in mental health focused on what this all might
mean for mind and mood.
5
Franciscus Cornelius Donders, the youngest of nine (and the only
boy—much to his parents’ delight, though probably not his), was a
physiologist who began his professorship in 1847 at the University
of Utrecht, in the Netherlands, at age twenty-nine. His research
focused on how the brain connects to the rest of the body: how
blood nourishes it, how long it takes for nerve impulses to travel up
to it, and, crucially for our discussion, how it and the nervous system
might link heart rate to respiration. In 1868 he identified the vagus
nerve, a long, twining fiber that leaves the skull and connects to the
salivary glands, lungs, heart, and gut, shuttling signals and informa-
tion between them, as the probable “relayer” in the case of RSA.
6

It seemed that information on respiration was being sent up to the
brain on the same bundle of nerves that carried heart rate informa-
tion and that these signals were possibly integrated (“talking” to each
other and modulating each other) somewhere in the brain stem (all
of which has been repeatedly confirmed, even through today).* As
the research progressed into the twentieth century, it became clear
that the greater, more regular, and more frequent the shifts in heart
rate noticed during RSA, the greater the amount of “tone,” or activ-
ity, in the vagus nerve bundle.
*See, for instance, Grossman and Kollai’s research, detailed in “Respiratory Sinus
Arrhythmia.”
WiMeSo.indd 41 2/22/13 10:07 AM
42 n AromAtIcs
This point is worth reemphasizing because it is the central idea
that physiological research has brought to the understanding of
HRV: the heart rate itself varies, yes, but the way it varies (that is, the
pattern in the variations) changes depending on how much activity
is occurring along the vagus nerve. So when the vagus nerve is more
active, the variations in heart rate noticed during RSA become more
substantial and somewhat more frequent, and, also, apparently, a bit
more regular. In other words, when changes in HRV become more
regular and oscillate from one peak to the next over the period of
about seven to ten seconds (or about 0.15 Hz to 0.1 Hz) it is safe
to assume that the vagus nerve is more active. But if the changes in
HRV are less regular, or oscillating at lower frequencies (if any reg-
ular pattern can be detected at all), it usually indicates that other
forces are at work.
So take this example: you are sitting quietly, breathing normally, and
hooked up to a device that gives you your instantaneous heart rate (by
very precisely measuring the time between heartbeats, and translating
that to a beats-per-minute figure). If you’ve ever used a heart rate monitor
in the gym, then you know what I’m talking about (though you may not
have been sitting quietly). Let’s say your beats-per-minute count starts at
65. Over the course of five seconds or so, it gets up to 70. Then, over the
next five seconds, it goes back down to 65. And the cycle of up and down
keeps repeating itself, roughly every ten seconds. You are experiencing a
recurrent change in heart rate: your HRV pattern is clearly visible and
repeats regularly about every ten seconds. Then, the cat knocks over that
same flowerpot again. So much for that . . .
This line of physiological inquiry has brought us to the concept
that, by measuring the patterns of change in heart rate, we can divine
something about what’s happening internally,
7
especially as it relates
to the vagus nerve and its level of activity. This nerve is the messenger
of the “rest-and-digest” side of our system, the countervailing current
to the “fight-or-flight” response, the yin to our yang. So perhaps these
regular, ten-second fluctuations in heart rate might tell us that we are
WiMeSo.indd 42 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 43
in a state that is relatively less “fight-or-flight,” relatively less stressed,
relatively less tense. Now we’re getting somewhere.
But we can’t draw any firm conclusions until we examine a bit of
the research on the clinical side of things. To get a handle on whether
measuring changes in heart rate variability can tell us anything about
what a person is truly experiencing, what his level of distress (or peace-
ful appreciation) might be, we need to be able to track the HRV fluc-
tuations, while at the same time monitoring a disease process or any
other type of life-changing event. If aromatic plants have an effect on
our internal state of tension, helping us move more peacefully with
the flow of events all around us—as I contend—we need to first make
a clear link between HRV and that internal state of tension. If this
two-way link is conclusively established, then we might set out to see
whether aromatic plants have an effect on HRV fluctuations. The
whole reason we are even discussing HRV is to arrive at a more objec-
tive assessment of inner stress than is given by answering the question
“How’s it going?”
It turns out that the first clinical observations on the significance
of HRV fluctuations were conducted by obstetricians.
8
Makes sense,
right? Not only is birth perhaps the first (and maybe most dramatic)
life-changing event, but a fetus has precious few variables to disrupt its
HRV fluctuations. Either it is getting what it needs or it isn’t. Worldly
concerns do not trouble it (yet). It cares about the nutrition it’s getting,
how Mom is doing, whether that umbilical cord is out of the way, and,
once labor begins, how those contractions are going.
Scientific monitoring of the fetal heart rate, including discussion of
its variability, began with Edward Hon, an obstetrician who was working
at Yale in 1958. His first insights centered on heart rate decelerations—
periods when the fetus’s heartbeat slowed down considerably.
9
This
would usually happen during labor but sometimes even during routine
prenatal observation. As you can imagine, he quickly found that these
drops in heart rate could be bad signs. Furthermore, once a series of
pronounced decelerations occurred, things were usually pretty far along
WiMeSo.indd 43 2/22/13 10:07 AM
44 n AromAtIcs
in the bad direction. Dr. Hon needed a little more warning. He began
to notice that regular fluctuations in the fetal heart rate would start to
“flatten out,” or disappear, before the big decelerations started, and he
began to find that a loss in fetal HRV was associated with a distressed
state.
10
Dr. Hon was monitoring his patients using a modified electrocar-
diogram (the machine that measures the electrical activity of the heart
using electrodes strapped to the body). This gave him useful infor-
mation and allowed him to glimpse how the ups and downs of the
fetal heart rate might indicate how well things were going inside the
uterus. But it was Konrad Hammacher, an obstetrician and researcher
in Düsseldorf, Germany, who took it to the next level.
On most evenings, after his long shifts at the Women’s Hospital in
Düsseldorf, Dr. Hammacher returned to the medical school and worked
on developing a machine that might record patterns in fetal heart rate
and also the contractions of the laboring mother’s uterus. Usually con-
tractions brought on a slight fetal heart rate deceleration at about the
same time, but a more pronounced deceleration shortly after a contrac-
tion was associated with a more dangerous situation. So it would be
useful to have a machine that could record both the heartbeat of the
fetus and the contractions of the uterus at the same time. That way, an
obstetrician could see the fetal heart rate, its variability, its accelerations
and decelerations, and how they related to maternal contractions all on
one strip of paper. He decided the best way to do this was to have his
machine listen for fetal heart sounds (rather than electrical activity) and
measure pressure coming from the mother’s abdomen (which increases as
the uterus contracts). By continuously recording these two measurements
on paper at the same time, and later teaming up with Hewlett-Packard
to mass-produce the device he came up with, Dr. Hammacher invented
the modern cardiotocograph, or electronic fetal monitor, which is a cru-
cial tool in the practice of obstetrics today. In effect, watching its output
over time is much like holding a person’s radial artery pulse, and equally
as fascinating: we get a deep appreciation of her internal state.
WiMeSo.indd 44 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 45
Doctors today describe the ideal output from these machines as
showing a fetal heart rate between 110 and 160 beats per minute, with
“moderate” variability (the line is squiggly), and no “late decelerations”
(slowdowns that occur after the uterine contractions).
11
One of the
worst signs to witness: the fetal heart rate trace loses all variability, and
turns from a squiggly, ever-changing, ever-adapting tightrope walker to
a flat, smooth curve. That indicates that the living system of the fetus
is losing its capacity to adapt to and integrate with the changes in its
environment. In other words, it is dying.
Most traditional cultures burn aromatic plants, or strew them about,
during labor and birth. Monks in Lhasa use local cedar and wormwood.
In India and Persia, frankincense is burned for forty days and nights,
starting the night of a birth, to honor mother and child and “dispel
evil.” This practice is echoed in the New Testament story of the birth
of Jesus. Roman culture used floral incenses and waters (featuring lots
of rose) in preparation for, during, and after labor. And while some have
talked about the antiseptic qualities of most aromatic plants as being the
“original reason” for using them in the context of birth, as well as an
explanation for their power to “dispel evil” (that is, germs), or simply to
cover the sometimes unpleasant odor of childbirth, I contend that their
principal use stemmed from the plants’ ability to modulate both mater-
nal and fetal stress and tension.
12
These represent the “evil” traditional
cultures are attempting to dispel. Thus it is not surprising to me that
modern research shows that exposure to aromatics reduces maternal and
fetal stress, evidenced by an increase in high-frequency heart rate vari-
ability patterns—waves peaking every seven to ten seconds. As a tight-
rope walker might tell you, more frequent adjustments are better.
In the fetus, the complete loss of heart rate variability is one of the
strongest clinical signs of fetal distress. But going back to the physiolog-
ical research on HRV, recall that the “low-stress” state was character-
ized by a roughly six-to-nine cycles per minute oscillation in heart rate
(equivalent to a maximum heart rate occurring every seven to ten sec-
onds). Once these cycles start to disappear from the fetal heart monitor’s
WiMeSo.indd 45 2/22/13 10:07 AM
46 n AromAtIcs
strip, it can presage distress to come. Not as bad as a complete loss
of variability, but nevertheless an ominous sign. Clinical research in
adults has focused on this six-to-nine cycles per minute frequency
(often termed the “high frequency,” or HF, band of heart rate vari-
ability). You may remember that, based on the work of Donders at the
University of Utrecht in the late nineteenth century, this HF band
of oscillations is associated with increased activity in the vagus nerve,
the main channel for “rest-and-digest” parasympathetic activity in the
nervous system. Perhaps, when we’re in the HF band, we are more
relaxed and at peace with our surroundings (fetuses certainly seem to
be). What could this mean for the heart muscle itself? It is likely that
the longer one spends in the HF band of heart rate variability, the less
stressed the cardiovascular system. After all, the vagus nerve speaks
gently to our hearts, encouraging slow, measured strokes and suppress-
ing the secretions of vessel-constricting chemicals. If this is the case,
we might expect that a loss in heart rate variability and a decrease in
time spent in the HF range might be linked with greater rates of heart
disease, high blood pressure, maybe even heart attack and death.
Starting in the early 1990s, this link became clear to clinical research-
ers who focused on heart disease and heart attacks. David Ewing, at the
University Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland (on the site of the Royal
Infirmary), was one of the first to notice that some patients, after a heart
attack, had poor HRV and lost those high-frequency fluctuations.
13

During the 1980s, others observed decreased vagus nerve activity pre-
ceding episodes of a bad heart rhythm disturbance, known as ventricular
tachycardia (spasmodic, irregular jerking of the heart muscle that often
precedes a heart attack). Research linking low HRV and heart disease
was progressing.
14
But it was Ewing who first began to use HRV as a way
to predict whether heart attack mortality was more likely before a second
heart attack happened. He reported that his patients with poor HRV
and reduced HF fluctuations following a heart attack had “long term
survival . . . considerably reduced, independent of other risk factors.”
15

A few years later, he found that observing a decreased HRV, obtained
WiMeSo.indd 46 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 47
from twenty-four-hour heartbeat monitoring, was enough to accurately
separate individuals who had angina (chest pain related to poor blood
flow to the heart) from normal individuals.
16
In another strong piece of
research that followed over 560 individuals for almost three years, he
teamed up with Italian scientists to assign a risk factor for heart attack
to those with poor HRV. Having fewer fluctuations meant a roughly 3.5
times greater risk of having a heart attack and dying.
17
All this sounds a
lot like sophisticated pulse diagnosis to me.*
Numerous studies followed up on this initial research during the
first decade of the twenty-first century, and the results generally fall
into line. As the variability of the heart rate decreases, the risk of heart
attack goes up, as does the risk of death. A summary of these studies,
which merged the data of almost 3,500 cases, found that a reduction
in variability of the heartbeat meant a fourfold greater chance of dying
within three years.
18
This is greater than the risk posed by smoking.
Research conducted in 1998 by examining the participants in the
Framingham Heart Study surveyed over two thousand patients at the
Massachusetts clinic and recorded their HRV and blood pressures.
19

They tracked them for four years and found that those with poor heart
rate variability were consistently more likely to have high blood pressure
(true for both men and women). High blood pressure is itself another
risk factor associated with heart disease. The Framingham researchers
concluded that people with poor heart rate variability probably were
experiencing a nervous system problem, an imbalance and dysfunction
of their vagus nerve signaling, and the heart was suffering as a result.
†
*And that is precisely what Chin-Ming et al.’s study, “Radial Pressure Pulse and Heart
Rate Variability in Normotensive and Hypertensive Subjects,” confirms, using a mechani-
cal pulse-reading machine—a fascinating read.
†In the study “Reduced Heart Rate Variability and New-Onset Hypertension,” J. P.
Singh and colleagues commented: “A noteworthy finding in our study was that the LF
[low-frequency] component of HRV in men was observed to be a stronger predictor of
hypertension than body mass index, a measure of obesity” (page 296). In conclusion,
“The presence of reduced HRV in hypertensive subjects and the association of LF with
new-onset hypertension are consistent with the hypothesis that dysregulation of the
autonomic nervous system plays a role in the pathogenesis of hypertension” (page 296).
WiMeSo.indd 47 2/22/13 10:07 AM
48 n AromAtIcs
In sum, what we have discovered clinically from our exploration of
heart rate variability in humans before, during, and long after birth is
that it can provide a clear measure of health in the heart muscle itself.
So losing variability may be one of the starkest warning signs of that
all-important cause of death in the modern society: cardiovascular dis-
ease. As the heart loses its ability to adapt to ever-changing circum-
stances, its rhythm becomes rigid, stubborn, tense. As Qi Bo might
have said, that vital muscle loses its ability to “respond to the polarity
changes of the Universe.” Not particularly good.
HearT raTe VariabiliTy, sTress, and Mood:
HaPPy is THe suPPle HearT
Having poor variability in your pulse is a warning sign for high blood
pressure, heart disease, and heart attack. This seems connected to the
level of activity in the vagus nerve, a key messaging bundle for our
autonomic nervous system, the relay for many of our “gut feelings.”
But does a defect in the heart cause the vagus nerve to become less
active or is it the other way around? If we are under constant stress,
and don’t indulge the “rest-and-digest” side of our physiology enough,
could that somehow damage the heart and lead to death, like a heart
literally breaking from too much stress? I suspect that, like so much of
how human physiology works, nerves and heart participate in a feed-
back loop where one leads the other farther down a dangerous path. As
the nervous system experiences stress, as it retreats from relaxation, the
heart hardens. This makes the cardiovascular system less able to endure
and respond to stress; thus, the nervous system swings more wildly at
every near-miss. And onward the cycle repeats itself. But I also think
that the changes in cardiac function evidenced by poor HRV most
likely have strong roots in the nervous system because even transient
changes in mood and perception have dramatic, powerful, and measur-
able effects on HRV. Though these effects dissipate, they may become
cumulative if experienced over and over again, day after day, year after
WiMeSo.indd 48 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 49
year. This has been the focus of the psychiatric arm of research into
heart rate variability. What does it mean for our mood, our happiness,
our level of internal stress?
Clinical researchers and physicians who deal with behavioral and
emotional disruptions (such as anxiety and depression, but also poor
response to stress and patterns like compulsive disorders) began to notice
connections between emotional state and HRV around the same time as
cardiologists were discovering its connection to heart disease and heart
attacks.* Some of the earliest psychological investigations into HRV
came from exploring the link between major depressive disorder, panic
disorder, and cardiovascular death. A connection was already becoming
quite clear.
†
Mental health researchers began to wonder if a decline in
HRV could be predictive of the disease states they were observing. After
all, if major depression and fatal heart attacks are linked,
‡
and loss of
HRV (especially the high-frequency oscillations) is also linked with fatal
heart attacks (as we have just seen), then perhaps major depression and
other imbalances are also characterized by similar changes in HRV.
Let us take a moment to think about this. It is not a given that
emotional state and mental functioning, heart health, and the variabil-
ity of the heart rate are necessarily connected. Depressed, anxious, or
stressed-out individuals could have a different chemical makeup that
somehow adversely affects the heart muscle independently of how
*See, for instance, Lacey’s 1967 study, “Somatic Response Patterning and Stress,” or Kals-
beek’s 1963 study, “Scored Irregularity of the Heart Pattern.” These early efforts largely
left the significance of HRV unrecognized, but a correlation was emerging nevertheless.
†Of course, the heart-mood connection has long been recognized. It is an intuitive one.
Some of the earliest research includes observations that, when the heart is damaged
or defective, abnormal psychological states may result. For example, see Maholick and
Logne’s 1949 study, “Psychosomatic Aspects of Heart Disease,” or Benedict and Evans’s
1952 study, “Second-Degree Heart Block and Wenckebach Phenomenon Associated
with Anxiety.”
‡This topic has become extensively researched and the association is well established.
For some of the pioneering work see Anda et al.’s 1993 study, “Depressed Affect, Hope-
lessness, and the Risk of Ischemic Heart Disease.” Almost twenty years later the under-
standing of the topic has become much more complete. See Fiedorowicz et al.’s 2011
study, “The Association between Mood and Anxiety Disorders with Vascular Diseases.”
WiMeSo.indd 49 2/22/13 10:07 AM
50 n AromAtIcs
variable the heartbeat is; after all, reduced HRV is not the only con-
nection to death from heart disease. But if this link truly existed, then
beyond connecting reduced HRV to our mental/emotional state, it
would also provide a powerful piece of evidence that the mind and
the body, and, in particular, our emotional-processing centers and our
cardiovascular system, are not really separate entities.
Further, this would give much greater weight to HRV as an indica-
tor of balance between individual and environment, between the inter-
nal organs and the mind. As you can imagine, already in the 1990s,
research was confirming this three-way link between the brain, the
heart, and HRV.
20
But in terms of internal balance—or internal “coher-
ence,” as it is now termed—even deeper and more far-ranging implica-
tions were just over the horizon. These implications would come to
define a state of being in which humans, and presumably many ani-
mals, experience deep appreciation and satisfaction, highly creative and
adaptive thinking, and feelings of strong connection to their environ-
ment. This state, as we shall see, can be elicited by a variety of prac-
tices, including the use of aromatic plants. Some have called it “being
in the flow.” Huang Di, the yellow emperor, would have called it sim-
ply “health.”
One of Rollin McCraty’s first contributions to the research on con-
nections between HRV and emotional state was published in the
American Journal of Cardiology and consisted of a tidy experiment in
which a couple dozen individuals were either asked to elicit feelings
of anger or feelings of genuine appreciation toward an individual or
situation they had experienced.
21
Changes in heart rate variability were
monitored during the process. McCraty had trained his subjects in a
technique called the “freeze-frame method,” which teaches you to reset
your emotional state and refocus it on the requested emotion. Training
had taken at least three months (but up to two years in some cases).
Regardless of the amount of training the subjects underwent, the
results were clear: recalling anger or frustration consistently decreased
WiMeSo.indd 50 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 51
HRV and moved any regular heart rate oscillations out of the HF
band. Conversely, experiencing appreciation increased variability of
the heart rate, and the variations took on the characteristic, recurrent
seven-to-ten-second pattern we’ve seen is associated with increased
activity in the vagus nerve. These results alone are pretty remarkable:
if you spend your time angry or frustrated, your heart behaves like the
heart of someone who is four times more likely to die of a heart attack.
Not only that, but with just a little mindfulness training, you can con-
trol your heart rate variability fairly easily and put yourself in a state
that seems associated with less cardiovascular disease.
McCraty published his results from the lab at the Institute of
HeartMath in Boulder Creek, California. He has since continued
to expand on this original discovery, exploring how music, exercise,
and spiritual experiences affect HRV and connect back to this state
of appreciation and creativity.
22
His results document that anxious,
depressed, chronically stressed, and obsessive individuals experience
declines in their HRV.
23
But his more recent research, conducted
through the first decade of the twenty-first century, substantially
expands the lines of connection between mind and body.
In short, McCraty and his colleague Doc Childre identify a state
they have termed “internal coherence.”
24
Remember that six-to-nine
cycles per minute variation in the heart rate that indicates relaxation,
appreciation, and less heart disease? It is a state where the beats per min-
ute (bpm) of the heart are fluctuating between two regular extremes,
say 65 to 70 bpm, and hitting that maximum of 70 bpm every seven
to ten seconds. It turns out that when this is happening, other vital
rhythms of the body are fluctuating at similar rates, or at least multiples
thereof. This means that for every ten-second-long heart rate fluctua-
tion cycle, you are also going through two complete breath cycles. The
electrical activity in your brain is cycling at a similar frequency. Even
the pulsing of digestive secretions is falling into line. If you’re exercis-
ing, you may be going through four or five complete breath cycles for
every ten-second HRV cycle, but this is coordinated with the cycles of
WiMeSo.indd 51 2/22/13 10:07 AM
52 n AromAtIcs
muscle firing in your thighs. In short, your entire physiology is hitting
the same downbeat, and while some cycles may hit that beat only once
every measure, all of them are in sync. They positively reinforce one
another. Running becomes easier, because the heart is sending blood
to the legs in rhythm with their contracting muscles’ requirements.
Breathing becomes easier, because the diaphragm is contracting in sync
with the core, which is supporting the contractions of the legs.
To get a rough understanding of this effect, try jogging using ran-
dom, unsynchronized arm motions. It’s tough. Then jog naturally, and
notice how your arms swing in sync with your legs, and how much
easier that is. While you’re at it, notice your breathing. You may be
going through six, or four, or even two stride cycles per breath (that
last one would be a good solid effort), but whatever it is, your breathing
and your legs are not disconnected; their pattern of activity is coherent.
When all this coherence is occurring, we feel comfortable, at peace in
our skins and with our surroundings. We are the opposite of anxious,
frazzled, scattered, or depressed. We are in the flow.
So decreased HRV is associated with states of stress, tension,
anger, frustration, anxiety, and depression. All this also seems linked,
not only through HRV but also on its own, to increased heart disease.
This state of decreased HRV has a counterpart, the “healthy” HRV
pattern, in which the heartbeat varies in cycles of six-to-nine cycles per
minute and other physiological rhythms begin to express coherence, or
patterns of change synchronized with HRV. Emotions even out. Stress
is reduced. But what is happening in the nervous system? How does
this relate to our ability to adapt to stressful situations, to perform bet-
ter, in short, to function better in our day-to-day lives?
Julian Thayer knows about synchronizing downbeats. He plays upright
jazz bass and has recorded with a variety of musicians. He continues to
perform live in the United States and Europe. He also composes, and
leads ensembles from behind his bass in pieces that I would characterize
as complexly layered and, when you first hear them, arrhythmic. After
WiMeSo.indd 52 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 53
listening a few more times, however, I notice overlaying lines between
instruments recurring at intervals that, though hard to pin down, have
some degree of spiraling regularity. The music is very organic—perhaps
reflective of an appreciation of our own internal music and rhythms.*
In addition to his jazz career, Thayer is also a professor of clinical
psychology at Ohio State University. His focus there is—you guessed
it—heart rate variability. He is attempting (successfully) to describe a
model of mental process and function that incorporates the rest of the
physiology and uses HRV as a benchmark measurement of each indi-
vidual’s internal state.
†
His approach is to analyze behaviors and, using
techniques of brain imaging such as functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI), link these behaviors to specific areas of the brain and
to patterns of heart rate variability.
Thayer and his colleagues have presented a detailed description
of a web of brain structures, based on the model of the central auto-
nomic network, or CAN (a network first described by Benarroch in
“The Central Autonomic Network”), which accomplishes two tasks
that are crucial to the day-to-day activity of a successful organism.
25

First, the CAN connects to areas in the cortex of our brains (the outer
layers, often called the “gray matter”) and helps to activate those corti-
cal structures involved in the retention of working memory. Working
memory is where we store details of a particular place and time we
are currently experiencing so as to better integrate and process changes
in our surroundings.
26
For instance, it is very difficult to participate
in a good discussion unless you can quickly recall and integrate the
*An album of Thayer’s original compositions, called Zakú, was released in 2007.
†Thayer has published extensively in the field with various colleagues. His more recent
work includes confirmation of the brain/heart/HRV connection in 2010, “The Rela-
tionship of Autonomic Imbalance, Heart Rate Variability and Cardiovascular Disease
Risk Factors”; the role of anxiety and stress on decreasing HRV, also in 2010, “Effects
of Momentary Assessed Stressful Events and Worry Episodes on Somatic Health Com-
plaints”; music and its positive effects on HRV, with R. J. Ellis in 2010, “Music and
Autonomic Nervous System (Dys)function”; marital discord and its effects on HRV in
2011, “Matters of the Variable Heart”; and smoking, depression, and HRV, also in 2011,
“Depression and Smoking.”
WiMeSo.indd 53 2/22/13 10:07 AM
54 n AromAtIcs
points that framed the conversation. This is where working memory
comes in—it allows us to link our brain’s “output” with a whole line of
“inputs” that we feel are pertinent. Since outputs become inputs almost
immediately, the cortical structures involved in this type of processing
require a substantial measure of flexibility and adaptability.
The second major function of the CAN is to bring signals from the
heart, lungs, internal organs, and emotional centers to bear on the mat-
ter of successfully negotiating the present reality.
27
That is, the CAN
takes in information relayed through structures such as the vagus nerve
and emotional content passed through the limbic system, lays out that
information for the cortex to examine, and helps to integrate it into
the whole experience. It links autonomic input, feelings and drives, and
working memory and processing centers into a single state of being.
This is something we actually do every day, and it runs in both direc-
tions. Fear can be deeply felt in the belly, but nausea also has strong
effects on our mood and decision making. You can feel love and long-
ing strongly in your chest, right over the heart, but conversely the con-
striction of blood vessels that can sometimes come with high blood
pressure can also make us more close-minded, less open, less loving.
Between these two functions, the CAN (and its associated
emotional-processing centers in the limbic system) literally acts as
a bridge between mind and body. It is a loosely structured network,
which can actually rearrange itself based on the types of situations we
encounter most often.
28
It thus seems to be a major, central structure
involved in keeping us on top of day-to-day changes, especially unex-
pected sources of stress. As such, it is crucial to successful performance
in response to a wide range of social and cultural demands.
The first step in Thayer’s research involved taking pictures of
blood flowing to the areas that are part of the CAN. Using this tech-
nique (the fMRI mentioned above), he connected increased activity
in the network (as measured by blood flow) with an increase in heart
rate variability, especially in the high-frequency range.
29
Recall that the
HF range of HRV is an indicator of overall heart health, more stable
WiMeSo.indd 54 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 55
mood, and greater activity along the vagus nerve (an important part of
the “rest-and-digest” parasympathetic nervous system). So this network
integrates signals from the body with emotions experienced in the
limbic system and sends them to the perceptual framework currently
stored in our working memory. When it is humming along well, sens-
ing and adapting as it is meant to do, heart rate variability increases
and shifts into the HF band. Our heart is happier for it, presumably,
and we certainly feel less anxious, stressed, frazzled. Based on Thayer’s
findings, it seems the CAN is crucially important for getting—and
keeping—us in the flow of events. And, by looking at HRV, you can
tell how well it’s working.
Ultimately, the model Thayer proposes goes something like this:
When we are in the flow, working efficiently and effectively on a task,
the CAN is efficiently shuttling information from the body and the
limbic system to the cerebral cortex (specifically the prefrontal cortex).
It is also integrating current memories of the task at hand and gener-
ating an ongoing, adaptive framework for our behaviors. Crucially, it
seems the CAN is also inhibiting our fight-or-flight response, which is
very good at what it does but gets in the way if we’re trying to do some-
thing other than fighting or fleeing. If the CAN is active, it literally
feels good inside, and our heart rate variability increases.
What is left to examine is whether folks with high HRV, and espe-
cially high-frequency HRV patterns, are actually better able to perform
executive-function tasks under pressure than those with poor HRV.* If
this is indeed the case, it tells us that having a high degree of HRV means
we are better adapted to our circumstances, more effective in our deci-
sion making, and overall a lot happier and less stressed about everything
we are doing. In short, it means that a high degree of HRV indicates that
we are in a state of internal coherence, that the levels of tension and com-
munication between our internal organs and our brain are well balanced
*For a definition and description of executive function and the areas of the central ner-
vous system believed to be involved, see Shimamura’s “The Role of the Prefrontal Cortex
in Dynamic Filtering.”
WiMeSo.indd 55 2/22/13 10:07 AM
56 n AromAtIcs
and well synchronized. We have also seen that being in this state means
less heart disease and fewer heart attacks, as well as less of a range of psy-
chological complaints. So what did Thayer and his colleagues discover?
From his research, it would seem that those with high HRV at base-
line consistently perform better on tasks involving executive function,
that is, tasks where ongoing focused attention is required. For tasks
that involve programmed responses to stimuli (where the individual
doesn’t have to make a lot of decisions, like a simple one-step task), low
HRV folks do just as well. But when observing the results of a battery
of tests over the first decade of the twenty-first century, Thayer con-
sistently found improved reaction times, fewer false- positive responses,
and greater overall accuracy (summarized in Thayer’s 2009 study,
“Heart Rate Variability, Prefrontal Neural Function, and Cognitive
Performance”). In some tests, he threatened subjects with electric
shock for giving inaccurate answers
30
(though no shocks were actually
delivered). Even when threatened, high-HRV people consistently did
better. High-HRV individuals had lower levels of the stress hormone
cortisol coursing through their veins.
31
They also demonstrated better
and more adaptive situational awareness.
32
The bottom line seems to
validate our thesis on the importance of heart rate variability: it is a
crucial marker of a highly adaptive, efficient, low-stress individual. It is
a marker we should all be pursuing in this current cultural context, as
it shows us how to be more comfortable in our lives and find a way out
of the malaise and overstimulation so often encountered in the general
population. If we can get our heartbeats to vary in a pattern of six-to-
nine cycles per minute, we will essentially be walking through our lives
more ready, more creative, and much happier (and our hearts will be
much happier, too).
Once Thayer established the HRV-CAN performance connection,
his attempts to improve his subjects’ HRV centered on physical train-
ing programs, and he got excellent results putting people through eight-
week exercise regimens designed to increase their HRV.
33
But since this
is a book about plants, my proposal to you is that, even though exer-
WiMeSo.indd 56 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 57
cise is invaluable for defusing stress and making us happier and more
creative (it should be pretty clear by now why this is), aromatic plants
are uniquely suited to improving our HRV and bringing us back into
the flow. Ultimately, I propose that this is why humans have so often
turned to aromatic plants during peak experiences in their lives. They
help us perform better and integrate the lessons of these moments
more efficiently into our individual and collective stories.
Cultures that figure this out are more likely to succeed, and hence
the universal use of aromatic plants in cultural rituals and ceremonies
such as those tied to religion. But we don’t use the aromatics to make
the church smell nice, or to cover up the body odor of sweaty hunters
who return with a kill. We used them, and can use them still, to help
us move through life’s changes more effectively, to learn our lessons
more clearly and gracefully, to make decisions more effectively, and
to be happier about our choices. The key brain structures involved in
this process have been identified. The body is also intimately involved.
Their interplay is evidenced by the degree of heart rate variability.
Now, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we need to confirm that
aromatic plants actually can substantially improve HRV.
aroMaTic PlanTs, HearT raTe VariabiliTy,
and neuroMuscular Tension
I want to start by examining the link between aromatic plant con-
sumption and an increase in high-frequency heart rate variability
(HF HRV). If we can find such a link, we could draw the conclusion
that the consumption of, or exposure to, aromatic plants can help to
keep us adaptable and “in the flow,” largely by improving our ability
to integrate moment-to-moment changes both around and within us.
Aromatic plants might have beneficial effects on our focus and deci-
sion making, and in the end might have a strong role to play in pro-
tecting us from heart disease. Once we find that aromatics increase
HRV, we can explore what traditional herbal medicine and modern
WiMeSo.indd 57 2/22/13 10:07 AM
58 n AromAtIcs
pharmacological research have to say about these plants. I would like
to conclude by offering the idea that our bodies and cultural systems
are well tuned to experiencing aromatic plants directly, every day (or
at least fairly often). This is because aromatics have been around since
before human beings emerged on the planet (chimpanzees, for exam-
ple, seek out strongly scented herbs for a lot of reasons that don’t have
anything to do with killing bacteria), and they have been featured in
the rituals of successful cultures for a long, long time. They are an
important part of who we are.
Research on aromatic plants has focused on a unique subset of
their chemistry: the volatile, or essential, oils.* These complex blends
vary considerably from botanical species to botanical species, but they
have one universal quality: the small size of their component molecules
makes them very easy to vaporize. Even at room temperature, you can
quickly detect the essential oils of an aromatic herb. In studying their
effects (beginning in the 1920s), researchers tried exposing both ani-
mals and humans to a wide range of different plants. Early experiments
involved, among others, valerian, asafoetida, lavender, sandalwood,
roses, violets, and incense gums, such as olibanum. Almost immedi-
ately two broad classes started to emerge: some plants seemed to have
sedative effects, while others were stimulating. Some had dual effects,
depending on the experiment.
34
As research continued, more plants with aromatic essential oils
came under scrutiny. Among them were pine and spruce; neroli,
lemon, and bergamot; rosemary, peppermint, and basil; frankincense
and myrrh; chamomile, clove, and many, many more.
†
The odors still
appeared to be either sedative or enlivening, with some exhibiting both
qualities. However, herbs such as lavender were starting to be regarded
*For a comprehensive summary of the research and an excellent aromatherapy reference,
see Lis-Balchin’s Aromatherapy Science.
†Again, for a review see Lis-Balchin’s Aromatherapy Science. For examples of individual
research papers, see Torii et al.’s “Contingent Negative Variation and the Physiological
Effects of Odor” and Manley’s “Psychophysiological Effects of Odor.”
WiMeSo.indd 58 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 59
as universally calmative, whereas others, such as rosemary, seemed
stimulating in all circumstances.
35
Research on mental performance
was indicating that perhaps rosemary improved results, compared to
lavender, but the latter, though considered more sedative, still caused a
rise in performance compared to no scent at all, and participants felt
pretty mellow throughout the process.
36
When examining aromatics
from the perspective of traditional herbal medicine and aromatherapy,
I will spend a little more time talking about the concept of “warm” and
“cool” aromatics. For now, suffice it to say that there seem to be some
important differences in the various strongly scented plants we know.
Interestingly enough, however, this appears to have no bearing on
our discussion of heart rate variability. Warm or cool, stimulating or
sedating, plants with aromatic qualities consistently increase HRV,
enhancing the adjustments the heart muscle makes to the frequency
of its beats. When exposed to any herb from a wide range of aromat-
ics, people experience physiological changes very similar to those expe-
rienced by runners, meditators, and music lovers.*
37
This means that,
regardless of the immediate effects on the mind of any essential oil,
the mere fact that we are interfacing with a strongly scented plant puts
us into the flow of events and increases our capacity to adapt to stress
and change.
Lavender, traditionally a calmative oil,
†
has been studied in situa-
tions of both acute and chronic anxiety; in general insomnia and insom-
nia of menopause; among students and teachers; even in performance
of night-shift nursing staff.
38
In all cases heart rate variability increased
in those either exposed to the smell, given the plant by mouth, or both.
Bergamot, which, depending on whom you ask, is either sedating or
stimulating,
39
increased HRV in students and teachers.
40
Spruce, often
regarded as stimulating, prevented an excessive stress response after
*Combining music and aromatics is certainly a good way to improve HRV. See Peng, Koo,
and Yu’s “Effects of Music and Essential Oil Inhalation on Cardiac Autonomic Balance.”
†See, for instance, Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. The original dates to 1653 and has
much to say about the use of aromatic plants and their extracts.
WiMeSo.indd 59 2/22/13 10:07 AM
60 n AromAtIcs
subjects had been forced to stare at a computer screen—and increased
the HRV of all participants.
41
Bay laurel, peppermint, lily of the valley,
and more are linked to an increase in HRV,
42
and especially the high-
frequency band of HRV. Even the fragrance of coconuts shows this
effect.
43
In Japan, there is a practice known as shinrin-yoku or “forest
bathing,” where long sessions of deep inhalation are conducted in the
forest. A host of benefits comes to its practitioners, and greater HRV
is one of them.
44
In fact, researchers investigating forest bathing found
that just sticking your nose in woodland moss improves your heart rate
variability.
45
Though the human research is still beginning (the con-
cept of HRV as a measure of comfortable adaptability is still relatively
new), I suspect the results will continue to show that strongly scented
plants consistently enhance HRV in those who smell them, and espe-
cially in those who consume them. We can be more relaxed and at ease,
or more focused and creative, or both. But in any event, since our heart
rate variability increases after using aromatic plants, they will enable us
to better adapt to the changes of nature.
THe TradiTional aPProacH
To further make the case that aromatics attune us to changes and make
us function more efficiently and calmly, let’s examine the use of these
plants in traditional herbal medicine. Having discovered that consum-
ing them has the immediate impact of increasing our heart rate vari-
ability (and promoting all the good effects that go along with that), we
can make this prediction: it is likely that traditional systems of healing
use aromatic plants to address conditions of stress, mental health, and
perhaps also cardiovascular disease. Let us see if this is the case by first
examining what types of plants are used for mental health and then
investigating the various uses of aromatic plants.
Herbalists in the Western tradition tend to classify herbs used for
mental health under the action of nervine, meaning they have an effect
on the nervous system. Within this classification we find sedatives,
WiMeSo.indd 60 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 61
anxiolytics, antidepressants, hypnotics, and more.* Generally speaking,
these herbs are somewhat calming, to different degrees, and fairly safe
until you get into the stronger members of the Papaveraceae family (the
poppies). Those stronger ones are most often reserved for emergency
situations (at least theoretically). What about the plants that are more
of an everyday habit?
One botanical family, the Lamiaceae, or mint family, has a lot
of members in it that are considered “nervine.” Peppermint may
help with focus and alertness
46
but also is well known historically
as a relaxer of tension and spasm, especially in the abdomen but in
the mind as well.
47
It is used to treat headaches, either internally or
rubbed on the temples.
48
Lemon balm is another mint that makes
a delicious tea used to relieve sadness and darker moods. There are
other, more subtle mints as well, such as motherwort and scullcap,
which, at first blush, may not seem incredibly aromatic but contain
rarefied but effective volatile oils that contribute to their effects:
motherwort is used to treat anxiety and heart palpitations, while
scullcap features in many remedies for convulsions and tremor, anxi-
ety, and stress. As we saw above, classic Lamiaceae, such as lavender
and rosemary, have a long track record of use and research in the
area of balancing mood and mental health. One of the more exotic
mints—holy basil, or tulsi—is revered in India as a physical mani-
festation of the Divine. Planted in front of many homes to protect
inhabitants from evil influences, it also serves as a main ingredient
in teas that claim to confer long life, calmness of spirit, and endless
vitality.
49
Almost all the mints are strongly aromatic.
†
Other nervine plants come from a diversity of botanical families.
*For lists of herbal “actions,” references can be found that are relatively old. From the
turn of the twentieth century, see Petersen’s Materia Medica and ClinicalTherapeutics.
For a more recent classification, see Hoffmann’s New Holistic Herbal.
†For references to many of the herbs listed above see Hoffmann’s New Holistic Herbal,
Rosemary Gladstar’s Family Herbal, “Dr. Duke’s Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical
Databases,” and Uri and Felter’s King’s American Dispensatory.
WiMeSo.indd 61 2/22/13 10:07 AM
62 n AromAtIcs
Chamomile, an Asteraceae, is a traditional calmative,* especially used
in children. (As I was growing up, there was always a cold and some-
what sweetened bottle of chamomile tea in the fridge.) Linden is a tree
in the Malvaceae family that makes one of my favorite teas, relaxing but
not sedating (see Uri and Felter’s terse but precise account of linden’s
activities in King’s American Dispensatory). It is milled and blended
into soaps across Provence, France,
50
where it is regarded as a fragrance
second only to lavender. Mimosa, or Albizia, a member of the Fabaceae
family also known as silk tree, has wonderfully aromatic blossoms that
smell like a light combination of citrus and rose. Called the “tree of
happiness,” it is used as a remedy for depression, anxiety, insomnia, and
discontent.
51
Valerian, an herb in its own family whose aroma many
describe as somewhat revolting, is an important sleep aid
52
that was
also used traditionally to relax muscles and improve circulation.
†
Then there are the stronger plants, such as kava (in the Piperaceae
family), which is an intoxicant, though extremely effective as a treat-
ment for anxiety and tension.
53
(This plant was also given a rating of
“Good,” based on the quality of evidence for its effectiveness by Singh
and Ernst in Trick or Treatment?) And Jamaican dogwood, a member
of the Fabaceae family, which was traditionally used as a fish poison
when its grated bark was scattered on the surface of ponds to act as
“bait,” does a great job in addressing pain and sleeplessness.
54
There
is the whole range of Papaveraceae (including the now-illegal opium
poppy): California poppy is used as a gentle sleep aid and pain reliever;
corydalis is a sedative and painkiller.
55
We can round out our over-
view of these nervine plants with another highly aromatic one: the
common hop, found (to varying degrees) in almost all products of the
beer-brewing industry. It is calmative, reduces spasms and anger, and
promotes sleep.
56
These stronger plants have indeed been used for men-
*This property of chamomile is referenced in almost every classic herbal text. See, for
instance, Rosemary Gladstar’s Family Herbal. For an interesting application of chamomile
in adults, see Roberts and Williams’s study, “The Effect of Olfactory Stimulation on Flu-
ency.”
†First referenced by Hippocrates, as quoted by Dioscorides in De Materia Medica. The
Eclectic physicians very much appreciated valerian.
WiMeSo.indd 62 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 63
tal health problems in traditional Western herbalism, but less on a day-
to-day basis and more for specific, immediate, and usually transient
complaints. Nevertheless, the most aromatic one (hops) has certainly
found its way right into everyday use, in most cultures.
So, with the exception of stronger-acting plants (which often con-
tain powerfully intoxicating chemicals from the class known as alka-
loids), most herbs used for common, relatively mild mental health
complaints belong either to the mint family (Lamiaceae), or to a vari-
ety of other botanical families (though it could be argued that more
than half of all the nervines are mints). Aside from the noted excep-
tions, these are all very strongly aromatic plants. Traditional Western
herbal practitioners tend to use aromatics as their go-to, safe, daily
mental health balancers while reserving a few powerful herbs, which
don’t necessarily have strong smells, for times when you need a little
extra kick in your nervine remedy.
Before we expand our view to look at the uses of aromatic plants in
general, what about cardiovascular disease? If aromatic plants improve
HRV, it seems as if traditional systems of healing would have picked up
on this and added aromatics to formulas that treat heart problems. As
it turns out, this seems to be true, though they generally play more of
a supportive role.* One of the most succinct articulations of this prin-
ciple is a classic triad developed by English herbalist David Hoffmann.
He recommends that all formulas for high blood pressure include haw-
thorn berry, dandelion leaf (an herb that promotes the flow of urine),
and some kind of aromatic plant.
57
Some choices might include cramp-
bark, which smells a lot like valerian due to its similar essential oil pro-
file; yarrow, which has an amazing medicinal smell; ginger, with its
warming, spicy aroma; or linden again. The aromatic component of
the formula is said to “open up the circulation,” helping to dilate blood
vessels and reduce blood pressure. This concept is echoed in Chinese
*For instance, see the references to the use of the Leonurus (motherwort) species in tra-
ditional Chinese medicine in Ghorbani et al.’s research, “Ethnobotanical Study of Medic-
inal Plants,” or the highly prevalent use of Ocimum (basil) species in Africa in Mensah et
al.’s research, “Phytochemical Analysis of Medicinal Plants.”
WiMeSo.indd 63 2/22/13 10:07 AM
64 n AromAtIcs
and Ayurvedic medicine,
58
and we will explore it further when we look
at the pharmacological effects of aromatics. For now, suffice it to say
that many traditional healing systems that use plants employ aromatics
as part of a strategy for managing cardiovascular disease, and lean on
them heavily if heart disease is coupled with mental health disturbance.
What about broader uses of aromatics in herbal medicine? Before we
can proceed further, we have to take a moment to explore the art of aro-
matherapy (a term first coined in René-Maurice Gatefossé’s Gatefossé’s
Aromatherapy in 1937). Aromatherapy is a healing system all its own
that employs aromatic plants or their concentrated essential oils. Most
often, the remedies used in aromatherapy are inhaled, though you can
also find them used topically (as massage oils, for example) and even
internally, though this is rare. But since the art of aromatherapy is
exclusively focused on the use of aromatics, we should be able to get
a pretty good idea of what these plants are used for by analyzing the
therapeutic strengths of this modality.
It’s hard to say exactly when aromatherapy began to be regarded
as its own discipline. Certainly, as we have seen, humans have used
strongly scented plants for a very long time. For example, in Egypt the
use of incense (known as senetcher, or the “divine-maker”) has been
part of the culture for over four thousand years.
59
The same can be said
of China and India.
60
In these historical contexts, the use of aromat-
ics centers around two main goals: reducing infection, and enhancing
rituals and ceremonial events (even if the ritual is a simple courtship
dance). In Europe during the Middle Ages, aromatics made a strong
showing as antiseptic agents as well.
61
I have always been somewhat
haunted by the image of the physician during the Great Plague, cov-
ered in a long skin robe, a wide hat, and a mask resembling a stork’s
beak, wandering the wards of the sickhouses. They say the beak of
that mask was stuffed with rosemary and mugwort, and that rosemary
brews were used throughout to wash floors, blankets, and clothing of
the sick, as well as the sores on their plague-ridden bodies.
62
This was
WiMeSo.indd 64 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 65
all for the purpose of cleansing the “bad air”—presumably, by replacing
one air with another, more strongly scented, they would eliminate the
contagion.
So aromatic plants have been important allies for helping our spe-
cies get a handle on infectious agents:* bacteria (but also viruses and
fungi) with whom we have always had an uneasy, though not entirely
unfriendly, relationship. As the risk of infection began to decrease
(with the advent of hygiene and fewer open sewers), this aspect of the
aromatics’ potential became a bit less important on a day-to-day basis,
and this change may have ushered in the practice of aromatherapy as
we know it today. This was probably sometime in the seventeenth
century,
†
and may have been best exemplified in Europe by Nicholas
Culpeper, the rebel herbalist who dared to publish a book of self-care
recipes in English, not Latin (much to the dismay and scorn of the
Royal College of Physicians). He was also one of the first apothecaries
(pharmacists of the time) to seriously delve into aromatherapy, crafting
distillates from aromatic plants and recording their uses.
63
Some of Culpeper’s extracts included elixirs made from the vapors of
wormwood, hyssop and all the other mints, rue, chamomile, orange, and
lemon. Sometimes those preparations were recommended for use as-is,
in two-to-three-drop doses, for “nerves and melancholy,” “afflictions of
the head,” “internal wind” (presumably gas), and asthma and other lung
conditions. By mixing these extracts with animal fats and turning them
into ointments, he crafted medicines used for the plague, chest rubs for
respiratory complaints, and enhancers of circulation (for ailments such
as the “dropsy,” which we now know is a failure of the heart muscle).
In sum, Culpeper’s contribution to the art and science of using aroma
as therapy involved treating infection, respiratory complaints, intestinal
*There are innumerable references to the antipathogenic effects of aromatic plants and
their volatile oils. For a representative summary, see Lis-Balchin’s “Comparison of the
Pharmacological and Antimicrobial Action.”
†While hygiene was certainly gaining in prominence, it would be another two hundred
years before the urban sewer and sanitation system as we know them were developed on
a large scale. See Cosgrove’s History of Sanitation.
WiMeSo.indd 65 2/22/13 10:07 AM
66 n AromAtIcs
gas, and mental health conditions. It is interesting and worthy of men-
tion that, at least in the mind of a popular English herbalist of the early
seventeenth century, aromatics had a huge range of uses for almost any
nervous system complaint and, beyond that, were also useful for the
three other disease categories mentioned above. This is further evidence
that the main applicability of these plants is in balancing the interplay
between mind and body, even though they have other strengths. Aside
from the antiseptic quality, I contend that the effects aromatics have on
lung and intestinal tissue are manifestations of their same tension-tam-
ing power, but that is a pharmacological topic we will explore a bit later.
For now, let’s see if this trend of antisepsis and “antitension” holds for
aromatics as history advances.
As I just mentioned, better hygiene reduced the importance of
the antiseptic qualities of strongly scented plants. As stronger disease-
fighting agents came into use, aromatics fell out of favor as disinfec-
tants. After World War II, when petroleum-based synthetic chemistry
made the mass production of antibiotics possible,
64
aromatics were
all but forgotten outside of culinary tradition, religious ritual, and
Christmas potpourri (arguably, a religious ritual). Unless, of course,
you count the entire perfume industry—which had taken off like a
rocket since the time of Nicholas Culpeper.
Aromatherapy and perfumery are historically intertwined, and one
can argue that perfumery is actually a branch of aromatherapy con-
cerned not only with putting people at ease, but also with increasing
sexual attraction between them.
65
So those who would have you scent
your body with various combinations of plant (and animal) fragrances
are recommending something that affects the mind, and targets many of
the same areas we have seen are activated by aromatic plants: those relat-
ing to openness, flow, and relaxation. A perfume that puts people into
fight-or-flight mode hasn’t come onto the scene, and if it were to, I seri-
ously doubt it would do well in the marketplace. Granted, the possibility
is there—male pheromones are often quite aggravating to other males of
the species.
66
But you don’t see that marketed in department stores.
WiMeSo.indd 66 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 67
Beyond perfumes and other ritual fragrances, scent as medicine
is found in cosmetic preparations (bath salts, lotions) and in specific
aromatherapeutic delivery systems (diffusers, room misters, essential
oil blends). These preparations are used more and more these days (at
least in the United States, where they were much less prevalent before
1970).* But to what end? Is the trend observed by Culpeper still true?
Do we still use aromatics mostly for mental health, relaxing tension in
the lungs and intestines, and disinfecting?
Clinical research into aromatherapy is relatively new and has a
track record that is roughly thirty years old. Pharmacological research
has been going on for a bit longer.
†
If you examine the experiments con-
ducted in both these areas since about 1980, some unmistakable trends
emerge. Pharmacological research finds aromatics effective for relaxing
smooth muscle in airways, in circulatory tissues in the intestines, and
in the uterus. (While some oils are found to stimulate the uterus, this
often depends on the timing of administration.) They are great at kill-
ing pathogens. And they have noticeable effects on behavior. If you
collate all the clinical research to date, aromatherapy is found to be
effective in addressing the following areas: dementia, childbirth, epi-
lepsy, insomnia, anxiety, depression, headaches, and nausea (especially
nausea related to chemotherapy). Additionally, research finds essential
oils to be effective in treating acne, athlete’s foot (a fungal infection),
and respiratory infection. These sound exactly like the conditions
Culpeper was using his aromatics for: mental health, gut tension, and
infection. Compiling research on over forty common aromatic plants
over the last thirty years, you end up with two basic classes of action:
either the plants are stimulating or they are sedating.
67
This has been the trend throughout recorded history: the remedies
used in aromatherapy, which consist exclusively of highly scented plants,
*For a summary of the history and patterns of essential oil use in the United States in
recent decades see Herz’s “Aromatherapy Facts and Fictions.”
†Lis-Blachin’s Aromatherapy Science contains a comprehensive review and critique of
clinical and pharmalogical studies of essential oils both inhaled and taken by mouth.
WiMeSo.indd 67 2/22/13 10:07 AM
68 n AromAtIcs
have effects that are couched entirely in terms of nervous system function:
they either enliven or they soothe and calm. Sometimes they do both. And
while you do hear about their ability to kill pathogens, you rarely learn
much about their ability to stimulate digestive function, enhance immu-
nity, or directly affect cellular aging. Their specialty, it seems, is to balance
our level of neuromuscular tension and thereby address a range of com-
plaints that stem from being out of sync with life’s ups and downs: anxiety,
frustration, depression, sleeplessness, compulsiveness. No wonder they have
a positive impact on heart rate variability. We seem to be uncovering a
pattern that is deep and pervasive, linking the use of aromatic plants to a
successful, adaptable, and ultimately happy human being.
Beyond aromatherapy, herbal medicine employs aromatic plants in teas
and extracts meant for internal use. Setting aside infectious conditions
for a moment (for example, aromatics such as thyme are used for lung
infections; juniper for urinary tract infections; oregano for gastroin-
testinal infections; rosemary for skin infections),
68
and having already
discussed the extensive use of aromatics for mental health, what other
uses for these plants can we uncover? How might they fit into the
hypothesis that humans use them mostly for balancing tension in mind
and body and thereby attuning to the flow of change all around them?
In general, aromatics rich in essential oils have three broad spheres
of applicability in Western herbal medicine. The first is mental health,
where they are employed not only for conditions involving mood dis-
turbance and sleeplessness, but also to promote focus and relieve head-
aches. The second sphere relates to treating conditions relating to muscle
spasm: sometimes externally, but also internally as teas and tinctures
(that is, hydroalcoholic extracts). Finally, in the third case, aromatics are
often added to hot teas to induce sweating and help break a fever: this
time-honored use is one of the principal strengths of an herb like pep-
permint. We have also seen, as articulated by David Hoffmann, that aro-
matics can be used as support in cases of high blood pressure—and heart
disease, more generally. But I contend that this last use is a special case,
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AromAtIcs n 69
in which the aromatics calm muscle and increase perspiration. These are
all related to an opening, relaxing function.*
One final area garnering a lot of research lately has been on aro-
matics’ power to reduce inflammation in the body. Resinous plants
like frankincense (Boswellia) top the list.
69
While I do not mean to
minimize the anti-inflammatory powers of these plants, which are very
real and useful, this property is hardly unique to aromatics themselves:
almost all plants reduce inflammation. This is another reason we
should consume them every day. But, as is the case with frankincense,
the essential oils themselves do not exert the most profound anti-
inflammatory action. Rather, the heavier organic acids of the triter-
penoid class (such as boswellic acid, in this case) do the work.
70
I want
to stick to actions and characteristics unique to this subset of plants
and to their more volatile, vaporous constituents. We have already
explored the use of aromatics in mental health. We have also discussed
their ability to control infection and reduce inflammation. Let us turn
now to their antispasmodic (muscle relaxing) and diaphoretic (fever-
breaking) functions, for these relate in very important ways to improv-
ing our heart rate variability and returning us to the flow.
Next time you feel uncomfortable in your belly, try a warm cup of
ginger tea. Or, for that matter, try some fennel seed or chamomile tea,
or even peppermint spirits. You might also consider taking a sip of an
anise liqueur. Any of these remedies will yield similar results: relaxing
the belly, so greater comfort quickly ensues.
†
It is certainly not surprising
that many of these herbal preparations are taken after meals, sometimes
even an hour after a big meal, to help us feel more at ease. Their imme-
diate noticeable effect is to relax feelings of fullness and cramping, and
the side effect is sweet-smelling breath. Relaxing the belly has a decidedly
*See Hoffmann’s Medical Herbalism for listings of the aromatic plants that fall under the
traditional “action” classes of nervine/sedative/hypnotic, antispasmodic, antiseptic, and
diaphoretic (that is, relating to breaking a fever).
†Innumerable instances have been personally observed by the author. A wide range of
texts on herbal medicine reinforce these traditional applications; for instance, see Rose-
mary Gladstar’s Family Herbal.
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positive effect on mood as well, and the aromatic quality of the plants
consumed likely contributes to less tension and anxiety in the after-
meal conversation. Think of what types of preparations people enjoy
after meals: some are bitter—like coffee, for instance—but most often
an aromatic tea or cordial features prominently. This is because strongly
scented plants are regarded in herbal medicine as gas-dispelling,
71
in this
case quite literally calming the internal “wind.”
But leave it to traditional systems of cuisine to think one step
ahead: aromatics are featured throughout the meal in many indigenous
cultures. These are the spices and seasonings that have been prized for
millennia for enlivening our food and are essential defining ingredi-
ents of any “roots” meal. To a certain extent I agree with the charac-
terization that aromatics were used in cooking, in part to disinfect and
cover up the smell and taste of spoiling food and thereby to extend its
shelf life.
72
However, I also think that their effects on the nervous sys-
tem cannot be discounted. Taste is in large part a function of smell—
as anyone with a cold can tell you—so these herbs also contribute to
the enjoyment of the meal. And as the herbs enter the stomach and
travel from there, well-warmed, into the intestines, they exert a relax-
ing, wind-dispelling effect that keeps us at ease.
Additionally, cultural culinary intelligence tells us a lot about the
same factors aromatherapy research has uncovered: some herbs and
spices are warm, or enlivening, while others are cool, or calming. Since
certain foods are considered to have similar qualities, you begin to see
pairings of warm meats (lamb, beef) with cool aromatics (spearmint),
and cool seafood (fish and shellfish) with warm spices (thyme, ginger).
This makes sense from a flavor perspective, but these pairings may
have some medicinal value as well. In fact, it is hard to say which goal
came first. Most likely the two coevolved. We wanted food that tasted
good but also food that “worked”; that is, it made us feel consistently
good, nourished, and strong. So we used aromatics to modulate the
effects of the meal, and habits became cuisine.
Thus, when it comes to digestion, aromatics tweak the effects
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AromAtIcs n 71
that food has on our belly and our mind. They are also specifically
employed after meals for “problem situations,” relating to bloating,
cramping, and pain, and to encourage a calm, convivial atmosphere.
All this most likely relates to their ability to relax the muscles involved
in digestion. What about other muscles in the body?
Take the uterus. Such a solid ball of contractile fiber you will not
find elsewhere in the human frame—with the exception perhaps of the
heart, though even this muscle can’t squeeze itself into the size of a
fist while also stretching out to accommodate a ten-plus-pound mass,
a lot of water, and a vast network of blood vessels. Every so often, as it
sheds its lining, this muscle initiates a series of spasmodic contractions
that, though mild compared to those of childbirth, can still be a source
of considerable distress. Invariably, herbal medicine uses two kinds of
plants to help with menstrual cramps: aromatics, which reduce the
spasmodic writhing of the uterine musculature, and painkillers, which,
well, kill pain (we’ll leave these aside for this discussion).
73
Warm gin-
ger compresses are applied to the belly and low back. Calendula flowers
are taken as tea. Crampbark, with its characteristic valerian-like aroma,
is a well-named favorite. Even pennyroyal, which has a bad reputation
and is a highly aromatic mint, is used externally to relieve cramping.
74

As with digestion, we see similar effects on the uterine musculature:
generally speaking, if it is tense and crampy, aromatics relax it.
The case of the uterus brings us to an interesting alternate effect
for aromatics on human muscle: historically, if a woman missed her
menstrual bleeding, aromatics were suggested to actually stimulate the
uterus to contract (and potentially expel any unwanted pregnancy).
Strong aromatics were used to cause abortion—from bitter aromat-
ics such as wormwood, which we’ll meet later, to pennyroyal, which I
mentioned above.
75
So how could these plants have patently opposite
effects, stimulating the uterus in one case but relaxing it in another?*
*This was shown in animal experiments conducted during different parts of the men-
strual cycle and pregnancy by Lis-Balchin and Hart’s study “The Effect of Essential Oils
on the Uterus.”
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The answer, which gives us an important lesson in the nature of aro-
matic herbs, relates back to heart rate variability; to studies on aroma-
therapy that found both stimulating and sedating qualities to essential
oils, depending on the setting and experiment; and to the state of inter-
nal neuromuscular tension. Aromatics, it seems, help to adjust tone, or
overall degree of stimulation, along the muscles that line all the internal
organs of the body. If tone is high, and there is spasm, aromatics can
relax that spasm. If tone is slack, and there is stagnation and sluggish-
ness, aromatics can enliven and gently open things up. I posit that these
are actually two sides of the same coin, most clearly exemplified by the
antinausea effect of taking gingerroot:* food sitting in a sluggish stom-
ach too long (sluggish due to stress, or due to jostling movements, or age)
is met with increased contractions from the gastric musculature, while at
the same time the tight valve at the end of the stomach is relaxed and the
food can move along. Result: food goes down, not up. The ginger both
stimulates and relaxes. Similarly, pennyroyal can relax a spasming uterus
but stimulate a sluggish (or pregnant) one.
We see this same effect in the lungs. Here, aromatics are generally
used for two purposes (aside from killing pathogens that take up resi-
dence there). In conditions of increased tension in the airway muscles,
such as asthma, herbs like eucalyptus relax and open the tight pas-
sages.
76
Conversely, if there is a lot of chest congestion and fluid, warm
and spicy aromatics like elecampane (and ginger again) help to stimu-
late expectoration, increasing the rhythmic contractions of the airway
muscles to get the mucus out.
77
We are seeing the same effects here that
we saw in the digestive tract and the uterus.
And while it seems smart to pick a “cool” aromatic in conditions
of painful spasm and a “warm” one when the tissue is wet and sluggish,
you can get decent results by using peppermint in both cases. Extra
tone, aromatics relax. Slack tone, aromatics enliven.
*There has been much clinical research on ginger’s antinausea properties. Some recent work
includes: Ryan et al.’s 2011 study, “Ginger (Zingiber Officinale) Reduces Acute Chemotherapy-
Induced Nausea”; Pillai et al.’s 2011 study, “Anti-emetic Effect of Ginger Powder Versus
Placebo”; and Smith’s 2010 study, “Ginger Reduces Severity of Nausea in Early Pregnancy.”
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AromAtIcs n 73
Why is this? I believe this is the crux of the important lesson these
plants have to offer. We will explore the why in greater detail in just a
moment. For now, suffice it to say that the lungs, the uterus, the stom-
ach, the intestines, the heart, and the brain all have one important
thing in common: they are all touched by the vagus nerve. If aromatics
can improve heart rate variability, a key marker of activity along the
vagus nerve, and the vagus connects all these tissues that are strongly
affected by these plants, then perhaps what is happening is that aro-
matics are helping to balance all the “gut feelings” we receive from our
internal organs by increasing or decreasing their tone, as necessary. As
was the case with the after-dinner cordial, this can also relax the mind.
At the same time, aromatics directly impact the brain and mood.
Feelings, by acting through the vagus nerve, have a very real impact
on the body—as evidenced by such examples as heart rate variability,
butterflies in the stomach, and anxiety-induced asthma. By reducing
tension through both the mind and the body, aromatics keep us supple
and well balanced—a powerful way to enhance overall health.
In summary, by delving into traditional herbal medicine (and aro-
matherapy as well, in this case), we have discovered that there might
be a good basis for the observed effects of aromatic herbs on key
markers of relaxation and adaptability (such as HRV). They are gen-
erally used for mental health, and they balance the tone of the muscles
that surround our internal organs. These plants affect our conscious
mind; they are traditionally used for frazzled and “hyper” states but
also for alleviating darker moods. These plants also affect our uncon-
scious mind—those parts of us governed by the gut, the heart, the
reproductive organs—keeping them in the right state of tension. Is it
any wonder that aromatics promote our internal coherence, that they
put us in the flow of events? Aromatics seem to fit perfectly into all
the pieces of Thayer’s central autonomic/limbic system network: con-
sciousness and the working memory of current perceptions, visceral
feelings relayed upward by the vagus nerve, and emotions. We will
explore why this is so in the last section of this chapter. But before we
WiMeSo.indd 73 2/22/13 10:07 AM
74 n AromAtIcs
do, let us return for just a moment to David Hoffmann’s prescription
for high blood pressure.
You will recall that Hoffmann suggests a mix of hawthorn, dande-
lion leaf, and an aromatic to address hypertension. The first two herbs
are there to help the heart itself and to get the kidneys to let go of a lit-
tle fluid, respectively. But why the aromatic? Certainly we can say that,
given the positive effects aromatics have on heart rate variability and
therefore cardiovascular health, no further explanation is necessary. But
an extended part of the answer brings us back to that other traditional
use of highly scented plants: they induce sweating and break a fever.*
In fact, when taken at the right times (that is, when someone feels cold
and feverish), even cool aromatics like peppermint help to encourage
perspiration and warmth. Not only are these plants used for bringing
down fevers, but they help with a peculiar syndrome called Raynaud’s
phenomenon
78
where fingers and toes get so cold that they often turn
purple, or even lose all color, and can become numb and tingly. This
is thought to be a condition of spasm in the arteries that bring blood
to the hands and feet. You can probably see where I’m going with this.
Aromatics, as we will see in a moment, relax the muscle that surrounds
our arteries as well. So more blood flows from the core to the extremi-
ties, and we sweat, or at least feel warmer. Our heart is less burdened
because the blood it has to pump is flowing through channels that are
literally less tight. We are more open, more relaxed, in both mind and
body. Circulation improves. Blood pressure goes down. You can read
this by plotting graphs of heart rate variability—or you can feel it as
you hold the radial pulse.
*Mills and Bone’s, Principles and Practices of Phytotherapy gives a list of aromatics that
includes yarrow, elderflower, chamomile, linden, and catnip to manage fever (pages 136–
39). Also, they note on page 30, “Infusions of essential oil-containing herbs are often
taken as diaphoretics especially during acute respiratory infections.”
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AromAtIcs n 75
THe PHarMacoloGical aPProacH
How do aromatics, and their volatile essential oils, actually accom-
plish all this? Many mechanisms have been proposed and studied. To
conclude this introductory section, I would like to review some of the
most compelling and discuss their potential implications.
Let us start where we left off: by examining the effects of aromatic
essential oils (the primary chemicals responsible for defining the class of
aromatic herbs) on the muscle that lines the human arterial system. This
musculature, which is very much out of the realm of direct conscious
control, is of the exact same type that lines the stomach and intestines,
and the bronchial passages of the lungs. It also makes up practically
the entirety of the uterus. Human arterial muscle is different from the
muscle that we are used to seeing—for instance, our bicep—in that it
contracts in on itself, like the shutter of a camera, instead of contracting
along a straight line. So it’s great for tightening and loosening, but not
so good for lifting or pulling. What is interesting for our discussion is
that there is an anatomical and functional similarity between the mus-
cles that line our arteries and those that surround all our hollow organs.
The muscle is called “smooth” to distinguish it from bicep-type muscle,
which has stripes, or striations, in it when observed microscopically. This
fact immediately helps explain why aromatics have pronounced effects
on all these different tissues. If an herb can modulate the tension in the
smooth muscle of the stomach, it will also work on the smooth muscle
of the arteries once its essential oils are absorbed and find their way to
the heart. From there, it’s onward to the tissues of other organs, such as
the uterus, and finally to the lungs, where the volatiles are ultimately
expelled through exhalation (some come out through the kidneys, too—
and effects on the bladder are also possible).
79
In researching how essential oils affect smooth muscle, scientists
have uncovered a few basic mechanisms of action. It doesn’t seem that
nerves are affected by these oils (at least in the local tissue), nor is the
nerve/muscle connection. Neurotransmitter receptors on smooth muscle
WiMeSo.indd 75 2/22/13 10:07 AM
76 n AromAtIcs
are left untouched by the volatile oils.
80
In fact, it would appear that
these substances work on the muscle itself, by increasing the production
of cAMP
81
(an intracellular messenger that reduces the activity of many
cells) and perhaps also by limiting the ability of muscle cells to take in
calcium,
82
a critical element involved in initiating contraction. For blood
vessels, a third mechanism comes into play: essential oils boost the activ-
ity of a strongly vasodilative (artery-relaxing) chemical called nitric oxide.
Put this all together, and the research paints a picture of a class
of chemicals that can directly affect isolated smooth muscle (which is
usually used in these types of experiments). Even without a connection
to “central processing”—that is, the brain—aromatics affect the tissue
responsible for tension and tone around all our internal organs and our
blood vessels. But the pharmacologists have taken it one step further.
Remember the distinction between relaxing, or “cool,” aromatics
and the “warmer,” stimulating ones? This is the distinction between,
say, lavender and ginger. All aromatics exert both these actions on
smooth muscle, but, depending on the precise makeup of their essential
oil cocktails, they can exhibit a little more of one or the other effect.
The bulk of the aromatics don’t exhibit a preference—they have bal-
anced blends of volatile chemicals. But in some we see a preponderance
of slightly heavier, less “airborne” constituents—and these plants are
generally more relaxing on smooth muscle, though even they cause a
little contraction at first. In others, where the constituents are smaller
and lighter, there is a longer period of contraction before relaxation
eventually ensues.
83
This is interesting for two reasons. First, it vali-
dates some of the subtlety in the traditional understanding and appli-
cations for aromatics. Second, it confirms that all aromatic plants have
the ability to both stimulate and relax—and that, depending on the
context, either effect may be elicited.* When present in and around a
*Or, as stated in Lis-Balchin’s Aromatherapy Science: “Many essential oils show both
effects: the spasmogenic effect comes first followed by the spasmolytic phase. . . . The
reason for these differences lie in the chemical compositions of the essential oils and the
effect of individual components on smooth muscle . . .” (page 45).
WiMeSo.indd 76 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 77
functional piece of smooth muscle, they provide the necessary ingredi-
ents to help with any imbalance in that muscle’s tone. No other plant
chemicals seem to be able to do that.
Essential oils from aromatics affect all smooth muscle of the body,
regardless of its connection to the brain. But, of course, in a living
human being, the brain is connected! Since we’ve seen that the sig-
nals coming to the muscle (through the vagus nerve) are unaffected
by aromatics, all we can really say is that these herbs modulate smooth
muscle tension, and that the vagus relays that level of tension up to the
brain (because that is precisely its job—the vagus nerve is a two-way
street). However, we cannot forget that aromatics also have a strong
odor, and before their chemistry even makes it into our mouths we
are pointedly aware of them through our sense of smell. This sense is
ancient and very powerful. How might it play a role in the effects of
aromatics?
The olfactory mucous membrane, a small area less than a half-
inch across and located under the bridge of the nose, is loaded with
incredibly sensitive odor detectors. It is thought that we can discrimi-
nate between ten thousand different fragrances, each having a unique
molecular receptor implanted into that small patch of tissue inside the
top of your nose.
84
In some ways, smelling is like tasting—if you lived
in the ocean, these two senses would quite literally be one—except that
the sense of smell is orders of magnitude more discriminating and sen-
sitive than the sense of taste. We can perceive certain molecules that
are put under our noses in such minuscule quantities as two billionths
of an ounce. Another important distinction between smelling and
tasting is that, once a particular chemical connects with its receptor,
it immediately initiates a nerve signal, which, after being amplified by
the olfactory bulb, travels directly to the limbic system of the brain.
By contrast, when we taste (or, for that matter, when we touch, see, or
hear), the signal passes first through a gatekeeper, the thalamus, before
it goes anywhere else.
85
The thalamus is a great censor, responsible for blocking out the
WiMeSo.indd 77 2/22/13 10:07 AM
78 n AromAtIcs
vast majority of what our senses perceive. Which is why I can’t find
my car keys, even though I’m looking right at them. Most of the time
this is actually helpful, as we would otherwise quickly be overwhelmed
with the huge quantity of sounds and sights we experience. But when
we smell, this gateway, this first screening pass, is itself bypassed. The
signal generated by smelling travels straight to the limbic system every
time.
From Julian Thayer’s work, we have found that the limbic system
can be seen as a key component of the central autonomic network, that
web of brain structures that regulates the efficient processing of high-
level tasks (via prefrontal cortex working memory), balances the func-
tion of internal organs (via input from the vagus nerve), and connects
to our feelings (via the limbic system). It is in the limbic system that we
find centers that affect anger, pleasure, and reward, and also memory
formation. These structures have been part of the animal brain since
before mammals existed.
86
And as part of the central autonomic net-
work, they are crucially involved in modulating our vital pulses, how
we deal with the present moment, how we feel our way through life. It
would certainly be most advantageous for an organism to be able to tie
environmental cues into this system quickly and effectively: such a skill
would improve adaptability and survival. So it would seem that we use
smell as a “fail-safe,” an uncensored link to events all around us. No
wonder this sense has such powerful effects.
We come to an image of an aromatic herb, its volatile oils warmed
and rising, entering our nasal passages. There, they activate very spe-
cific nerve endings whose signals are relayed directly to the feeling
centers of the limbic system. Next, nerve impulses link up with struc-
tures involved in regulating internal organs, managing stress and our
response to it, and making second-by-second decisions on events hap-
pening around us. As these structures are stimulated, we become more
focused and modulate hormonal cues. Finally, once the smells enter
our lungs and from there the blood (or, if ingested, the oils make it
into our bloodstream through the belly), the level of tension in our
WiMeSo.indd 78 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 79
internal organs is directly balanced. These organs send signals back
up to the central autonomic network, too. It would seem, therefore,
that the actual perception of smell ends up in the same places that are
stimulated by the chemical action of the aromatics on smooth muscle
deep inside our bodies. One action reinforces the other.
Most likely, aromatics bring us into focused, flowing balance and
help us function more efficiently because, in nature, new and strong
smells are often a sign of a changing environment or circumstance
(after all, we really are only sensitive to new smells; we become quickly
accustomed to ones that linger). There may be an evolutionary reason
for why having a sense that directly hits the physiology’s “autopilot”
systems is a good idea. Without needing to think too much about it,
a new smell can immediately wake us out of a wandering daydream or
calm us out of a panic, helping us deal with the present moment. As
we have seen, almost all plant-based smells have these effects. Animal
smells (such as musk, urine, sweat, and sexual fluids), on the other
hand, tend to get us in a fighting mood or make us want to have sex.
It’s not that stimulating the receptors on the olfactory mucous mem-
brane yields universally similar results. Animal smells activate our
instincts for dominance and reproduction. Plant smells calm, center,
and focus our energy.
There may also be a cultural advantage to the effective use of plant
smells, and this is where we return to the idea of ritual, ceremony, and
the role aromatics play in these social customs. Since the odor-percep-
tion areas of the limbic system are so tied into the memory-creation
and emotional centers of the brain, we can harness specific scent com-
binations to elicit not only a state of focused flow, but also a memory/
feeling/behavior pattern that is much more specific. Cultures that lev-
eraged this insight could literally bind groups together by using specific
aromatics from the plant world and thereby influence not only their
level of focus but also the direction that focus would take. Consider
these scents: the smell of morning coffee, the incense in a temple, the
rosewater in your evening bath, a lavender sachet, tobacco on the back
WiMeSo.indd 79 2/22/13 10:07 AM
80 n AromAtIcs
steps, calamus in the marketplace. These all mean something very real
and very specific to me and to countless others, too. For you, the asso-
ciations may not be the same. But if you know the smells I love, you
have the power to control my thoughts.
Aromatics from the plant world have a direct link to ancient and
well-connected structures in our brains, areas that lead us to calmer,
more focused, more efficient functioning, and awaken very specific
stored memories and associations. We have used aromatic plants
throughout history because they help us deal better with the constant
change that surrounds us, and because they bind cultures together in
shared patterns of association. By activating these old, reptilian centers
in our brains we find that our pulse rate begins to sway back and forth
in a rhythmic dance where the downbeats synchronize with breath,
muscular contraction, and the electrical activity of the brain itself.
These smells come from the green, wild world around us. We can liter-
ally “breathe in” the forest and share in the common “cultural” bond
of being an animal. This makes us feel right. But what happens as the
forest retreats? What happens when these plant aromatics are lost from
the culture or replaced with others whose effects are unknown?
WHy aroMaTics?
Psychologists at the University of Warwick, in England, made some
interesting observations about individuals who had either a blunted
or completely absent sense of smell (a condition known as anosmia).
87

Generally speaking, beyond the immediate recognition that not smell-
ing makes it really tough to enjoy (and therefore seek out) a good meal,
the researchers noted increased depression, increased feelings of vul-
nerability, and increased difficulty coping with stressful situations and
environmental change. (They also noticed a substantially reduced sex
drive, so those animal smells are important, too.) This all makes sense,
of course. Unfortunately, my guess is that anosmic individuals would
have higher rates of heart disease because of changes related to being
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AromAtIcs n 81
unable to smell. More recent research has begun to link defects in odor
processing (including, but not limited to, anosmia) to Parkinson’s dis-
ease.
88
We are also learning that our ability to smell tends to decrease
with age.
89
While you and I may still be able to smell, the palette of
natural smells around us is much less colorful than it was ten thousand
years ago (or even a hundred years ago), and the nature of the odors we
experience has also dramatically changed. In lieu of forest bathing,
we have freeway breathing. In lieu of basil, oregano, garlic, and olives,
we have something in a spray can that I can’t quite pronounce let alone
spell from memory (and it smells kind of weird, too). If withdrawing
the sense of smell leads to depression, fear, and apathy, then perhaps
the gradual withdrawal of plant-based aromatics from our culture is
also contributing to a general malaise, poor attention span, and dark
moods. Perhaps aromatics spark the spirit, and a soul bathed in scent
can actually become “immortal,” fly free, and be at peace.
So as the smoke of incense rises in the dark interior of the pyramid,
as the steam rises from my cup of linden tea, an ancient ritual repeats
itself: we smell, we take volatile plant chemicals into our lungs and
bodies, and we thereby connect to what surrounds us. A fresh scent
stimulates deep centers in our brains, and our thought processes
become more focused, efficient, and relaxed. Our feelings retreat from
anger and domination, and stress begins to have less of a hold on our
minds and bodies. All the vital rhythms in our internal milieu begin
to synchronize in a way that just feels right, feels like flow. We may
be drawing on old animal comforts here: walking in a familiar forest,
the smells of the season returning us to a timelessness where cares and
sadness have a little less power over us. And as we focus, flow, and syn-
chronize, our pulses take on a characteristic pattern. We can feel this
in our arteries—a balanced vital rhythm born of a balanced state of
internal tension, a skillful tightrope walker under our skin.
It is no wonder that, in all cultures, we use smells during peak times
of our lives. We need to be present at these moments. The aromatics
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82 n AromAtIcs
bring us there. The aromatics also help us remember, they help us
carry the timelessness of being present now into our future lives. We
can return to the very moment whenever we need to, and that, too, is a
great comfort. We can, and should, bring these scented plants into our
lives when we feel the weight of the modern world upon us, when we
feel disharmony within and around us. They truly can help us buffer
the asymmetries of tension and calm the often destructive winds that
follow.
As the pharaoh’s priest drinks the aromatic herbs, as he burns the
incense, he crosses into the spirit world and can usher his ruler’s body
into the afterlife. He uses smells that bind a thousand-year-old king-
dom. He is in a flow that spans generations and, as such, he unburdens
himself of all worldly cares, while focusing like a flame on his present
intent. It is similar to what the old Taoist sages called immortality, free
and easy wandering, doing-without-doing. I can see you on a riverbank,
on young green springtime grass, cherry blossoms falling occasionally
from the branches above as the sweet air mixes with the vapors from
your teacup. Huang Di, the yellow emperor, gently holds your wrist,
feels the vitality throbbing within it, and smiles.
WiMeSo.indd 82 2/22/13 10:07 AM
83
PePPerMinT
Mentha x piperita
There is a small pharmacy in Florence, Italy, not more than three
blocks east of the great cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, that has
been processing medicinal plants in almost the same way for eight
hundred years. While it has an entrance on the public road, the
larger doors in the back of the main apothecary lead to an inner
cloistered courtyard, much in the style of Renaissance Italy, with
simple columns, terra-cotta tilework, and spare but elegant gardens.
This courtyard is at the heart of a small triangle of the city built
around the church of Santa Maria Novella (yes, lots of churches), and
the pharmacy bears the same name.
This tiny shop was founded by the Dominican friars who set
up residence on this block in the thirteenth century, and it became
known for extractions of medicinal plants focused on their aromatic,
ethereal components. Some of its specialties, used for cosmetic and
antiseptic purposes, include rose waters, rosemary distillates, and
hand-blended soaps. But the preparation that has always garnered the
greatest acclaim (enough to warrant a personal dispensation from the
archduke to sell it to the public) is a distillate known simply as “water
of Santa Maria Novella.” Its only ingredient is the volatile spirit of
peppermint, Mentha piperita. Peppermint is a classic aromatic, and
its high concentration of essential oils make it perhaps the strongest
plant in this category.
Remedy Recommendation
The apothecaries recommend taking a small amount of the water
of Santa Maria Novella, perhaps ten to thirty drops, in a half cup of
WiMeSo.indd 83 2/22/13 10:07 AM
84 n AromAtIcs
water. At this dilution it is light, pleasantly enlivening, and definitely
refreshing to the palate. But it can also be taken in more concentrated
form to remedy such diverse ailments as fever, headache, tension,
stomachache, flatulence, and, of course, “hysteria” (a very interesting
term whose Greek root, ύστερα or hystera, means “uterus”).
GroWinG, HarVesTinG, and
sTorinG PePPerMinT
One thing to remember about mints in the garden: they have a wan-
dering way and are difficult to disentangle from areas where they have
taken up residence. But despite their hardiness and competitive skills,
they do have a preferred set of growing conditions they find most
favorable. So, if you have the space, I suggest planting peppermint in
a somewhat cool and slightly moist spot, where the sun doesn’t shine
continuously, and wilting heat is rare—far away from your other herbs
and vegetables. If conditions are good, minimal fertility is required
and your mint will thrive year after year, mixed among the grasses.
I harvest from a great patch on the eastern border of the field, where
afternoon sun isn’t too hot and the soil stays cool all summer long.
Alternatively, containers made of terra-cotta are suitable. Given water
and placed in part shade, you can expect multiple harvests if you cut
the peppermint back every time it flowers. Grown on a kitchen patio,
it can also be used as needed for teas and cooking.
The whole plant is glossy and smooth, and it releases its aroma at
the slightest touch. It has a strong and biting quality, almost too strong
to eat lots of it directly. Reddish-purple veins continue the purple color
of the stem into the small, fine-toothed leaves. It comes up quickly in
the spring and is one of the last plants to retreat in the fall; flower-
ing begins anywhere from June into early July and continues through-
out the growing season. The inflorescence is a spike of multiple small
flowers, with side shoots of blooms all around, arranged in an oppo-
WiMeSo.indd 84 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 85
site branching pattern up the stem. Harvest peppermint by cutting the
stems and then stripping off the leaves and flowers. These can be used
directly, or dried over two to three days and stored for up to a year.
By far the easiest way to establish this herb in your garden is to get
a few grown plants from a friend or a nursery. If they have some, most
folks are more than willing to dig it up and give it to you. Transplant
them into medium-sized holes with a little compost and water them
for the first week, if necessary.
usinG PePPerMinT
We have used peppermint as an archetypal aromatic plant for many
centuries. It soothes the belly and eliminates cramps and intestinal
spasms. It reduces headaches and relieves tension. It can relax airways
and improve breathing. In concentrated, tiny doses, it stimulates the
mind and improves focus. Its efficacy in controlling fever is legendary.
And its flavor, as the Dominican friars found so long ago in Florence,
is quite appealing. No wonder so many still turn to it for a wide range
of complaints. It’s truly a great introduction to the use of aromatic
plants in daily life.
Peppermint Sun tea
in summer, you can often get a sense of what the afternoon mi ght
bri ng by wal ki ng out i nto the garden fi rst thi ng i n the morni ng. some-
ti mes (at l east up here i n Vermont), i n l ate Jul y or august, the hazy sun-
ri se comes wi th a certai n feel and smel l to the moi st ai r. it wi l l be qui te
hot today, i t seems to say, so you’d better get to work before the sun
gets any hi gher.
These are the times you will want to stuff a bunch of fresh pepper-
mint into the biggest glass jar you can find, fill it with water, and cap it
tight. Then it can sit in the sun until late afternoon, when evening, just
over the horizon, promises relief. The solar energy alchemically converts
WiMeSo.indd 85 2/22/13 10:07 AM
86 n AromAtIcs
the heat of the day into a choice brew, rarefied, subtle but strong, its
depth and potency belying its easy preparation.
Peppermint sun tea is not nearly as biting as a cup brewed with boil-
ing water, yet it is not timid at all. it reinvigorates the spirit and prepares
the body for a magical summer evening. you can even use some to
wash your face and neck before dinner: you will feel rejuvenated in no
time. after the meal, it relaxes the belly and improves digestion by alle-
viating bloating and spasm, and stimulating the function of the liver. it is
a delicious, simple, and effective way to enjoy this plant when it is most
abundant, our ally for the hot days.
the Water of Santa Maria novella
(Peppermint Spirit)
Dried peppermint leaves
100–150 proof vodka
home distillation apparatus (see box on pages 87-88)
To approximate the water of santa Maria novella, we will require a little
more ingenuity. The preparation is essentially a hydrosol, except made
from an alcohol infusion, rather than from a tea. We will start with a tinc-
ture and, by heating it, separate its aromatic components from the more
bitter and fibrous “fixed” constituents. This is perhaps the most elaborate
of preparations listed in this book, but it is also one of the most reward-
ing, as it yields an intense, highly concentrated, and highly effective
peppermint spirit that has been crafted using alchemical principles that
are almost one thousand years old.
Prepare a tincture from dried peppermint, using a pint mason jar
filled with chopped and lightly packed leaves. cover the leaves with a
strong alcohol, preferably 150 proof, though 100 proof will do (between
75 percent and 50 percent alcohol by volume). close the jar tightly and
label it with the date and source of your peppermint. shake the jar oc-
casionally over the next two to four weeks.
during this time, the alcohol dissolves the volatile essential oils, rich
in menthol, from the oil-bearing glands on the sur face of the peppermint
WiMeSo.indd 86 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 87
leaves. extraction of minerals, chlorophyll, organic acids, tannins, and
other nonaromatic constituents is occurring as well.
after a few weeks strain and press your tincture into a measuring
cup, rinse out the jar, and pour the strained extract back in. it should
be anywhere from bright green to greenish brown, depending on the
strength of the alcohol used. but before replacing the lid, you must drill
a hole in it to serve as an exit for the aromatic vapors we will be attempt-
ing to separate from the tincture.
for the final step, we simply need to heat up the peppermint tincture
while the copper coil is connected to the lid (see box on pages 88–89
to create this home distillation apparatus). The safest way to do this is to
place the distiller in a pot with simmering water, allowing the copper tub-
ing to hang outside the pot over a measuring cup, ready to receive the
distillate. since alcohol boils at about 185°f, simmering water at 200°f
will vaporize it, along with any aromatic constituents, and they will rise
up into the copper coil where the temperature will drop, the vapors will
condense, and fluid will be recovered drop by drop.
When you’re done, bottle up the peppermint spirit and store it in
a cool, dark place. it will keep indefinitely and be ready for use either
full strength (with caution) or, more often, diluted in some water. full
strength, it is recommended topically, rubbed into the temples for head-
aches that arise from tension or stress, while internally it’s consumed in
doses of two to three drops, for an immediate and power ful increase
in focus and alertness, or to decongest the airways. The diluted spirit is
still used the same way as it was in the Middle ages: to treat indigestion,
bloating, headaches, fever, cramps, and spasms. it is a very power ful
regulator of the level of tension in the internal organs.
The alchemical process of distilling peppermint spirit is fascinating,
and though it is somewhat laborious, in the end you are also left with a
tidy homemade still, which can be used to separate the aromatic fraction
of any herbal extract you choose to make (try motherwort or scullcap, for
instance). but a much more simple, though no less effective, method of
using this herb sticks most in my mind, perhaps because it reminds me so
much of childhood: the time-honored peppermint compress.
WiMeSo.indd 87 2/22/13 10:07 AM
88 n AromAtIcs
Making a Home Distillation Apparatus
You will need:
• A small coil of copper tubing
• Gasket (or the rubber bulb on the top of a dropper)
Most copper tubing sold to carry water (think drinking water supply
for a refrigerator, for instance) is one-quarter inch in outer diameter.
A small coil of this type of food-grade tubing can easily be found at
any hardware store. This piece will serve as collector and conduit of
the peppermint spirit: one end will fit into the lid of the mason jar,
the other will drain out into a suitable receiving vessel.
It’s pretty simple to attach the tubing to the lid of the mason jar.
Drill a hole through the metal lid with a quarter-inch drill bit. Keeping
the bulk of the copper tubing coiled up, gently bend a small section
three to four inches long so that it points downward, ready to be
fitted into the hole in the metal lid. But before putting it in, slip a gas-
How to assemble your home distillation unit
(Photographs by Guido Masé)
WiMeSo.indd 88 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 89
ket around it to secure the seal. Believe it or not, I’ve found that the
rubber bulb at the top of a dropper (found on any bottle of herbal
extract) is precisely the right size for this job.
Separate the rubber bulb from the dropper by pulling out the
glass dropper itself, and pushing the bulb through the plastic ring that
secures it to the bottle. Once you’ve isolated the piece of rubber,
cut the closed end of the bulb off with scissors, essentially creating
a rubber tube. This should slide onto the end of the copper coil,
and the whole ensemble will fit in to the hole in the mason jar’s lid.
Tighten everything onto your jar and—presto!—you have a simple
home distillation unit.
Peppermint Compress
Peppermint tea
Clean piece of cloth
When an illness causes a fever, there is also usually discomfort, head-
ache, and alternating heat and chills. next time this happens, try this
simple remedy to produce sweating, reduce headache, and help
“break” the fever to provide relief.
soak a clean piece of flannel or cloth in a strong, warm cup of pep-
permint tea. Gently wring out the excess fluid and apply this warm prep-
aration (technically a “fomentation”) to the forehead, allowing it to sit
there at least fifteen minutes. This process can be repeated every hour
or so, until headache and fever are reduced, and sweating begins.
by helping to relax and dilate arteries, warm peppermint tea reliably
increases sur face circulation in the forehead and temples, helping to
radiate off heat and encouraging perspiration. it is ultimately this sweat-
ing, or diaphoresis (an effect displayed to a certain extent by all aromat-
ics), that cools the body and brings the internal temperature down.
WiMeSo.indd 89 2/22/13 10:07 AM
90
leMon balM
Meli ssa officinali s
Virgil was poet to the emperors—the first emperor of ancient Rome, in
fact. His epic works served largely as propaganda to glorify the geneal-
ogy and exalt the divine status of Augustus who, fresh from repeated
military campaigns, had succeeded in consolidating the entire old
Republic under his authority. Through glorified language and warlike
analogy, the poet’s power served his master well.
But at heart Virgil was a lover of the countryside and the bucolic
life. In his Georgics, published 20–30 BCE, he details the life of farm
and garden, devoting an entire volume to the keeping of bees, one
of his favorite subjects. He was keenly aware that bees sought out
aromatic plants for nectar, for protecting the hive, and, perhaps, for
managing their mood. He describes a method for corralling an errant
swarm.
Burst from their cells if a young troop be seen,
That sails exulting through the blue serene,
Driv’n by the winds, in clouds condens’ d and dark,
Observe them close, the paths they steer remark;
They seek fresh fountains, and thick shady bowers,
’Tis then the time to scatter fragrant flowers.
Bruis’ d balm, and vulgar savory spread around,
And ring the tinkling brass, and sacred cymbals sound:
They’ ll settle on the medicated seats,
And hide them in the chambers’ last retreats.
The Ecologues and Georgics of Virgil (1753),
trans. Joseph Wharton
WiMeSo.indd 90 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 91
Balm, in Virgil’s words, is melissaphyta, which literally means
“plant of the bees” and is also the root of lemon balm’s genus name:
Melissa. Bees certainly love it, and it may indeed serve to soothe
them when a swarm has gone astray—it has much the same effects
in humans and animals. Its delightfully citrusy, aromatic quality is
rarely if ever bitter and lacks any bite, making lemon balm tea a per-
fect beverage for any complaint where stress and digestion are fight-
ing it out.
GroWinG leMon balM
You will want to brush up against lemon balm as often as you can.
It is irresistible. Even young children are fascinated by the leaves and
rub them to release the fragrance. For this reason, and also because
it’s a very well-behaved plant (for a mint family member), I like plant-
ing melissa as a border to a path, with something taller behind it, like
echinacea or butterfly weed. It is also a plant well-suited to container
gardening, right at home in a terra-cotta pot on a sunny balcony (pro-
vided it has a good amount of water). When dining al fresco on the
terrace, you can pick a little sprig for garnishing dessert, ice cream,
or sorbet.
Lemon balm is a dry plant: somewhat astringent to chew directly,
covered in a very fine down that makes it feel just a little bit bristly,
definitely not juicy. It comes up fairly early as the weather warms up
in spring, with big, wide, frilly-edged leaves that are quite delicious.
Over the course of the warming summer, the leaves get smaller as the
plant grows, to a height of two feet or so, and they take on a yellow-
ish hue. This is most often the case in soil that is just a little rockier
and less compost-rich, but, in my opinion, these conditions make for a
stronger, more deeply scented herb. Flowers start blooming in late June
and are white to cream-colored and whorled around the square stem. If
you harvest the leaves before the flowering is too far along, they are a
bit less astringent. After each successive cutting, lemon balm will grow
WiMeSo.indd 91 2/22/13 10:07 AM
92 n AromAtIcs
back quite strong and continue to provide its sweet and sour fragrance
well into the frosty months.
It is easy to grow this herb from seed. Three or four of the small,
black, oblong seeds per container should do, covered with a little soil
and kept thoroughly moist. You may have to wait a few weeks for
complete germination, but once the seedlings are established and have
gotten a taste of the sun and wind, they can be planted out even in
marginal soil. In warmer climates, lemon balm escapes to hedgerows
and sunny cracks in the patio, competing very well in the wild and
making smaller, but vibrantly aromatic, specimens. Where it’s colder,
more attention might be required, with occasional weeding to keep out
the grasses, and a little compost mulch.
usinG leMon balM
As an important aromatic herb, lemon balm (also known simply as
“balm”) is both soothing to the nerves and uplifting to a dejected
spirit. Its traditional uses generally focus on mood, as does the modern
research: short-term anxiety support, with effects from a single cup of
tea lasting many hours; long-term reduction of stress after daily use;
even an ability to calm the confusion associated with the dementia of
old age. Depressive or, more appropriately, irritable conditions are also
soothed by all preparations of this plant. But its uses don’t stop there.
Melissa may be one of the more appropriate choices for so-called
butterflies in the stomach—the feeling of impaired digestion, perhaps
even accompanied by a bit of nausea, that comes when stress and anxi-
ety overtake us. Now, indigestion can make us feel anxious, too. But
in this case, it’s the other way around. Always get symptoms in your
belly when eating in a crowded, noisy restaurant? Have you learned not
to eat food before a public speaking engagement or a performance? Is
eating on the run a recipe for bloating and pain? Try lemon balm, in
any and all preparations (tincture-soaked sugar cubes are my favorite).
Another traditional use of this plant relates to its antiviral quali-
WiMeSo.indd 92 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 93
ties. It is recommended for cold sores, or herpes virus infections, where
it reduces nervous tension (stress is thought to trigger outbreaks) and
also directly inhibits viral replication. I have always had the best success
treating cold sores with lemon balm essential oil or tincture applied
topically, and sometimes combined with licorice root powder. But for
general prevention, any preparation will do.
Think of the swarm of bees flying in the summer sun, perhaps a
little confused or at least stirred up and not quite pleased about the
whole affair. They course through the air looking for a signal to return
home, to a place that’s safe, a place that makes them glad again. This
signal is melissa, an aromatic with a citrus scent that gladdens the gar-
den but also brings happiness to those who consume it, loosening ten-
sion in the spirit and in the belly. Of all the aromatics, it is perhaps the
most uplifting, though never stimulating—the joy of bees. May it be
your joy as well.
lemon Balm tea
The infusion of melissa into water is certainly the most traditional ap-
proach (if you don’t count mashing it up and smearing it all over beehives
to both calm and attract their inhabitants). you can certainly use fresh
sprigs, steeped in hot water, for an effective and very pleasant afternoon
preparation.
but i prefer to gather lemon balm with a knife, cutting sprigs and
thereby encouraging new growth, and then removing the leaves from
the stems and drying them. The dry leaves can be stored whole in glass
mason jars, and a generous pinch can be taken as needed, rubbed
together, and infused into a cup of tea. The drying concentrates the
essential oils (by removing the water content) and enhances the lemon
taste and fragrance.
even on warm summer days, i like to take this tea hot. and in the
evening, as the heat of the day dies down, it can’t be beat.
WiMeSo.indd 93 2/22/13 10:07 AM
94 n AromAtIcs
lemon Balm tincture
Freshly dried lemon balm leaves
100–190 proof alcohol (the higher the proof the better)
The tincture of lemon balm is made like the tea, but with the freshly
dried leaves (not more than a week or so after harvest) and the stron-
gest alcohol you can get your hands on. one-hundred proof vodka is
okay, 150 proof is better, and if you can get hold of pure-grain alcohol
(190 proof), that is ideal. The plant, though very aromatic, is quite stingy
with its essential oil and to maximize extraction we need more alcohol
(since alcohol dissolves oils especially well).
fill a mason jar with lightly packed, crushed, dry leaves, then cover
them with your best score from the liquor store and close the lid tightly.
using grain alcohol (or anything above 160–170 proof) will extract a lot
of chlorophyll, too, making the tincture a shining emerald-green.
after two to four weeks, strain and bottle.
Remedy Recommendation
Lemon balm tincture can be given in quarter-teaspoon doses, mixed
with a little water. Alternatively, a fantastic after-dinner treat (and
aromatic digestive) is made by slowly adding five to ten drops of the
tincture to a sugar cube or a slippery elm lozenge. You can make a
bunch of these at a time and store them for later use.
lemon Balm infused honey
Dried, crushed lemon balm leaves
honey (ideally raw, unfiltered, local honey)
Given its strong historical association with bees, perhaps the best prepa-
ration to make with lemon balm is an infused honey. Honey has always
WiMeSo.indd 94 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 95
been used as a medicine itself, but historically it has also served as a
carrier for a variety of medicinal plants. it extracts their virtues fairly well
and, being highly antiseptic, preserves them for an indefinite period.
To make an infused honey, start with dried, crushed lemon balm
leaves and fill a mason jar half to three-quarters full. Pour honey over
the herb until the jar is full. ideally, this would be a raw, unfiltered, local
honey—loaded with vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antiseptic resins and
waxes. cover and seal the jar tightly.
at this point, you have two options. The most gentle, though time-
consuming, option involves placing your jar in a sunny window or green-
house for a couple of weeks, shaking occasionally. The more rapid al-
ternative is to simmer the jar in a hot water bath for a few hours. This
latter option is less attractive to raw honey purists, and i understand any
reluctance to heat this precious substance. The choice is yours.
once your honey is ready, and when it’s still warm from the sun or
the simmering water, strain it through a very coarse steel mesh and store
the honey for later use.
a spoonful can be taken as is or placed in the bottom of a teacup
and hot water added for an “instant” brew. another option is to drizzle
the infused honey over vanilla ice cream or into plain yogurt. not all
plants impart their flavor to honey very well—but melissa most certainly
does.
WiMeSo.indd 95 2/22/13 10:07 AM
96
linden
tilia europea
Trees make powerful impressions. More than their smaller herbaceous
relatives, they hold sway over our imaginations, winding their way into
myth and legend, even driving our culture at times. It may be their
sheer size, or their longevity, or both—but trees have an ability to
link the earth to the sky and to frame natural “cathedrals” for human
beings. Legends have always followed certain species—from the apple
to the yew—and the linden tree, also known as Tilia, is no exception.
This tree has a wild side, to be sure, and it’s an important native
member of low- to mid-elevation forests across the entire Northern
Hemisphere. However, it is also often found planted in villages and
cities as a companion tree, because of both its beauty and its amaz-
ing fragrance. In Central and Eastern Europe it is held in the high-
est esteem, serving as the national symbol of Slovenia and the Czech
Republic (where it is known as lipa). Here, majestic old lindens served
as gathering points for the local community, and villages would hold
court under their branches, confident that the tree would ensure jus-
tice but also bring about peace and an amicable resolution to conflict.
In many villages, this practice continues today.
Brixen, a very ancient town in northern Italy steeped in Germanic
influence, sits at the confluence of two rivers—the Isarco and the
Rienza. There the linden has always had a strong presence. A medici-
nal tea is made from the flowers (as is the case everywhere this tree
grows), and its wood is sculpted into incredibly elaborate carvings by
artisans in the surrounding valleys. Two Kaiserlinde, or chief lindens,
rumored to be over eight hundred years old, overlook the city from
foothills on the eastern and western sides.
Ireland also boasts its share of ancient lindens (here, as in Great
Britain, they are called lime trees). I was lucky enough to find a pair
WiMeSo.indd 96 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 97
of huge ones, their dense shade cooling the grass in a clearing of old-
growth forest that was otherwise mostly oak and laurel. They grew side
by side, the bases of their trunks touching, forming something of a
cradle, or gateway, where we lingered for a while. Burlington, Vermont,
is planted with a great many linden trees, lining some of the residen-
tial streets that run west, down toward the lake; at the lakefront itself,
small-leaved lindens (so different from the native basswoods) create
an intoxicating fragrance for summer evening walks. But in Provence,
where the same fragrance mixes with the red ochre soil that nourishes
lavender and other aromatic herbs, the cult of linden’s power is most
ritualized. Tilleul, which refers to the tree, a tea made from its flowers,
and a perfume distilled from the linden flowers, is firmly embedded
in the culture as a remedy for everything from distress and sorrow to
digestive complaints, fevers, and high blood pressure.
For the heart, tilia is a great ally—so it’s nice to note that its leaves
are generally heart-shaped, though this varies a little depending on spe-
cies (there are over thirty of them). American basswood can have huge
leaves, bigger than the palm of your hand, and larger, thicker flow-
ers (due to a second set of sepals). T. cordata has smaller leaves, with
slightly less showy flowers, though I consider them more aromatic.
T. platyphyllos, a mostly European species, has medium-size leaves,
fragrant flowers, and is considered the longest-living species. The
tree is at home in almost any temperate climate, enjoying the balmy
Mediterranean basin as much as frigid Vermont. It doesn’t mind a little
moisture and grows fairly quickly. Its leaves are silvery on the underside
and catch the wind easily, much like a cottonwood or aspen. It’s fantas-
tic to watch a breeze shake the linden tree, then wait for the smell to
drift from across the field.
Walter von der Vogelweide was a medieval German poet who lived
during the beginning of the thirteenth century. He may have been
born not too far from Brixen, the town in northern Italy at the conflu-
ence of two rivers. Regardless, he certainly spent long periods in that
valley. Perhaps he even saw the planting of the two Kaiserlinde that
WiMeSo.indd 97 2/22/13 10:07 AM
98 n AromAtIcs
still overlook it. Here are the opening verses of a poem, “Unter der
Linden” (Under the Linden), that he wrote from the perspective of a
young girl remembering her beloved.
Under the linden
On the meadow
Where last night we shared a bed
I found today—
Great joy to behold—
Crushed flowers and trampled grass.
From the wood and across our vale,
Tandaradei,
In beauty sang the nightingale.
From von der Vogelweide’s Die Gedichte
Walthers von der Vogelweide (Poems of
Walter von der Vogelweide),
trans. by Guido Masé
HarVesTinG linden
When I harvest linden flowers, usually sometime in the first weeks of
July, I take a big round basket up into the tree with me or, if the branches
are too dense, up the ladder. At this point, there usually are bees to con-
tend with. If the image is one of waving leaves and the smell a light,
bright, sweet fragrance, then the sound is a full, droning buzz from the
hundreds of bees gathering nectar for honey. The flower itself is attached
to a light-green bract, a long, oblong, leaflike structure that is pierced by
the flower’s stem. This bract is a very important part of the medicine,
so I will harvest it along with the single or double fully opened flower
(it’s almost impossible not to). You can get a bushel-basket full in a few
hours, if it’s a good year. Then it’s off to dry the flowers as quickly as
possible and store them tightly in glass jars, out of the sun.
Though it always happens a bit later in Vermont (and in Eastern
WiMeSo.indd 98 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 99
Europe), lindens typically bloom around the summer solstice (late
June) in places like Provence. When winter is dark and night is deep,
we will come back to those jars, open them, and release a one-of-a-kind
aromatic medicine, whose fresh fragrance holds the joy of a midsum-
mer night.
usinG linden
The linden tree, sacred in many traditions, offers us a fragrance and
a medicine that are soothing, relaxing, opening, and encouraging to
love and appreciation. Of all our aromatics, it is perhaps the best suited
for the stressed and anxious, or overwhelmed and irritable, personality
type—and who among us hasn’t felt that way from time to time? Our
modern lives are amazingly rich in communication and information,
but the barrage of information that assails us every day can have its
negative effects. First, the simple volume of data can be overwhelming.
But second, it can so capture our attention, and demand so much of us,
that we begin to neglect the people and places in our lives that matter
most: our families, our friends, our homes and gardens. I feel linden
helps me unplug and allows me to appreciate the nourishment and love
that’s right in front of me. And this is a powerful gift from a strong
and beautiful tree.
tilleul or linden Flower tea
Tilleul, the simple infusion of linden flowers, is a subtle but incredibly pow-
er ful remedy. it is made by pouring hot water over a few handfuls of the
dry, crushed blossoms and bracts stuffed into a teapot. Make sure that
the tea steeps covered, or you will lose a lot of the aromatic quality into
the kitchen air.
The linden can steep for three or thirty minutes, for it will have none of
the astringent unpleasantness of an overbrewed green or black tea. on
the contrary: the infusion is round, velvety almost, slightly thickened by
simple starches found in the bract. coupled with its distinctive fragrance,
WiMeSo.indd 99 2/22/13 10:07 AM
100 n AromAtIcs
it truly is a luxurious experience for such a simple ritual and is perhaps my
favorite kind of tea.
Try it at the end of a day to unwind. it slightly shifts consciousness
into a more joyous and calm place, allowing us to relax and appreciate
life for a moment. you can also drink it throughout the day, especially if
work or family are sources of stress that foster anxiety and frazzled think-
ing. Taken habitually, it can replace rituals such as alcohol or drug use
for breaking away from workday or family stress.
Tilleul is also thought to foster love and an open heart, alleviating
impatience and anger as well as high blood pressure. in europe it is rou-
tinely recommended for cardiovascular disease, as it is a safe adjunct to
conventional therapy (and it tastes delicious, too). some will suggest a
tincture, or alcohol extract, of these flowers—and while this can be very
effective, there’s something to the ritual of a cup of tea that makes it the
best way to enjoy this herb.
Taken as hot as possible, it is still used frequently for fevers and chills
associated with winter illness. This ability to cool the body by stimulating
slight perspiration is another reason it’s so highly prized in places like
Provence, where summer afternoons can become overwhelmingly hot.
To this end, a cup is enjoyed after lunch—usually around two or three
o’clock—and is often drunk cool and slightly sweetened. it’s one of the
best iced teas i’ve ever had.
The postlunch benefits linden offers extend to the digestion, too.
Herbalists prescribe a simple tea for many types of belly issues, from
heartburn to gas and bloating (though its effects on problems like con-
stipation is less pronounced). The aromatic quality is relaxing to the mus-
cles lining the gut, and the smooth, soothing nature of the tea softens
and heals areas of irritation.
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AromAtIcs n 101
linden Flower Bath
A few cupfuls linden blossoms
A washcloth or muslin bag
The tea has a fantastic and well-deserved reputation, but linden’s fame
extends into the per fume industry, too, where its bright floral notes are
sought after in producing eau de toilette, soaps, and creams.
My suggestion is to try turning your bathtub into a giant teacup full of
tilleul, then steeping yourself in it for some time. This is easily done by tak-
ing a few cupfuls of blossoms and tying them up in a washcloth or muslin
bag, then placing it in the tub as it’s filling with hot water.
Those who extol the benefits of lavender baths for relaxation would
do well to try linden, too—much less biting of a fragrance, and the sooth-
ing qualities that make the tea so lovely do wonders for the skin, too. a
cup of tea and a warm bath surround you with the vapors from this
tree’s amazing flowers, and both mental and physical knots untangle,
the pores open and the skin cools, and the heart relaxes just a little.
While we might not have the time to take a luxurious bath every day, it
nevertheless is an experience everyone should try.
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102
GinGer
Zingiber officinale
I remember ginger best from the time I spent in Bali, Indonesia. The
days there start with a warm haze, a quick sunrise over the rice padi,
and a sultry heat that wafts through the tiled homes with their thick,
thatched roofs. Often, the slightly oppressive afternoons are broken by
a rain shower—but this does little to refresh the thick air. Flowers are
everywhere—from jasmine blossoms, left as offerings on every step, to
huge sprays of white, pink, red, and yellow coming from the ginger
plants that line the trails between the rice terraces. And the ginger,
known as jahe locally, is harvested and used in nearly every dish, from
the “mixed rice” (a mélange of vegetables, egg, shredded meat, and
fried rice that is a lunchtime staple) to candies and drinks. It is also a
central remedy for the indigenous system of medicine, called jamu in
Indonesia, and is found in nearly every formula.
Ginger’s energy is warm. It’s spicy, though not in the same way as
the hot chilies that are also often used in the cuisine of Southeast Asia.
Its aroma is more floral, at times almost fruity, and its flavor reflects
this. Because of its warmth and the unique accent notes in its palate,
for me this aromatic herb will always be associated with tropical Bali,
its sacred volcanoes, and its animist religion that worships the spirits
of springs, mountains, ancient trees, and hidden valleys. Its immediate
effects are a welcome treat on warm and humid afternoons. Ginger can
help to induce perspiration, and even though it tastes warm, this action
ends up cooling us off nicely. Pretty nifty trick from a cup of tea.
Interestingly, in the cold weeks of November when, back in
Vermont, hunters take to the forest in hopes of restocking their freez-
ers with excellent wild venison, this tropical plant can provide amazing
support. Long hours are spent in silence, in stillness, in the deer stands
or blinds of the leafless forests. Often hunters pick the time between
WiMeSo.indd 102 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 103
four and six in the morning to stalk their prey—the coldest hours of
the day. The temperature, coupled with the lack of movement, can lead
to discomfort, regardless of how many layers of clothing the hunter is
wearing: fingertips and toes become tingly, muscles lose their respon-
siveness, and reaction time crucial to success is lost. A mugful of ginger
tea, or a few ginger capsules taken beforehand, strengthens the body
against the bone-chilling cold. As with so many of the aromatic plants,
this root works differently depending on the circumstances: cooling
off a body that is overheated and warming up one that is too cold.
GroWinG, HarVesTinG, and
PurcHasinG GinGer
Technically, the underground part of the ginger plant that we use
for medicine is known as a rhizome. From this rhizome’s fleshy, yel-
low body rise pointy growing tips that will shoot upward, given the
right conditions, into a glossy, reedlike stalk and its smooth and shiny
leaves. If conditions are right (meaning, a pretty constant seventy-five-
to-eighty-degree air temperature and high humidity), a flower bud that
resembles a pink pineapple will emerge and send out yellow flowers
from its core. The underground parts of ginger will lengthen and fat-
ten over time and can easily be harvested by cutting and replanting to
ensure the next crop. Even if conditions aren’t ideal, you can still get
the rhizome to sprout a few green shoots—but don’t expect it to grow
much. In Vermont, even in my greenhouse, ginger has a difficult time.
This is not too much of an issue, however, since this storied spice
is available, dry or often fresh and whole, at nearly every grocery store.
If you can’t find any fresh, stop by a specialty Asian foods store or even
a natural foods supermarket or cooperative. While the dry, powdered
root is certainly serviceable for medicinal purposes, it can be a bit too
stimulating, especially if folks are already feeling a little dried out. It
keeps well in the open air of a room-temperature kitchen for at least a
couple of weeks, though it will start to dry out after seven to ten days.
WiMeSo.indd 103 2/22/13 10:07 AM
104 n AromAtIcs
My recommendation: purchase it fresh, in small quantities, once or twice
a week. If you live in a warm and humid climate with no danger of frost,
you can plant it in your garden, usually in part shade and fertile, loamy
soil, allowing the green ends of the growing tips to stick a half-inch up
out of the ground. But be forewarned: nonorganic rhizomes have often
been heat-processed, or even irradiated, and won’t grow at all.
usinG GinGer
The simplest and most traditional way of using ginger is to cook with
it. I peel the rhizome and cut it into thin slices with a very sharp par-
ing knife. These can be added to hot peanut, sesame, or coconut oil
and left to cook for two or three minutes before adding more stir-fry
ingredients: carrots, onions, mushrooms, burdock roots, or whatever
strikes your fancy. Before serving your meal, remove the slices and set
them aside (a bit too fibrous to just eat straight). Ginger shares this
use with its cousins turmeric and galangal (and cardamom, too, to a
certain extent). Eaten habitually, three or four days a week, its aromatic
and pungent constituents will gently and safely adjust the subjective
feeling of body temperature: a cool constitution will warm up a bit,
and warmer folks will overheat less. This latter effect is echoed in the
modern research literature, where ginger and its chemistry consistently
show anti-inflammatory results—not exactly a temperature issue, but
helpful nonetheless as a daily habit.
Ginger’s soothing effects on the belly are due to its relaxing aro-
matic qualities, which quickly relieve nausea and allow food to move
down the digestive tract. Its aromatic chemistry also explains why
it can warm up cool hands and feet: by relaxing the smooth muscle
that surrounds the arteries, warm blood moves from the core to the
periphery. If we’re hot, this will make us sweat—and sweating leads
inevitably to cooling (also useful, as are all aromatics, in managing a
fever). But if we’re already cool, the extra circulation will remedy cold,
numb, or tingly fingers and toes. Raynaud’s phenomenon, mentioned
WiMeSo.indd 104 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 105
earlier, describes an extreme example of cold hands and feet. Cold tem-
peratures, but also stress and tension, can cause those who suffer from
Raynaud’s to get numb and even have their fingertips turn purple or
white. This is thought to be associated with a constrictive spasm of the
circulation—and ginger does wonders to relieve the condition, both in
the short term and following habitual use.
So from the tropics comes an aromatic that is a useful counterbal-
ance to the relaxing, cooling mint-family plants we’ve explored so far.
Ginger is warm, and its relaxing effects are coupled with a gentle anti-
inflammatory action that makes it ideally suited for muscle pain and
tension, either taken internally or applied topically as a warm compress.
While it is difficult to grow in temperate regions, it is so widely avail-
able that you should have no problem adding it to your home medicine
kit (and spice rack). And every time you taste it, or feel its relaxing
warmth on your back or belly, it will bring you back to its tropical
home: warm, relaxed, a place where time moves more slowly and the
pace is often more leisurely—a much-needed oasis in our modern lives.
Ginger tea
2 teaspoons ginger powder or 4 slices rhizome
12 ounces boiling water
While its culinary uses are well known, ginger has a unique and extremely
powerful medicinal effect when taken as a tea. it is strong, so two tea-
spoons of the powder or four good-size slices of the fresh rhizome can be
infused in twelve ounces of boiling hot water for just five minutes or so.
This preparation, while delicious in and of itself and useful for tem-
perature regulation, is specifically power ful in controlling nausea. i’ve
seen it work consistently and in a variety of situations, from the morning
sickness of pregnancy, to after-meal indigestion, to motion sickness. in
this final application, it seems as effective as technological medicine—
and way tastier! i will always be grateful for the little bag of pickled gin-
ger that helped me on a particularly turbulent entry into Tokyo.
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106 n AromAtIcs
hot Ginger Compress
3 teaspoons ginger powder or 6 slices of rhizome
1 cup water
A clean piece of cloth
Tense muscles are almost an inevitability of modern life. at some point, we
have all seen ourselves holding our shoulders tight when concentrating or
under stress. This can lead to soreness, or creep up the neck and morph
into a tension headache. since ginger is so useful at improving circulation
and relaxing tension in the muscles of the belly, perhaps it could find an
application for skeletal muscle tension, too. in fact, this might be my fa-
vorite use for this tropical plant.
Make a really strong tea (three teaspoons of powder, or six slices
of rhizome, per cup of hot water) and saturate a clean piece of flan-
nel with the infusion. you can then apply the cloth directly to areas of
tension, soreness, or pain. circulation to the affected area improves,
inflammation is reduced, and the tightness dissolves. This application is
known by herbalists as a hot ginger compress and is recommended for
everything from muscle pain to arthritis.
Massage therapists sometimes use a few drops of ginger essential
oil in a base of grapeseed or olive oil to help melt away knots during a
relaxing body rub. in bali, and nowadays throughout the world, women
use ginger compresses for the low back and pelvic pain associated with
menstruation, as well as the uterine pain that can linger after childbirth.
Warm cloths soaked in ginger tea are applied to the low back and belly,
and the whole midsection is wrapped up in linen. leave these prepara-
tions on for fifteen minutes or so, then check: you don’t want to warm
the tissue up too much!
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107
Garlic
alliuM sativuM
In the Balkans, the region just north of Greece, mountain folk talk
of a strongly scented remedy whose mere aroma dispels all manner of
evil, from sorcerers and demons to the dread upir, a witch-spirit who,
rising from the grave, travels the countryside in search of blood. Its
victims slowly lose color and vitality, become depressed, and eventu-
ally fade away. It is possible that the term vampyr, which evolved into
our present-day vampire at some point in the eighteenth century, comes
from these Central European legends. Regardless, the remedy is the
same: the bulb of a stinking lily, cultivated for cuisine but also used as
a potent disinfecting medicine. This remedy is, of course, garlic.
Garlic braids and wreaths, so common as a way of curing and stor-
ing the bulbs, are still hung in the rooms of small children and sick
people to prevent evil influences from taking hold. In this sense, gar-
lic embodies the essence of the aromatic herbs. But it also possesses a
great power to enhance vitality, acting as a strong stimulant to those
who consume it. In India, where the herb has been used for over five
thousand years in similar negativity-dispelling rituals, it is shunned by
yogis because of the fire it engenders in the spirit—it arouses passion
and élan vital, sometimes too much for those engaging in a meditative
path. In ancient Egypt it was given in large, daily doses to slaves work-
ing on pyramid construction to keep them healthy but also strong and
vital (and, perhaps, to keep depression and apathy at bay). In all these
uses, garlic transcends its aromatic powers and shows much more of its
tonic qualities—previewing the virtues of another important class of
medicinal plants.
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108 n AromAtIcs
GroWinG, HarVesTinG, and
sTorinG Garlic
It is quite easy to grow good garlic, and the process is understandable
(the seed is huge), straightforward (into the ground it goes), and quite
rewarding (one clove becomes a whole bulb). It is an ideal project to
help children learn the joys of gardening and its rewards. As the garlic
rests over the winter months, children can anticipate the first green
shoots of spring, watch the plant’s development over the early summer
months, and participate in the process of harvesting, cleaning, and cur-
ing. How much more delicious is the roasted bulb when you were the
one who pulled it from the rich garden soil! So even if you never plan
a garden, nor expect to get your garlic anywhere other than the super-
market, I encourage you to try an experiment at least once to witness
this magic of growth. The plant takes up little space, and five or six
bulbs can be raised in a small planter box on a windowsill.
The first step is finding good “seed.” Not a seed-bearing plant, like
an onion or leek, garlic propagates from a single clove that grows into
a whole bulb. If left untended, this bulb will eventually burst and each
of those cloves will try to grow, too—but the plant will quickly lose
vitality this way, and become a shadow of its former self. It requires the
human hand to thrive. So find yourself a local farmer who has grown
garlic for some years in the same soil and environment you have in your
garden. Try a farmers’ market or natural foods store. Look for the big-
gest, firmest heads you can find or, better yet, ask if there is any “seed
garlic” for sale. Chances are that, starting in late September, there will
be lots available. I’ve found that three or four pounds is an adequate
amount to grow for my small family, providing enough to last until
May. Talk to your farmer or produce department manager about the
differences between softneck (stores well) or hardneck (more pungent)
varietals, and make a choice that suits your needs.
The time is late October or early November. Garlic “seed” in
hand, make your way to the garden. The one trick for this plant is
WiMeSo.indd 108 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 109
well-prepared soil with little competition from fast-growing weeds. I
make sure that there is a lot of compost in the beds, but I also add a
little bone meal (for my acidic Vermont soil) and an organic fertilizer,
such as fish emulsion or another concentrated source of nutrition. If
your spring and summer tend to be dry, just dig the soil deeply and
plant the garlic at ground level. You may need to water the cloves from
time to time. Conversely, if your climate is moist, raise your beds six to
twelve inches above grade. You can always use a planter box or another
container, even planting it among tomatoes and basil in a large ceramic
pot. Separate the head of garlic into individual cloves first, and leave
the papery wrapper on. Then push each clove, pointy side up, into the
loose and fertile soil. Space them about eight inches apart.
Over the winter, your garlic will put out small rootlets that give it
a jump on the growing season. Come spring, it will be one of the first
plants to emerge, strong and green, quickly sending up lilylike shoots
already rich with its characteristic smell. The plant will get bigger and
bigger until, usually in mid- to late June, it begins to flower. Now, a
garlic flower is a bit different from your usual blossom. In softneck
varieties, a swelling begins in the stem that erupts into a cluster of
small “bulbils.” In hardneck varieties, a snakelike “scape” twists its way
upward and forms a similar swelling at its end. The scapes can, and
perhaps should, be cut off and either chopped fresh for soup or stir-fry
or preserved by canning or pickling. A few weeks after the flowers,
when the bottom three to four leaves of the garlic plant have turned
yellow and the whole thing is about three to four feet tall, it’s time for
harvest.
If you wait too long, the new garlic head will burst open and really
cut down on storage time (though not edibility). But when you feel the
time is right, usually in the middle of July, simply grasp the neck of the
plant and pull up vigorously. An entire brand-new head will come up
with a tangle of rootlets and soil beneath it. My recommendation is to
try this raw form immediately, on a hot day in the garden. Peel a clove
and bite into it. It is both milder and sharper than the cured bulb. It
WiMeSo.indd 109 2/22/13 10:07 AM
110 n AromAtIcs
gives an immediate, enlivening spice but little of the long-term burn-
ing you can get from aged garlic. Before bringing it in for storage, clip
off the rootlets sticking out of the bottom of the bulb and trim the
neck just below the bulbils for a softneck, or at about eighteen inches
from the bulb for a hardneck. Then tie the stalks into bundles of five
to seven plants and hang them in a room with good air circulation.
Traditionally this meant the barn, but a covered porch or a room with
open windows and low humidity is perfect, too. After about ten days,
you can clean up the bulbs (remove the least amount of wrapper pos-
sible), cut the rest of the neck off, and place them in a cool, dark place
for long-term storage.
usinG Garlic
Entire books have been written on the medicinal and culinary uses of
this remarkable plant. In Italy, it is considered a virtual panacea. The
cloves are crushed whole and used as treatments for wounds (excel-
lent and effective), eaten for worms, and given as stimulant tonics to
improve digestion, liver function, and mood. It is one of the first rem-
edies on the list for treating the common cold or influenza, and fea-
tures prominently in many of the most famous national dishes, from
marinara sauce to bruschetta. There is little doubt that this is a good
herb that is quite good for you, too. So, to conclude our exploration,
I would simply like to offer a brief note on its chemistry and prepara-
tion, and the medicinal effects of its aromatic qualities.
First off, you can’t swallow a whole garlic clove and expect to get
much out of it. The chemical compounds responsible for its antisep-
tic and aromatic quality are sulfur-rich molecules known as isothio-
cyanates, but they don’t exist in active form in the clove. Rather, since
they probably evolved to deter browsing animals and insects, they are
synthesized as needed whenever the plant is traumatized. Normally,
inactive forms and the enzyme that converts them into the pungent
spices we know so well exist in two different compartments. When
WiMeSo.indd 110 2/22/13 10:07 AM
AromAtIcs n 111
something (like a knife, or the teeth of an herbivore) break the mem-
branes that separate these compartments, the enzyme kicks into action
and the isothiocyanates are born. Now garlic is ready to work its magic.
What this means is that, for maximum medicinal effect, the cloves
should be chopped and allowed to rest for two to three minutes.
When we eat this garlic, either close to raw or infused into warm
olive oil or soup, the pungent compounds are absorbed into the blood-
stream relatively quickly. Here they act as all aromatics do: they dilate
blood vessels, opening and relaxing the circulation. But garlic also has
a dual action on the heart, usually decreasing the strength of its con-
tractions and slowing the heartbeat. Put all this together, and you have
a remedy that can contribute to lower blood pressure and a feeling of
relaxation. Conversely, if circulation is poor or if the heart is already
fatigued, garlic has a decidedly stimulating action, warming the hands
and feet (again, by dilating vessels) and perhaps increasing the strength
of the heart’s contractions.
This latter effect may have been what the supervisors of the pyra-
mid crews were after when they prescribed daily garlic rations to the
slaves. Improved circulation and stronger hearts push back fatigue. But
that may also underlie the use of garlic in protection against vampires.
The pale, deficient, weak individuals who were thought to have been
victims of nightly bloodletting would show renewed signs of vigor after
consuming the cloves for some time. And while, in the past, weakness
and deficiency were dominant concerns, in our modern culture we
often see the opposite: heat, stress, and excess often manifest in the
heart as high blood pressure, rapid heart rate, and, eventually, heart
disease. Like most aromatic plants, garlic helps us find the balance
point of tension in our bodies and in our hearts. But few are so easy to
add into everyday life, or as enriching to everything from a simple plate
of grains to a rich and complex seafood stew. Truly, as they say, garlic
is as good as ten mothers.
WiMeSo.indd 111 2/22/13 10:07 AM
112
3
Bitters
Turn On and Challenge
Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison.
Paracelsus, ca. 1520
What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in
disguise.
Oscar Wilde, 1895
Our tastes are our preferences, literally. Often these preferences favor
sweetness, ease, and comfort over bitter trials and provocation: but
despite how much we try, there is no avoiding fate’s travails. Some lives
experience them in small measure. Others are overtaken by them, end-
ing in tragedy. This is the story of an ancient king obsessed with tox-
ins.* It gives us a potent example of the tragic case—and also reveals
the secret behind a bitter antidote to all poison.
*The primary sources for this story are Pliny’s Natural History and Justinus’s Epitome of
the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus (which includes details on Pompey’s campaign
against Mithridates and his eventual demise). An excellent contemporary appraisal and
collection of these primary sources is Mayor’s The Poison King.
WiMeSo.indd 112 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 113
Mithridates Eupator was nearing the end of a protracted, bloody
war with a rising power from the west. For over twenty-five years he
had resisted the advances of Rome, challenging the warlike republic
and often succeeding. But now, under the leadership of a new general
and reinforced with fresh armies, Roman centurions had driven him
from his native lands, pursued him across the kingdoms of his allies,
and backed him into a far northern corner of his realm, where his son
Machares was viceroy.
Hoping to rest, regroup, and renew his armies, Mithridates wanted
to make a desperate last stand: a counterattack from north of the Black
Sea. His pride allowed for no less. He counted himself among the
descendants of Alexander the Great. He cherished his kingdom’s his-
tory: the people of Pontus, in what is now northern Turkey, had long
held back both the Persians to the east and the Greeks and Romans
to the west. He himself had repelled numerous attempts at his crown
(a professional hazard for all royalty at the time), and, now, nearing
the end of his seventh decade of life, he was not about to back down
peacefully.
His son, Machares, however, had made different plans. Messages
took time to travel, but he had been following the course of the war
and, being no fool, had realized that the tide was turning against
his father. Having secured an alliance with Roman leaders, he didn’t
particularly wish to jeopardize his long-term fate on a risky gamble.
Through compromise, he envisioned a chance to forge a comfortable
and possibly lucrative relationship with Rome. A period of peace might
allow him to consolidate his holdings, return productivity to the land,
and spare lives. He had hoped his father would never return from the
battles on the southern shores.
Mithridates was clearly shocked by his son’s betrayal. Though his-
torical accounts vary, they lead to the same conclusion: be it through
deception and false promises of safety, or perhaps just through simple
force, Machares was poisoned and quickly died. The beleaguered king
might even have been able to mount his counteroffensive, to test his
WiMeSo.indd 113 2/22/13 10:07 AM
114 n bItters
meddle once more against an old enemy who would not have been
expecting such a move. One can only imagine the corrosive rage and
sadness that consumed him. But victory was not to be his.
His youngest son, Pharnaces, had been riding north for days with
a small but fast contingent and arrived just after his brother’s death.
Pharnaces had been groomed as heir since he was young and, though he
was the last son of Mithridates and his wife, Laodice (also his sister), he
had always shown the most promise. He came upon the encampment
where his father, sisters, and remnants of the army were stationed. He
was able to quickly convince the disillusioned generals that a kingdom
under his control, allied with Rome, would be better for everyone con-
cerned. He recruited their aid in a coup to overthrow his father.
Mithridates caught wind of this plot through a few elite sol-
diers whose loyalty remained steadfast, but by now it was too late.
Despairing, he returned to his poisons, always close at hand (some say
hidden in his staff), and rapidly crafted an especially strong prepara-
tion. Among his cache were true toxins, such as nux vomica beans from
far afield, and deadly nightshade berries, grown much closer to home,
plus the viciously acrid root of aconite—especially bitter, death-giving
plants. He mixed quickly and with a skilled hand. First, his mistress
and daughters, including Drypetina, who had loved him and stood by
his side for over forty years, were made to taste the poison. It proved
remarkably effective, and they all quickly perished. Next, surrounded
by the corpses of his family and a few loyal guards, the king briefly
contemplated his life of war, struggle, betrayal, and revenge. He took
the vial to his lips, closed his eyes, and drank deeply.
The kingdom of Pontus occupied land on the southeastern shore of the
Black Sea, an expanse of water surrounded by Turkey, the Balkans, the
Caucasus, and Crimea. This land connects the Mediterranean basin to
the rest of Asia, and its climate is mild. Being a long strip of coastline,
it ranges almost four hundred miles across and is bordered about sixty
miles to the south by an impressive mountain range whose eastern
WiMeSo.indd 114 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 115
peaks exceed ten thousand feet. These mountains slope quickly to the
sea and are rich, green, steep, and dotted with clear lakes.
These slopes are still covered by very old forests, which, in the time
of Mithridates, would have been even more extensive. The woods at
lower elevations are rich in beech, chestnut, oak, and spruce. There are
occasional colonies of yew and a storied grove of boxwood, holly, and
ivy where the boxwood trees are over thirty feet tall. Proceeding up the
mountain slopes from the rocky cliffs of the coast, evergreens begin
to dominate, including spruce, Black Sea fir, and Scotch pine. Finally,
above about six or seven thousand feet, forest is replaced by wide
Alpine fields, and we find great quantities of native meadow herbs:
yarrow, gentian, arnica, and lady’s mantle, which flower in the summer
months; and snowdrops, crocuses, and irises that bloom in the spring.
Traveling back toward the sea, we follow springs and streams to riv-
ers cut deep into the mountains and lined with dense stands of alder.
Here there are also rhododendrons, delphinium, monkshood, wild roses,
honeysuckle, calamus, cyclamen, and deadly nightshade. All these plants
may have played a part in the life of the poison king of Pontus, but we
know at least that he experimented extensively with the more toxic
ones, such as monkshood and nightshade. He would also include gen-
tian, calamus, iris, parsley, carrot seed, and various tree resins in many of
his preparations. The base was always extremely bitter; aromatic plants,
such as ginger, cardamom, and rose, came in smaller proportion; and the
whole was bound together with resins, gums, or tree sap.
Mithridates began his experiments in poison formulation (as well as
his research into antidotes) by collecting plants on his walks in the wild.
His studies started early: when he was fourteen, his father was poisoned
and control of the kingdom was turned over to his mother (she herself
was the prime suspect in the murder) until he or his brother would be
ready to ascend to the throne. This was the beginning of a strong inter-
est, some say a paranoid obsession, with poisons and their antidotes. If
it happened to his father, he reasoned, it could happen to him as well.
The young prince hit upon an interesting idea: perhaps, if full
WiMeSo.indd 115 2/22/13 10:07 AM
116 n bItters
doses of poison could kill, then smaller doses might strengthen him
against death. Simply employing plants that tasted like the poison but
were not toxic themselves (like the root of high mountain gentian)
might do the trick. Mithridates retreated from palace life for a period
and apparently delved deeply into venom brewing and antidote craft-
ing, because when he returned, both his mother and his brother were
poisoned and died. The prince became king, married his sister, and set
about building an army—all the while looking over his shoulder, fear-
ing the murder in his evening meal, but confident that the regular use
of his antidotes would keep him alive.
The work of Mithridates proceeded along two tracks. First, he
learned all about the toxic plants and how to prepare and administer
them. This was accomplished through experiments on himself (and
others, including many animals) both to determine dosage and also
to build a tolerance to the poisonous alkaloids found in these herbs.
Second, he constantly worked on the perfect antidote, a medicine so
powerful it could reverse the effects of poison and thereby preserve
life. In these pursuits, he had the assistance of a varied group of poi-
soners, shamans, and herbalists, ranging from snake charmers of the
eastern lands (who taught him how to extract toxins from vipers), to
the mushroom eaters who lived in the north (who, experienced with
all toadstools, had a special fondness for the white-flecked red caps of
the fly agaric). Of all his coconspirators, one stands out for his depth of
knowledge and skill in pharmacology: the root doctor Crataeus.
Crataeus was from Pergamon, a storied capital that, roughly one
hundred years earlier, had commanded almost all of modern-day
Turkey and parts of Greece. As a trained herbalist, he would have had
access to the collected knowledge of the time on physiology and phar-
macy, which, of course, included extensive information on medicinal
and toxic plants. Additionally, as was often the case, he most likely
gravitated toward wealthy and influential patrons, so that he might
pursue his (relatively) esoteric trade in comfort and have access to often
exotic—and expensive—remedies.
WiMeSo.indd 116 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 117
Because Mithridates and the kingdom of Pontus had come to
dominate Asia Minor and the lands Pergamon had formerly con-
trolled, Crataeus quickly found himself in the court of Sinope, the
Pontine capital. He discovered in the young monarch a kindred spirit
and a powerful ally, and the two formed a strong bond. Together,
Mithridates and Crataeus fine-tuned powerful poisons that killed rap-
idly without producing symptoms; they discovered new and effective
medicinal plants; and they perfected a supposed antidote to all poisons,
which became a daily tonic for the toxin-obsessed king. Crataeus, who
was equally methodical, kept extensive records and is in fact credited
with the first visual compendium of medicinal plants in the Western
world
1
—annotated in detail and enriched with his own illustrations of
the herbs being described.
This manuscript must have been a fantastic collection. Not only
were individual plants outlined and named, their illustrations accom-
panied by their medicinal uses, but also, the recipes for numerous
remedies and tonics (including the famous mithridate, as the uni-
versal antidote became known) were recorded along with numerous
variations.
Crataeus identified and discussed several “new” plants, too: includ-
ing agrimony, boneset, and gravel root (all of which he named after his
royal patron).* The famous herbal of Dioscorides, published over one
hundred years later, copied huge portions of Crataeus’s work
2
and has
itself been copied by every herbalist since. So, even though the original
work was lost, we are still feeling the influence of the palace herbalist
of Pontus over two thousand years later.
What was the composition of the mithridate, the mythical univer-
sal antidote, that Mithridates and Crataeus formulated so long ago?
What made it so powerful, so successful, that physicians revered and
copied it for hundreds, if not thousands, of years? There are numerous
*Eupator, Mithridates’s suffix, was the chosen appellation. Agrimony is Agrimonia eupa-
toria, and the genus Eupatorium includes both boneset (E. perfoliatum) and gravel root
(E. purpurea).
WiMeSo.indd 117 2/22/13 10:07 AM
118 n bItters
recorded recipes, starting with Celsus’s De Medicina (pages 178–79 and
also well summarized in Norton’s “Pharmacology of Mithridatum”). It
seems clear that the antidote itself did not contain poisonous plants
but rather was a mixture that included many herbs, both local and
exotic, but all nontoxic in normal doses. Some of the king’s first
attempts at antidotes were straight kyphi mixtures (see page 35), sent
over by the pharaoh of Egypt: aromatic resins mostly, sacred incenses
and gums, which opened the circulation, reduced inflammation, and
increased the body’s adaptability to the stress (in this case poison) it
was experiencing.
But while the aromatic mixtures may have conferred an advantage
in withstanding the poison, they were not adequate to prove universally
effective against toxins. They may not have known this at the time, but
what the king and his root doctor required was a way to improve the
processing (metabolism) and elimination of the poisons from the body
to make the mixture complete. Since almost all poisons were admin-
istered by mouth, any antidote needed to work through the digestive
system and its associated “chemistry lab,” the liver. By harnessing our
own detoxification mechanisms, the mithridate may have blunted the
effects of poisonous alkaloids, such as aconitine, strychnine, and atro-
pine, helping the body to neutralize them more quickly and excrete
their by-products more effectively.
In examining the ingredients of the mithridate (as best can be
determined by the historical record and the flora of northern coastal
Turkey),
3
we find a few categories of plants that appear consistently
in the many documented variants of the universal antidote formula.
First, as mentioned, were the aromatics. These ingredients included
Egyptian calamus, cinnamon, myrrh, and frankincense; but also vale-
rian and cardamom. Next, the blend featured a few “special” plants
that were highly revered for their ability to heal. Some examples
included St. John’s wort and saffron. Finally, and perhaps most impor-
tantly, Crataeus and Mithridates added a large proportion of roots and
leaves whose only common characteristic was their intense bitterness.
WiMeSo.indd 118 2/22/13 10:07 AM
Plate 1. (above) Mentha x piperita, Peppermint inflorescence
(Photograph by Guido Masé)
Plate 2. (below) Melissa officinalis, Lemon Balm flower
(Photograph by Guido Masé)
WiMeSo_color insert.indd 1 2/22/13 10:13 AM
Plate 4. (above)
Zingiber officinale,
Ginger sliced rhizome
(Photograph by Guido
Masé)
Plate 5. (left)
Zingiber officinale var.
rubra, Red Ginger
flower
(Photograph by Anne K.
Dougherty)
Plate 3. (above) Tilia europea,
Linden flower
(Photograph by Guido Masé)
WiMeSo_color insert.indd 2 2/22/13 10:13 AM
Plate 6. (above) Allium sativum, Garlic clove (Photograph by Guido Masé)
Plate 7. (below) Allium sativum, Garlic bulb (Photograph by Guido Masé)
WiMeSo_color insert.indd 3 2/22/13 10:38 AM
Plate 8. (above) Artemisia absinthium, Wormwood inflorescence
(Photograph by Guido Masé)
Plate 9. (below) Taraxacum officinale, Dandelion flower
(Photograph by Guido Masé)
WiMeSo_color insert.indd 4 2/22/13 10:13 AM
Plate 10. (above) Taraxacum officinale, Dandelion seed
(Photograph by Guido Masé)
Plate 11. (below) Arctium lappa, Burdock flower (Photograph by Guido Masé)
WiMeSo_color insert.indd 5 2/22/13 10:13 AM
Plate 12. (above) Rumex
crispus, Yellowdock leaf
(Photograph by Guido
Masé)
Plate 13. (left) Theobroma
cacao, Chocolate pods
(Photograph by Anne K.
Dougherty)
WiMeSo_color insert.indd 6 2/22/13 10:13 AM
Plate 14. (above) Astragalus membranaceus, Astragalus flower
(Photograph by Guido Masé)
Plate 15. (below) Astragalus membranaceus, Astragalus leaf
(Photograph by Guido Masé)
WiMeSo_color insert.indd 7 2/22/13 10:14 AM
Plate 16. (above) Ganoderma tsugae, Red Reishi (Lingzhi)
(Photograph by Guido Masé)
Plate 17. (below) Crataegus monogyna, Hawthorn flower
(Photograph by Anne K. Dougherty)
WiMeSo_color insert.indd 8 2/22/13 10:14 AM
bItters n 119
These were botanicals from the Apiaceae or parsley family, such as
wild carrot root, parsley itself, anise, asafoetida, and opopanax; herbs
from the Brassicaceae or mustard family, such as shepherd’s purse; and
roots from the Gentianaceae family, such as gentian and centaury.
Gentian (Gentiana lutea) is considered one of the bitterest plants
we know.
4
Even small quantities of amarogentin, one of its constitu-
ents, elicit strong reactions on the tongue and throughout the diges-
tive tract.
5
It is a beautiful plant, growing to four feet and featuring
a riotous spike of yellow flowers, and Mithridates would have had to
search for it at higher elevations, in the sunny meadows above the tree
line, during his wanderings in the mountains of Pontus. Its flavor is
actually very similar to that of the true poisons—deadly nightshade
(Atropa belladonna), for instance—and, being experienced in trying
these poisons, Mithridates could not have helped but notice the simi-
larity in taste. Gentian, however, is completely nontoxic, and herein
lay the king’s genius. He thought that the regular consumption of a
plant that tastes like poison might somehow fortify him against the
occasional ingestion of a truly toxic herb like belladonna. As we shall
see, this strategy worked quite well—too well, in the end—and relied
on a couple of important ideas. First of all, our physiology appreciates
a good challenge. And second, historically we have lived in an environ-
ment full of a wide diversity of botanical chemistry that provided that
challenge.
THe xenobioMe: is THere an oPTiMal
oPeraTinG enVironMenT?
Any living system exists in the context of its surroundings. Fields
respond to the quality of the soil, the water that flows through them,
and the weather they experience. Mice living in the field respond to the
grass seed that ripens every fall and to the predators flying above the
open expanse or hiding in the hollows. Bacteria living on and in the
mice respond to their hosts’ feeding patterns, their living situations,
WiMeSo.indd 119 2/22/13 10:07 AM
120 n bItters
their social interactions. Even the inner milieu of the bacteria is respon-
sive to the environment of the mice and field, altering the chemistry it
expresses.
6
This reflects a profound degree of interconnection, where
one piece of the web of life affects many other pieces in turn, at many
different levels.
If we agree that ecological interconnection is indeed a reality, and
organisms evolved in the context of their environments,
7
then it is not
unreasonable to ask what environmental parameters, or ecological com-
ponents, might be able to best provide the organism with what it needs
to function well. In other words, are there any identifiable elements in
the world around us that are crucial for health and, specifically for our
discussion, crucial for our ability to consistently process and eliminate
substances that might otherwise be toxic, irritating, and poisonous?
We know that food and water are necessary for survival. We
also have a pretty good idea about some chemical constituents whose
absence causes illness: vitamin C and scurvy, folic acid and neural
tube defects in the fetus, and vitamin B12 and anemia,
8
to name just a
few. Notice that these are nutrients we have identified by the immedi-
ate results of their deficiencies. Remove B12 from a person’s diet, and
within months she will develop very noticeable symptoms of fatigue
and pallor, she will stop menstruating, and depression may ensue.
We know these nutrients are important because it is easy to trace a
direct cause-and-effect relationship between deficiencies and disease.
But could there be other nutrients whose absence causes more subtle
issues? It’s possible that these issues would not even be evident on an
individual basis, requiring instead a large population and long periods
of observation. As we shall see, our species seems to be in the middle
of just such an experiment, and the results are quite telling. But, for
now, let’s stay focused on the individual’s physiology and its ability to
process the daily barrage of chemicals to which it is exposed.
If we are talking about processing chemicals, we have to talk about
the liver. While many tissues in the body have the ability to produce
enzymes and antioxidants that help to neutralize toxins, none compare
WiMeSo.indd 120 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 121
to the four-pound sponge located on our right upper abdomen, halfway
hidden behind the rib cage. It is a tireless metabolic workhorse—but,
curiously enough, if left alone it does very little. Isolated liver tissue and
isolated liver cells do not seem to do much of anything, neither synthe-
sizing bile nor producing high levels of metabolic enzymes. Researchers
attempting to study how liver cells behave have learned that, in order
to better replicate the conditions found in living beings, the cells have
to be bathed not only in nutrients, but also in a cocktail of chemicals.
It is only then that they begin to act like their true selves. This makes
sense: any participant in the web of life becomes lost, sad, and con-
fused when removed from its native environment. Cells taken out of
the liver and cultured appear to be quite literally depressed—until you
give them something to do.*
The cocktail of chemicals researchers apply to isolated liver cells
varies depending on the experiment. Its precise composition comes
from observing how cells metabolize “test” substances (such as aceclof-
enac, a pain reliever) and comparing it to how an animal’s liver breaks
down those same substances. If the cells work in the same way and at
the same rate as in the living organ, then the chemical cocktail must
be right (or at least close enough).
9
This technique is useful for creat-
ing experimental models of drug metabolism but doesn’t tell us much
about the true ecological context necessary for a complex, living organ,
such as the liver, to work at its best—other than the fact that some
type of context is absolutely essential.
We can perhaps begin to discover an answer by thinking about
what types of foods humans have eaten historically. Our diets, as we
shall see, have shifted over the course of recent history. Before we
began cultivating vegetables and grains, some ten thousand to fifteen
*Although, interestingly, cells from other human organs, such as nerve or muscle cells,
don’t need much more than sugar and a few growth factors to respond to calcium and
other electrolytes, much as they would in a living being. This implies that liver cells are
more tied to the xenobiome—the comprehensive chemical environment in which it
evolved—than other tissues are. This makes sense, given their role.
WiMeSo.indd 121 2/22/13 10:07 AM
122 n bItters
thousand years ago, we mostly consumed meat and wild plants.
10

Toxins came from bacteria (spoiled meat or contaminated water), the
bites of venomous insects or animals, or directly from poisonous roots,
barks, leaves, seeds, and berries. On this canvas we can begin to paint
the picture of the xenobiome, the comprehensive chemical environ-
ment in which the liver evolved
11
and without which it might feel like
a fish out of water.
Standing in the middle an East African landscape, you take a moment
to experience the silence. It is hot and sunny. Where you can see into
the distance, a slight haze lingers from the night. There is a tall, wide
tree far off—a massive baobab that served as shelter, whose fruits you
pounded into a meal that also seemed to reduce the aches from your
days of running. Your gaze returns to your feet, red with the fine dust
that is the soil here, out of which grows the endless sea of grass.
You hear a snap like the crack of thunder, then a series of them, and
though they seem far away, they are clear and ring brightly across the
savannah. The elephants are tearing down whole trees, wrenching mas-
sive limbs to get at the leaves, prying what sustenance they can from
the dry landscape. It’s good to know they are there. You haven’t found
many animals yet, and resources are scarce. Perhaps the elephants have
discovered something interesting.
As you begin to move again, you notice a sickle bush (Dichrostachys)
and a tamarind tree beyond some taller golden grass. The roots from
the first are starchy, bitter but nourishing, and the beanlike fruits of
the second will make a great, bitter-sour complement (depending on
how ripe they are). You collect a good supply of both to save for the
evening meal.
To people who lived (or are still living) in this world, plants pro-
vided the bulk of the chemistry that their livers experienced on a daily
basis. Meat may have been abundant and was certainly crucial in nour-
ishing the species, but it isn’t a source of much chemical diversity. Aside
from iron, other minerals, and important nutrients like B vitamins,
WiMeSo.indd 122 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 123
animal flesh is primarily a source of macronutrients, such as protein
and fat. Even more crucially, most of the chemistry meat does provide
isn’t at all challenging to liver metabolism. Protein from the break-
down of the meat we eat is used by the liver to make our tissues, our
enzymes, our plasma proteins. We would never dream of chemically
destroying such a precious resource. So, in the end, though they may
not always have represented the bulk of the calories and macronutri-
ents, plants were certainly responsible for providing both the greatest
sheer number of different individual chemicals to the liver and also its
greatest metabolic challenge.
Plants are hardly harmless when ingested. Sure, many are poison-
ous, but we generally avoid these and don’t tend to think of carrots as
toxic (which, of course, they aren’t). The reason we tolerate them so
well, however, is based on millions of years of coevolutionary history.
Starting with insects, plants have been producing chemicals that act
as deterrents to browsing and feeding, and animals have been finding
novel ways to neutralize these compounds.
12
This is a crucial adaptive
strategy for insects and herbivores whose diets rely exclusively on the
local flora, but it’s important for carnivores, too. It is definitely impor-
tant for omnivores (like humans) who count on a decent measure of
plants as part of their diets. Without these adaptations, carrots would
be harmful to our health.*
In sum, humans living on the East African savannah have access
to macronutrients from starchy plants and meats but are also exposed
to a wide range of chemicals from the botanicals they consume. Many
of these chemicals are produced for protection and thus contain a cer-
tain element of toxicity—at least, until the animals eating them evolve
methods of neutralizing them. We cope with potentially harmful
plant chemicals by breaking them down into safer forms in our liv-
ers and intestinal tissue, and, as a result, experience no ill effects from
*If only from the apigenin, a potentially toxic flavonoid, as seen in Tsuji and Walle’s
“Cytotoxic Effects.” Apigenin is still toxic to cancer cells, as noted in Cárdenas et al.’s
“Antitumor Activity of Some Natural Flavonoids.”
WiMeSo.indd 123 2/22/13 10:07 AM
124 n bItters
them today (with some exceptions, of course). Finally, our detoxifica-
tion organs seem to require exposure to some of those plant chemicals
to even be active at all.
13
The xenobiome therefore mostly comprises
plants—they are largely responsible for the makeup and behavior of
our chemical processing centers.
14
You may wonder how a chemical might prevent a browsing insect
or animal from consuming its plant. After all, if it’s simply toxic, you
could eat your fill, saunter off, and experience problems later on. This
is hardly helpful to the plant, which might have been destroyed before
your demise. What’s required is a signal, a way to tell a hungry animal
that it may not want to overdo the grazing. And this makes a lot of
sense from the animal’s perspective, too: it seems advantageous to get
a feeling as to the toxicity of the food you consume before you eat a
whole lot of it and end up in trouble.
So, to be of deterrent value, plant chemicals need to be able to com-
municate their toxic presence to the animals that might consider eating
them. This, as you can imagine, is accomplished through the sense of
taste, which is there to give us an idea of the possible chemical content
of what we are eating.* Sweet things, highly desired, mean there are a lot
of nutritious, carbohydrate-based calories on the way. Salty things imply
a rich mineral content, which is also very important. Sour flavors are
elicited by acids (think vinegar) and are a result of mild chemical irrita-
tion. Pungent, spicy impressions are generated by aromatic volatile oils
and their associated compounds (again, as a result of mild irritation),
and we can usually smell pungency before we taste it. There is a flavor
called umami, or “deliciousness” in Japanese, which is linked with cer-
tain amino acids found in meats and other savory foods, as well as with
MSG (monosodium glutamate). Finally, there is the bitter taste.
It is harder to define a single type of chemical responsible for the
bitter flavor. With the exception of meat and the umami flavor, there
usually is an underlying hint of bitterness riding on the palate together
*For an overview of taste/chemical detection, see Kinnamon and Cummings’s “Chemo-
sensory Transduction Mechanisms in Taste.”
WiMeSo.indd 124 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 125
with any of the above tastes: whole, unprocessed grains contain the bit-
ter bran, salty seaweeds may have a bitter opening bite (as does actual
salt in crude, unprocessed form), lemon and grapefruit juice always mix
bitter with sour, and aromatic plants taste bitter when eaten whole.
The only common thread in the bitter flavor realm is that it is present
in virtually all plants. While some are more bitter than others, on bal-
ance, both an apple and a carrot have more bitter flavor in them than a
piece of beef (try the peel if you doubt me on this). We find the bitter
flavor so often because it is linked to a wide range of chemicals that
are very common in the plant world: chicoric, chlorogenic, cinnamic,
and rosmarinic acids; flavonoids and other polyphenolics; coumarins
and furanocoumarins; iridoids; lactones; cyanogenic glycosides; other
saponins; and more. All of these were once toxic to insects and ani-
mals.
15
Some still are. So the bitter flavor seems to be the signal from
the plant world to watch out—eat less—and activate your detoxifica-
tion mechanisms. (As it turns out, when you feed animals extracts con-
taining high percentages of these bitter compounds, such as rosmarinic
acid, you end up with enhanced liver detoxification.)
16
Animals that
tied their perception of bitter to enhanced liver metabolism fared bet-
ter than their competition.
There is one more important class of plant chemical that has, in
almost all cases, an extremely bitter flavor: the alkaloids. These mol-
ecules often have powerful effects on animals that consume them and,
from caffeine to quinine, taste pretty revolting. Poisonous alkaloids,
such as atropine, strychnine, and aconitine, are intensely bitter, and
you would have a hard time consuming appreciable quantities of them.
But I guess that’s the point: the plant makes the chemical to keep the
animal away, and the animal develops a broadly sensitive taste recep-
tor to warn it about the chemical’s presence. That warning comes to
us as “bitterness.”* A little bit, coming from the ubiquitous molecules
*There is widespread consensus that our ability to perceive bitterness is an evolutionary
adaptation to the presence of potential toxins in the diet. See, for instance, Lindemann’s
“Chemoreception,” as well as Scott and Verhagen’s “Taste as a Factor in the Management
of Nutrition.”
WiMeSo.indd 125 2/22/13 10:07 AM
126 n bItters
whose toxicity we’ve learned to disable, keeps our livers functioning
well. Too much might mean we’ve ingested something overly toxic. In
either case, the perception of bitter implies a challenge to our physiol-
ogy and especially to our molecular metabolism.
We are beginning to get a better picture of the xenobiome: it is a
set of chemicals, mostly derived from plants, that either once were or
still are toxic to a certain degree and possess a generally bitter flavor.
Most of what we think of as bitter is no longer toxic to us (though it
may still be to the insects that have not developed the same detoxifica-
tion machinery we have).
17
But it certainly awakens the same defenses
that it always has: we have retained the perception of the flavor and the
responses that go with it. And here we are starting to see why adding
bitter roots and leaves to the aromatic Egyptian kyphi might have been
an especially good idea for the toxin-obsessed Mithridates. The ongo-
ing exposure to a rich and potent xenobiome kept his liver on its toes,
gave it a daily challenge much as a daily run challenges the cardiovas-
cular system and keeps it in “good shape.” Such a xenobiome, we will
see, might be just as important as physical exercise itself. Challenge
leads to resiliency.
an inTerlude WiTH GoldilocKs
Now, as any runner knows, excessive challenge can quickly lead to
damage and set off a downward spiral of injury, stagnation, weak-
ness, and further injury. But no challenge at all brings on weakness
and stagnation even more quickly. The optimal path, it seems, lies in
the middle. Intuitively, we know this to be true, but in recent years
research is beginning to uncover how important this middle path is in
the healthy functioning of our physiology.
Take, for instance, social and emotional development. Dr. Mark
Seery, a psychologist and researcher at the University of Buffalo, has
spent the last decade analyzing the effects of challenge on human
beings, particularly in the realms of psychology, mental/emotional
WiMeSo.indd 126 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 127
health, and cardiovascular fitness. By studying what happens to us
when we are placed in situations where environmental challenge either
meets or exceeds our ability to cope, he has helped articulate what
researchers are calling the “Goldilocks principle” of stress: not too
much, not too little, but just the right amount.
As you might recall from the children’s fairy tale, Goldilocks is
the somewhat-brazen little girl who wanders into a cottage inhabited
by three bears and proceeds to eat their breakfasts, wreck their furni-
ture, and sleep in their beds. During each of her acts of trespassing, she
tries three different options in turn: the first is too much, the second
too little, and the third just right. What Dr. Seery and his colleagues
discovered is that, when it comes to stress, we fare best not when we
experience the least amount; rather, children who have the greatest
degree of psychological resiliency and mental health are those who
experienced a moderate level of stress during development. Those who
experienced very low levels of stress fare worse than their highly trau-
matized counterparts.
18
This is a fairly common phenomenon: not only in exercise and in
childhood development, but also in eating, sleeping, communicating,
even gardening (ever noticed what happens if you don’t “harden off ”
your seedlings?). Living systems do best when they engage moderately
with their environments, accept some measure of challenge, and get
stronger in the process. We have numerous cultural and philosophical
aphorisms that ensconce this principle firmly in the realm of “com-
mon sense”: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; adversity builds
character; necessity is the mother of invention; no pain, no gain. Even
the Buddha is said to have recommended the middle path, between
the extremes of total self-indulgence and total self-denial, as the opti-
mal road to travel. In the end, like Goldilocks, we should avoid the
challenges that overwhelm us (this porridge is too hot!), but seek out
those that help us grow and adapt. Without challenge, we become less
resilient. But with a little, we turn out just right.
Might this principle also apply to the chemical makeup of our
WiMeSo.indd 127 2/22/13 10:07 AM
128 n bItters
xenobiome? We have already seen that plants have come up with molec-
ular challenges to the organisms that eat them and that the process of
adapting to those challenges has helped create the liver and metabolic
tissues that we have today. Obviously we can overdo the consumption
of botanical toxins, and this (as Mithridates knew all too well) can
still lead to death. But the ongoing exposure to low levels of similar
substances might actually be important in maintaining our overall
resiliency (Mithridates was counting on this). Toxins, or former tox-
ins, activate our metabolic machinery. Could it also be possible, as in
so many other cases, that removing these challenging chemicals from
the xenobiome makes us weaker and less resilient? Could there really
be a “middle path” to tasting poison?
THe biTTer TasTe recePTor:
feel THe cHallenGe
Before we can see what happens when we remove formerly toxic, bitter-
tasting molecules from the xenobiome, let’s take a moment to exam-
ine the “detector” our physiology uses to assess the degree of metabolic
challenge that our food contains. The bitter taste receptor is part of a
family of proteins known as TRs (taste receptors). There seem to be
six different types of TRs and some degree of variation within each
different type. For example, the receptor for sweet flavor is one type
of protein, coded for by three genes, and able to detect sugars.
19
The
receptor for umami is similarly simple and detects amino acids (pro-
tein).
20
Sour taste is mediated through two different receptor sub-
types, able to detect hydrogen ions (responsible for acidity).
21
We have
a receptor for fats and another for salt (sodium).
22
Each of the above
receptors is manufactured from the information stored in three to five
genes, consists of one to three different subtypes, and binds to a small
range of substances—some, like the salty and sour receptors, only to
one specific substance.
But the bitter taste receptor family, known as the T2R receptor
WiMeSo.indd 128 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 129
family, is made of over twenty different subtypes, coded for by some
thirty-four genes, and able to detect over one hundred often completely
unrelated chemical compounds.
23
The diversity and complexity of
human bitter taste receptors directly mirrors the diversity of a plant-
based xenobiome and contains the physical record of our interactions
with a series of botanical toxins over the millennia. This is proof posi-
tive that we use the bitter flavor as a signal for potential trouble from
the vegetable kingdom. Only those substances that served as botanical
defense mechanisms, and that were once toxic to our ancestors, stimu-
late the T2Rs.
24
Low concentrations of bitterness are noticeable but not necessarily
unpleasant. Highly bitter substances can be so distressing as to cause
vomiting (and a good thing, too—stomach pumping free of charge,
courtesy of the highly poisonous plants). Stimulating T2Rs has pro-
found implications throughout the digestive system and in the liver, as
we shall see when we review the pharmacology of bitter-tasting mol-
ecules. For now, suffice it to say that getting the signal of bitterness on
the tongue increases antioxidant enzyme and bile secretion in the liver
through the combined action of hormones, such as cholecystokinin,
and nerves, such as the vagus nerve.
25
This combination of effects pre-
pares us to interact successfully with the bitter botanical chemistry we
have experienced throughout our evolutionary history. It is a cascade of
reactions that keep us well protected, a carefully orchestrated series of
steps in our dance with the xenobiome.
Interestingly, T2R receptors are found in many other tissues of the
body, indicating that their chemosensory ability is not limited to the
tongue. First and foremost, they are present in the throat, stomach,
small intestine, and pancreatic duct,
26
where they reinforce the hor-
monal and neural signals first elicited on the tongue. Liver and gall-
bladder tissue also have T2Rs.
27
Researchers have discovered these
bitter taste receptors in the airways of the lungs (where, if stimulated,
they induce relaxation and opening), and even in brain cells.
28
Neurons
might be sensitive to bitter stimuli, the scientists speculated, as part of
WiMeSo.indd 129 2/22/13 10:07 AM
130 n bItters
an appetite-regulation pathway in the nervous system because, in fact,
reduced food consumption and lower blood sugar levels are another
profound consequence of the bitter taste.
Our physiology evolved the ability to perceive bitterness in order
to protect itself from orally ingested plant toxins. The logical next
step after receiving the “warning sign” such flavors represent might be
reduced oral food intake, meaning that it makes good sense to eat less
if you’re detecting the potential for lots of toxicity. If true, this could be
part of the reason eating more vegetables leads to less caloric consump-
tion.
29
Filling your belly with indigestible plant fiber certainly plays a
part, but the relatively bitter taste of most vegetables and salad greens
might be involved as well. Regardless, it would be fantastic if we could
help control appetite by stimulating T2R receptors. This might be
another reason for the presence of bitter chemicals in our xenobiome.
As it turns out, this is precisely what bitter-tasting foods appear
to do.
30
Perhaps through nerve-based interactions, perhaps through
the initiation of hormonal cues, people who stimulate their bitter
taste receptors empty their bellies more slowly
31
and feel more full.
Interestingly, when infusing bitter-tasting substances directly into the
GI tract, researchers found no such effects
32
—meaning that, although
T2Rs are found in the stomach, intestines, and beyond, there is some-
thing important about the conscious perception of the bitter taste. We
eat less, and food remains in the stomach and duodenum (the main
“digestive” parts of the digestive tract) longer. These effects represent
useful adaptations in our model of the xenobiome: eat fewer poten-
tially harmful substances and process them more completely.
We will explore the hormonal connection to bitters when we
explore their pharmacology, but, for now, it is worth mentioning an
interesting 36-amino-acid protein known as polypeptide YY. It is
secreted by cells in the small intestine in response to bitter-tasting mol-
ecules and also protein-based meals, and it appears to be involved in
controlling appetite in humans. When both obese and lean subjects
have higher levels of polypeptide YY circulating in their bloodstream,
WiMeSo.indd 130 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 131
their intake of food decreases by 30 percent. The fact that bitter plant
constituents stimulate the secretion of this hormone may be part of
how they control our feeding behavior.
As we shall see, other hormones are also secreted in response to
T2R stimulation and reinforce the signal to consume less food while
also modulating physiological processes (largely in the liver) that keep
our blood sugar levels under control. Blood sugar, or blood glucose, is
an important fuel for every cell in the body, but chronically elevated
levels are quite harmful and are the hallmark of a common metabolic
dysfunction, type 2 diabetes mellitus. Perhaps T2R receptor signal-
ing is involved in maintaining healthy blood glucose levels, as research
from the laboratory of C. Shawn Dotson seems to suggest.
Dr. Dotson, working at the University of Florida, is very curious
about how our tastes affect our eating. He has studied and docu-
mented a specific connection between T2R receptor stimulation and
average blood glucose, finding that the greater the signal coming from
the bitter taste receptors, the lower the glucose levels.
33
T2Rs influence
numerous hormones and, in Dotson’s opinion, present “potential tar-
gets for treatment of Type 2 diabetes mellitus.”
34
His research, coupled
with studies showing that specific bitter molecules from plants keep
blood glucose low,
35
suggests a significant role for the bitter taste recep-
tor in the management of diabetes.
So it seems that our xenobiome, the cocktail of chemicals we experi-
ence, is loaded with a variety of substances that, at one point, were
toxic to animal and insect life. We have evolved ways, through the
liver and digestive tract, of handily dispatching (most of) these sub-
stances. Naturally, the more of them we consume, the more active the
liver’s detoxification pathways are and the more engaged our body’s
molecular processing streams become. Additionally, it seems that these
same substances have an effect on our appetite, making us eat less
and keeping our blood sugar under control. Aside from macronutri-
ents, our xenobiome is quite bitter, a context that provides (or, perhaps
WiMeSo.indd 131 2/22/13 10:07 AM
132 n bItters
more accurately, provided) a daily challenge to our systems, mediated
through the T2R receptor—a challenge that relies on age-old memo-
ries of poison encoded in our bitter taste receptors, and a challenge
that keeps our metabolism fit.
Most animals can feel this challenge, and humans are no excep-
tion. Experiencing the bitter flavor induces a series of changes that
include not only improved liver and digestive function but also reduced
caloric consumption and blood glucose. And while these changes are
happening on a case-by-case basis, what effects become evident in a
larger population? What we need is a big group of people. We need
to alter its xenobiome by dramatically reducing the presence of plants
and their bitter secondary metabolites. And we need to watch what
happens over a few generations, say, one hundred years or more. Based
on what we’ve just learned, it might be reasonable to expect that, on
average, the people in our group would eat more, gain weight, experi-
ence more type 2 diabetes and higher rates of digestive complaints and
inflammation. But where might we find such a group?
THe “WesTern” dieT: a Grand exPeriMenT
in xenobioMe alTeraTion
Consider sugars and carbohydrates, the source of another important
taste: sweet. Carbohydrates historically occupied a much smaller role
in our diets than they do today. When analyzing traditional indige-
nous diets from around the planet, carbohydrate content is low com-
pared to that of animal protein.
36
As human populations reach more
northern latitudes, starchy vegetables and plants in general become a
smaller and smaller fraction of daily calories, replaced largely by sea-
food.
37
Interestingly, plants—from berries to seaweeds—still feature
prominently in the human diet and are specifically sought out as
health-promoting foods, even at the higher latitudes, such as in native
Inuit populations.
38
In these same populations, people are consuming
fewer plants than average and carbohydrate intake is also extremely
WiMeSo.indd 132 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 133
low. Levels of diabetes, inflammatory heart disease, and fatty infiltra-
tion in the liver (often a sign of toxic damage) are comparable to those
of other indigenous groups.
39
So perhaps we should refine the picture
of the xenobiome a little: rich in bitter plants, it also has a relatively
low level of sugars and carbohydrates.
Not that low sugar consumption is anyone’s choice; it is much
more a matter of availability and circumstance. While bitter plants are
virtually everywhere, sweet starches, gums, and other substances, such
as honey, are fairly uncommon. Just as with bitter, we have evolved a
powerful set of behaviors associated with sweet: we seek it out and
are intensely gratified by consuming it. It is a taste associated with
deep and profound nourishment, and it makes us feel loved, safe, and
rewarded, much as a drug would.* Of course, there is an excellent evo-
lutionary reason for this: energy-dense nutrition is vital in a competi-
tive world. If we had our way, if we could give in to our taste-driven
desires, we would get rid of bitter completely and eat all the sweet food
we could possibly find.
Such a dream was impossible for the majority of human history.
We may have complained about it, but aside from the diets of north-
ern latitudes, our food was largely plants and meat with the occasional
sweet treat. And in the frozen tundra of the north, forget about it—
not even complex starches were available, dried blueberries being the
best you could hope for. Even after the advent of agriculture and the
domestication of grains, truly sweet food was still rare, with rice, bread,
or other carbohydrates being quite coarse and often as bitter as they
were starchy. Milling soft, refined flours was an intensely laborious and
expensive proposition, which is why cakes and pastries prepared with
them were largely a luxury of the aristocracy. The general population’s
resentment of their rulers’ ability to gorge on sweet (and reap its drug-
like rewards) was still evident at the end of the eighteenth century: the
*For a comprehensive review of the druglike effects of sugars and our hardwired response
to the sweet flavor, see Kessler’s The End of Overeating—an excellent read by a former
FDA commissioner.
WiMeSo.indd 133 2/22/13 10:07 AM
134 n bItters
apocryphal “Let them eat cake” was used to mock an overfed, out-of-
touch elite and its cavalier attitude toward the peasants’ hunger.
Interestingly, the aristocracy didn’t just have the exclusive luxury
of being able to fully indulge its desire for sweet. It also had a lock on
illnesses like gout, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes.* But, to
the rest of us, this wasn’t the issue. The rich could avoid physical labor
and get anything their hearts desired, including lots of sweet food.
Understandably, we were jealous. We wanted to stop working our bod-
ies to the bone every day, and we wanted sweet cake to eat every night.
As they say, be careful what you wish for. With the advent of
large-scale industrialized agriculture and milling in food production
(typically a Western phenomenon of the nineteenth century), all of a
sudden large portions of the population had access to softer, whiter
bread. Novel chemical techniques were used to make the flour whiter
still—literally by bleaching it. When sugarcane processing and sugar
production were mechanized and coupled to steam power at about the
same time, Europe’s largest import skyrocketed in availability and pop-
ularity. Now everyone could entertain the notion of dessert at every
meal and contend less with the rough and somewhat bitter flavor of
coarsely milled bread.
Industrialization arose part and parcel with urbanization, and as
people moved to cities to support the new factories, much in their lives
began to change along with the new landscape. First, people moved
their bodies less. Factory work consisted of long, brutally intensive
hours—but was often not as physically demanding as farm work had
been. Second, the proportion of sweets and refined carbohydrates in
the average diet began to rise. I feel that sugar found its role as an opi-
ate during this time, a respite from the exploitation of industrial labor,
a literal piece of the “pie in the sky” promised to so many workers.
That role is one that it still holds today for many of us.
But crucially for our discussion, the diversity of plants in the aver-
*My favorite example of these maladies is Henry VIII, king of England during the first
half of the sixteenth century.
WiMeSo.indd 134 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 135
age person’s diet began to drop. This change was slow at first, with
many folks still connected to the country and the wild, bitter botan-
icals such a life offered. Inevitably, after a few generations, however,
families picked fewer dandelion greens in the spring, relying less on
foraging for supplementing their meals. Instead, for most people, the
supplement became an extra helping of carbohydrate. And while we
blame so much of our modern public health concerns on the rise of
sweet in the Western diet, we can’t forget that at the same time we
handily eliminated much of what was bitter and wild in our food.
This is quite natural: it’s exactly what a child would do if given the
choice. But, as we saw when examining the xenobiome, it is a choice
that deprives the metabolism of vital chemistry, key to keeping it chal-
lenged, awake, and alive.
During the twentieth century, this trend continued. Petrochemical
fertilization ushered in a “green revolution” that, in certain parts of
the world, allowed for a fivefold increase in grain production. The
American Midwest, once a patchwork of family farms, is becoming a
vast corn, wheat, and soybean desert, a display of order and dominance
unequaled on the planet. Huge water, fertilizer, pesticide, and herbi-
cide supplies are now needed to maintain this carbohydrate glut, all
to provide a diet that is more and more devoid of the incredible biodi-
versity human beings had historically consumed. What has happened
to us as a result? Because, as you have probably figured out, we are
the guinea pigs in this experiment. We had no idea what might occur
by upending the chemistry of the xenobiome, by thrusting a relatively
rare flavor (sweet) to the forefront of caloric consumption and elimi-
nating a ubiquitous one (bitter) almost completely, but that’s exactly
what we’ve been doing for almost two hundred years. In the developed
world, we have decided that our diet should be free of uncomfortable
foods, foods that are wild, bitter, fibrous, weedy, or otherwise challeng-
ing. For the last fifty years we’ve pursued this plan with fervent zeal.
What do we have to show for it?
Let’s begin by reflecting on the infrastructure that is devoted to
WiMeSo.indd 135 2/22/13 10:07 AM
136 n bItters
satisfying our desire for carbohydrates. The largest impacts are agri-
cultural. In sections of the upper Midwest, where corn dominates and
average farm size (by state) is three hundred acres or more, industrial-
ized agriculture focused on the intensive production of carbohydrates
rules the ecology. Of particular interest are the chemical additives to
the ecosystem. In all corn-producing states, ranging from New York
through Iowa, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, over 11 billion pounds of
nitrogen, and almost 4 billion pounds each of phosphorous and potas-
sium, are added to the soil each year. Synthetic fertilizers are one thing,
but of even greater concern are the herbicides applied to the same acre-
age to control unwanted, wild plants. Corn farmers applied 57 mil-
lion pounds of glyphosate (Roundup), more than 51 million pounds of
atrazine, and some 20 million pounds of other herbicides in 2010.* By
comparison, all the herbicide applied to potatoes amounted to about 4
million pounds, of which more than half was actually fungicide.
Atrazine is an interesting chemical. It’s fairly cheap, and it kills a
broad range of weeds from lamb’s quarters to couchgrass. It seems to
persist in the environment, especially in the groundwater, for a long
time. This fact, coupled with the increased risk in humans of hor-
mone disruption and birth defects from low levels of exposure, led the
European Union to ban it from use in 2004. In Italy, in the 1980s,
fertile lands around the Po River were under intensive cultivation, and
atrazine was a major herbicide used at that time. Media reports of con-
tamination and subsequent ill effects were alarmingly frequent, and
the use of bottled water became the norm. In the United States, U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS) maps of herbicide use show heavy applica-
tion rates (more than thirty-two pounds per square mile) in almost all
of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa—the heart of corn country.
The effects of atrazine on plants are dramatic. This chemical
attaches to a piece of the molecular machinery that is essential for
converting light to energy, and, as a result, photosynthesis is disrupted
*From the National Agricultural and Statistics service, a branch of the U.S. Dept. of
Agriculture, “Agriculture and Chemical Use Program statistics for 2010.”
WiMeSo.indd 136 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 137
and the harmful effects of solar radiation are amplified. Weeds quickly
wither and die. In animals, it winds its way into the metabolism of
sex hormones, affecting fertility, growth, and development, with docu-
mented ill effects on amphibians, birds, and, more recently, humans.
Though we’ve long known about the endocrine-disrupting effects of
pesticides like DDT, we are only starting to understand how weed-
killing herbicides affect our hormones, and it doesn’t look too good.
Ironically, some of the weeds, from kudzu to red clover, dandelion to
wild carrot, might actually buffer the deleterious effects of agrichemi-
cals. We are using massive amounts of toxins on our farmland to
kill the plants that might be our best protection against the toxins
themselves.
Fertilizer runoff can affect open bodies of water, which are deli-
cately balanced ecosystems. Lake Champlain, running almost the
length of Vermont’s western border with New York, routinely experi-
ences blooms of toxic algae. These cyanobacteria thrive in the high-
phosphate environment created as streams traversing farms run into
rivers and finally into the lake. Herbicide and pesticide use is becom-
ing more of a concern for human beings who drink water both from
lakes and from underground aquifers. The petroleum required to pro-
duce the fertilizers and toxins, harvest the grain, ship, process, and
ship it again makes the whole operation fairly inefficient (and perhaps
unsustainable). Finally, it is worth remembering that more fossil fuels
are burned to turn some of that carbohydrate into beef, chicken, and
pork. We’ve put our livestock on a high-sugar, low-biodiversity regi-
men, too—and that affects the meat we eat, and not in a good way,
I’m afraid.
As is true in any living system, you cannot remove a challenge,
a stressor, an adaptive pressure from one part of the web without
affecting other parts in turn. In large areas of the developed world,
we have conquered the short-term challenge of the bitter flavor and
the medium-term challenge of hunger. But the longer-term danger
of chronic disease, including diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, is a
WiMeSo.indd 137 2/22/13 10:07 AM
138 n bItters
different matter. And we have shifted a huge part of the challenge to
our environment—to our prairies, our rivers, our lakes. It’s not too dif-
ficult to trace a link between a glass of soda, its corn syrup content,
and a little more atrazine in the water. And in the end, water supply
affects us all.
Place a graph of diabetes rates in the United States next to a graph
of farm acreage devoted to corn. They both follow a disturbingly simi-
lar curve, rising slowly since the 1970s and much more sharply begin-
ning in 1995. Granted, this is a simplistic analysis: many other factors,
such as the production of corn for fuel (in the form of ethanol), com-
plicate this simple correlation. But our taste for sweet has consequences
both in the world around us and in the world inside us. It is interesting
how much the one reflects the other. Our fields have lost biodiversity,
are devoted largely to carbohydrates, and are fed by a fluid (through
irrigation) that is both overabundant in nutrition and laced with tox-
ins. Similarly, the products of our fields have created a xenobiome for
our liver and digestion that is at once less wild and challenging, and at
the same time hypersweet. The lack of challenge affects our ability to
process poison, so in the end we, too, are fed by a fluid (through our
bloodstream) that is both overabundant in nutrition and laced with
toxins.
This can impact health in many ways. Generally, you start to see
issues with digestive function first. The sweet flavor does very little
to activate the gut, being mostly about rewarding the brain. It lacks
most of the stimulating effects elicited by the T2R bitter taste recep-
tors. This was not a problem in the past, since anything sweet usu-
ally came from whole plants loaded with bitter, metabolism-activating
chemicals. But now, sweet starchy foods flow like ghosts through our
stomach and intestines, moving along but hardly making a mark. The
body still recognizes them as sources of sugar and sends out signals to
control the inevitable rise in blood glucose levels. But without bitters
as a companion, the starches pass quickly into the small intestine and
are met by a sluggish digestive enzyme response. Pieces of carbohydrate
WiMeSo.indd 138 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 139
begin to ferment, acted on by bacteria instead of by our digestive flu-
ids, and the gas that results may cause bloating, spasming, and even
nausea. After some time of not experiencing the bitter flavor, the valves
between compartments of our digestive tract grow slack, losing their
tone. Food slips through even more easily. This may lead to heartburn,
worsened by overeating, by lying down right after a meal, or both. The
lack of bitter stimulus may also be connected to sluggish bowel func-
tion, with occasional periods of constipation.
The unchallenged digestion eventually has a harder time handling
proteins, too. If they are inadequately broken down, proteins, such as
gluten (from wheat) and casein (from milk), can be somewhat irritat-
ing, stimulating a mild (and sometimes not so mild) immune reaction.
And inflammation in the belly may be a source of considerable distress,
making digestive issues worse in a vicious cycle and also relaying an
impression of this distress to the central nervous system via the vagus
nerve. If aromatic plants help relax and rebalance the signals coming to
the brain from the gut, a diet lacking bitters does the exact opposite:
our mood has to contend with a daily background level of irritation
and tension coming from the belly.
The speed with which blandly sweet meals move through the gut
may complicate matters once the simple sugars they contain begin
to enter the bloodstream. In nature, even the sweetest of substances,
like honey, are wrapped up in a great deal of fiber. This fiber, which
consists of indigestible starches, literally “traps” the sugars present in
food and slows their rate of absorption. This is largely what our diges-
tion expects—table sugar is an unknown food, in the evolutionary
time line—and it reacts to glucose entering the bloodstream with the
assumption that it’s coming from a whole-plant context. But what is
the difference between a whole-plant ideal and a refined-carbohydrate
reality?
To understand the difference, let’s examine the chemistry of the
two. A whole-grain meal contains some digestible starches (which
end up getting broken down to glucose), along with some soluble
WiMeSo.indd 139 2/22/13 10:07 AM
140 n bItters
and insoluble fiber. A refined-grain meal simply contains the digest-
ible starches—the refining process has removed everything else. Now,
let’s assume that both meals have the same amount of digestible car-
bohydrates in them, say, fifty grams. We know that those fifty grams
of refined carbs will travel more quickly through the gut and enter
the bloodstream more quickly because they’re not trapped in a fiber
matrix.* But our pancreas, a major organ involved in blood sugar con-
trol, doesn’t know this. It simply assumes that all carbohydrates we eat
are bound to indigestible fiber, because that’s all that it has ever known.
So the fifty grams of carbohydrates from the whole-grain meal
enter the bloodstream at a given rate, a rate that the pancreas is used
to, and as blood sugar levels slowly rise, the pancreas secretes insulin
in response. But when the fifty grams of sugars from the refined meal
enter the bloodstream, they do so at a much more rapid pace. You
can actually approximate this same rapid rise in blood glucose with a
whole-grain meal; you just have to consume one hundred grams of car-
bohydrates instead of fifty. And, since it knows no better, the pancreas
assumes this is exactly what you’ve done. So it secretes more insulin,
preparing the bloodstream for a flood of sugar that isn’t coming! And
a few hours later, the result is low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia. The
pancreas overshot its target, glucose levels drop, and the brain starts to
crave—you guessed it—more sugar, the sweeter the better. We’re riding
the sugar roller coaster.
We are now beginning to see the results of our experiment in xeno-
biome alteration. We have removed the bitter flavor from our diets,
both by reducing the amount of wild, weedy foods we consume and
by refining and overdosing on starchy staples. This has been a natural
response driven by deep-seated instincts: bitter makes us think of poi-
son and makes us want to eat less, while sweet rewards our pleasure
*For more on this, consider the concept of the “glycemic index,” which pegs the speed at
which different foods enter the bloodstream as glucose. Table sugar, as a baseline refer-
ence point, has a glycemic index set at 100.
WiMeSo.indd 140 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 141
centers and makes us want to eat more. The consequences have been
a series of imbalances in the human physiology: digestion has become
sluggish and ineffective because the xenobiome is no longer stimulat-
ing, and blood sugar levels have begun to seesaw in dangerous ways
that eventually increase resistance to insulin and promote the rise of
type 2 diabetes.
Since you cannot alter one component of a system without affect-
ing the whole, we are finding that our environment has suffered, too.
We have shifted short-term challenges we used to experience in the
endless search for nutrition onto different pieces of our ecological web.
The global rise in carbohydrate consumption has prompted the devel-
opment of industrialized agriculture, increasing environmental pol-
lution dramatically, especially pollution of our water resources. After
years of planting grains to feed our hunger, a “sugar-industrial com-
plex” may now be determining what we eat. Either that, or there’s some
powerful graminaceous magic afoot.
Several ideas have been advanced about how to correct the symp-
toms associated with our newly altered xenobiome. Eliminating car-
bohydrates, and especially processed carbohydrates that have been
separated from their fiber, seems like an obvious solution. Many people
end up doing just that when they remove wheat products from their
diet, as wheat accounts for up to 90 percent of the refined grain con-
sumed in the United States (not including sugar). Others simply cut
out carbohydrates completely and train their bodies to use lipids as
energy by approximating a “Paleolithic” diet rich in meat protein and
fat (and this may make them less reliant on bitter plants as a result—
remember the Inuit). These approaches certainly can help to manage
digestive complaints, obesity, and diabetes. They are intuitive ideas,
and any plan should rely at least in some measure on moderating sugar
intake.
Another approach is to supplement the digestive juices with
enzymes taken orally. These are catalysts that break down the major
classes of macronutrients we need: proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.
WiMeSo.indd 141 2/22/13 10:07 AM
142 n bItters
They are usually produced in abundance by cells in the mouth, stom-
ach, pancreas, and small intestine—but only in response to adequate
stimulation of bitter T2R receptors. If such a stimulus is absent, one
certainly could add in enzymes from the outside world, though this
seems like bailing water from a leaky boat. Better to find the hole
and plug it. There is also preliminary evidence that long-term diges-
tive enzyme supplementation might make gut juices even weaker, in
essence adding to an already addictive pattern: first the sugar, then the
enzyme.
We know that the problem exists. Our guts are weaker and more
hypersensitive; our carbohydrate intake has contributed to epidemic
rates of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease; and our environ-
ment is being saturated with poisons whose effects we can’t escape. We
also know that our xenobiome has been dramatically altered, made less
diverse and less wild. Might part of the solution come from this less
visible angle, rather than simply carbohydrate reduction or a pill?
Might part of the solution be hiding in the unwanted plants, the
bitter, weedy roots and greens that intrude on our fields and gain foot-
holds in waste places? They have been perennial companion species.
Often in the past they were used as sources of food (in many places
they still are). They are rich in bitter constituents, especially their
roots—which we might have favored for nutrition as they also contain
many digestible (and indigestible) starches. By activating our bitter
taste receptors, they reawaken an ancient reflex, our birthright really,
that makes us able to engage with a diverse botanical environment and
the chemistry that comes with it. It is a challenge we were born to take
and, furthermore, it seems to be a challenge without which we suffer
and stagnate. Bitter plants, long sources of potential toxins, may at this
point be so entwined in our metabolic machinery that we cannot live
without them. Herein lies the heart of the mithridate, the bitter anti-
dote to all poisons, an elixir of life.
WiMeSo.indd 142 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 143
THe TradiTional aPProacH
If we think bitters might be a viable solution to the gastrointestinal
and metabolic disturbances of modern life, there should be evidence in
traditional herbal medicine that these plants improve liver and diges-
tive function, and possibly correct the effects of diabetes. Of course,
it is hard to separate the bitter flavor from the general context of an
indigenous cuisine, where most meals contain a good measure of bitter
vegetables. Nevertheless, historically, certain bitter herbal preparations
have been viewed as more “medicinal” and have been used as a supple-
ment to all diets for a range of complaints. You can still get tonic water
at any grocery store—featuring the bitter taste of quinine (and lots of
corn syrup, too). Let’s examine these types of formulae and see what
virtues they were thought to hold.
One of the first ever documented, at least in the European/
Middle Eastern context, must certainly be the mithridate. The herbal-
ist Crataeus and his king put together a blend that was rich in both
aromatic and bitter constituents, and though some had very intense
flavors, all lacked any toxicity. This basic formula has remained
unchanged ever since—which is why I think Mithridates made the
first high-test digestive bitters. In all likelihood, the herbs were finely
ground in a mortar and pestle and comminuted one with the other
until a powdery mix remained. This could have been sprinkled on
food, rolled into a large pill, or mixed into wine as the Egyptian priests
who supplied some of the ingredients had always done. But the addi-
tion of so many local bitter plants to the aromatic cocktail was a new
one. At the very least, their use was brought to the level of a fine art at
the royal seat in Sinope.
The main use for this preparation was as an antitoxin, to allay
the king’s paranoid obsession with protecting himself from those who
might wish to poison him. This application makes a lot of sense, given
what we know about the effects of bitter T2R receptor stimulation and
the importance of wild, bitter plants as part of the xenobiome. The net
WiMeSo.indd 143 2/22/13 10:07 AM
144 n bItters
result must have included an increase in detoxification activity by the
liver. But the mithridate also became prized for its action in response
to a variety of other common issues, mostly arising from wounds and
trauma, but also from digestive complaints, stiffness, weakness, old
age, and debility. It was thought to decrease overall vulnerability (from
vulnus, Latin for “wound”), and eventually the legend of Mithridates,
his epic victories in battle, his old age and ruthlessness, and his secret
remedy became conflated into a myth that the remedy itself conferred
nearly complete invulnerability.
By blunting the effects of poisons and also apparently decreasing
inflammation through the entire physiology, the mithridate secured its
place in history. Physicians and pharmacists, beginning with the fol-
lowers of Galen more than two hundred years later, tried to copy and
amend the formula, prescribing it for many similar complaints. Galen
was aware of the mithridate, noting its use against poison and for
digestive disorders, calling it “an incomparable antidote for all inter-
nal indispositions of the body.”
40
He renamed his variant on the recipe
theriac, meaning “antidote.” It is interesting to note that this word
literally means “from the wild” in ancient Indo-European tongues—
a nod to the importance of ingesting a little wildness to counteract
toxicity. Now Galen was a good physician, but he tended to prefer con-
jecture over empiricism. Often his idea of how the theory of medicine
should pan out trumped his actual observations of illness and recov-
ery. Unfortunately, in European medicine for the next fifteen hundred
years, this trend continued.
The original mithridate, and its derivatives such as the Galenic
theriac, became adulterated with a variety of substances, such as animal
bile, snake flesh, and more. These additions were perhaps the result
of a theoretical notion that if a snake could survive with all that poi-
son inside it, there must be something magical about its very nature
that can be transferred to those who eat it. Of course, this is a false
concept—but it sounded good in theory, so medicine ran with it, as
usual. Eventually, another misguided notion took over: that if poison
WiMeSo.indd 144 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 145
tasted bitter, the antidotes must taste sweet. So by the eighteenth cen-
tury, even the word theriac had been bastardized into treacle, which
was a sickly sweet mixture of sugar water and ineffective vestigial
quantities of aromatic and bitter plants. Needless to say, it was not very
useful stuff.
Fortunately, as the original bitter remedy was being diluted to inef-
fectiveness by the “authorities” in the medical field, folks living in the
country were still harvesting the same wild plants and blending them
together using the same basic structure: some aromatics to rebalance
tension, some bitters to stimulate digestion and liver function, and no
actual poisons. These remedies were seen primarily as bitter digestive
aids and taken around mealtimes. Despite being largely ignored by
mainstream medicine, they have persisted throughout history for one
simple reason: they work. Numerous such remedies can be found in
the marketplace today. But some of the other benefits ascribed to the
mithridate (such as less inflammation and more youthful vigor) were
part of the virtues associated with these blends, too.
The Italian amaro, or “bitter,” is an alcoholic mix very much along
these lines. It contains special (and often closely guarded) combinations
of bitter roots and leaves, from plants such as gentian and artichoke,
blended with aromatics, such as citrus peel, ginger, clove, and more.
Some, like Fernet Branca, are quite bitter. Others, including Averna,
have sugar added to make them more palatable. More commercial
preparations, such as the cherry-red Campari, are a bit less bitter, but
are still cut from the same mold. Cynar, definitely an acquired taste,
is an artichoke-based liqueur that I remember being fairly ubiquitous,
“enjoyed” by young and old alike before or after meals.
The amari are still used primarily to enhance digestion, though
their aromatic qualities also make them useful for relaxing into con-
vivial conversation after sharing food. They are recommended for
symptoms ranging from heartburn and indigestion to gas and bloat-
ing, irregular bowel function, and, more generally, any issue relating to
the belly. But one often hears, especially from old-timers, that taking
WiMeSo.indd 145 2/22/13 10:07 AM
146 n bItters
a daily shot of a good amaro keeps away infection, reduces inflamma-
tion, and helps to encourage resilience and strength. These folks, notic-
ing a slight decrease in digestive strength that comes with advanced
age, tend to love their bitters even more. The improvement in liver
metabolism that accompanies the bitter taste may have positive sys-
temic effects, too. Regardless, people in traditional cultures don’t turn
to digestive enzyme or hydrochloric acid pills when they feel an issue
in their bellies. They turn to bitters.
Throughout Europe, this cultural tradition is well established.
Swedish bitters, a somewhat laxative blend containing senna, may have
come from a Paracelsian formula dating back to the sixteenth century.
Absinthe, not exactly a classic bitter but still used in much the same
way (and possessing a similar flavor), was popularized in France and
throughout the world, starting in the late eighteenth century. “New
World” preparations, featuring new bitters like quinine but also more
classic roots, such as gentian, became popular around the same time
(Angostura and Peychaud’s are two of the more famous brands). In
the United States myriad bitter tonics were marketed during the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries for nearly every ailment. But two
main points stand out in the more recent history of these formulae.
First, they are just the tip of a cultural iceberg that includes a range of
homegrown remedies that never made the history books. And second,
all of them are considered digestive and liver remedies first and fore-
most. This is no surprise, given what we know about the stimulation
of bitter taste receptors in humans. So, from a cultural perspective, the
bitter flavor is an important conscious addition to food and has tradi-
tionally been associated with a healthy, happy belly.
What about herbal medicine? Do bitters have a distinct therapeutic
focus, and how are they thought to work from a traditional perspec-
tive? If the answers to these questions reinforce the idea that they fig-
ure prominently in maintaining the correct xenobiome for liver and
digestive function, we will have further evidence that bitter plants have
WiMeSo.indd 146 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 147
a crucial role to play in bringing us closer to a state of overall wellness.
Generally speaking, bitters are used in herbal medicine in much
the same way as they are used in a broader cultural context. Herbalist
David Hoffmann is of Welsh extraction and training but has lived
in the United States in the recent past and served as president of the
American Herbalists Guild. He groups the basic actions of bitters
into three functions: they stimulate the release of digestive juices, aid
in liver detoxification, and help regulate blood sugar. Additionally,
Hoffmann mentions that bitters can be used to stimulate a weak appe-
tite and reduce inflammation in the gut wall.
Christopher Hobbs, an acupuncturist and American herbalist, has
commented at length about the value of bitter herbs. He cites improve-
ment in digestive function, though he also notes metabolic effects,
commenting that symptoms such as fatigue and inflammation may be
related to poor chemical processing by the liver. He also repeats the
general formulation principle for bitters first recorded by Mithridates:
some bitter, nontoxic herbs; some aromatics; and a little sweetness to
blend it all together.
Rosemary Gladstar, who lives in the mountains of Vermont but
spent long periods in California, recognizes the crucial role bitters
have to play in balancing liver function. She emphasizes how a healthy
liver improves physiological function across the board, particularly the
metabolism of reproductive hormones. Thus, Gladstar recommends
bitters for balancing a range of women’s complaints that may be linked
to hormone imbalances. For instance, her “bitterroot blend” calls for
dandelion and yellowdock roots, Oregon grape root, wild yam rhi-
zome, and a little Vitex berry. She recommends simmering it in tea—
quite bitter, I’m afraid—and, handing you the cup, remarks, “I’ve seen
many tenacious cases of reproductive problems respond well to liver
tonic herbs.”
41
Deb Soule, a folk herbalist and amazing gardener living on the
Maine coast, recommends a classic liver blend made of gentian, thistle,
burdock, ginger, and licorice (again, a somewhat simplified but classic
WiMeSo.indd 147 2/22/13 10:07 AM
148 n bItters
Mithridates-like formula—intensely bitter roots and leaves, some aro-
matics, and a little sweet licorice to tie it all together). She emphasizes
that “herbalists believe that health and vitality begin in the digestive
tract”
42
—and by now we should see why this is so.
In Chinese herbal medicine, bitter herbs are highly valued. All
effective herbal remedies are thought to contain at least some ele-
ment of the bitter flavor. The applications focus on conditions that
are “damp and hot,” characterized by chronic inflammation and per-
haps swelling—an immediate recognition of the importance of bit-
ters beyond just good digestive function. Regulating excess that might
accumulate in the physiology due to overeating and especially overin-
dulgence in sweets is a crucial virtue ascribed to them. Finally, they
are thought to improve the ability to store vitality from the food we
consume—simply put, to digest and absorb nutrition more effectively.
In Ayurveda, the medical art of the Indian subcontinent, the bit-
ter flavor is also held in high regard. The Charaka Samhita, compiled
by the physician Charaka one to two hundred years before the time
that Crataeus was studying in Pergamon (perhaps 200–300 BCE), is
an extensive treatise on a very old medical art. In it we find bitters used
as purifying agents, to improve digestion, to regulate bowel function,
and as remedies for poison and worms. An interesting quote states that
“though itself is nonrelishing,” the bitter taste “destroys nonrelish.”
43
I
take this to mean that, though bitters taste bad, they were thought to
help with a poor appetite and perhaps even nausea.
It would seem that traditional herbal medicine uses bitters for all
the functions connected to T2R receptor stimulation. They improve all
aspects of digestion, from poor appetite to overeating to everything in
between. Liver metabolism is always mentioned. And blood sugar bal-
ance comes up frequently as well. Most references talk about a dose of
herbal bitters that ranges between one-quarter and one-half teaspoon
of a liquid preparation, though doses of some traditional liqueurs, such
as amari, can be ten times that. Because of their value in modulating
digestive function and the metabolic changes associated with eating,
WiMeSo.indd 148 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 149
they are usually taken around mealtime. And most herbalists you talk
to would say that it is vitally important to taste the bitter flavor on
the tongue while you consume these herbs. Of course, if you are, in
essence, harnessing a poison detection system, you’d better engage it
fully right at the front door!
But after ringing that front doorbell, bitters go on to stimulate
more activity inside the house. All botanical medical systems ascribe
deeper virtues to these plants, linking them to reduced inflammation
and irritability throughout the entire physiology, from nerves to skin,
and also to increased activity of tissues in general. How might this hap-
pen? We will explore some biochemical mechanisms that are at work
when we discuss the pharmacology of bitters, but traditional herbal
medicine has some good ideas to offer, too.
English phytotherapist Simon Mills proposes an interesting model.
He contends that bitters have broad systemic effects, in part by stimu-
lating neurological and immunological tissue present in the gut. Nerves,
including the vagus nerve and also smaller fibers and bundles (known
as ganglia), like those that make up the solar plexus, relay a lot of infor-
mation about the state of the gastrointestinal tract to other areas of the
body. Immune cells sample the belly’s contents constantly, adjusting
the type and quantity of chemicals they secrete and thereby affecting
inflammation throughout the physiology. Mills contends that, just as
needles (or fingers or cones of burning mugwort) can stimulate distant
areas of the body in practices such as acupuncture, herbal chemistry
can interface with the wide absorptive area of the digestive tract. Each
molecule acts like a small “needle,” balancing the release of hormones,
the impulses of nerves, and the activity of the immune system through
a mechanism he dubs acupharmacology.
When you consider that the inner lining of our guts is about the
size of a football field, you can begin to appreciate the vast sensory
apparatus we carry inside us. It truly is a complete and highly sensitive
interface with the world. We spread out everything we put into our
mouths across this vast field, chemically altering and absorbing some
WiMeSo.indd 149 2/22/13 10:07 AM
150 n bItters
of it, and interacting with all of it. Bacteria teem in this environment,
complicating the picture further and helping us remember that, on a
microscopic level, our digestive tracts are distinct and balanced eco-
systems. In this context, the food we eat and the chemistry it contains
create what could be called patterns of “weather” for this ecosystem—
with daily, even yearly, cycles of activity. I wonder if bacterial colonies
comment, in their own ways, on these changes: “Feels like it’s gonna be
a sweet one again today, friends” or “We were all doing fine until the
great bitter glut, and now the Bifidobacteria have overrun the neigh-
borhood . . .” But, all joking aside, the idea of acupharmacology presup-
poses an awareness that a xenobiome exists, is vitally important, and
can end up affecting the whole human being (for good or ill) if it is
altered. In this context, bitters are like a lightning storm: dramatic and
eye-catching, and providing crucial rain.
While the articulation of acupharmacology is quite new, there is
also an old concept, still much in vogue at the turn of the twentieth
century, known as “dirty blood.” Of course, there is no actual “dirt” in
the blood, and if there were a poison or pathogen coursing through our
veins, we would likely need more help than what herbal bitters could
provide. The concept here is that our internal environment might turn
a little more “pro-inflammatory” on occasion. The chemistry bathing
our tissues can get a little bit off and the result is more allergies, break-
outs and rashes, irritation, heart disease, even anger. Sound familiar?
It reminds me a little of the herbicide-laden fluid we use to bathe corn
country. Through stimulating liver metabolism (a major filter of the
bloodstream, after all), bitters help correct this condition by “cleaning”
the blood. If we allowed bitter weeds to grow in cornfields, we might
clean our aquifers, too—and help with pest control as well. But that’s
a tale for another day.
While the idea of dirty blood has been exploited for many an
herbal “detox” program, and used to market a variety of interesting
(though potentially dangerous if they contain harsh, habit-forming lax-
ative herbs, as many do) supplement products, it nevertheless still holds
WiMeSo.indd 150 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 151
a kernel of truth. After all, the liver does indeed metabolize harmful
substances, and this function is enhanced if the xenobiome is rich in
bitter-tasting molecules. And perhaps the altered xenobiome we have
created for ourselves has engendered a deficiency problem rather than
a toxin-pollution problem—we are not necessarily polluted and dirty;
we may just be missing bitter plants.
The often-touted oxidative hypothesis of aging and inflammation—
stating in very warlike terms that our tissues suffer at the hand of free
radicals that need to be “quenched,” or vanquished, with antioxidant
chemicals—might be only part of the truth. We need to consider the
idea that the problems we are experiencing could be due to a xenobi-
ome that is missing some key elements, elements without which proper
function is lost. Their deficiency is not as visible as deficiency of the
major vitamins and takes much longer to become apparent, requiring
maybe a few human generations to be fully evident. If our blood is
dirtied by anything, it might be sugar. More likely, our internal envi-
ronment is just missing its familiar, diverse botanical influences.
Traditional perspectives teach us that bitters are important parts of
our internal ecology, creating the right environment within. They liter-
ally touch every part of the gut, wherever T2R receptors are found, and
send signals through nerves and hormones to the whole body. Their
chemistry, though wildly diverse, is something we should seek out and
embrace because of its safe and broadly beneficial effects. We should
worry less about “bad” foods, toxicity, and fear-based reactions to what
we eat and more about providing the essential ingredients for optimal
gut function. These are easily found in bitters.
It seems that human beings have always used bitter herbs for
medicine, mostly to help with digestive and liver health, but also to
balance blood sugar and control some more subtle changes related to
inflammation, environmental sensitivity, and age. The challenge bit-
ters embody was always viewed as an integral part of life—though, as
is remembered in the Passover seder, it can be a difficult part. One can
overdo it, as did Mithridates, who filled every moment and every meal
WiMeSo.indd 151 2/22/13 10:07 AM
152 n bItters
with bitterness, aggression, and revenge. Failing to embrace it, how-
ever, leads to a worse outcome in the end: a slow degeneration in the
glut of sweet, monotonous luxury. The traditional emphasis on bitters
shows us an effective way to bring back the flavors our guts were born
to taste, without necessarily needing to radically alter our diet: just a
spoonful of bitter medicine can help all that sugar go down.
THe PHarMacoloGical aPProacH
Our explorations of the bitter taste and the indications for bitters in
traditional herbal medicine have framed a clear picture for the uses
of these important plants in remedying digestive symptoms, bolster-
ing liver health, and reestablishing blood sugar balance. We have also
seen bitters employed to counter toxins, control allergies and asthma,
improve the skin, and alleviate other chronic inflammatory diseases.
They might be useful in a culture where gastrointestinal complaints,
obesity, and diabetes are widespread. In fact, according to the xenobi-
ome hypothesis, we may be experiencing these diseases at massive rates
in large part because we are no longer using bitters. What does the sci-
ence have to say?
A major mechanism of action for bitter tastants stems from the
activity of the T2R receptors. As we saw earlier, these receptors (pres-
ent all over the body, but especially in the gut, pancreas, liver, and gall-
bladder) induce physiological changes that lead to greater secretions
from the gut, reduced movement and closing of the valves between
gut compartments, and less caloric consumption. T2R receptors medi-
ate the connection between the bitter herbs and our bodies. But what
exactly is going on after they are stimulated?
Research geared at answering this question has largely proceeded
on two fronts: the transduction (or relaying) of signals from T2R recep-
tors can involve either nerves that connect to the brain or hormones
released into the bloodstream (often both transduction pathways are
active). The nerve responsible for relaying messages from the mouth
WiMeSo.indd 152 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 153
and gut back up to central processing is, of course, the vagus nerve—
that thick bundle of neural fibers that both listens to and controls the
heart, lungs, and digestive organs (and more, like the muscular fibers
of the iris). The vagus nerve is clearly awakened when T2R receptors
are stimulated, and the nerve kicks into action. It sends information
up to the brain, where it is processed and integrated with other sensory
input, and then it carries signals back to the gut musculature and secre-
tory glands to slow movement and increase secretions. This is just what
we might expect, given the traditional uses of bitter plants.
The role of the vagus nerve in digestion, food intake, gut motility,
high blood sugar, and obesity was reviewed extensively by Hans-Rudolf
Berthoud at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, in his study
“The Vagus Nerve, Food Intake and Obesity.” He examines how taste
begins the process of vagal signaling (a phenomenon familiar to anyone
who has noticed increased saliva production when tasting something
bitter). He ends up linking increased vagal tone to less food consump-
tion and describes how this affects obesity. He goes on to show how
different foods activate vagus nerve fibers all the way down the gastro-
intestinal tract and notes that T2R receptor stimulation activates the
same hormonal secretions that are stimulated by high-protein, high-fat
meals. Carbohydrates, on the other hand, barely affect the vagus at all
(though they may awaken some serotonin pathways). In summary, it
is clear that the nervous system, through the vagus nerve, plays a very
important role in coordinating muscular contraction (which is gener-
ally reduced), digestive enzyme secretion (which is increased), and hor-
monal secretion (also increased) throughout the digestive tract. It is
also involved in liver function, primarily stimulating the uptake and
storage of sugar from the bloodstream. Animals whose vagus nerve has
been severed eat more and have higher average blood sugar levels after
eating sugar.
44
This, of course, is not surprising.
Understanding that the nervous system can carry the signal for
bitter through the entire digestive tract, liver, and pancreas helps us
see that a simple taste can have wide-ranging effects. These effects are
WiMeSo.indd 153 2/22/13 10:07 AM
154 n bItters
reinforced by a few important hormones that increase the “reach” of
the vagus nerve and have profound repercussions in the physiology.
Those hormones are cholecystokinin (CCK), peptide YY (PYY), and
glucagon-like-protein 1 (GLP-1). Keep in mind that these hormones
have received research attention. It is very likely that we are barely
scratching the surface here, and much more is yet to be discovered
about the signaling and functioning of digestive and metabolic feed-
back loops. That, however, hasn’t stopped the older Italian gentleman
from sitting at a bar in the late-afternoon light, sipping his amaro, and
cursing at the soccer scores. I am grateful for that.
Cholecystokinin (CCK), released by cells in the lining of the small
intestine, was first named because of its ability to stimulate the con-
traction of the gallbladder (also known as the chole cyst, or bile sack).
We now know that it is a hormone crucial to connecting the brain
and gut, with effects that stretch far beyond increasing the flow of
bile. Taken as a functional unit, these effects coordinate the activity
of digestive tissues and synchronize them with the motility of the gut.
This ensures that food moves through at a rate that precisely matches
our ability to digest it. In practice, this means slowing down muscu-
lar contractions, increasing enzyme and bile secretion, and providing a
feeling of fullness
45
—precisely reinforcing the vagus nerve.
We first release CCK into the bloodstream when the T2R bitter
taste receptors are stimulated on the tongue.
46
This is a big part of why,
though bitters may awaken the appetite in the short term, they actu-
ally reduce caloric consumption in the end. It is also why bitters are
often taken before meals. But if we remember that the T2R signal is
there to warn us about toxicity, it is interesting to note that high doses
of CCK also have a strong effect on the emotion centers of the brain,
prompting outright panic. In fact, CCK is injected into subjects (at
levels far, far above those achievable by T2R stimulation) in order to
generate anxiety so researchers can test new anti-anxiety drugs.
47
Fear.
Challenge. Poison.
As we continue down the gastrointestinal tract, there are more
WiMeSo.indd 154 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 155
T2R receptors, as well as detectors for fat and protein. All of these,
when activated, stimulate the release of more CCK.
48
The liver synthe-
sizes more bile, the gallbladder contracts, more enzymes are released
from the pancreas, and the valves between the esophagus and the stom-
ach, and between the stomach and the small intestine, close. Muscle
contraction slows. Food is more likely to be thoroughly digested.
Additionally, if there are any carbohydrates in the gastrointestinal
tract, their absorption is slowed and blood glucose levels don’t rise as
much.
49
This pattern is beginning to sound familiar.
By the time we reach the end of the small intestine and the begin-
ning of the colon, activated T2R receptors begin to stimulate the
secretion of two additional hormones—polypeptide YY (PYY) and
glucagon-like-peptide 1 (GLP-1).
50
In short, the first serves to strongly
suppress appetite. The second encourages the release of insulin and
enhances the body’s insulin sensitivity. As a result, we feel more satiated
and our blood sugar levels are lower. As we saw when we were examining
T2R receptors, PYY, if administered before a meal, reduces consump-
tion in both healthy and obese individuals by almost a third.
51
GLP-1 is
so good at boosting the body’s insulin response that analogues are being
researched as antidiabetes drugs.
52
That is an admirable endeavor, but I
offer the idea that we might already have an even better option.
When used habitually and perhaps before eating, bitters not only
slow down the entry of sugar into the bloodstream, they also make
us eat less and sensitize us to insulin. This is the perfect prescription
for an epidemic of insulin resistance, diabetes, and obesity. This is not
some kind of mysterious coincidence, nor an accident of design. The
epidemics are there because the bitters are not, and, as a result, our
built-in sugar buffering mechanisms are slowly atrophying. We are
seeing it on an individual level, meal by meal. We are seeing it on a
cultural level, diagnosis by diagnosis. And we are seeing it in our envi-
ronment, acre by acre.
WiMeSo.indd 155 2/22/13 10:07 AM
156 n bItters
Research has examined the use of bitter plants in humans in the same
conditions for which they’ve always been famous: regulation of diges-
tive function, improvement of liver function, regulation of blood glu-
cose, and improvement in hypersensitivity diseases, such as allergies
and asthma.
Gentian root, an old standby, was administered to a group of 205
patients with a range of dyspeptic, or “bad-belly,” symptoms, including
nausea and vomiting, heartburn, gas and bloating, spasmodic pain, and
constipation. All were quickly and effectively relieved.
53
Liquids con-
taining both gentian and wormwood (another classic bitter) stimulated
gastric and pancreatic enzyme secretions, as well as bile release from
the liver.
54
Even the humble (but bitter) dandelion was lauded for its
effects on incomplete digestion, gas, and bloating.
55
Bitter preparations rich in flavo-lignans from milk thistle are now
world-renowned liver protectants. They are the best (and only) anti-
dote to poisoning from the deathcap mushroom, Amanita phalloides,
which kills by liquefying the liver over the course of forty-eight hours
(Mithridates would be proud—of both). They are also quite useful in
the management of cirrhosis, a slower kind of poisoning that is usually
brought on by alcohol.
56
But even simple preparations featuring only
bitter artichoke leaves still exert an action that is both liver-protective
and digestion-enhancing in humans.
57
Extensive pharmacological
research underpins the use of classic bitter herbs, such as dandelion,
58

in supporting liver health and improving its ability to detoxify poison.
Certain plants, such as bitter melon (Momordica), are exceptional
antidiabetic agents, comparable to conventional medication (though
milder).
59
Even relatively abundant bitter constituents, such as chloro-
genic acid (found in everything from chicory root to garden lettuce),
reduce blood glucose after eating sugar, exerting their effects in part
through the liver.
60
And we have seen clear evidence that stimulat-
ing T2R receptors has a profound influence on hormones that gov-
ern insulin sensitivity in human beings. Bitters may be milder than
conventional drugs in managing diabetes but, if taken habitually, they
WiMeSo.indd 156 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 157
still have therapeutic applicability.
61
They certainly appear to be excel-
lent preventive agents. They have these powers by virtue of a positive
rearrangement of the xenobiome, providing needed cues for balanced
metabolic activity.
Finally, there has been some interesting human research lately that
is exploring the ability of bitters to manage inflammation and irrita-
tion beyond the gut. Plants such as milk thistle, gentian, burdock, and
yellowdock are featured in discussions of allergies, sinusitis, asthma,
and generalized inflammation.
62
This all makes sense from the analy-
sis of the key components of our metabolism and the crucial role bit-
ters seem to play in the health of the liver and digestive tract. When
these organs are happy, processing what we ingest with vigor and effi-
ciency, we are generally happier. But perhaps more important, there is
less inflammation in all our tissues, and we suffer fewer effects from
toxins and irritants. How crucial this is in today’s world! Like a strong
fire that burns hot and clean, we want our metabolism to process food
with a sense of purpose and an almost passionate engagement. We can
get there by rising to the challenge the bitter flavor offers.
WHy biTTers?
We are in the middle of a cultural experiment. The hypothesis is sim-
ple: challenge yourself less, and you will have a happier, healthier life.
We have observed the ill effects of forced, excess labor for millennia.
We have struggled against malnutrition, sometimes making do on wild
plants alone, for millennia. If given the opportunity to rest and eat,
who would refuse it?
The hypothesis is also dead wrong. Human beings are not like vin-
tage automobiles, meant to be rested and admired. We are meant to
move. We are meant to struggle, occasionally. And we are meant to
eat tough and bitter foods, ones that we might rather avoid if we had
the choice. Just because excessive challenge has beaten us down (some
would say forged us in fire), over the course of evolutionary history,
WiMeSo.indd 157 2/22/13 10:07 AM
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doesn’t mean we should now reject it outright just because we can.
There is a middle road to follow, and it may be time for us to walk it.
Unless we do so, our slow cultural degeneration into earlier and earlier
sugar poisoning will inevitably continue, and our slow and steady pol-
lution of the environment will only become more acute.
We have recognized the crucial role of exercise. No one contends
that a sedentary life is healthier than an active one. But what about
food? Concepts in nutrition are identifying important pieces here
and there, but nutrition has yet to give us a broad and clear vision of
how and what to eat. Unfortunately, it never will—we cannot piece
together an “intellectual” cuisine by identifying all the key chemicals
of the xenobiome and ascribing recommended daily requirements to
each one. Nor can we bypass cuisine itself by just supplementing our
physiology with elements they would have produced in the context of
a traditional meal—elements such as digestive enzymes, hydrochloric
acid, or even glucagon-like-peptide 1.
Such elements have to be a natural expression of a living, vibrant
human being in order to be effective. How can we stimulate this
expression? Through bitter, wild plants. They hold a chemical diver-
sity that is often unfathomable to our analytic machines. When we
do uncover a specific layer of its complexity, we only reveal a deeper
one. And at every turn, its richness interfaces with ours so completely
that it is as if we were one large organism—plant and person evolv-
ing together, coherently coupled. Many are starting to recognize that
wilderness is crucial to our health—the experience of nature itself, the
presence of wild bacteria and parasites inside us, even the (relatively)
tame garden soil under our fingernails.
63
So, too, we have to add the
wild back into our food. This will build our resilience, to be sure. But
I will guarantee you this: any human who tastes the wild and weedy
plants and feels a benefit will never look at a sterile cornfield the same
way again.
We must celebrate some of the most vulgar (literally meaning “of
the people”) plants because they are the most bitter. It is the bitter fla-
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bItters n 159
vor that holds the key to identifying wildness in herbs. It is the bit-
ter flavor that activates our digestion and metabolism. It is the bitter
flavor that gives us the signal that our food is challenging and worth
waking up for. We don’t need to live off these plants, or to consume
them in more than modest quantities. Excessive bitterness can overtake
our life. But walking the middle path in the land of poisons ensures a
healthy, stimulating xenobiome and this is what will correct the defi-
ciencies in the Western diet.
So we return to Mithridates, the poison king. He tasted bitter-
ness early, when he was still a child and his mother killed his father.
But this challenge made him strong. He rose, and took revenge, and
took the kingdom back. In the process, he had to kill his mother, but
this, too, gave him strength and with it he fought Rome’s eastward
advance. All the while, he was tasting poison and blending antidotes,
consuming daily doses of bitter herbs from the wild lands of his king-
dom and beyond. As his strength grew, so did his anger and bitterness,
in a vicious cycle that, though it made him exceedingly powerful, con-
sumed him as well. In the end, we find him almost all alone, with one
last faithful guard beside him, having killed his eldest son and been
wholly betrayed by his youngest. The bodies of his family members,
who died poisoned by his own hand, lie strewn around him. As the
enemy closes in to capture and torture him, he takes a deep draft of
his most potent poison to end a vengeful, angry life. But, as the story
goes, it has no effect on him. That is the most bitter irony of all: his
daily use of wild plants had made him invulnerable to the toxicity of
his own poison. He pleads with his guard to run him through with a
sword—and gets his final wish.
We must not follow his path too far. We need not fill our lives with
so much of the bitter flavor that we lose the appreciation for its sweet
rewards. It is dangerous to walk too far into the poison realm: the con-
fidence that comes from overcoming challenge can quickly become a
hateful, resentful arrogance. But that is not our way. We can appreciate
a measure of bitter on our palate and experience its benefits without
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letting ourselves be overtaken by a choleric humor. We can thereby
release the addictive hold that sugary sweetness has on our psyches,
acknowledging that often there is difficulty in life and embracing the
opportunity to meet it head-on. In so doing, we return to an ancient
stream that flows through the lives of plants and people. Within it
runs water that is nourishing but also challenging, clean like the crisp
bite of gentian root. Though not exactly good, its bitter flavor is real.
As you taste it, I watch your eyes brighten, your brow furrow, your
back straighten. You are ready. Per aspera, ad astra. Through challenge,
to the stars.
WiMeSo.indd 160 2/22/13 10:07 AM
161
WorMWood
arteMi sia absinthiuM
Circling around the North Star is the constellation many know as
the Big Dipper. In the Indo-European mythology, which holds the
roots of Greek and Roman legends, these stars were part of a larger
grouping known as Ursa Major, or the Big Bear. Because of its con-
stant presence in the night sky of the Northern Hemisphere, as well
as its special location, it was always regarded with respect. So it is not
surprising that it is named after an animal that, almost universally, is
considered a powerful spirit-guide, a shamanic healer, keeper of the
secrets of nature.
In the Greek pantheon, the cult of the bear evolved, some say,
into the cult of nature and the hunt. The animal was replaced by an
equally powerful goddess: Artemis, often pictured with a bow and
a stag, lady of the growing moon, and, like the bear, queen of all
healers. She was swift and effective in all her pursuits, but also chal-
lenging and often intensely harsh—transmuting rival hunters into
animals and chasing them down, if not killing them outright. She
had a taste for revenge, and many both on Olympus and off tasted
her bitter anger.
I have always felt that the genus of plants to which she lends her
name, the Artemisias, are very aptly named. They are all powerful, wild
plants. The undersides of their leaves almost always have a silvery qual-
ity that reminds me of moonlight and makes them stand out on moon-
lit walks in the garden. They all have a history of use that includes
ceremony, from the sagebrush of the American West to the cosmopoli-
tan mugwort, found in almost every city sidewalk crevice and country
ditch. And they are all intensely bitter herbs.
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GroWinG and HarVesTinG
WorMWood
It is easy to grow wormwood, but remember that it has little tolerance
for other garden plants. Perhaps contributing to its dark reputation,
the plant secretes substances from its roots that inhibit the growth
of other species (a trick known as “allelopathy”). It sprouts readily
from its numerous, small seeds and grows into a strong and woody
perennial— meaning that every winter it leaves behind a hard and
twisted stalk, which sprouts with new silvery growth when spring
returns. Unless it’s cut back regularly, this growth can get a bit rangy,
straggly, and unkempt—but with regular harvest (for distillates and
other fancy preparations), the shrub is kept in check and is actually
fairly well behaved.
I like it planted in the corner of a bed, where it has room to grow
without impeding others, and also where there is a good chance of
brushing up against it: its odor, which is unique but contains hints of
cedar, clove, and camphor, is not unpleasant and its foliage delicate,
lacy, and silvery. If you have the luxury of space, consider devoting
a whole bed to wormwood, or at least one very large container: that
way it won’t bother other plants, and you will have an amazing garden
feature, especially if you like to visit your herbs on nights with a full
moon. Wormwood does well in a wide, terra-cotta planter embedded
in the center of a stone patio, not requiring much fertilizer or water-
ing (think of its relatives, equally at home in the desert or a city side-
walk). When it flowers, clusters of small yellow buttons appear on a
long spray—tiny flowers with almost insignificant silver-green petals.
It can be harvested at this point, and hung in bundles from the raf-
ters for aroma and also to dispel pests. But for medicine, the month
of June is probably ideal: before the flowers arrive, when the leaves are
still a little juicy and highly aromatic, wormwood yields its virtues to
the skillful herbalist.
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usinG WorMWood
Of the Artemisias, wormwood is the most bitter by far. Its intensity is
the reason for its name: so strong that even worms are expelled when
you consume it. But beyond this use, it is also a classic bitter herb that
possesses a lot of aromatic qualities—an incredible combination for
digestive health in general. In fact, its essential oil profile, rich in sub-
stances like thujone, gives it a rich and somewhat notorious reputation
among bitters: it is the secret ingredient of true “absinthe,” a distilled
preparation with a rich and checkered history. So Artemis returns:
challenging, yes—but also dream-inducing, stimulating, erotic: the vir-
gin huntress all men desire but can never have.
Warning
Of all the plants in this book, this one is perhaps the most difficult to
work with. It is expressly forbidden for pregnant women, and those
nursing small children would do well to avoid it, too. Part of its chal-
lenge comes from the intense bitterness, but the volatile oils present
in wormwood are also quite strong and not for the faint of heart.
The combination, however, is what makes this herb distinctive—so,
if you are neither with child nor planning to conceive, consider its use
in moderation. Quickly effective and somewhat magical, it’s worth
having in your home apothecary (if only for that little bottle of arti-
sanal absinthe to show your friends).
There is no way I would ever recommend an infusion of worm-
wood. Even a cupful of its tea would turn the stoutest stomach. For
general medicinal use, or to add as a bitter in drinks or cocktails,
the most common preparation is the tincture. This allows for a little
taste, all-important when using bitter plants, but doesn’t overwhelm
with a mouthful of fluid.
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Wormwood tincture
Fresh or dried wormwood
100–150 proof vodka
To make the tincture, the fresh herb (or dried, too) is steeped in at least
100 proof vodka or ideally some stronger spirits—something closer to 150
proof. some would say that the best tinctures are made with wormwood
harvested the night of a full moon—but regardless of your timing, chop
the leaves finely and loosely pack them in a mason jar. cover them with
your spirits, and, shaking occasionally, allow them to steep for at least
two weeks, though four weeks is ideal.
after this time, the tincture should be strained, the leftover leaves
pressed to remove all the juices, and stored in a dark place.
Remedy Recommendation
Five drops of this preparation is adequate as a digestive tonic for
upset stomach, gas and bloating, irregular bowel habits, or gastro-
intestinal inflammation. Some might require up to thirty drops. For
intestinal worms, twice that dose two or three times a day is the
usual recommendation (but please consult a qualified herbalist before
starting any antiparasite regimen yourself ).
Absinthe (Wormwood Spirit)
Wormwood tincture (made from the fresh herb)
home distillation apparatus (see box on pages 88–89)
While the tincture is useful, the true magic of wormwood reveals itself
once the tincture is distilled. for this purpose, as recommended by
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bItters n 165
the alchemist-poet dale Pendell (with whom i wholeheartedly agree),
a tincture made from the fresh herb is the only choice that is truly
effective.
you take the strained, pressed, fresh wormwood tincture and run it
through the distillation apparatus described in the section on pepper-
mint. Placing the tincture in the sealed distiller in a simmering water bath
will yield a clear spirit, between 150 and 190 proof, depending on how
long you let it go, which is the basic foundation of absinthe.
it can be taken as is, mixed in roughly equal parts with water, or you
can reinfuse the distillate with other herbs of your choice: anise, gin-
ger, and a little peppermint are all traditional choices. but the heart of
the absinthe itself is the distilled wormwood spirit, which is easy enough
to make.
now, absinthe has an interesting reputation. The Parisian bohemi-
ans of the nineteenth century ascribed magical, inspiring qualities to
this preparation. Poets, philosophers, artists, and madmen have all rev-
eled in the mystery of la fée verte, or the “green fairy” (so-called be-
cause of the emerald-green color of the spirit—add fennel seeds
and a little peppermint to your wormwood distillate and you will see
what i mean). Many of the effects are thought to be linked to thu-
jone, a potent chemical that is part of the volatiles found in many ar-
temisias. it seems to have stimulating, and perhaps hallucinogenic,
effects.
The dose of wormwood distillate required is about one-half ounce, and
only preparations made from the fresh plant contain adequate quantities
of the essential oil to be potent. all the commercial preparations available
on the market today contain virtually no thujone—so while they are nice
and green, there is very little of the magic present. The reason for this is that
thujone is toxic when consumed at high doses, or for prolonged periods,
and thus is outlawed at effective concentrations. That is all the warning i
will give.
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Wormwood Candies
1 cup distilled wormwood remnants or simmered
wormwood
2 cups white sugar
1 tablespoon butter
2
/3 cup honey
Confectioner’s sugar
While the absinthe carries off all the aromatic qualities of the plant, what’s to
be done with the leftover material in the distiller? it is a dark, thick, intensely
bitter substance one drop of which activates all the recoil mechanisms our
digestion possesses. i generally use it for making one of my favorite bitter
preparations, incredibly useful for eliminating sugar cravings, and based on
a recipe passed down to me by my austrian uncle Harald (an herbalist and
master pastry chef, whose go-to tonic is the elderfower tisane).
you can use the remnants of the distillation process or you can simply sim-
mer a lot of wormwood in water for ffteen minutes or so (this removes all the
volatile components and concentrates the bitter ones). you will want about
a cup of intensely bitter wormwood fuid, obtained through either method.
Gather your cup of wormwood brew, two cups of white sugar, a ta-
blespoon of butter, and two-thirds cup of honey. also, get yourself a can-
dy thermometer and either a cookie sheet or a nice slab of marble (which
is what my uncle recommended—its cool temperature allows for better
hardening of the candy). dust the marble with confectioner’s sugar. Mix
the brew, white sugar, and honey together, and slowly heat it to a boil.
When the thermometer reads 275°f, add the butter and stir well.
let the mixture reach a temperature of about 305°f (hard crack stage),
then pour it slowly over the marble slab. This should be left to cool until
it’s not tacky anymore, then cut into one-inch squares and left to cool
completely. My uncle would finish it off by dusting everything with anoth-
er generous measure of confectioner’s sugar and individually wrapping
the candies in small pieces of wax paper, but this last step is optional.
Keep these on hand for children, or anyone else with a sweet tooth. They
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bItters n 167
quell the craving with a minimum of calories and, over time, a sort of aver-
sion to sweetness begins to develop (try it and you’ll see why). but my uncle
recommended these for everything from digestive complaints, nausea, and
irregular bowel habits to skin complaints, sore throat, and lung congestion.
Perhaps by harnessing some of the systemic effects of bitter plants,
these intense wormwood candies are actually broadly medicinal. and
what i’ve always liked is that, by distilling a tincture, you divide its ar-
omatic, inspiring, ethereal fraction from its bitter, digestive, grounding
components—a little of both sides of artemis.
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168
dandelion
taraxacuM officinale
There is a yellow flag on your lawn. In fact, there are many. It is April,
and the dandelions are flowering (though the exact timing may vary,
depending on location). If you don’t do something about it, the flow-
ers will become gray puffballs, and the seed will disperse on the wind.
And then there will be more. Once, upon returning from a trip abroad,
I found my garden full of bare, skinny dandelion stalks, their seeds long
gone into the fertile open soil I had been nourishing and protecting for
the sake of my vegetable and medicinal herb starts. For a moment, I felt
the horror of the suburban weekend warrior. It was a good horror—in
the same instant, I had to acknowledge that the entire situation was
now out of my control. That’s a good thing to do sometimes.
There is perhaps no other plant that is as iconic as the dandelion in
the modern battle for the perfect green lawn. It features prominently
on the front of many brands of synthetic herbicide. It has a long, frag-
ile, persistent taproot that is difficult to eliminate, so we have resorted
to chemicals in an attempt to eradicate it from our lives. It alters the
homogeneity of the turf. It is a sign that we are not perfect in our
devoted service to the Poaceae—the grasses that control our lives, to
whom we sacrifice huge swaths of forest land, agricultural field, and
living space. “Human slaves,” they seem to whisper, “you are neglecting
your duties. You cannot allow even one rebel to survive—or we shall
withhold our sugar from you.”
But like all good rebels, the dandelions are irrepressible. Mow them
down, and they simply flower closer to the ground. Pave them over,
and they will find and expand any cracks. Poison them and, in the
end, you only succeed in poisoning your own children, for the dande-
lions adapt, resist, and continue to spread. But just as you can’t keep
a good rebel in chains, you can’t keep a good idea down, either. They
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bItters n 169
are like that thought that nags at the back of your conscience, the one
you keep dismissing because it is too challenging, too risky, too ugly
to entertain. It keeps waving its little flag for a reason: it is the best
medicine for you right now. And so I feel it is with the dandelion: the
weed we love to hate is perhaps the best catalyst to deliver us from the
bondage of perpetual, hypnotic, addictive sweetness. So, back in my
garden, I did the only thing an herbalist could do: I knelt down in the
soil, found a new dandelion, and ate the whole thing—root and all. It
made me feel a whole lot better.
GroWinG and HarVesTinG dandelion
If you have any difficulty finding or growing dandelion, you either
live in the tundra or in the desert. This plant with the characteristic
toothed leaf is cosmopolitan and generally very easy to find. You can
seek it out in any lawn or park, provided that you know there aren’t
any synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides being used. This is
certainly how I collect the greens in springtime, a habit I picked up
from my family in Italy. A few weeks after the snows melted in the
lower Alpine valleys and the stronger sun began to warm the soil, we
would head out for short walks with a sharp knife and a wicker basket.
The best dandelion “crowns” were small, tight, lime-green in color and
had no flower buds on them yet. We would slice the whole crown off
at ground level, put it in the basket, and move on. Back home, after
a little cleanup rinse, they would receive a quick chop and a generous
dousing of olive oil, vinegar, and salt. Often this was dinner, maybe
with just a little cheese and prosciutto. Other times they were the cen-
terpiece of a bigger salad. I remember them being bitter, crunchy, salty,
and delicious.
The true bitter quality of the dandelion is found in its root.
It is not as intense as some of the other bitters, such as gentian or
artichoke, but it is nevertheless very effective. There is a fine line to
walk if you want to harvest it for medicine: the wild roots are very
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difficult to extract from the soil and are often quite spindly. On the
other hand, if you grow dandelion in your garden, the roots get nice
and fat and are a whole lot easier to dig up. The downside of culti-
vated dandelion is that it becomes much starchier and, therefore, less
bitter than its wild counterparts. This is because, as is the case with
most roots, the bitter principles are found in the outer cortex and
the nutritive, sweet starches are in the inner flesh. While both are
important medicinally, it is the bitter we seek: so my compromise is
to allow more and more dandelions to grow in the perennial beds
that are going fallow—areas where the soil is still loose, but where I
haven’t added compost for a couple of seasons. For example, after I
harvest echinacea root from a garden bed, I simply leave the soil open
and won’t fertilize or plant anything for a year or two. Weeds inevi-
tably spring up, and among the lamb’s quarters, amaranth, purslane,
and sorrel you’re bound to find a good crop of dandelions. Not too
fat, not too skinny, not too easy, not too hard: Goldilocks shows us
the middle way in the garden, too.
So rather than striving to eliminate this weed from our lives, we
should be harvesting it and using it daily. It is a gentle bitter, not
overly challenging yet still amazingly effective. Its safety is legend-
ary. And it seems to work so hard at making its presence known: one
of the first f lowers in spring, one of the most attractive seedheads
to children, one of the most common weeds in cities and empty
lots. It isn’t too pushy, but nevertheless it’s relentless: no wonder
many herbalists choose it as their icon, repurposing a symbol that,
to many in this culture, still has so many negative connotations.
Herbal medicine works slowly, seemingly in the shadows, and yet
cannot be eradicated: so, too, the dandelion, pushing up through
concrete, reminds us that nature still wants to connect with us.
Dandelion root tincture was the first tincture I ever made. It can
help catalyze so much good change—if only we heed the signal of
its yellow f lag.
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bItters n 171
usinG dandelion
The dandelion leaf gets more and more bitter as the season progresses.
This does not mean it should be avoided—on the contrary, its medici-
nal effects become more and more pronounced. While herbalists regard
this leaf as a mineral-rich botanical to be infused for kidney and uri-
nary health (and with a strong diuretic action), it is also useful as a bit-
ter tonic when added to salads. It enlivens our unchallenging iceberg,
romaine, and baby spinach concoctions with its wild touch. Eaten reg-
ularly, it has all the benefits of the bitter herbs: it helps control over-
eating, primes digestive function for fewer postmeal symptoms, and
improves the liver’s metabolic effects. If only we found dandelion leaf
more often in our restaurant salads!
Roasted Dandelion Root (A Coffee Substitute)
Freshly harvested dandelion taproots
a classic liver tonic made from dandelion roots is actually a decent substi-
tute for coffee. These roots, along with chicory roots, are still prepared this
way and brewed as a morning beverage throughout both europe and the
american south.
Take your freshly harvested taproots and mince them until they are
about the consistency of coffee grounds. Then, in a cast-iron skillet and
on low heat, roast them until they are dry and a toasty, nutty aroma
begins to waft up from the pan. Just as with coffee, you can opt for a
darker or lighter roast. Then simply take the skillet off the heat, allow
everything to cool, and store the roasted roots in an airtight container.
These can be used in a french press or even a drip-style automatic
coffeemaker, either straight or mixed in with a little coffee or chocolate.
it makes a delicious, bitter morning beverage that goes great with cream
and is very good at waking up an appetite for a nice, nourishing breakfast.
regular consumption of this coffee substitute will bring all the ben-
efits of bitters to your physiology: fewer digestive complaints first and
WiMeSo.indd 171 2/22/13 10:07 AM
172 n bItters
foremost, but also a reduced level of systemic inflammation due to im-
proved liver function. The positive effects of this humble weed on all
manner of gut troubles have been known for centuries, and its yellow
flower has always signaled to herbalists that it is specifically useful for the
liver and gallbladder, sources of yellow bile.
a century ago Guthrie rankin, a scottish country doctor who became
a member of the royal college of Physicians in london, gave a lecture on
digestive and gallbladder “colic” (painful, recurrent cramps and spasms),
in which he extolled the virtues of the dandelion. i can only imagine how
this went over in those rarefied circles (though it couldn’t have gone too
badly, as his lecture made it into the british Medical Journal).
Dandelion Root tincture
Fresh dandelion roots
100 proof alcohol
for quicker access to its medicinal powers, i suggest preparing a dande-
lion root tincture. The roots can be harvested either in the spring or the fall:
earlier in the season, they are more bitter and stimulating. later on, they
store up a reserve of starches for the winter and are more nourishing. These
fall roots are not at all inferior: the starches are actually quite useful for the
beneficial bacteria that live in our intestines. in practice, you can harvest
the roots and make a tincture anytime you have the opportunity to do so.
fill a mason jar with finely chopped fresh roots, and cover them with
100 proof spirits. allow the jar to rest in a cool, dark place for at least four
weeks, then strain and preserve the liquid.
Taking between one-quarter and one full teaspoon of this tincture
around mealtime, either straight or mixed with just a little bit of water (or
other bitter herbs of your choice), will give you a quick and convenient way
to avail yourself of dandelion’s power. your belly and liver will be grateful.
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173
burdocK
arctiuM lappa
Like so many weeds, burdock is much maligned despite its virtues. In
Japan, where it is still used as a staple food, there is a story of three
roots getting into a hot bath: first the burdock gets in and then quickly
jumps back out because the water is too hot. Next the carrot tries, and
it likes the bath so much that it stays in too long and turns red. Finally
the daikon radish enters, washes itself quickly, and emerges white and
clean. The implication is that darker skin is dirty and undesirable, but
I feel the opposite is true: the dark, fuzzy, bearlike skin of burdock is
the most beautiful of the three and also has the best flavor. It is wild,
nutty, and gently bitter. And it is by far the most nourishing. Again,
what seems most undesirable might be the best medicine.
HarVesTinG burdocK
Every year in the fall we get out our digging forks and head to a wild
patch of weeds by the elder grove, close to the edge of the wood. Here
the burdock has been thriving in the rich soil, opening its wide leaves in
May and growing larger and larger over the course of the summer. The
foliage is huge now and lends an almost tropical feel to this unkempt
corner of the garden. Rising out of this mass of silver-green are thick
stalks, some over five feet tall, covered in golf ball–sized burrs that are
green or brown, depending on their stage of maturity. But we seek out
the plants with no stalks, the ones that have reached the end of their
first season of growth—for once burdock sends up its flower and sets
its seed, the whole plant dies and its root is worthless. These first-year
plants, however, hold a delicacy that is both edible and medicinal. I
like to watch folks harvest it: easing out the long, straight taproot is a
test of patience.
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174 n bItters
The trick is getting the whole thing out of the ground in one piece.
I have routinely seen wild burdock roots that are two feet long, though
they can surpass even this length, given the right soil. They seek deep
mineral nutrition from the subsoil and carry these nutrients up into
the plant and, by extension, into those who consume it. Using a dig-
ging fork and long digging sticks made of smooth, well-worn hickory,
we loosen the soil where the leaves meet the crown of the root and
begin to work our way down into the earth. Every once in a while a
gentle tug reveals that there’s still a long way to go. Sometimes, you will
hear a muffled “pop,” followed by a sigh of disappointment coming
from the more impatient diggers (the taproot has broken off). But the
patient ones emerge from the foliage with a thick, dark-brown, fuzzy
root that tapers to a point and reveals, like a geological core sample, the
structure of the soil: a foot of brownish topsoil is followed by a layer
of gray Vermont clay and finally a pebbly, rocky mix that still clings to
the end.
usinG burdocK
Cooking with burdock root is the traditional way to consume this
bitter herb. Its flavor is quite mild, and in Asia it is a regular addi-
tion to soups and stir-fried vegetable dishes. It used to be popular
in Europe, too, added to soups mostly, but it has fallen out of favor
over the last few hundred years, like so many of the more traditional
foods. This is a shame, because its regular consumption is quite ben-
eficial and it is much more nutritious than the carrot, which is the
standard cooking root these days. Fortunately, there has been a resur-
gent interest in burdock over the past few years, and I am starting to
see more and more of it in the produce departments of natural foods
stores. It’s a whole lot easier to bring it into your life if you can find
it next to the leeks in a supermarket cooler, but the trade-off (as with
dandelion) is that these cultivated roots are less bitter than their wild
counterparts (and you don’t get a chance to test your patience when
WiMeSo.indd 174 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 175
you harvest them). Still, it is better to eat a store-bought burdock
than none at all. And when consumed regularly, its benefits will still
be evident. Before you cook with your roots, clean them gently with
a cloth or potato brush. Don’t scrub too hard—you want to preserve
a good amount of the bitter peel. You can use burdock just as you
would a carrot. It can be sautéed, cut on a bias and stir-fried with
other vegetables, or diced and mixed with celery and onions as the
base for soup and stock.
One of the major reasons burdock is good for the belly is the bit-
terness of the outer peel. But the complex of starches in the root itself
has some highly valuable properties, too: some of the carbohydrates
are digestible by humans, but many others contribute to a cocktail of
soluble fiber that helps regulate colon function in a couple of ways.
First, it can soften a hard stool and add a little bulk and firmness to
a softer one. Second, the soluble fiber is rich in “prebiotic”* starches,
food for the beneficial bacteria that inhabit the lower part of our
digestive tract. These bugs are important for maintaining a healthy
colon, and they help control levels of inflammation there by keeping
pathogens at bay. We are learning more and more about our colon’s
ecology and how to promote digestive health by adding different
strains of lactobacilli and other bacteria. This seems like a decent
approach, but burdock and its prebiotic soluble fiber can help, too, by
making sure that the right food is present for the good bugs to eat.
Given the right environment, so the argument goes, the right ecology
will thrive.
Herbalists value burdock for its bitter digestive qualities. But as
we’ve seen, improving digestive function and liver metabolism can
have important implications elsewhere as well. This is particularly
evident with this weedy root: its softening starches, coupled with
its general bitter effects and power to rebalance the colon’s ecology,
combine to make it an excellent anti-inf lammatory for the diges-
tive tract. As we saw in Simon Mills’s concept of acupharmacology,
*Prebiotic is starch that probiotic bacteria consume preferentially.
WiMeSo.indd 175 2/22/13 10:07 AM
176 n bItters
reducing inf lammation in one mucous membrane can bring down
irritation in other tissues, too. Burdock is perhaps the best example
of this effect. It has been used traditionally for all manner of skin
complaints, from simple rashes to eczema and psoriasis, as well as
acne in both children and adults. It is so safe and gentle that it can
be simmered into tea and used in any situation. Even pets, espe-
cially dogs, who sometimes have irritation or “hot spots” on their
skin that can lead to a persistent itch-scratch cycle, find relief with
this simple remedy. American physicians of the nineteenth century
called it “alterative,” meaning it has the power to alter a stubborn,
unresponsive condition. For this purpose it must be consumed regu-
larly, as part of meals or as a cupful of suppertime tea. If given the
chance, it acts patiently and persistently to address chronic skin and
digestive issues—helping to get at the root of the problem, just like
a patient and persistent herbalist digging for burdock in the thick
Vermont clay.
Burdock and Seaweed Appetizer
thinly sliced burdock root
equal parts vinegar and water
Seaweed
oil, salt, and pepper to taste
one of my favorite recipes doesn’t even involve cooking: simply slice
the burdock into thin matchsticks and soak these in an equal-parts mix-
ture of vinegar and water for about ten minutes. drain, then mix with a
little seaweed (arame is great, but shredded nori works, too), sesame
seeds, minced garlic, and grated ginger. add a little oil, salt, and pep-
per to taste.
This crunchy, savory, and spicy preparation makes an amazing ap-
petizer that, because of its medicinal bitter quality, also primes digestive
function and prepares the palate for the meal to come.
WiMeSo.indd 176 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 177
Burdock tea
A few tablespoons fresh, diced burdock root
1 cup water
for more medicinal preparations, take fresh roots and dice them. dry
them in the oven at the lowest possible temperature or on a screen in
the sun. Then take a few tablespoons of the roots per cup of water and
simmer them for a few minutes.
The tea that results is a mild bitter preparation, excellent for the di-
gestion, especially if you are feeling debilitated, worn out from a long
illness (or from food poisoning), or suffering from deficient appetite.
WiMeSo.indd 177 2/22/13 10:07 AM
178
yelloWdocK
ruMex cri spus
If your heart is full, and you need release, turn to the curly dock—or so
the legend goes. Alternatively known as garden patience, sour dock, or
yellowdock after the color of its roots, old herbalists who know of such
things say that this plant can help us let go of the influences that are
blocking our progress, impeding our understanding, or simply weigh-
ing us down. While this may indeed be the case figuratively, it has
literal truth as well: there is no safer or gentler bitter when it comes
to ensuring regular bowel function. But isn’t it interesting that in tra-
ditional medicine a remedy for constipation can also help with stuck,
stagnant emotion? The folkloric record is full of such correspondences.
GroWinG and HarVesTinG yelloWdocK
This herb has another “signature” that connects it back to the heart as
an organ of feeling. Herbalists speak of these signatures—images, signs,
or shapes found in the physical form of plants that echo their medici-
nal uses—when picking out remedies from the forest and field. So it
is with yellowdock that, as its seed matures in July, you begin to see a
pink three-winged, papery calyx that holds inside two or three seeds
shaped precisely like little brown hearts. These seeds twine themselves
in spiral fashion up the green stalk, often three or four feet in height.
By August, the entire plant turns brown and the seeds are borne off
on the backs of animals or on the water beside which this plant loves
to grow. They release the small hearts into the streams of the world so
that new life may be born.
In the early spring, the first tender leaves of this plant can be har-
vested as food. They are tangy and tender, making a great addition
to soup or omelets. One note of caution: their sour taste is linked to
WiMeSo.indd 178 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 179
a high oxalic acid content, which can be dangerous for those with a
history of kidney disease (same as with rhubarb or sheep’s sorrel). But,
otherwise, the diuretic effect they offer continues to reinforce the gen-
eral idea of release and movement: the leaves can help with water reten-
tion, edema, bloating, and fluid stagnation in the body. Additionally,
in the spring there is a sticky mucilage that forms right where the plant
emerges from the soil: because of this, the crowns were traditionally
collected and mixed with animal fat to make dock-leaf ointment, a
remedy for all kinds of cuts and skin irritation. For our purposes, the
bitter yellow root is used. It spirals down into the earth much as the
seeds spiral up the stalk, and it’s rugged and dark with a bright yellow
core.
In the wild, yellowdock prefers open soils and a good bit of mois-
ture. It is often found where human activity has disturbed the topsoil
and left a place for the seed to germinate. This, however, means that
you see it at construction sites or on roadsides—not good places to har-
vest roots. So I actually cultivate the root in the shadier spots of the
garden, where there is a little moisture, without adding any fertilizer.
You can purchase or collect the seed and just scatter it where there
is open soil. This is best done in the fall, so that when spring arrives
vigorous plants will emerge, mature, and (if conditions are good) set
more seed. Though it can be an invasive plant, it is simple to control
in the garden: the young plants can be easily pulled up and they don’t
take over quickly.
After a full season or two of growth, the roots will be ready for
harvest. Yellowdock is a perennial, so you can wait longer if you wish—
the roots will get bigger. Since they can branch considerably under the
soil, consider using a digging fork or a small shovel to help. The best
time to do this is after the whole plant has turned a rusty brown: this
both ensures that the root is completely mature and that there will be a
good amount of seed to scatter after harvest. After they are freed from
the soil, cut the tops just under the crown, taking time to notice the
beautiful golden cross section, rich in brown rays. Wash and clean the
WiMeSo.indd 179 2/22/13 10:07 AM
180 n bItters
roots with a gentle scrubbing, as there is often a good amount of clay
in the crevices. I recommend chopping them at this point, while they
are still fresh, regardless of your plans for processing: it is much easier
than trying to slice them when they are dry.
usinG yelloWdocK
Yellowdock root is a classic “blood cleanser,” favored by Europeans and
also by Native Americans who quickly discovered the powers of this
herb when it began to spread, following the arrival of the first colo-
nists. It was used for everything from recurrent infection, anemia, and
rheumatic disease to boils and tumors. Considering its bitter quali-
ties, this range of applications sounds familiar—but the chemistry of
this plant sets it apart from some of the other bitters. It contains small
quantities of a substance called emodin, found in several species from
aloe to rhubarb, which has a mild stimulant effect on the colon and
also underlies yellowdock’s anticancer activity.
Sometimes I run into folks who have been habitually using over-
the-counter laxatives for months, maybe even years. Their bowels
have lost the ability to move without this external stimulus. A slow
transition to a higher-fiber diet, rich in bitter greens and herbs, can
help considerably—but often, at least in the initial stages, some
yellowdock tincture is necessary while the laxative dose is being
reduced. With a little patience, you can retrain the colon to respond
to the stretching of its wall as it fills with stool, and the depen-
dence on artificial sources of stimulation can be successfully broken.
When this happens, there is marked relief: not only are irregular
bowel habits uncomfortable, but laxatives can often cause cramping
and make life even less pleasant. This simple remedy is both safe and
effective, and should be in pharmacies next to the stimulant and
bulking remedies.
But perhaps more important, it is extremely rich in iron and other
minerals, making it a key bitter used in pregnancy and debilitated con-
WiMeSo.indd 180 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 181
ditions. Again we see a signature in the living plant for these traditional
uses: its “rusty” quality, evident in the dry stalk but also in the reddish
splotches found on the fresh leaves, is considered a sign that it is rich in
iron. Obviously, it isn’t the iron content that causes these features—but
it has always been fascinating to me how these patterns come together
sometimes.
That a remedy for constipation contains large quantities of bio-
available iron is a bit of a paradox: usually, iron pills have the oppo-
site effect and lead to sluggish colon function. This is another case
in which the whole package provided by medicinal plants ends up
being more well crafted than any combination humans might have
engineered. And despite its effectiveness for ensuring regularity, its
use as a source of easily absorbable iron is highly valued in the herbal
world. If a person has anemia associated with an iron deficiency (such
as might result from an inadequate diet or from excessive blood loss),
yellowdock really shines. To this end, we usually prepare a syrup. It
preserves well, tastes good, and corrects iron deficiency quickly and
effectively.
Though this may be its greatest virtue, the systemic effects of hav-
ing regular digestion are not to be underestimated. Far from simply
alleviating discomfort, yellowdock (and most all bitter remedies) can
help resolve long-term “stuck” conditions. As a result, there is often
less anger and irritability, more comfort in daily life, and a greater
willingness to be open to the love of others. I know this seems like a
stretch for a weedy, simple plant—but for the right person it can make
all the difference. After all, since the days of Hippocrates, a backup
of bile (known as choler in Greek) was linked to anger, tension, and
headaches. By helping us release the old patterns we hold on to (and a
little bile as well), bitters such as yellowdock can counter the choleric
tendency in our modern culture.
WiMeSo.indd 181 2/22/13 10:07 AM
182 n bItters
Yellowdock tincture
Fresh yellowdock roots
100 proof alcohol
unlike some of the milder bitter roots, yellowdock makes a tea that is
a little too strong to be palatable, even in small doses. so for medi-
cine i usually employ a tincture made from the fresh roots. cleaned and
minced, they steep well in 100 proof spirits and, if put up for three to four
weeks, produce a tincture that is my go-to remedy for mild constipation.
its applications are numerous: a sluggish bowel during pregnancy, or the
irregularity that accompanies travel or unfamiliar situations—all yield to
its gentle action.
it is not habit-forming, unlike other stronger plants (senna and cas-
cara sagrada, for instance). it is even safe to give to children. for adults,
i recommend half a teaspoon of the tincture taken before the evening
meal, or twice a day, if necessary. for children, the dose depends on
age. best to avoid it for youngsters under eighteen months; fifteen to
twenty drops until about age five; and thirty to forty-five drops until the
teenage years, at which point adult doses are fine to use. Though it is
safe for long-term supplementation, yellowdock is usually employed for
periods of two to three weeks at most.
Yelowdock Syrup
8 ounces minced, dried yellowdock root
1 quart spring water
Raw honey
Take about eight ounces of minced, dried yellowdock root and simmer it
in a quart of spring water, over low heat, until there is only about a pint of
fluid left. strain the liquid, which should be dark brown and rich-smelling,
and mix it with an equal part by volume of raw honey (meaning, if you
have two cups of fluid, mix it with two cups of honey).
WiMeSo.indd 182 2/22/13 10:07 AM
bItters n 183
That’s it! The syrup will keep indefinitely if refrigerated, and for a few
weeks if left out at room temperature.
Remedy Reccomendation
Take a couple of tablespoons of yellowdock syrup with meals, once or
twice a day, to ensure good iron levels. Because of yellowdock’s abil-
ity to regulate bowel function, this is a beloved tonic for pregnancy:
it helps keep energy levels up and corrects any mild constipation.
WiMeSo.indd 183 2/22/13 10:07 AM
184
4
tonics
Nourish and Balance
We need the tonic of wildness.
Henry David Thoreau, 1854
In Neolithic times, Ireland was ruled by a series of tribes,
1
many of
which left lasting monuments to their presence in the form of sacred
wells, barrow mounds, and standing stones at special sites. During
transitions between different ruling peoples, fierce battles raged that
consumed many lives and forged a strong mythology populated by war-
riors, goddesses, and healers of divine power.
One such healer was Dian Cecht, a noble figure in the Tuatha De
Daanan and cousin to the king, Nuada. His tribe of tall, beautiful,
shining folk waged war against the Fir Bolg for dominion of Ireland,
perhaps around five thousand years ago, though the true dates are lost
in time. In their first battle on the western coast, Dian Cecht gained
much renown for blessing and enchanting a deep well. It is said that,
when the warriors of the Tuatha De Daanan were injured in any way,
simply descending into the well and bathing in its waters would restore
them to complete health. There was, however, an exception: any piece
WiMeSo.indd 184 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 185
severed from the body could not be made whole again, meaning, by
extension, that decapitation still meant death.
Dian Cecht, his son Miach, and daughter Airmid would sing
incantations over the wounded soldier as he descended into the well.
Dark and deep, with spiral staircases intertwining on the inner walls,
it held cold and restorative water. The soldier would reemerge whole,
energized, and ready to return to battle. Thanks to this ritual, in the
end, the Tuatha De Daanan, children of the moon goddess, were able
to overcome a race of nature worshippers whose temples were the fairy
hills of Newgrange and Knowth.
But the Fir Bolg did not pass quietly into history: during the four-
day-long battle, a great warrior among them was able to completely
sever the hand of Nuada, the king. Despairing, the king ran to Dian
Cecht to be restored, but the well could not help him. So the great
healer fashioned a silver hand for his master and skillfully attached it
to the arm. Both hoped that, thereby, Nuada could maintain rule of
the tribe, for Brigid, the matriarch, had decreed that only one whose
flesh was whole could lead the people.
Unfortunately, the silver hand, though fully functional and as
alive as any flesh, was not good enough for Brigid. The Tuatha De
Daanan fell into turmoil. During this confusion, Miach and Airmid,
the great healer’s children, returned to the battlefield and found the
severed hand of Nuada. Over the course of nine days, and using a deep
and healing magic, Miach restored the living hand to the king, and
thereby, the king to his throne. Such an amazing act of surgery had
never before been witnessed, nor has it ever since.
Now, though both may work quite well, there is a difference
between a silver hand and one of living flesh, and Brigid clearly knew
this. One is the product of technology—advanced, remarkable, effec-
tive, but still a construct, an approximation. The other is a product
of life itself—our true substance, warm, sensitive, integrated into
the whole. The first is our best patch. The second is true healing.
So, whether it was out of amazement and disbelief, fear of incredible
WiMeSo.indd 185 2/22/13 10:07 AM
186 n tonIcs
power, or simply jealousy, Dian Cecht had to challenge his son to a
display of healing skills.
Three times the father took a sword to his son’s head, each time
lopping off a bigger and bigger portion. Time after time Miach healed
himself, blood returning to the veins and brain, skull, and hair grow-
ing back as they were before. The third time was by far the hardest.
And when the sword came down for the fourth time, the great healer
found that he had completely severed his son’s head—and from this
wound there was no return. Miach had died, and with him a great deal
of the magic of the healing well was also lost.
Dian Cecht and Airmid buried Miach close by, and while the
father quickly left the grave, sister Airmid lingered for days, through
foggy, damp mornings and sunny afternoons and rain clouds that, roll-
ing low overhead, darkened the sky over the green, green hills. After a
time, strong seedlings began to sprout from her brother’s barrow: each
one was unique, growing at its own pace and in its own manner. They
grew taller, quickly. There were 365 in all, some say one for each bone,
joint, and sinew in Miach’s body, others say one for every day of the
year. But Airmid recognized in each a virtue and power to heal the
ailments and ills her people might encounter, and she began to speak
and sing to the green plants, and they sang back, so that soon she knew
their secret ways. Gathering them up into her cloak, she grouped and
arranged them according to their strengths.
But her father returned to the grave before she could hide the
magic plants. Seeing what she had done, Dian Cecht seized the cloak
and scattered the herbs to the winds. Here I cannot help but think that
jealousy was at work—jealousy that simple, humble herbs could accom-
plish what he might never be able to achieve, jealousy that nature in
her own time could work healing that ten thousand men could not
comprehend. Or perhaps he simply wanted to hide the knowledge from
most people, leaving it to be passed on, as a precious gift, by a select
few. Regardless of his intent, this is what he accomplished: Airmid
remembered each of the plants that had sprung up from her brother’s
WiMeSo.indd 186 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 187
grave, and some say that, to this day, she heals the sick and wounded
from her home in the hills of Connemara. It is a good thing for us
that she did remember and in so doing kept alive an essential part of
our cultural knowledge. We find today that, despite our technology,
the basic nature of life and health remains elusive. Some of Airmid’s
most magical plants were her tonics. By following their tendrils as they
intertwine with our physiology, we may learn something about that
basic nature in the process.
a noTe in HarMony
The word tonic has a range of meanings. In its simplest form, it refers
to tone: the degree of tension, or activity, in a tissue. For example, a
well-toned muscle can withstand the load of a heavy weight longer
than a muscle with poor tone. In pharmacy, the word often has a
more uncertain meaning. Generally, tonics are considered to be rem-
edies that are safe and foodlike, and that enhance physiological func-
tion rather than directly treating disease. While this is a commonly
accepted definition, “tonics” are also sometimes viewed with skepticism
(and rightly so, considering some of the preparations marketed as ton-
ics in the nineteenth century).
Because of these many layers of meaning, I prefer to use a met-
aphor to describe them. So consider the concept of tonic in music,
and, more specifically, the concept of the tonic note. This is the fre-
quency of sound upon which a musical scale is built. In a C-major
scale, the tonic is the C note. It provides a sense of resolution when
it is sounded, closing a measure in a satisfying manner and returning
the listener to the fundamental element of the piece. The other char-
acteristic of the tonic note is that it harmonizes with all the other
notes in the scale. Regardless of whether we are playing in C-major,
C-minor, or a pentatonic variant, any note used will sound fantas-
tic when voiced alongside a C. Here’s a great definition: in music,
the tonic is the most basic summary of the whole piece, the root to
WiMeSo.indd 187 2/22/13 10:07 AM
188 n tonIcs
which the song returns in the end, and the note that harmonizes
with everything along the way.
So, too, herbal tonics act as an important foundation for the daily
unfolding of the song that is our health and vitality. We already saw
this idea expressed in the concept of the xenobiome, the chemical envi-
ronment that our metabolic physiology needs for optimal function.
Indeed, bitters are often considered tonic because they enhance and
normalize the activity of the digestion and liver. But Airmid’s remedies
reach more deeply into more pervasive processes, and their action was
always considered more precious. They may show effects on the liver
and digestion, too—but their effects at all levels of the human system
make them truly tonic.
Part of this has to do with absorption and distribution of the plant
chemistry we eat. Some of the most bitter substances, such as iridoids
from dandelion and gentian, generally aren’t very well-absorbed. What
does enter our system is metabolized by the liver and leaves through
the bile without circulating in the bloodstream much at all.
2
This, of
course, isn’t an issue as most of the action of bitter plants is mediated
by the T2R receptors that line the whole gut and provide plenty of
places for iridoids to exert their influence.
But tonic plants, just like the tonic note of a song, interface and
harmonize with every piece of our melody. Some, like bioflavonoids,
are somewhat bitter and thus work on the digestion, but they continue
by acting on the lining of the blood vessels, our livers, and the environ-
ment inside our cells. Others, like saponins, have digestive effects but
also go deeper by interfacing with patches of immune tissue as they
move through the belly. All of them bring into focus the idea of com-
plex systems interacting: a cocktail of chemicals from plants blending
seamlessly with the processes of the human physiological network. So
we are going to need to extend the idea of the xenobiome beyond the
sphere of digestive and metabolic activity.
Another word that is often seen in the context of plant medicine is
holistic. And though it may be overused, it has a very specific meaning
WiMeSo.indd 188 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 189
and describes the activity of tonics well. In essence, holism is simply
the broad self-similarity of a network: every tiny piece holds within it
the image of the whole, akin to what occurs in a piece of holographic
film. If you cut it in half, you don’t get half a picture: you still get the
whole; it’s just a little fuzzier. Similarly, in music, the tonic note holds
within it the entire composition: it just lacks elaboration. The progres-
sion of notes in a simple melody is, at its core, an initial variation on
the tonic note. And even though a song can get extremely complex and
detailed, it always recalls the melody, and the melody holds the tonic
note, returning to it to anchor the piece. Music is holistic.
Herbal tonics are remedies whose effects can reverberate through
every aspect of our being. As such, they might be the most impor-
tant, enriching elements of the xenobiome. They may seem like no
more than simple food, but their chemistry and activity make them
unique: the more we examine these herbs, the more we find that they
act pervasively, and in remarkably coordinated fashion, to increase
resilience. All traditional healers and visionaries knew this—they
worked quietly and subtly in their communities, using this gentle
rebalancing medicine. In so doing, they saw echoes of the divine in
their gardens, in their remedies, and in the people who used them.
Hildegard von Bingen, a mystic, healer, and composer who lived in
twelfth-century Europe, wrote extensively about the tonic qualities
of plants, trees, and places (found in Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica).
In Heavenly Revelations, she also composed intricate, tonic-driven
chants that beautifully express her rapture with the holistic nature of
the world. Listening to her O viridissima virga (O greenest branch)
is like taking an herbal tonic. We return to the root, we experience
reconnection, we are nourished at a very deep level. It is so gentle, so
powerful, so much like coming home.
The tonic, in its most positive sense, is an expression of love
from the plant world to our own. It is evidence of our coevolution.
Everywhere we look, we find locks in our bodies that are opened by
these botanical allies. Airmid, and many more wise women following
WiMeSo.indd 189 2/22/13 10:07 AM
190 n tonIcs
in her lineage, knew this basic fact: go to the tonic herbs, nourish the
human being, yield, sing, and watch the resonance.
TurninG Genes inTo HealTHy HuMans:
ePiGeneTics and iMMuniTy
To be perfectly honest, all the herbs I talk about in this book are at
least a little bit tonic—in the sense that they are safe, gentle (though
often quickly and deeply effective), and rebalancing over time. But, as
we shall see, there is a difference between a distilled, aromatic, pep-
permint spirit and a tablespoon of cooked hawthorn berries; a dif-
ference between ten drops of bitter dandelion tincture and a boiled
broth of reishi mushroom and Astragalus root. The berries, roots, and
mushrooms are the tonics. Sure, there is a lot of overlap between the
categories of plants (with some, like garlic, perhaps belonging to all
three). But tonics are unique in that they are coupled with the process
of genetic expression and the process of immunity. The science of epi-
genetics, which studies genetic expression, shows how tonics affect the
balance of cancer-promoting and cancer-suppressing genes and the bal-
ance of cellular metabolism. An analysis of immunology will show us
how tonics speak to the effector cells of the immune system and alter
the immunological chemistry of our blood and lymph.
Tonics have the distinctive ability to modulate the function of
these two essential processes, and to do so in coordinated, simultane-
ous fashion. Amazing pharmacological detail substantiates this claim.
In addition, traditional herbalists have a strong record recommending
classic tonics—like ginseng, wild blueberries, and red clover, among
many others—for the worn-down, fatigued, and chronically inflamed.
They unburden us or, more accurately, we slowly collect a growing bur-
den when they are not in our lives. Eventually, this burden can mani-
fest as heart disease, chronic pain, even cancer. But before we explore
how tonic plants interface with our physiology, let’s take a closer look
at epigenetics and immunity.
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ePiGeneTics
Imagine yourself on the border between Montana and Idaho, almost
exactly on the Continental Divide that separates the waters that flow
into the Atlantic from those that flow into the Pacific. At nine thou-
sand feet, there are still clusters of old—but small—spruce and fir trees
here and there in the meadow. The grasses are short and mixed with
a range of wild plants. The slope is steep, and rising above you are the
rocky tops of Mt. Jefferson and its ridges. Behind you is a brown and
deeply fissured rock wall, crumbling into a pool of water and graced
with goldenrod and purple chiming bells in this late summer season.
From this pool a small stream tumbles down and into a steep valley,
winding its way north as it prepares to hairpin around the mountain
and flow east.
This is Brower’s Spring, and its water will flow into what becomes
the Missouri River, and from there on into the Mississippi and out,
past New Orleans, into the Louisiana bayou. At first the flow is over-
whelmingly governed by gravity, though long ago, before the moun-
tains had their present shape and the valleys were cut into them, even
the clear-cut path that spreads out before you was uncertain. Once, the
water from the spring could have flowed west instead—early in the
development of this landscape, so much could have been different. But
now the course is clear and, as the river basin opens wider, more waters
swell the stream so that once it reaches the broad prairie, the water
flows in a channel that stretches five football fields across.
It would take a lot to push this flow around, both at the widest
point and at the source. In both cases, canals and dams might make
a difference but would require incredible energy and time. At our
time-scales, the river’s course looks pretty fixed (except, of course,
when it floods). A water droplet from Brower’s Spring is fairly certain
to flow past Vicksburg, Mississippi, at some point (assuming it doesn’t
evaporate beforehand).
But once in the Mississippi Delta, this certainty changes somewhat.
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Sure, the droplet will enter the sea somewhere along the Louisiana
Coast—but where exactly is governed much more by a complex tangle
of local factors. Wind, rain, runoff, fish, boats, plants, and even simple
chance, as well as its interaction with other droplets along the way, will
all play a role. Finally, somewhere out of the branching delta, the water
will reach the Gulf of Mexico.
The story of water’s journey to the sea is very much like the story of
a new skin cell. Though once, long ago, before skin even existed, the
ancestors of this cell could have chosen myriad different paths to travel,
now it is locked into a course that has been well-worn by hundreds
of generations of skin cells before it. When it grows, it won’t become
bone, muscle, nerve, or vessel: it will be skin. Once it reaches maturity,
it will look a little different from its neighbors, depending on a com-
plex tangle of local factors, ranging from inflammatory chemicals, to
sun exposure, to elements from the diet of the human being on which
it grows. It may switch back and forth between a few different states
during the course of its month or so of life. Finally, as with all skin
cells, it will die and be replaced, leaving a protective and waterproof
layer of protein behind. Unless, of course, something unexpected alters
this plan—unless a flood occurs and the river breaks its banks. The
skin cell might then find a different course, forget its manners, and
start dividing out of control or perhaps perish before its time.
During the first weeks of development, the human embryo is just
a ball of cloned cells. Each of these cells is more akin to a drop of rain
far above the Continental Divide, back on the border of Idaho and
Montana: it hasn’t committed itself to any path quite yet. It will hit the
ground somewhere along the ridgeline just west of Mt. Jefferson, and
percolate through the soil, or perhaps run off some stones, and join the
underground plume of water that feeds Brower’s Spring. But it could also
become part of the Great Salt Lake, if it falls only a few more feet to
the west. As it falls, its possibilities are diverse, but once it arrives on the
ground, it soon becomes locked into a well-defined course.
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Though all our cells (and there are over fifty trillion of them) have
the exact same DNA—an identical genetic blueprint in their nuclei—
they become very different during development. They choose a river to
join then stick faithfully to its course, though still retaining the ability
to make some final adjustments in the end. This analogy of a landscape
was first developed by Conrad Waddington, a geneticist and evolution-
ary theorist who worked in the latter half of the twentieth century. He
compared the fate of a cell as it differentiates from its embryonic state
to marbles rolling down a furrowed slope: they pick valleys to follow
and end up resting in the lowest points. Using energy, a marble can be
pushed up and over a ridgeline, or back up a valley—but, in general,
it will follow its course once it chooses it, just like our water droplet.
The science that attempts to describe this landscape is the science of
epigenetics—the study of how our genes become our bodies. The land-
scape is a series of chemical and environmental factors. These factors
govern how the blueprint of life is expressed. They determine how and
when specific cell types form and how they behave once they’ve settled
on their path.
3
Now, while this is pretty important stuff, how applicable is it
to daily life? There are two answers. The first is that understanding
epigenetic factors and how to modify them might help prevent, and
possibly even treat, cancer—helping the river stay within its banks.
The second is that epigenetic factors govern the cell’s behavior during
trauma, infection, and inflammation—the path the droplet takes once
it reaches the delta. Though we can’t turn back the clock to an undif-
ferentiated embryonic state using plants, we might be able to have a
positive impact on factors associated with cancer and chronic inflam-
mation. In this sense, the science of epigenetics is extremely relevant.
Genetic material can be used for two main purposes, as far as we
know today. It can either be used to create proteins for structure and
catalysis of metabolic reactions (about 2 percent is used for this pur-
pose), or it can be used to create chunks of RNA that end up affecting
the genome in turn. These are known as retrotransposons, free- floating
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functional copies of pieces of DNA, often used to alter when and how
genes are active. The instructions for their production account for
over 40 percent of our DNA blueprint.
4
We’re not sure about the rest.
The transcription of DNA into mRNA (another type of functional
DNA copy, used as a template for assembling proteins for enzymes,
muscle tissue, or hair) and its translation into proteins has been well
described;
5
what is more interesting are the feedback patterns that
occur when proteins affect the DNA, in turn, “switching” particular
genes on or off.
How is this “switching” accomplished? This is another way to
frame epigenetics—as a collection of factors that turn genetic material
on or off. After all, a skin cell contains all the information needed to
become a nerve cell—it’s just that the nerve cell genes are “off.” The
process of picking a streambed to follow to the sea is governed by
which areas of the genome are active. Our cellular physiology does this
by attaching different types of molecules to DNA and to the scaffold-
ing that supports it.
Let’s take a moment to visualize the more than six billion base
pairs that make up our DNA. Of all that genetic material, very little
is actually accessible at any given time. It’s mostly packed away into
chromosomes, unless the cell is dividing, in which case it’s slowly being
unraveled and copied. While it’s packed away, the molecular machin-
ery that “reads” the information can’t get access to it. The packing is
accomplished by wrapping the DNA around spherical proteins known
as histones. This is the only way you can fit six feet of double helix into
one-one- thousandth of an inch. But it also serves to protect the genetic
material from radiation and harmful chemicals.
If you were floating in the intracellular fluid and could cross through
one of the pores in the nuclear membrane (all the while watching thin
ribbons of mRNA threading their way toward the protein-assembly sta-
tions that are the ribosomes), you would enter a soupy realm bustling
with activity. Proteins and enzymes, along with pieces of RNA, would
be flowing in and out of view, coming and going from a cluster of giant,
WiMeSo.indd 194 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 195
dense scaffolding. This scaffolding is made of histones, arranged into
chromosomes, gatekeepers of the genome. Around certain areas of the
chromosomes, you could make out ghostlike loops of DNA suspended
in the haze, drifting toward each other, with lots of molecular activity
around them.
6
Steroid receptors, activated by their hormonal triggers,
would be gliding along the loops. A variety of molecules from the outside
world might be at work, too. In short, you would be observing a stew of
molecular machinery, extremely complex but endowed with the typical
“fuzzy” organization found in so many ecosystems.
The loops of genetic material that are unwrapped from their histone
scaffolding are legible thanks, in part, to a structural change in the scaf-
folding itself—an epigenetic change. Some of the molecules in the stew
are responsible for adding small hydrocarbon chunks, known as acetyl
groups (–C
2
H
5
), to the histones.
7
This allows the histones to release their
grip, and the DNA, unbound, begins to float freely inside the nucleus.
Now it can be read, its instructions can be followed, the chain of events
that leads to physical structure and function can begin. The instructions
might include directions to unwrap other areas of the chromosomes or to
attach other types of molecules to other histones, which, in turn, might
lead the currently active genes to have different ultimate expressions in
the organism. The web of interactions between genes, histones, and the
molecules surrounding them defines a complex system, a network of
organized complexity (to return to Warren Weaver’s words).
8
Some of the most interesting players in this network are proteins
known as sirtuins, from a protein first discovered in yeast and called
Sir2.
9
These proteins have since been well characterized in human
beings,
10
and they generally remove acetyl groups, both from histones
and from other molecules. The sum of their effects seems to increase a
cell’s resilience, reducing inflammation and increasing life span.
11
Their
presence allows for the successful “packing up” of DNA, and their activ-
ity is stimulated by increased stress, DNA damage, increased energy
usage, and the presence of harmful chemicals. All in all, recent evidence
suggests that these molecules are the central regulators of such diverse yet
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all-important processes as the cell cycle, cellular self-destruction, cel-
lular metabolism, and DNA repair.
12
If we could trace a link between
tonic herbs and sirtuin activity, we might find clues as to their deep
rebalancing power.
Another important epigenetic mechanism takes place on the DNA
itself. Certain base pairs, the “rungs of the ladder” in the double helix,
may have another type of small hydrocarbon chunk, this one called a
methyl group (–CH3), attached to them. This acts as a sort of “road-
block” for the protein machinery charged with reading the DNA. Even
if the instructions are floating free from their histone scaffolding, they
are literally illegible. And it seems as if the areas of highest methylation
(where methyl groups are attached to the DNA) are those right before
what’s called a “promoter sequence”—a flag for the start of an active
gene. Methylation thus keeps our cells from even starting to copy that
gene into mRNA. So, if the acetylation of histones offers a flexible way
to make large sections of the genome available, methylation of DNA
hard-codes certain genes on or off.
13
And, as it happens, these codings
can be acquired during our lifetime and passed on to our offspring.
Epigenetic changes have been experimentally documented to extend
over at least three generations.
14
Dysfunction in methylation has been linked to cancer
15
—where
normally dormant genes, silenced perhaps since those first weeks of
embryonic development, lose the methyl groups on their promoter
regions and become active again. But, in practice, this is a rare occur-
rence. Modification of DNA’s scaffolding, the histone protein chains,
is much more commonplace—and these modifications can change
fairly radically, depending on the situation and the environment.
16
You
might expect to find some degree of influence here from tonic plants.
And, of course, you would be correct. Let’s see why.
In the cellular nucleus, a complex balancing act is taking place. The
instructions stored in the DNA, encoded in a giant organic library,
are packed in dense stacks. But rather than being just simple storage
WiMeSo.indd 196 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 197
shelves, these stacks have special abilities. They can find their way
around the library all by themselves, lock and unlock bookshelves, and
bring different volumes together to create a meaningful story. They
are aided in this by a cloud of enzymes that place and remove chemical
elements, such as acetyl and methyl groups, on the books and shelves
and, in so doing, affect what is visible, legible, active. Only the active
instructions participate in this dance. The rest of the genome sits
quiet, tucked away, dark—until the miraculous event of cellular divi-
sion literally turns the library inside out and duplicates it. Along the
shelves are books that describe how to grow, how to rest, how to per-
petuate inflammation, how to repair and renew tissue, how to respond
to signals from other cells.
17
All this complex cloud of activity is set
in motion at the moment of fertilization, when sperm meets egg (the
raindrops above the ridge). As cells divide, each settles into a pattern
(the river’s course) but can also respond, within limits, to changes in
its environment and thereby alter its expression (the many channels in
the river’s delta).
Many of these responses are modulated by proteins, such as sirtu-
ins, which rearrange the stacks in the library of the genome and close
up huge sections after they’ve been read. They also activate and deac-
tivate a web of other enzymes (we will explore them more when we get
deeper into the pharmacology of herbal tonics), which, in turn, open or
close other parts. Sirtuins are the custodians of a very important set of
genes and gene-activating enzymes:
18
they regulate how a cell responds
to environmental stressors by increasing its resilience, longevity, and
self-repair function or, if necessary, helping to drastically reduce cel-
lular activity through a process called “autophagy,” or “self-eating.”
19

In other words, they increase life span and reduce the damage a cell
might suffer during inflammation, while also ensuring that they don’t
become overextended, bloated, or wasteful.
If we are talking about wellness from a cellular perspective, our
sirtuins seem to be crucial. Their activity is, however, tied to their envi-
ronment: not only what genes are active, but also what the chemistry
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surrounding them looks like. The activity of sirtuins and, by exten-
sion, the activity of genes relating to cellular resilience, metabolism,
and repair, are extremely sensitive to the xenobiome.
20
Here we return to the tonic plants. It seems that certain molecules
they contain, known as bioflavonoids (and other polyphenols, such as
the curcuminoids, coumarins, and stilbenoids), are some of the most
potent activators of sirtuins.
21
These molecules are found in many dif-
ferent plants but are highly concentrated in tonics, such as chocolate,
hawthorn, blueberries and grapes, green tea, dong quai (Angelica sinen-
sis), Schisandra, and more.
22
These are the molecular interfaces between
the inner world of the nucleus and the environment all around us.
Epidemiological research that looks at correlations between plant fla-
vonoid intake and disease is extremely interesting, and well summa-
rized in Jeffrey Blumberg’s review.
23
Flavonoid consumption levels are
linked to significantly lower rates of heart disease, stroke, and certain
types of cancer. The lowest documented rate of flavonoid consump-
tion globally is in the United States.
24
We will come back to what this
means for us, and why these flavonoid molecules might be so impor-
tant for keeping us vibrantly healthy and resilient. But for now, I want
to leave you with one final thought. Yes, these compounds are essential
for helping our cells respond to environmental stress and challenge,
and they do this by modulating epigenetic activity through proteins,
such as sirtuins.
25
Yes, they protect us from the most common diseases
associated with old age. Yes, they come from plants. But what is their
role in the botanical world?
It turns out that plants overproduce these molecules when they
are under stress. Imagine that—when a hawthorn tree experiences
drought or inclement weather, it generates more of the same molecules
that our cells use for modulating protection, resilience, and longevity
switches.
26
This makes sense—that’s what the plant is using them for,
too.
27
But the beauty of this whole system is that if we regularly con-
sume the plants richest in flavonoids, we tap into a botanical-signaling
system that is highly sensitive to the conditions in the air, water, and
WiMeSo.indd 198 2/22/13 10:07 AM
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soil around us. This signaling system grabs our genome and directs its
expression through epigenetic mechanisms that have evolved over mil-
lions of years of plant consumption.
28
We have allies in the wild, tonic,
flavonoid-rich plants. They whisper to us at the deepest level of our
beings, where our physical substance unfolds out of the genetic blue-
print, and they direct this unfolding as a conductor does her orchestra.
iMMuniTy
Let’s stay at roughly the same spot, deep inside the nuclei of our cells.
Backing out a little, we pass into the thick fluid of the cell itself. Here
a host of molecules, each participating in a complex dance of chemi-
cal reactions, keeps the cell active and in good repair. Eventually, we
cross outside, beyond the fatty membrane that separates the cell from
the fluid all around it. Studding this membrane are proteins and sug-
ars that have an incredible diversity of roles: channels for transport of
nutrients, receptors for signal molecules, docks for anchoring to other
cells, markers for identification, and many more. It looks something
like a very small planet, mostly covered in a greasy ocean, with occa-
sional cholesterol islands and an array of different, gigantic trees grow-
ing out of (and into) its surface. This landscape is in flux, with the
“trees” gliding along and even changing shape in a kind of hyperac-
celerated tectonic drift.
A new type of cell appears in the periphery. First there is only one,
but soon there are more. They are much, much smaller spheres, but
they, too, have a whole range of different outgrowths on their sur-
face: delicate bands of protein and sugar they can use to communi-
cate, exchange genetic material, and interact with their environment.
These are bacteria—Staph in this particular case—and they probably
shouldn’t be here. One of them brushes up against the outer surface of
our cell.
Almost immediately a stream of proteins begins to form a cloud
around the bacteria like a swarm of blackflies around a hiker’s head.
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200 n tonIcs
They start to connect with the tendrils growing out of the invader’s
outer layer. Some are repelled, but others succeed in creating small
openings in the bacteria’s cell membranes, and a few of the pathogens
fall away. If you were an immune cell, you could smell this activity, it
would be attractive to you, and you would slowly make your way to the
scene. Soon enough, one does: with surprising agility for something so
large, a white blood cell appears, extends long fibrous arms around the
bacteria, and eventually engulfs them all. Inside, they soon meet their
demise, and the white blood cell places pieces of them on its outside
surface: “Here’s what I found!” it seems to say. As we shall see, it has
some important friends who might be very interested in the discovery.
The above image is that of the innate immune system in action.
This system is in part a collection of molecules, such as the defensins
that swarmed the Staph, that help an organism withstand attempted
colonization from harmful pathogens. In animals, this chemical activ-
ity is reinforced by cellular players like the white blood cell (a dendritic
cell, also known as a macrophage, which lies in wait in our tissues). But
the molecular component of the innate immune system is extremely
ancient, being the primary immunity for insects and found throughout
the plant world as well.
29
We share a “first line of defense” with plants
and fungi in the age-old struggle of multicellular organisms attempting
to stay alive in the face of an overwhelmingly viral and bacteriological
world. Plant defensins, so similar to our own, repelled potential invad-
ers for millions of years before the first animals ever swam the sea.
30
The molecular components of innate immunity evolved in concert
with the pathogens in the environment and still provide a remarkably
effective barrier to infection. Coupled with dendritic cells and other
white blood cells, including the “natural killer” cells, they protect us
from simple cuts, bacteria, many viruses, and developing tumors. All
the players in the innate immune system are highly sensitive to what
pathogens produce, especially their surface markers. In fact, research-
ers use a substance called “bacterial lipopolysaccharide” to induce
experimental inflammatory reactions.
31
They directly aggravate innate
WiMeSo.indd 200 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 201
immunity by injecting a huge number of bacterial surface markers into
skin or muscle tissue. Furthermore, not only is the innate immune
system exquisitely sensitive to foreign molecules, it is also extremely
specific and only mounts reactions to those molecules and not, say, to
tissue in our joints, digestive tract, or upper respiratory passages.
32
The innate immune system has a rapid response, too. Within min-
utes, defensins, complement proteins, and dendritic and natural killer
cells are on the scene of a wound or viral incursion, helping to prevent
infection. This defense mechanism is highly effective, and it’s crucial
that it function well. Those with genetic illnesses that affect the pro-
duction of immune-active proteins experience debilitating, lifelong
disease.
33
As we age, or experience frequent, recurrent immunologi-
cal challenge, all aspects of immunity suffer somewhat.
34
Still, innate
immunity continues to protect us extremely well from everything from
the common cold to a Staph infection on the skin.
Vertebrates, however, lay claim to a special trick: our immune sys-
tems have the ability to remember. This memory is encoded in another
type of molecule, the antibody, which is precisely tuned to one particu-
lar substance (known as an antigen, or “antibody generator”). When
antibodies bind to antigens, they greatly facilitate the capture and
destruction of whatever may be causing problems.
35
And once we can
make antibodies to a particular substance (usually a snippet of DNA
from the pathogen or a unique cell surface marker), we retain that abil-
ity and can muster it quickly during any future exposure. Far more
often than not, the combination of innate immunity and antibodies
neutralizes any potential threat from an organism that might want to
colonize us.
Our capacity for making antibodies and thus remembering what
we have encountered resides with the adaptive (also known as the
acquired) immune system. It is a collection of white blood cells that,
unlike the cells and proteins of innate immunity, can discriminate in
its attacks. Its memories are stored in special white blood cells called
“B” cells. This is where antibodies come from. But the true heart of
WiMeSo.indd 201 2/22/13 10:07 AM
202 n tonIcs
the adaptive immune system is called a “T” cell. In short, T cells serve
as direct killers, or, more often, coordinators of the overall immune
response. They secrete chemicals that can stimulate the release of his-
tamine (an inflammatory chemical notoriously involved in allergies)
from the mast cells where it is stored. They can stimulate the activity
of more dendritic cells and macrophages, speeding their cleanup of the
affected area. They recruit and train B cells, and are thus essential for
the production of antibodies. But crucially, they also act as the traffic
directors of the immune response, helping to activate it when it’s dor-
mant or calm it when it becomes overactive.
36
While there is broad overlap, there seem to be two general pat-
terns of behavior for these “helper” T cells (also called regulatory T
cells). These patterns are defined by the types of chemicals and cells
involved. Very well described in animals,
37
our understanding of the
patterns in human beings improved through the 1990s. Now, we know
that there are many different types of helper T cells, sometimes spe-
cific ones designed to regulate our immune system’s interaction with
a single, specific pathogen.
38
Still, there seems to be a balance between
two basic immune behaviors: a tendency to use antibodies (IgG) that
bind up bacteria and viruses for capture and disposal, and a tendency
to use antibodies (IgE) that stimulate histamine and other chemicals
involved in inflammation.
39
In other words, T cells can help the cells
of the innate immune system ingest and destroy unwanted material,
or they can trigger a signal that stimulates a histamine reaction and
causes redness, swelling, and pain. In practice, both patterns occur dur-
ing inflammation: the first is the cleanup, the second is the gas pedal.
Sometimes the immune system gets a lead foot, and though it’s unclear
why this happens, it can lead to conditions like allergies, asthma, and
eczema.
40
The link between innate immunity and helper T cells is the white
blood cell that engulfed the Staph bacteria.
41
As you recall, it placed
little pieces of what it found on its cell surface. It turns out that this
is a message for a T cell. This signal will activate the helper cells, and
WiMeSo.indd 202 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 203
they will coordinate the next phase of the immune response. If that
white blood cell engulfs an allergen, like a piece of pollen, it displays it
on its surface just like that piece of Staph. This would generally stim-
ulate the “cleanup” behavior pattern in a helper T cell. But in some
individuals, that T cell pushes the gas pedal and stimulates the release
of more histamine instead. The inflammatory reaction gets more and
more intense. In the end, the intensity of inflammation in all of us
is linked to the interplay between both patterns of T cell activity. In
fact, certain diseases where the immune system attacks healthy tissue
(such as rheumatoid arthritis) are characterized by an opposite pattern,
where the cellular “cleanup” processes get out of control and begin to
destroy connective tissue. In the end, it seems most important that the
two faces of adaptive immunity complement each other harmoniously.
If we could get a handle on this equilibrium—called the Th1/Th2
balance in reference to the first and second pattern of helper T cell
(Th) behavior—we could have an impact on allergy, chronic inflam-
mation, and hypersensitivity. This is yet another point of balance in
the human physiology. It is a place in the network that is highly con-
nected to other processes, affecting them profoundly. It is a place that
is sensitive to fluctuations in the chemical environment, in the xeno-
biome. Every time we’ve located such a place so far, we’ve also found
that plants have an essential, normalizing effect. As you might guess,
we will discover that the immune system also pivots around such a
botanical fulcrum.
Tonic plants are to the innate immune system what bitters are to diges-
tion. Many of them possess starches, chains of various sugar molecules
that look a lot like some of the sugar chains on the surface of a bac-
terium or virus. These chains, called polysaccharides, seem to wake
up innate immunity, increasing the secretion of proteins like defen-
sins and the activity of the phagocytic white blood cells.
42
That’s not
a huge surprise, if we remember that plants also use defensins to pro-
tect themselves. They help this immediate, quick-acting, ancient part
WiMeSo.indd 203 2/22/13 10:07 AM
204 n tonIcs
of our immune system stay vigilant and effective. This is never a bad
thing: innate immunity never overreacts unless told to by a helper T
cell, nor can it ever attack our own tissue.
43
Tonic plants go further, helping to regulate the Th1/Th2 balance
and often shifting it more toward a Th1 response
44
—taking the foot
off the gas pedal and restoring equilibrium. As we will see, this might
be due to a similarity between chemicals, such as polysaccharides and
bacterial surface markers. It is interesting to note that, over the past
twenty years, an idea termed the hygiene hypothesis
45
has attempted
to describe the rise in allergy, autoimmune disease, and even autism
in terms of missing immunological challenge. Lacking actual patho-
genic signals, helper T cells shift away from a cleanup pattern and
begin to overreact to everything from pollen to gluten, even to our
own tissues. Too much hygiene, so the argument goes, has confused
the immune system.
46
Some have gone as far as purposefully infecting
themselves with hookworms to successfully treat conditions like mul-
tiple sclerosis.*
47
One association that has been extremely well characterized is that
between asthma rates and rural farm life: it is an inverse association,
meaning there is less asthma on the farm.
48
Researchers have been
attempting to figure out why. Some say the bacteriological challenge
from raw farm milk is the key; others say it’s the milk’s whey content.
49

Still others comment on the exposure to farm animals—children who
sleep in the barn seem to have less asthma.
50
I suspect that a complex
series of factors underlie this association, rather than one single magi-
cal element. Though it’s seldom discussed, farm kids might be eating
more wild plants, or at least doing more gardening.
Interestingly, “horticultural therapy,” using small gardens for food
and recreation, is considered a great addition to the conventional
management of asthma in Japan
51
(not surprising, coming from a cul-
ture that also advocates immersion in the forest to relax and control
*For an engaging read on this topic and others relating to “rewilding” our bodies, see
Dunn’s The Wild Life of Our Bodies.
WiMeSo.indd 204 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 205
anxiety). So put it all together, and we come up with a picture that
includes not only exposure to bacteria but perhaps also to a variety
of diverse botanical influences—a rich xenobiome. Here we are get-
ting very close to describing the biochemical basis for “nature defi-
cit disorder”—a phrase coined by Richard Louv

in Last Child in the
Woods to both define a major problem in today’s culture and at the
same time offer a clear solution. Part of this biochemical basis might
be a lack of direct ingestion of wild plants.
“The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need,” Louv
explains in The Nature Principle.
52
I feel this is a valuable insight,
and not because nature is somehow always good and helpful. It’s not.
Simply put, elements from nature are crucial to our mental health (as
Louv repeatedly shows), our metabolic health, and our immunologi-
cal health. It is literally Thoreau’s “tonic of wildness” that we should
be seeking, and wild, unhybridized plants are a huge part of that. As
we have seen, they seem to be such a huge part that, without them,
our physiology suffers. The action of tonics includes the regulation
of epigenetic factors that are vital for cellular survival and resiliency.
We might also expect that some of their chemistry would impact dis-
eases where immune function is disrupted, providing some of the same
immune-active chemistry of pathogens, without any of the risks.
Of course, this is precisely the case. We will revisit how, and what
it means for us, when we explore the pharmacology of tonic herbs.
Suffice it to say that tonics like the medicinal mushrooms (Coriolus,
Ganoderma, Grifola, Lentinula, and more) and sweet roots such as
Astragalus have been found to reduce asthma, allergies, and symptoms
of rheumatoid arthritis (where the immune system is attacking the tis-
sue of the joints).
53
Additionally, they improve immune function and
lessen infection, as seen, for example, in two types of patients with seri-
ously challenged immunity: those undergoing chemotherapy for cancer
and those experiencing nervous exhaustion.
54
This dual action that is both balancing and enlivening comes up
over and over again in our exploration of plants, and it’s no coincidence:
WiMeSo.indd 205 2/22/13 10:07 AM
206 n tonIcs
we are built around these herbs. In exploring aromatic plants, we saw
how they rebalance mood and help us engage with life, but this could
have simply been a coincidence—useful, but not necessary. With bit-
ters, though, we came to appreciate the role of wild plants in managing
our ability to nourish ourselves—how we process food, handle sugar,
and protect ourselves against poison—and we may have begun to feel
that we are actually somewhat dependent on these plants for normal
function. But tonics are the best examples of how the complex botani-
cal world interacts with the complex human physiology: we are dance
partners and need each other. The memory of tonic herbs is encoded
as much in our genes and immune systems as it is in our myths and
cuisines. Their memory holds the answer to Michael Pollan’s chal-
lenge of how to “escape the worst elements of the Western diet and
lifestyle without going back to the bush.”
55
Incorporating just a little
of the wild plants into our daily lives can make huge difference over
time. And once it’s reawakened, this memory leads us back to the bar-
row mound where, as visible examples of rebirth and renewal, the tonic
herbs sprung up around Airmid. We, too, can gather them, yield to
their gentle song, and watch our whole being resonate in harmony.
THe TradiTional aPProacH
If tonic plants indeed have consistent effects on epigenetic regulation
and immunological balance, we might expect to see them used in a
traditional context for problems related to poor resiliency, overactive
inflammation, weakness, and repeated infection. Let’s take a look.
Perhaps the most famous and celebrated of all tonics is the root
of Panax ginseng, a plant in the Araliaceae family that grows wild in
rich, dense forests of northeast China and the Korean peninsula. It
is commonly known as ginseng (though a few different species claim
this name), and these days you can find it almost everywhere, especially
in preparations purporting to boost energy levels. Though I approach
these modern concoctions with skepticism, Chinese medicine does
WiMeSo.indd 206 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 207
have a lot to say about herbal tonics and about ginseng root in par-
ticular. It is reported to have been used by the yellow emperor, Huang
Di, as a tonic for longevity and well-being.
56
During the evolution of
dynastic rule, ginseng became more and more prized, with wild roots
(which can routinely exceed fifty years of age) being saved for the
express use of the emperor. It was at this time, during the first few
centuries of the Common Era, that this plant cemented its reputation
as a life- enhancing medicine for a wide range of ailments.
One important use of ginseng, however, stands out and clearly
illustrates how well this tonic works when it comes to increasing resil-
iency and literally “giving life.” When the emperor was near death, and
matters of succession required provincial leaders to assemble in the cap-
ital from the far-flung corners of the province, doctors would prescribe
quantities of pure, old, wild ginseng roots for the ruler. This would
keep him alive until everyone could arrive and settle the affairs of
state. These types of anecdotes are recorded throughout Chinese his-
tory, a more recent one being the story of Wung-Wai Tso,
57
currently
an honorary professor in the Biochemistry Department at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong. An experience in his childhood must have
profoundly affected him, because his work now centers on researching
the medicinal activities of traditional Chinese tonic herbs.
When Dr. Tso was young, he often stayed with his grandfather
while his dad was away. During one of his father’s trips, his grandfather
became weak and knew, as many people close to the end of life do, that
his end was near. Consulting with local doctors, he was given a strong
decoction made of ginseng roots. Thanks in part to this remedy, Dr.
Tso’s grandfather was kept alive for the two days needed for his father
to return home. Ginseng’s power, echoed over and over again in the
traditional use record, is to enhance vitality, especially in the later years
of life.
58
Traditional Chinese tonics, such as Astragalus root, were also seen
to have important effects on immune function. Astragalus was, and
still is, used to enhance the wei qi, or “surface energy,” thought to
WiMeSo.indd 207 2/22/13 10:07 AM
208 n tonIcs
emanate from the rhythmic motion of the lungs and protect us from
“evil influences” (in this case, that means the organisms responsible
for respiratory infections).
59
The root is called huang qi, or “yellow
leader,” truly a noble appellation in a culture where yellow is the color
of highest honor. It is often mixed with ginseng to increase vitality
and resistance to infection. Other important immune-enhancing ton-
ics in Chinese medicine are the medicinal mushrooms in general, and
reishi (Ganoderma lucidum, G. tsugae) in particular. Reishi has various
names that translate to “mushroom of immortality” and “mushroom of
kings,” and it is used for age-related problems, such as dementia, agita-
tion, immune weakness, and fatigue.
60
Again, the traditional use record
emphasizes tonics’ role in promoting vitality and resilience, especially
as we age, and in promoting good immune function. Often these ton-
ics are seen as having a “sweet” flavor—nothing like sugar as we know
it today, but quite satisfying nevertheless.
Chinese medicine has defined the category of herbal tonics. We
will look at what types of plants the West identifies as tonics in its
traditional herbal medicine, but before we do that I want to take a
moment to review the modern take on old Chinese life remedies. Plants
like ginseng, Astragalus, and the mushrooms, but also Schisandra,
licorice, and jiaogulan (Gymnostemma) have received increased atten-
tion in modern times and are generally classed as “adaptogenic” herbs.
Adaptogenic simply means that they are associated with an increased
capacity to adapt to stress and challenge in daily life, whether that
challenge stems from a mental, emotional, or physical source.
61
This definition, perhaps originating from the work of Russian
pharmacologist Nicolai Lazarev published in the late 1950s,
62
seeks to
identify a class of medicinal plants that have safe, “nonspecific” effects
on the physiology. These effects, depending on the person and circum-
stance, may include increased immunity, increased alertness, increased
physical and mental performance, and, almost paradoxically, better
sleep. As elaborated by Israel Brekhman (a student of Lazarev’s) in the
latter half of the twentieth century, all these effects boil down to one
WiMeSo.indd 208 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 209
particular gift: adaptogenic plants increase the physiology’s resilience
in the face of stress. They simply make us more resistant.
63
This sounds
exactly like what epigenetic and immune regulation may accomplish:
we have seen that tonic plants may increase resiliency at the cellular
level through epigenetic regulation. They also may decrease chronic
inflammatory damage (one of the clearest signs that resistance is break-
ing down—just ask any runner during intensive training), while also
increasing resistance to pathogens through immune regulation.
Thus, adaptogens don’t simply enhance resistance at a cellular level,
but they seem to be able to give the whole physiology greater endurance
in the face of ongoing challenge. While any challenge to the human
system may be stressful, it certainly doesn’t have to be. As we saw when
exploring aromatic herbs, it is our response to stressors that largely
determines their impact. In other words, there are two ways to handle
a difficult situation: either you lessen your perception of the problem,
meaning you don’t allow the stress to affect you (here aromatics shine);
or you shore up your resilience, meaning you can endure the challenge
longer (a traditional strength of tonics).
The idea that an organism eventually becomes overwhelmed when
under prolonged stress has been well documented. We have seen that
challenge is an important factor in promoting good health, but too
much for too long can have adverse effects. Hans Selye, a physician who
studied in Hungary during the 1920s but moved to Johns Hopkins in
Baltimore and eventually to McGill in Montréal, Canada, described
this phenomenon and its physiological basis in detail. His work
earned him a nomination for a Nobel Prize in 1949. Selye recognized
that human beings (and most animals, too) have a strong but limited
capacity to handle disruptive influences. At first, there is a beneficial
reaction—but, eventually, a state of exhaustion follows. As occurs with
exhaustive exercise, this state includes increased inflammation, loss of
function, and an inability to respond to any new challenges. In short,
we have a finite capacity to deal with harmful stimuli, and when we
reach that threshold, we can no longer adapt and respond.
64
Brekhman
WiMeSo.indd 209 2/22/13 10:07 AM
210 n tonIcs
proposed that adaptogenic tonics raise that threshold. As we will see,
others had already figured this out—and modern research has given us
a good pharmacological understanding as to why tonics work in this
way.
It is instructive to note that Brekhman’s research on adaptogens
started with the hypothesis that traditional tonic plants are adapto-
genic. In order to research those plants directly, he traveled to the
Primorski Krai (or “maritime province”) of far eastern Russia. This
province is bordered by the ocean to the east and China to the west—
close to the home range of ginseng. It is heavily forested, mountain-
ous, and untouched: the perfect place to stalk the wild, tonic herbs.
Brekhman, urged by Lazarev to “search for the answer in nature,”
65

spent more than forty years here cataloging and researching the phar-
macology of tonic plants, and in the process he thoroughly defined the
concept of adaptogen. Poignantly, after working with astronauts, ath-
letes, performers, chess masters, and more, he came to see these plants
as possessing a “life-enhancing symphony of a formula to make people
healthy, happy, to protect them from stress.”
66
So it seems as if these
herbs help sound a tonic note in all those who deeply explore their
virtues.
In Western medicine, the historical herbal tonic had a somewhat dif-
ferent definition than the life-giving, resistance-promoting adaptogens
featured in the Chinese medical system. Nevertheless, as we will see by
exploring the idea of the tonic in European herbal medicine and in the
practice of the Eclectic physicians, the ultimate effects are the same: it’s
just that in the West, tonics have been associated with a specific tissue
or organ system. There are heart tonics, gut tonics, and lung tonics, for
instance. This was true in Asia, too. The Chinese speak of yang, yin,
blood, and qi tonics; of tonics for the spleen, the liver, and the kidneys.
It seems that traditional herbal medicine has always recognized these
herbs as enhancing function and improving resistance, and sometimes
has tied their effects to particular pieces of the physiology.
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tonIcs n 211
Perhaps no other plant better embodies the European idea of
a tonic than the hawthorn tree. The mythology surrounding this
understory plant (which grows fifteen to twenty feet tall, much like
an apple tree) is extensive. It is also called the whitethorn, and it’s
associated with the May Day feast. In warmer climes, it blooms white
around this time and its fruits ripen over the course of the summer
into red, juicy, bean-size berries that hide a hard seed. Dioscorides,
whose compendium of herbal remedies dates to somewhere around
50 CE, references this tree. Galen mentions it. In more recent times,
Nicholas Culpeper summarizes its uses as a general tonic and diuretic,
emphasizing its importance in “dropsy” (now known as congestive
heart failure). By the beginning of the twentieth century, its use in
both folk and traditional medicine was well established, and its indi-
cations summarized by Maude Grieve: “used as a cardiac tonic in
organic and functional heart troubles.”
67
Modern Western herbalists
all concur with Varro Tyler’s more recent assessment that hawthorn
has “a favorable effect on the heart itself which is especially notice-
able in cases of heart damage.”
68
David Hoffmann makes an interesting point when discussing haw-
thorn, contrasting the use of this tree with that of remedies such as fox-
glove (Digitalis) and lily of the valley (Convallaria). The latter remedies
are very strong, containing chemicals called cardioactive glycosides that
are the sources of modern medicines used for heart failure—but if you
overdose on them, these plants can be lethal. True heart tonics, like
hawthorn, are different. As Hoffmann puts it, they “have an observ-
ably beneficial action on the heart and blood vessels. . . . How they
work is either completely obscure or an area of major pharmacological
debate, but flavones appear to be major contributors.”
69
The hawthorn
is about as toxic as an apple—meaning, not at all. And flavones, along
with a variety of other flavonoids, are important parts of its medici-
nal activity. As we saw earlier, these chemicals work in part through
their epigenetic effects—making cells in the heart and blood vessels
experience less inflammation and more resiliency. Other flavonoid-rich
WiMeSo.indd 211 2/22/13 10:07 AM
212 n tonIcs
berries, such as blueberry, bilberry, and even grapes, all have similar
traditional uses for the heart and blood vessels. True tonics indeed.
Herbs that improve the function of other important organ systems
also fall under the umbrella of tonics in Western herbal medicine. For
instance, some of the aromatic herbs we explored earlier are considered
“nervine” tonics, especially those in the mint family (the Lamiaceae).
They are seen as enhancing the function of the nervous system—and
we know why this is. Bitter herbs are often called bitter tonics, since
they substantially improve the function of digestion and metabolism.
Herbal bitters are perhaps some of the most well-respected tonics in
European medicine, as we clearly saw when exploring these plants. This
is what I mean when I say that all the plants in this book are somewhat
tonic—they are safe, foodlike, and shore up the function of the organs
they affect. But I have found it useful to separate the aromatic nervines
and the bitter digestives from the more specific anti-inflammatory and
immune-active tonics—both because of their chemistry and because of
their clinical applications.
Other plants seen as tonic in Western herbalism include herbs such
as red clover, melilot, cleavers, and sweet woodruff. These plants are
generally used to reduce swelling, such as edema, in tissue (though they
may also have some interesting immune-related activity). Then there
are also some very astringent plants, such as oak, or even rose, that
have similar uses. Here we see an application of the word tonic that is
more akin to that of modern medicine: astringing, or “tightening up”
tissues, literally improves their tone. The use of rosewater as a facial
toner is a perfect example. I contend that these applications are a bit
different from the classic idea of a “tonic” as an enhancer of physiologi-
cal function. Nevertheless, all these species are also rich in flavonoids
and tannins—astringent molecules all.
Immune-enhancing tonics are less clearly visible in Western tradi-
tion, certainly when we compare it to the Chinese record. Hildegard
von Bingen does mention mushrooms, though she isn’t too happy
about their use. “One who has pain in his lungs,” she writes in Physica
WiMeSo.indd 212 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 213
in reference to a willow bracket fungus, “should cook this mushroom
in wine and add a bit of cumin and lard.”
70
One doesn’t find lots of
sweet roots like Astragalus in the list of tonics. It may have been that
the right species were just missing, or perhaps that the focus in Europe
was more on treating infection and securing heroic, battlefield cures,
while in China, the concept of tonification was developed to a much
greater extent. In Europe we often see a greater emphasis on bitters as
a way to enhance liver activity and thereby stimulate resistance, from
Galen’s use of the mithridate to John Gerard’s seventeenth-century rec-
ommendation of Angelica root as “an enemy to poisons.”
71
This is a
sound strategy, as we have seen—but it falls more under the aegis of
bitters than of tonics.
So, in sum, much of the Western record looks to tonics as rem-
edies that manage inflammation, improve physiological function, and
enhance resistance, especially in the cardiovascular system. Almost
everything else considered “tonic” would fall under the definition of
an aromatic herb (“nervine tonics”) or a bitter. Whereas the Chinese
model looks to tonics as overall vitality enhancers that regulate immu-
nity and often taste sweet, the European system considers tonics to be
foodlike agents like hawthorn that soothe hot, inflammatory processes
in the body and have a more sour flavor. The former often calls for
nourishing vitality in the face of aging, stress, and damage, while the
latter focuses on improving function and reducing inflammation. Both
approaches are equally valid and useful in treating disease and main-
taining health—and ultimately lead us to the same place.
Eclectic medicine was practiced for about one hundred years in North
America, roughly from the 1850s to the 1930s. As a discipline, it made
incredible contributions to the art and science of botanical medicine
and to botany. Eclectic physicians cataloged over two thousand differ-
ent plant remedies, three-quarters of which were new to the European
colonists, since they came from species native to the Americas.
72
This
was, at the time, a very unconventional approach to medicine. While
WiMeSo.indd 213 2/22/13 10:07 AM
214 n tonIcs
both colonists and Native Americans knew about herbalism, “regular”
physicians largely employed strong medicines such as alkaloids (for
example, morphine) and minerals (like mercury, antimony, and tar-
taric acid). Bloodletting was still in vogue and embodied the general
driving philosophy of technological medicine at the time. Illness was
thought to be an expression of overactivity, of excess “heat,” and there-
fore draining off some of that vitality (in the form of blood) was the
solution. In the archetypal example of the fever, this approach seemed
to work (though now we know that bloodletting simply weakened
patients to the point where they were unable to mount a fever, without
actually “curing” them at all).
In contrast to this idea that the vital reaction needed to be sup-
pressed,
73
the Eclectics presented a vision much closer to that of
Chinese medicine and Selye’s stress response model. The physiology,
they believed, is generally pretty good at resisting disruptive influences,
whether splinters in the skin (pushed out by a strong inflammatory
reaction) or ingested pathogens (eliminated, for instance, by cough-
ing or vomiting). “But,” wrote John Scudder, an Eclectic physician
who worked in Cincinnati at the end of the nineteenth century, “if
this resisting power be weakened, locally or generally, or if the exciting
cause be too strong for it, then the cause acts, and disease begins.”
74

Thus, it may be as important to strengthen Scudder’s “resisting power”
as it is to treat the disease directly. Going back to the example above,
our approach changes if we see fever as part of the body’s resistive
response to a stressor like the influenza virus. In many cases, that
response will lead to a successful elimination of the virus (in which
case nothing needs to be done). Factors such as enhanced virulence or
bacterial coinfections might alter the progression of disease and need
to be addressed. But weakened resistance has an influence, too. This is
painfully obvious in the immunocompromised patient, but may also be
present in you and me if other sources of stress are taxing our limited
capacity for an adaptive, resistive response.
Interestingly, the Eclectics noticed that, after prolonged debility or in
WiMeSo.indd 214 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 215
hypersensitive cases, the body would increase secretions and inflamma-
tory symptoms in tissue, and especially in the mucous membranes of the
nose, throat, eyes, and lungs. This may be something like what we expe-
rience when we’re very tired, when our eyes begin to feel as if they were
burning and they tear up in response to the irritation. This certainly is
a fair description of an allergic reaction, such as hay fever or the chemi-
cal sensitivities that may accompany chronic fatigue. Tonics were still
considered the remedies of choice. Jones and Scudder say, almost with
surprise, that “very peculiar, and apparently very dissimilar effects upon
the secretory organs and tissues follow from the use of tonics, under
different pathological conditions.”
75
Meaning that, sometimes, chronic
disease leads to a dysfunction in immunity that causes an ongoing, hot,
hypersensitive, and hypersecretory condition, and tonics can bring this
situation back into balance, too—seemingly decreasing activity instead
of stimulating it. Sounds as if they were describing tonics’ ability to regu-
late the Th1/Th2 balance of the adaptive immune system one hundred
years before this balance was even identified.
The Eclectic view is, in the end, almost identical to Selye’s and
Brekhman’s: we are great at adapting to change, it’s what we’re built
to do, but there is a finite “pool” we can draw from to adapt. Once we
drain that pool (either slowly over time, as with insomnia, or quickly,
as with infection), collapse ensues. Tonic plants are used not to treat
disease directly, but rather to raise the threshold of exhaustion—to
improve adaptability, to enhance vitality, “to act directly upon the
vital force of the entire system” as Scudder puts it.
76
Here, thus, we
have a type of plant that was seen to act on every level of the physiol-
ogy, to increase resistance to infectious threat, bolster resilience in the
face of inflammation, and push back the fatigue and hypersensitivity
that come from repeated stress. The traditional record is talking about
modulating immunity and epigenetics, and identifies the plants that
impact these areas as tonics. Once we account for aromatic nervines
and bitters, it would seem that practitioners of botanical medicine fig-
ured out how to keep human immune function balanced and effective,
WiMeSo.indd 215 2/22/13 10:07 AM
216 n tonIcs
and how to help human cells flow along their rivers of genetic expres-
sion with grace.
So we have the Chinese tonics, from ginseng, to Astragalus, to
the medicinal mushrooms: sweet, nourishing, rich in polysaccharides
and saponins that both stimulate innate immunity (nonspecific resis-
tance) and balance acquired immunity (helping to coordinate resolu-
tion of inflammation). When we revisit their pharmacology, we will
see that there is even more these plants can do to raise Selye’s thresh-
old of exhaustion. We have traditional European tonics, such as ber-
ries and other flavonoid-rich plants like nettle or goldenrod that tone
tissue, strengthen the heart and blood vessels, and improve resilience
in the face of inflammation. As we will see, the action of these plants
extends to the immune system, too. But, crucially, we find a common
thread through the traditional record: to truly achieve health, which
is defined as being strong, vibrant, engaged, and resilient, we need
to think about medicine that builds adaptability just as much as, if
not more than, medicine that fights back against challenges. The lat-
ter strategy is being perfected by technological medicine. But the for-
mer has long been practiced by traditional herbal medicine. It relies
on wild, tonic plants—because our physiology, at the level of the tis-
sue, immune function, cellular function, and genetic expression, needs
these botanicals as part of its xenobiome.
Our body has a complex cocktail of hormones that balance its
internal functions. So, too, the ecology (of which we are a part) has
chemical signals it uses to coordinate the function of its component
organs. The flavonoids, phenolics, polysaccharides, and saponins found
in tonic herbs may be tangible examples of such chemical signals, and
evidence of the strong degree of coupling between plants and people.
What is amazing to me is that you can actually see overlap between
these two spheres, between the microcosm of human hormonal activity
and the macrocosm of interspecies ecological signaling. The processes
interlock. And it is here that I want to begin our discussion of the
pharmacology of herbal tonics.
WiMeSo.indd 216 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 217
THe PHarMacoloGical aPProacH
In the short term (meaning a matter of seconds and minutes), adrena-
line (a.k.a. epinephrine) rules the stress response. It speeds the heart,
opens the lungs, and gives us a rush of alertness to help us cope with
the events at hand. Coming quickly on its heels is the hormone cortisol,
secreted by the adrenal glands in response to cues from the brain (spe-
cifically from the limbic system and hypothalamus, areas we’ve encoun-
tered before). Both hormones are important, but while adrenaline is
short-acting, focused, and extremely powerful, cortisol takes time, has
more widespread effects, and isn’t quite as dramatic. This is partly
because it must enter the nucleus of the cell and interact with the mol-
ecules and enzymes that surround DNA in order to exert its effect, and
this takes time. Cortisol’s action centers on reducing inflammation,
mobilizing blood sugar, and countering fatigue—the classic actions of
a steroid, which is precisely what cortisol is. It has such dramatic effects
that, when Edward Kendall isolated it from adrenal tissue in the late
1940s, it was hailed as a “miracle drug” that might eliminate chronic
inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.
77
Since then we have
realized that this miracle is more problematic than we first thought,
78

but it is still a vitally important part of the adaptive stress response. For
example, I couldn’t run more than a mile or two without the cortisol
my adrenal glands secrete: my ankles, knees, and hips would be in too
much pain. This important hormone pushes back against both short-
and long-term inflammation.
As you will recall, Selye’s model of chronic stress exposure includes
an eventual exhaustive phase. We likened the body’s adaptive capac-
ity to a “pool.” Drain it, and collapse follows. That collapse is charac-
terized both by an inability to tolerate further stress and by crippling
fatigue and inflammation. You see it during endurance training. The
human body can withstand remarkable abuse, but its resistance has to
be built up slowly or exhaustion is inevitable. You see it in people who
experience demanding workloads for long periods: even the strongest
WiMeSo.indd 217 2/22/13 10:07 AM
218 n tonIcs
eventually succumb to chronic lack of sleep and repeated, daily stress.
The pattern is always the same. During periods of overwork and ele-
vated stress, human cortisol response is high, and more of the hor-
mone circulates throughout the bloodstream.
79
This is also true in
acute infection.
80
But in situations that bear the hallmarks of repeated,
chronic stress and eventual exhaustion, cortisol levels are much lower
than normal. We see this in post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic
fatigue syndrome, and childhood stress (children often reach the point
of depletion more quickly than adults do).
81
In a fascinating piece of research coming out of Germany in 2002,
Angelika Buske-Kirschbaum and her team explored the relationship
between cortisol levels and chronic inflammatory hypersensitivity,
specifically eczema-like skin inflammation.
82
The researchers discov-
ered that patients with eczema had lower levels of cortisol, and that,
perhaps to compensate, they secreted more adrenaline. This might be
a useful strategy for managing an acute stressor, but long term it sim-
ply seems to lead right where we might expect: to less of an ability to
handle inflammation and greater hypersensitivity. As the Eclectics and
Selye predicted, we can quite literally deplete our “pool” of vital adap-
tive energy. Chronic, severe stress is linked to lower cortisol levels, and
chronic hyperreactive inflammation inevitably follows.
What happens to cortisol once it leaves the adrenal glands? Unlike
adrenaline, which is mostly gone in three or four minutes, it can take
over two hours for cortisol levels to drop after a stressful stimulus.
83
Its
levels are regulated, as is so much else in the human body, by a pair of
enzymes that exert opposite effects: one inactivates cortisol by convert-
ing it into cortisone; the other reverses the reaction, changing cortisone
back into active form.
84
As cortisol levels rise, the first enzyme kicks
into gear in response—and hormone levels come back into line.
If there is a balance point in the human physiology somewhere, we
should by now expect that plants have a role in that balance. It turns
out that the metabolism of cortisol, a crucial stress hormone the levels of
which drop in the exhaustive phase of the stress response, is quite sensi-
WiMeSo.indd 218 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 219
tive to the chemistry of tonic plants, in particular to saponins. These
molecules, a combination of a hydrocarbon “body” and a sugar “tail,”
have a soaplike effect: that is how they got their name. The body mixes
well with fats and oils while the tail dissolves well in water. Plants like
soapwort have been used for just this purpose—as gentle detergents,
shampoos, and soaps.
85
Many saponins, like those in elecampane, are
somewhat irritating when consumed (you try eating soap and tell me
what you make of it) and can be used, in high doses, to induce vomiting
or, more often, expectoration. Once in the digestive tract, saponins from
plants like fenugreek and yucca have a well- documented ability to bind
to and facilitate the elimination of cholesterol.
86
It’s important to recognize that the “body” of the saponin, which
is most likely separated from the “tail” by intestinal microbes,
87
is
absorbed into the bloodstream and has some interesting effects on cor-
tisol metabolism. This mechanism may contribute to the activity of
such saponin-rich tonics as ginseng, licorice, Bupleurum, alfalfa, and
horse chestnut. In short, the leftover “body” of the saponin is absorbed
from the small intestine and enters the bloodstream, where it first
encounters the liver. Here, it either passes through or is combined with
other molecules that increase its water solubility. It eventually leaves
our system through the liver or through the kidneys. In both of these
tissues, it encounters the enzymes that metabolize cortisol.
88
This is the crux of the pharmacological activity of saponins as it
relates to the hormone cortisol. The case of glycyrrhizin, the sapo-
nin found in licorice root, has been very well documented (and this
molecule may have potential adverse effects, so approach licorice with
caution, especially in cases of high blood pressure).
89
Its metabolic by-
products interact with the enzymes that change cortisol into its inac-
tive form, inhibiting the breakdown of this important stress hormone.
90

So, in this illustrative case, we find that saponins, when ingested and
altered by the gut and liver, can have effects that prolong the activity
of cortisol. In the exhaustive phase of the stress response, they may
therefore help reduce inflammation, fatigue, and depression. They
WiMeSo.indd 219 2/22/13 10:07 AM
220 n tonIcs
potentiate the effects of our natural stress hormone, improving our
ability to handle disruptive influences and sparing the adrenal glands,
whose “pool” of stress hormones may be deficient already, from having
to make more. No wonder tonics, including licorice, are traditionally
used to address inflammation and fatigue.
91
Saponins have other very interesting effects, mostly centered on
the activation of innate immunity and the modulation of Th1/Th2
balance. Because of their soaplike quality, they create complexes with
cholesterol (which is very fatlike) and also with the membranes of cells
they encounter. They insert themselves into the membranes, leaving
their sugar “tails” sticking out, and thereby start to look a lot like the
surface markers of bacteria or viruses—a perfect stimulus for both
the innate immune system and also the T cells that coordinate the
acquired immune response.
92
They make such a good stimulus that drug makers employ cock-
tails of plant saponins, cholesterol, and pieces of cell membrane to act
as “adjuvants” to vaccines.
93
An adjuvant is a substance that wakes up
the immune system so it can mount a strong reaction to the antigens
present in the vaccine and thereby effectively train its adaptive arm to
remember what it encountered. Researchers get pretty fancy in their
adjuvant cocktails: depending on the types and ratios of saponins
employed, you can shift the adaptive response toward a Th1 or a Th2
pattern.
94
In plants, you never find a single type of saponin; it’s always
a mixture. Ginseng, for instance, is thought to contain over twenty-
five different saponins.
95
They certainly modulate cortisol metabolism,
either raising or lowering hormone levels, depending on the context,
but they also have both stimulating and suppressive effects on T cell
function, depending on the saponin examined.
96
In the end, it seems that saponins have the ability to speak to our
immune system and, depending in part on the details of their struc-
tures and the context in which they are applied, either to increase
or to decrease immune activity. They are always present in plants as
cocktails—so in a weakened state, enhancement of function ensues,
WiMeSo.indd 220 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 221
while in an overactive state, inflammatory responses are quieted. The
pharmacology of saponins goes a long way toward explaining the rebal-
ancing effects of tonic herbs.
But the story does not end here. Polysaccharides, which are long chains
of sugars, are found in a variety of plant and mushroom species. With
a few exceptions, such as celandine, Arnica, and perhaps juniper, all
the species are traditionally considered tonics, especially in traditional
Chinese medicine.* These species are plants such as Astragalus, ginseng,
licorice, and Bupleurum that we have encountered before, but also ton-
ics such as heal-all (Prunella), fenugreek, larch, oats, and Perilla. These
species are mushrooms we have met already, such as reishi, shiitake, mai-
take, and turkey tails (Trametes). All in all, more than fifty-five well-
characterized tonic species have rich quantities of these sugar chains, and
all of them are recognized by the same receptors that white blood cells
use to detect bacteria and viruses.
97
Polysaccharides form complexes with
fat and cholesterol, much as saponins do, and in similar fashion serve to
“prime” innate immune function, improving resistance to infection even
in delicate situations—following surgery, stress-induced exhaustion, and
the compromised immunity of advanced cancer.
98
Polysaccharides go further. They help the physiology handle can-
cer directly by increasing immune surveillance, helping to detect and
destroy malignancy before it grows out of control.
99
A patented poly-
saccharide formulation obtained from Trametes versicolor is known
as Krestin in Japan,
100
where for more than thirty years it has been
routinely prescribed in cancer therapy to strengthen immunity. It
helps the patient withstand chemotherapeutic drugs while also having
anticancer effects. Positive results are documented in the treatment of
gastric, colon, breast, and lung cancer.
101
And while this preparation is
usually administered by injection at cancer treatment centers, there is
evidence that polysaccharides are active orally: they interface with the
*See Zhu’s Chinese Materia Medica, pages 547–651, which covers the tonics.
WiMeSo.indd 221 2/22/13 10:07 AM
222 n tonIcs
immune system at sites along the digestive tract.
102
To this day I won-
der why, given its track record, Krestin is not used in the United States
for cancer and its associated complications.
Researchers are beginning to speculate as to why polysaccharides
from plants and mushrooms have similar immune-activating effects
as those on the surfaces of bacteria and viruses (without, of course,
causing disease symptoms). It is becoming increasingly clear that these
molecules are part of a very ancient signaling mechanism between
single-celled organisms (such as pathogens) and multicellular organ-
isms. Tonic plants have conserved similar elements found in very old
common ancestors, and when we ingest them, their chemistry inter-
faces with our innate immune system, ensuring optimal function.
Reviewing the research on the immune activity of these compounds
across the animal, vegetable, and fungal kingdoms, Igor Schepetkin
and Mark Quinn (biologists at Montana State University) remarked
that “a common, evolutionarily conserved polysaccharide structural
backbone may be shared between these diverse groups of organisms,”
103

and as a result multicellular beings capable of exploiting these signals
from the plant and mushroom world always fared better in an ecology
teeming with virulent bugs.
So we see a clear echo in the pharmacological exploration of tonic
plants: saponins, their aglycones, and polysaccharides may account
for a large portion of the immune-modulating activity traditionally
assigned to these herbs. We have already seen how they can blunt over-
active immune reactions, perhaps by balancing the Th1/Th2 response
or potentiating the activity of cortisol, in diseases such as asthma, aller-
gies, and rheumatoid arthritis. We’ve just examined the mechanisms
behind their ability to address deficient immunity. Through hormone
metabolism, innate immune activation, and the enhanced activity of
white blood cells, tonic plants make a strong case for being an essen-
tial part of our xenobiome. Without them, we might expect to see a
quicker progression to fatigue when under stress; a tendency to develop
frequent, lingering infections; increased autoimmune reactions; and
WiMeSo.indd 222 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 223
more cases of cancer. Look around. Chances are you know someone
who is suffering from one or more of these complaints.
Again, we are finding that a plant deficiency in our xenobiome
might be partially responsible for the unique illness patterns of the
Western world. While a lack of bitters is linked to increased rates of
diabetes, obesity, and digestive problems, a lack of tonics is linked to
reduced vitality and tolerance of stress, disrupted immune function,
and cancer. For instance, asthma rates in the United States have risen
from about 3 percent of the population in 1980 to more than 7 per-
cent in 2004.
104
Reidentifying the vitality- and resistance-enhancing
qualities of tonics, so well known to the Chinese and the Eclectics, can
point us toward viable solutions.
Enhancing immunity is important, but (as we saw in the physiology
of cortisol) we have to remember that immunity and inflammation
are linked. One requires the other, and a strong reaction to a stressor
usually involves what herbalists call a “hot” response. During a Staph
infection, this may be acceptable: the inflammation contributes to
eventual resolution, and all returns to normal. But repeated stressors of
a different kind, particularly noninfectious ones, can lead to the same
type of “heat” without the same purpose, without closure. Our physi-
ology has exquisitely sensitive mechanisms in place to help us handle
both infectious and noninfectious disruptions. By increasing their resis-
tance and longevity, cells can better weather the inflammatory storm.
These are specific epigenetic mechanisms, as we have seen, controlled
in large part by sirtuins. You will recall how this family of proteins is
involved in the removal of acetyl groups from histones. They “close up”
the stacks in the library of DNA, both protecting it from damage and
regulating the expression of key genes involved in cellular growth, divi-
sion, and inflammation. Polyphenolic chemicals found in tonic plants,
especially the traditional European tonics, such as hawthorn, reliably
stimulate sirtuin activity.
105
Sirtuins exist at one of the hubs of the network of enzymes and
WiMeSo.indd 223 2/22/13 10:07 AM
224 n tonIcs
transcription factors involved in epigenetics. This means that, if we can
find a way to influence sirtuin activity, we can have widespread effects
across the genome: we will be interfacing with a well-connected node
in the system. Since polyphenols, and especially bioflavonoids, can do
this, we might expect that these plant molecules would also have wide-
spread effects across the genome. They can act as guides for the flow
of genetic expression in the crucial “final mile” of the river, helping us
to pick channels of greater longevity and resilience. Let’s see how this
might work.
Two transcription factors, activated by sirtuins and by the poly-
phenolic chemicals found in tonic plants, play a vital role in how a cell
handles inflammation and how it resists challenge.
106
One, known as a
forkhead protein, induces epigenetic changes that lead to increased life
span, more efficient metabolism, and resistance to stressors.
107
Sirtuins
activate this protein. The other, known as nuclear-factor-kappa-B (NF-
κB for short), is responsible for turning on the genes needed for pro-
duction of inflammatory compounds. In short, without NF-κB, cells
and tissue simply can’t get as inflamed in response to stress.
108
Sirtuins
deactivate this protein. The net result of these actions, along with
many others that sirtuins initiate in our cells, is prolonged life span,
greater efficiency, fewer free radicals, less inflammation, and greater
resistance. This is exactly what we see when organisms consume bio-
flavonoids and other polyphenols from tonic plants.
109
Their activity
on sirtuins provides part of the explanation.
But what about cancer? If tonic plants and their flavonoids protect
cells and increase their life span, we might wonder whether this could
be detrimental in fighting tumors. Research shows that the converse is
true: flavonoids inhibit cancer growth and lead tumor cells to commit
suicide.
110
How is it possible that these plants and the chemicals they
contain have opposite effects on healthy cells and cancer cells? The
answer to this question frames the strengths of tonic plants very clearly:
as we have seen over and over again, they help find a place of balance.
Their effects depend on the context. And, in the end, through the
WiMeSo.indd 224 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 225
modulation of epigenetics and immune function, they help bring the
most basic processes of life to their most positive, healthful expression.
So while activating sirtuins is a big part of how flavonoids protect
cells, their activity is not limited to this sphere. Take this example as a
case in point. By stimulating sirtuins, tonics activate forkhead proteins,
which, in turn, shut off self-destruct switches like the p53 enzyme sys-
tem.
111
Conversely, part of what the self-destruct switches like p53 do
is to inhibit sirtuins, reducing the ability of the cell to survive. You can
see that we have a feedback system consisting of opposing, counter-
vailing forces, a clear place of physiological balance deep in the most
basic life processes of each and every cell. Sound familiar? Whenever
we’ve run into such a balance point, tonic plants are there, too. This
example is no exception. While flavonoids activate sirtuins, they also
activate p53 and other self-destruct, anticancer genetic switches.
112
It
is as if tonic plants are hedging their bets: by getting involved on both
sides of a physiological balance, they can positively impact the system
regardless of its state.
In a way this is similar to the progression of all chemical reac-
tions. An overabundance on one side of the balance point makes it
easier to transition to the other side. If a healthy cell is under threat
from inflammation and is expressing more and more genes that will
eventually lead it to self-destruct, the anti-inflammatory, prosurvival
effects of flavonoids become much more pronounced. Alternatively, if
a cancer cell is expressing more and more genes relating to growth and
division, the effects of flavonoids on self-destruct switches will pre-
dominate. The tonics seem to say, “Well, if I can’t attack this problem
head-on, maybe I can stimulate the countervailing force and bring the
situation back into balance.” This is seen in heart disease, autoimmune
disease and allergy, inflammation, dementia, and cancer—all areas
where flavonoids and the tonic plants that contain them have positive
impacts.
113
It is just as the Eclectics had hoped. It is also a physical
embodiment of a very, very ancient concept: that at the moment of
greatest darkness (or of greatest light), the seed of the opposite begins
WiMeSo.indd 225 2/22/13 10:07 AM
226 n tonIcs
to sprout with vigor. At the winter solstice, when nights are cold and
deep, the days start to get longer again. When a cell is threatened or
compromised, the seeds of balance are already sown—but only if that
cell is connected to nature, to its environment, to its xenobiome. If
that is the case, it will experience what the Chinese recorded in the
Book of Changes: “thunder within the earth: the image of the turning
point”
114
—A journey back to balance.
WHy Tonics?
The modern world has its faults, certainly, but it has provided us with
some amazing tools and technologies. This is clearly evident in the dra-
matic cures for infection and acute trauma achieved by medical science.
The drugs and procedures used to combat these age-old scourges, which
in the past decimated huge numbers of us, are remarkably, almost mirac-
ulously, effective. At the same time, however, we are struggling with new
sources of morbidity and mortality. No longer is infection the leading
cause of disease and death: now we have chronic inflammation, hyper-
sensitivity, cancer, and heart disease staring us down in our later years.
Tonic plants, with their complex cocktails of saponins, polysaccharides,
and polyphenols, seem to offer a potential solution through their ability
to modulate immune function and genetic expression.
I have returned to the word modulate throughout our exploration
of tonic herbs for good reason. If we are to address the new diseases of
the modern world, we will need to approach them with a slightly differ-
ent mind-set. They don’t respond well to the strong, direct treatments
used for acute conditions. The lesson learned from flavonoids and their
effects on cancerous cells as opposed to healthy ones should be applied
to the prevention and treatment of chronic disease. Sometimes it’s eas-
ier to balance a seesaw by standing close to the fulcrum and making
small adjustments on both sides, rather than by jumping from one end
to the other, throwing your weight around and attempting to control
the inevitable repercussions.
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tonIcs n 227
Tonics come to us, unadulterated, from the ecosystem. They seem
to be a necessary part of our xenobiome at very deep levels. They are
used in conditions of weakness, deficient energy and immunity, demen-
tia and exhaustion as much as conditions of cancer, inflammatory
heart disease, allergies, and asthma. But they are much, much milder
than technological drugs. Though they can lengthen the life span of
healthy cells by “turning on” survival genes, they will never be able to
increase cancer cell survival because the cancer cell has taken care of
activating all those genetic switches already. Flavonoids are too gentle
in their action to add to this effect.
Tonics are also complex medicines well suited to interacting with
our complex physiology. It’s impossible to overwhelm a chanting crowd
by screaming your message by yourself, but get some friends to whisper
an interesting thought to their neighbors, and the idea might spread,
like a virus, from person to person until the chant changes. In the face
of altered diets, increased stress, novel chemicals, and a much faster pace
of life (as well as a longer life span), we would be foolish to think that a
single drug targeting a single receptor site might be able to reverse the
years of cultural and ecological effects on an individual human being.
Medicine is beginning to realize this. Physicians are trying cocktails,
“polypills,” for cardiovascular disease in hopes that intervention at
multiple levels might be more effective.
115
I would respectfully argue
that nature has been handing us much more complex and multilay-
ered polypills all along: they are the herbal tonics. Their effectiveness
against the modern, chronic diseases is beyond dispute, especially when
treatment is started early on. It is even possible that the chronic dis-
eases exist, or are more widespread than they should be, because of an
absence of these vital plants.
Dian Cecht was a miraculous healer. The silver hand he fashioned for
his king, Nuada, was a technological marvel. It allowed the king to
grasp his sword, to return to the fight, to wield his strength for the
good of his people. But it did not make him whole again, and Brigid,
WiMeSo.indd 227 2/22/13 10:07 AM
228 n tonIcs
the goddess-queen, could not let a man unwhole lead the people.
Technology might make us work, but it can never make us well—it is
impossible to be fully well, engaged, and alive through its gifts alone.
True strength can only come from nature and our connection to the
wild world that shaped our genes, our chemistry, our entire selves.
Our technologies are certainly an expression of nature, but they can-
not completely replace Henry David Thoreau’s “tonic of wildness.” We
simply cannot remain whole that way.
Airmid and Miach, using deep, long-lost magic, made Nuada whole
again. They did not try to replace the king’s hand; rather, they reunited
the king with what was missing. Their magic was mysterious, and its
explanation beyond our ken. It also, as Airmid discovered, could not
be crushed by skepticism, arrogance, or jealousy. The old magic simply
transmuted, filling the healing herbs with its power. She recognized
this right away, collected the plants, and kept their secrets safe.
Using medicine is like planting a seed. Both, to some degree,
involve trust. We can try to control certain elements—enhancing the
quality of the soil, timing the sowing in accordance with the season,
even watching the weather for the most opportune moment. But, in
the end, we must do just as did Airmid: sit, wait, watch, and hope.
However, we have an advantage compared to the goddess of the heal-
ing plants. She has already paved the way, she has gathered the herbs
and passed their knowledge on through generations. She remembers. If
we can reawaken that memory, we can start to use tonics again for the
ills that make our lives unwell. We can nourish people, as we would a
garden. We can tend the growing seedlings, as did Airmid. Collecting
them, we can use the plants as tonic medicine, yield, sing, and watch
the resonance.
WiMeSo.indd 228 2/22/13 10:07 AM
229
ChoColate
Theobroma cacao
The jungles of Central America and Mexico are a tangle of vines and
hardwood canopy trees crisscrossed by a network of narrow trails.
Warthogs and other foragers travel across this landscape and are
stalked by the chief predator of this ecosystem—the jaguar. This mys-
terious nocturnal feline was always a totem animal for the cultures
that inhabited these sacred lands. From these forests and hills radiates
a power that ripples across the entire hemisphere, traveling down the
cordillera of the Andes and up through the Southwest United States.
This power still resonates from sites such as Palenque, perched on ver-
dant hills where the jungle slopes rise up from the drier plains of the
Yucatán Peninsula. Here, seated on a throne fashioned to resemble a
two-headed jaguar, the lords of the Maya handed out justice, sacrificed
the warrior-champions of enemy cities, and drank prodigious quanti-
ties of a magical, nourishing, enlivening liquid known as kakaw, cacao,
chocolate.
The drink was, and still is, extremely nourishing in large part
because of its substantial protein content. This is also why, when
shaken or vigorously stirred, it forms an airy foam that is velvety
and luxurious to consume (chocolate mousse is perhaps the epitome
of this in modern times). To the Maya; their ancestors, the mysteri-
ous Olmec; and the Aztecs, who ruled the same lands following the
demise of the Mayan culture, this foamy airiness was highly sought
after. They employed elaborate rituals to prepare it for the royal family
for whom the beverage was reserved. The basic trick consisted of pour-
ing chocolate-infused water from great heights, sometimes over fifteen
feet, into small cylindrical vessels over and over again. Servants, usu-
ally women, were employed for the express purpose of properly froth-
ing the ruler’s cacao. Spices and other special herbs were added to the
WiMeSo.indd 229 2/22/13 10:33 AM
230 n tonIcs
preparation—and the result was complex, thick, foamy, and no doubt
quite bitter. For even though it is one of the world’s most excellent ton-
ics, it is deeply bitter when unsweetened. This flavor transitions into
an intoxicating and complex mixture of sour, floral, and uniquely choc-
olate notes. There truly is nothing like it. Its pharmacological effects
warrant the blissful feeling with which it leaves you.
HarVesTinG cHocolaTe
Cacao pods appear in the jungle like ghosts, often creamy-white, about
the size of small footballs, hanging directly off the trunk of their trees.
They begin as greenish fruits, then mature into white, through yel-
low and orange, and finally to a reddish purple color so reminiscent
of the final chocolate itself. But it is not this pod that produces the
delicacy; rather, the seeds (known as “beans,” as with coffee) are what
hold the magic. At first, when the ripe pod is broken open, the beans
are wrapped up in a whitish pulp. But after being fermented for a few
days en masse, then laid out to dry, and finally carefully roasted at low
temperatures, they achieve the complexity that is characteristic of the
final product. In tropical environments, numerous species and varieties
of cacao are grown on plantations. Low-end, commercial preparations
are fermented and processed quickly, with little attention to detail. But
the highest-quality beans are hand selected, carefully separated from
their pulp, and freed of their papery skins without a single one being
damaged. The result is more intense and complexly layered than the
finest red wine—and may be a whole lot better for you, too. It is well
worth the price.
You can often find cacao “nibs” at specialty and natural foods
stores. These are broken-up pieces of the processed beans, rich in choc-
olate flavor but also creamy because of their high fat content. Cocoa
butter, as cacao’s fat is known, is semisolid at room temperature due to
its high saturated fat content. Although this type of fat has received a
lot of negative press over the past fifty years, cocoa butter is actually a
WiMeSo.indd 230 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 231
very healthful product. It contains a high degree of antioxidants that
prevent it from ever becoming rancid and contribute to the overall
health benefits of chocolate. When you eat the nibs (or other low-sugar
cacao preparations, such as 80 percent dark chocolate), you are partak-
ing of a protein- and fat-rich food that is actually extremely healthful,
provides nutrition essential for cellular function and repair, and tastes
great. I grew up in a world where chocolate was maligned and called
the “devil’s food.” This may, in part, be due to the intense pleasure
derived from consuming it (hardly a reason for negative marks in my
book). Rest assured that, when eaten close to its natural state, cacao
has no demonic qualities. We might want to call it the “jaguar’s food”
instead. It is powerful, mysterious, nocturnal, and beautiful.
usinG cHocolaTe
The chemistry of the fermented and roasted chocolate bean is extremely
complex. Right up front, its alkaloids set it apart from any of the other
plants we’ve explored. Alkaloids are tremendously powerful molecules.
From caffeine to morphine, humans have known about them for over
three hundred years and have pursued their extraction with great zeal,
as they have potent physiological effects. Cacao’s chief alkaloids (tech-
nically, proto-alkaloids of the methylxanthine variety, closely related to
caffeine) are called theobromine and theophylline—literally, “drink of
the gods” and “love of the gods,” respectively. Certainly not demonic.
These molecules are not nearly as stimulating as those found in cof-
fee or even black tea, yet they still have effects on the brain: a mild
euphoria, a relaxed focus, an easier breath. In fact, theophylline in con-
centrated form is still used as a drug for asthma because it helps relax
and open the airways. My favorite way to experience these alkaloids
is by drinking large quantities of traditionally prepared cacao after a
couple of days’ fast. Because their effects are subtle, I feel them most
strongly when I give my mind and body a chance to rest from the daily
routine and stimulus that usually surrounds me. Taken this way, on
WiMeSo.indd 231 2/22/13 10:07 AM
232 n tonIcs
a very empty stomach, cacao is one of the most pleasant intoxicants I
have experienced. Its stimulating quality is offset by a relaxation and
joy that is difficult to describe, but it suffuses me with deep and full
contentment. It nourishes the belly, dispelling hunger and bringing
satisfaction. Focus is clear, understanding is quick, and creativity is
enhanced. It is no wonder the Mayan rulers favored it so.
But the intoxicating alkaloids are not the most powerful of cacao’s
chemicals. What intrigues me the most are its bioflavonoids. They are
similar in structure to those found in green tea, though more diverse
and present in abundant quantities. As we saw in our general explora-
tion of tonic plants, these molecules have numerous health benefits,
according to the modern research record. First, the flavonoids may
have central nervous system effects, counterbalancing the alkaloids’
stimulating quality with a gentle relaxing power. They also affect the
cardiovascular system, where they can lower blood pressure, dilate
blood vessels, and protect the heart. Coupled with cocoa butter, the
flavonoids may lower elevated cholesterol, too (another example of
whole-plant synergy in action). Put this all together and you have
powerful medicine for the heart. Beyond this, there are the epigenetic
effects that contribute to their anti-inflammatory, cancer-protective
properties. All this seems pretty miraculous, but there is one catch:
unlike pharmaceutical agents, cacao’s chemistry needs to be experi-
enced daily for a fairly long period to derive any benefits. I know, it’s
torture.
Cacao is easy to prepare and, if you begin with a high-quality
powder, it’s a highly nutritious, medicinal tonic unequaled in the
world. The ritual of preparation, which can be simple or as elaborate as
a Japanese tea ceremony, provides a focal point in the day that is subtly
mind-altering and enlivening. It can be customized to suit individual
tastes, timing, and preference (some love chocolate as a warm morning
beverage). Its power flows from the jungles of the Western Hemisphere,
from jaguar-guarded forests rich in dark, deep magic, into our hearts,
through our bloodstream, and finally down into the hidden recesses of
WiMeSo.indd 232 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 233
every cell. It is a gift with a joyful, euphoric touch. The Maya’s tree of
life, growing out of the richest hidden soils, was a cacao tree.
Mayan-style Cacao (hot Chocolate)
1–2 teaspoons whole, raw cacao powder
A few spoonfuls milk, soy milk, or another liquid of your
choice (including water)
1 teaspoon honey (optional)
1 tiny pinch cayenne or ginger powder, or a little
vanilla or orange extract
The easiest and best way to get your chocolate fix daily is similar to the
Mayan preparation. When you make it this way, you can also add other
herbs and spices to suit your mood and tastes for the day. all in all, since
there are so many excellent cacao products available today, the whole
process is fairly easy and similar to brewing a cup of espresso.
start with whole, raw cacao powder. This is crucial for a couple of
reasons. since we won’t be growing or harvesting this medicine our-
selves (unless you’re lucky enough to be living on a belizean plantation),
choosing raw, organic cacao ensures that you have a potent variety
that has been processed with care and attention and was not burned
during roasting. additionally, organic cacao is usually fairly traded, an
important consideration when consuming a plant that has been linked
to farmer exploitation and environmental degradation due to its global
popularity. finally, raw cacao contains all the fat of the original bean
(unlike many standard cocoa powders). This helps to preserve the pow-
der and also adds substantially to its nutritional value.
Take between one and two tablespoons of the powder and mix it
with a few spoonfuls of milk, soy milk, or another liquid of your choice (in-
cluding water). This helps to smooth out the powder a little, and makes
the next steps a bit easier. since cacao is so bitter, i like to add a tea-
spoon of honey, though this is not necessary.
finally, put in a tiny pinch of cayenne, or ginger powder, or a little vanilla
or orange extract. Pour hot water just off the boil over this mixture, stirring
WiMeSo.indd 233 2/22/13 10:07 AM
234 n tonIcs
with a whisk or fork. if you’re feeling inspired, you can make this cacao in
the blender and add fruits like blueberries or strawberries for a special treat.
i usually have two mugs ready and will approximate the Mayan ritual
by pouring the hot chocolate from one to the other. This has the effect
of both cooling it down a bit and increasing its velvety frothiness. My
favorite time for this drink is late afternoon, in the summer sun or after a
snowy winter’s walk.
WiMeSo.indd 234 2/22/13 10:07 AM
235
astragalus
astragalus MeMbranaceus
It may have been over five thousand years ago, in Central China
where the Yellow River courses through rough and mountainous
countryside before dropping into fertile lowlands, that the mythical
Huang Di discussed matters of medicine with Shen Nong, the so-
called divine plowman. Such accounts are largely mythological, and
the timing is impossible to confirm; nevertheless, their work may
have provided the spiritual basis for Chinese medicine in its most
classical incarnation. Shen Nong, who was said to visibly radiate the
qualities of the medicinal plants he consumed, cataloged hundreds
of herbs while Huang Di, the yellow emperor, cemented the cultural
and political foundations of the Middle Kingdom. Yet over two
thousand years were to pass before the first compendium of plant
medicine recounting Shen Nong’s wisdom was to appear: The Divine
Plowman’s Classic on Herbs, as the text is known, details the effects
and preparation techniques for some of the most important botani-
cals (most of which are still in use today).
Among these, the yellow leader, huang qi, also known as Astragalus
membranaceus, stands out as a premier tonic. It is said to enliven the
earth energy of human beings, while also helping to fortify the pro-
tective shield, which, like a sword, repels invaders attempting to assail
our bodies. The herb is the root of a legume, cousin to the common
field vetch so often found in farms across the world, rich and sweet
and yellow and fragrant. I can imagine the two masters, walking in
the wild countryside, examining and tasting the wild vetches and hap-
pening upon this particularly upright, bushy, and vigorous species with
the cream-colored flowers. Shen Nong, the elder, was probably the first
to try its root. Pulling it apart, he watched it peel like the membranes
and fascia of our own tissue, and thought it might strengthen the vital
WiMeSo.indd 235 2/22/13 10:07 AM
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force and resistance of those who consumed it. How right he was, and
what a gift this plant has turned out to be for us all.
GroWinG, HarVesTinG, and
sTorinG astragalus
The seeds of Astragalus are like small, black lentils. They are found in a
small peapod, which, as the seed matures, inflates with pressurized air.
This was quite a surprise to me the first time I saw it. When the seed is
fully ready, it begins to rattle around in this fat, squishy pod, making a
very pleasant sound. This may be the origin of the name astragalus: this
Greek word refers to the small, cube-shaped ankle bones of animals, used
in Hippocrates’s time as dice. When thrown, they rattle across wooden
floors and make a sound similar to the one made by this herb when, in
October, all the seeds shake in the first cold autumn winds.
You can plant the seed, two or three per cell, in an early spring
greenhouse and expect fairly consistent and vigorous germination. Thin
the seedlings out so that there is a single one per cell and, once they are
hardened off, plant them into deeply dug garden soil in full sun. It is best
if the soil is not too heavy with a lot of clay, though Astragalus will han-
dle a broad range of growing conditions. Just avoid excess moisture, as
that may rot the precious roots. Then sit back and be prepared to watch
the plant grow for at least four or five years, though ten-year-old roots
are fantastic, strong medicine. Every fall, collect the rattling seedpods
and plant more, if you’d like. In the fall of the fifth year’s growth, loosen
the soil around the crown, cut the stalks with a heavy-duty clipper (the
crown will have expanded and sent up numerous shoots over the sea-
sons), and pull up the long, branching, twining yellow root. Use clippers
to cut off a small piece right away, clean it off, and taste it when it’s fresh.
Its full, soft, and sweet flavor is as nourishing to us humans as the fertile
alluvial soils around the Yellow River are to plants.
The harvested roots are extremely difficult to slice in cross section,
being very fibrous. So, traditionally, Astragalus was sliced lengthwise into
WiMeSo.indd 236 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 237
long “tongue depressor” strips with a creamy white interior surrounded
by a thin layer of rough brown root bark. This process also facilitates
drying, which is important because the roots lack any antiseptic power
and will quickly turn sour and get moldy if they are not processed with
speed. The long slices are placed in the sun or in a hot, well-ventilated
greenhouse and turned over periodically over the course of two or three
days until they are bone-dry. Then they can be stored in tall mason jars
for future use. Nowadays, you can find Astragalus in this form but also
cut and sifted into small shards, or even powdered. All these prepara-
tions, if relatively fresh (less than a year old) are effective medicine.
usinG astragalus
The science behind Astragalus is remarkable. Modern research is vali-
dating the uses Shen Nong detailed for this plant. But though studies
link it to improved immunity and reduced anemia when it comes to
chronic infection, cancer, kidney disease, and more, its true nature is not
difficult to discern. It is a nourishing tonic that builds our resistance
to all manner of ills, including pathogens as well as chronic weakness.
Therefore, recovery from protracted illness or long-term stress is another
of its strengths. When appetite is poor, following a fever or a disease like
mononucleosis, the root is simmered along with rice or another simple
grain to enhance vitality and return strength to the convalescing patient.
I have found this preparation, perhaps mixed with just a pinch of ginger
powder, to be useful support for those undergoing the difficult courses
of chemotherapy associated with cancer treatment.
Those who start taking plants like Echinacea in the fall should
switch to Astragalus instead. It’s a much more appropriate immune
tonic and much more effective at keeping illness at bay. I find it espe-
cially useful for those who interact with the general public—teachers,
retail workers, health care providers—and anyone with young children.
While its life-giving power is legendary in conditions of extreme
depletion, such as cancer, compromised immunity, or recovery from
WiMeSo.indd 237 2/22/13 10:07 AM
238 n tonIcs
prolonged infection, we don’t have to wait until we are extremely weak
to avail ourselves of this plant. In these viral times, when illness courses
the globe in a matter of weeks (or even days), everyone would do well
to get some Astagalus root every day once the summer season reaches
its peak and the grain harvest begins.
Whether simmered into soup, stock, or grain, or rolled into
tasty sweet treats, this herb directly enhances the life force. Its
noble power, evidenced by the creamy-yellow color of the roots
and f lowers, is humbly hidden away in an unassuming (though
very vigorously growing) plant. When cooking it in a big soup pot
alongside onions, burdock roots, and garlic, think of Huang Di
and Shen Nong in a cottage by the Yellow River, simmering their
own pot, and sipping their Astragalus brew. The spirit of this
plant unites us with those mythical leaders. The spirit of huang
qi is a leader itself.
Astragalus Broth
1 dozen 6-inch slices astragalus
1 gallon water
This plant, like all tonics, is basically enhanced food. as such, it is usually
cooked and not extracted. in chinese medicine the “tongue depressors”
are placed in cold spring water and then simmered for hours, or even
days. More water is added as needed, and eventually a somewhat thick,
creamy, and cloudy fluid can be strained out and consumed by the cupful.
for this simple decoction we usually start with a dozen slices, each
about six inches long, per gallon of water. you get about two weeks’
worth of medicine from this process, and it should be frozen to prevent
spoilage as the liquid will only keep for three or four days in the fridge.
needless to say, this can be hard to do, especially if it represents an en-
tire plant that you’ve tended for five years. so i supplement my garden’s
harvest with organically grown roots that i purchase. They are relatively
cheap and easy to find.
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tonIcs n 239
simple astragalus broth is great, but this herb is most often added
to stocks that are simmering on the stovetop anyway. Throw some slices
into the cold water you add to your soup bases, or tie up about a cup-
ful of shredded roots per gallon of water in a piece of muslin (for easy
removal later) and simmer away. it is a fantastic addition to the soups
and stews we make as the weather turns colder. and what per fect tim-
ing: one of the major virtues of this plant is to enhance the activity of
both the innate and acquired immune systems, and as such it is perhaps
the best preventive medicine for winter illness. best to start consuming
it while the leaves are still on the trees, though; it isn’t useful once you
get sick. but for those who get frequent colds, or whose respiratory tracts
seem to be congested and weak all winter, this herb is just the ticket.
Astragalus nut treats
Approximately 1 cup powdered, organic astragalus root
1
/2 cup nut butter
1
/2 cup raw honey
Shredded coconut (optional)
some people find that it’s difficult to simmer a soup stock, or maybe you
don’t care for soup. it is fairly easy to make a simple and tasty preparation
that appeals to almost everyone, children included. This can be frozen
and used as needed.
for this recipe, you will need recently powdered, organic astragalus
root (most likely purchased, since it is very difficult to powder the root
yourself without appropriate tools). Mix together a half-cup of nut but-
ter, such as peanut butter, almond butter, or even fresh tahini (sesame
seed butter) and half a cup of raw honey. Then slowly add about a cup
of astragalus powder to the mix. you may need a few more tablespoons
of the powder, depending on the consistency of your wet ingredients.
That’s it! roll the doughy mix into balls about an inch in diameter,
and dust them with shredded coconut or more astragalus powder. Then
eat two or three of these every day to prevent upper respiratory tract
infections, strengthen the lungs, and improve overall immunity.
WiMeSo.indd 239 2/22/13 10:07 AM
240
red reisHi (linGzHi)
ganoderMa tsugae
After crossing over an old rock wall, now half-buried under leaves, and
fording a small stream, the path enters a section of the forest that is a
little older and, in places, a little darker. There are fewer young hard-
woods and more and more Eastern hemlock trees—evergreens with
short, dark, flat needles on long branches overhanging the trail. There
is less vegetation in the understory or on the forest floor, just a few
ferns and the occasional patch of wintergreen or partridgeberry. In a
spot up ahead are some small deciduous trees—a striped maple and a
couple of very young ashes. They have taken advantage of a clearing in
the canopy where an old hemlock died, most of its trunk severed from
a craggy stump and lying across the ground.
There a prince of the forest has made his home. Five red fan-shaped
polypore mushrooms are growing out of the stump, one almost two feet
wide. They fan out on thick stems and all of them seem varnished in a
shiny maroon lacquer reminiscent of antique furniture. In this stump
dwells an amazing organism, and these visible parts are simply his repro-
ductive organs. He takes up residence from time to time in certain hem-
lock trees after they become old and die, slowly digesting their wood and
participating in the ecological web of the forest. Like the soil, the bugs, the
birds, and the trees, we, too, can choose to meet this being that, despite
usually only living three to five years, is nevertheless part of a very old lin-
eage of forest dwellers. His skill consists of transmuting decay into life.
This mushroom is known as reishi in Japan and lingzhi in China.
There are tropical species, such as Ganoderma lucidum, that prefer
harder woods, and a species known as Ganoderma tsugae that thrives in
our temperate forest and grows on hemlock trees. Regardless, as their
name means in Chinese, they have been known as “divine mushrooms”
and considered givers of immortality for at least two thousand years.
WiMeSo.indd 240 2/22/13 10:07 AM
tonIcs n 241
They are often found abundantly in their preferred places of growth,
and herbalists have been harvesting them to extend and improve the
lives of the members of their communities long before their specific
uses were first recorded. Modern research is fascinated with these
fungi: not only are they incredibly safe, they seem to have a profound
balancing effect on immunity, stress hormones, heart and brain func-
tion, and genetic expression. They are the very definition of a tonic.
HarVesTinG and sTorinG red reisHi
While many polypores (nongilled fungi that disseminate their spores
from small pores, are nontoxic, and usually grow on trees) have long-
lasting fruiting bodies, reishi does not. A few weeks after maturing,
the shiny red fans will rot if they are not harvested and dried. So I
always recommend harvesting them if you find some and they are
mature, fully red and without their yellow-white outer ring. First,
obtain a positive ID. Then visually inspect and touch the mushrooms.
They should feel solid and strong, and give a satisfying “thump” when
hit gently from above to release any remaining spores (and bugs). The
undersides, though not boggy, should feel moist and firm. Using a very
sharp knife, slice through the stem of the mushroom as close to the
tree as possible. Carry the red reishi fan home in a soft basket to avoid
excessive bruising.
It is much easier to slice this mushroom when it is fresh, so I
usually do so once I get back from the forest. The whole fan may
be hung in a warm, well-ventilated space and dried as is, but it will
be much more difficult to process that way (though it stores longer
when whole). Using a serrated knife, slice the fan into thin strips
and string them together with needle and thread, leaving plenty of
room between each slice. The chain may be hung anywhere there
is good airf low, as the slices dry quickly. Once they fracture easily
and there is no more trace of moisture, unstring them and store
them in a tightly capped glass jar.
WiMeSo.indd 241 2/22/13 10:07 AM
242 n tonIcs
usinG red reisHi
The effects of reishi described in both the traditional and modern record
are nothing short of legendary. Not only does it balance the mind, con-
trol elevated blood pressure, and aid in liver metabolism, but it also has
a strong dual effect on immunity: it stimulates innate immunity, while
also modulating the Th1/Th2 balance of the acquired immune system
(and toning down the Th2 response, if necessary). The net result: fewer
infections and less allergy and inflammation.
So while reishi is working deeply at strengthening and improv-
ing our immune system’s response overall and perhaps also length-
ening our life span, the major short-term effect I notice is that even
small doses reduce allergy symptoms almost immediately. This is
highly useful for controlling complaints such as hay fever, animal
and pollen allergies, and especially chemical sensitivities. Be pre-
pared for a range of side effects, though: more restful sleep, less anx-
iety and irritability, healthier blood pressure (for those with both
high and low numbers), and a mysterious clearing up of rashes and
skin issues.
It is very possible that mushrooms, like plants, are an essential part
of our xenobiotic cocktails, and send important cues to our immune
system without which we develop hypersensitivities and weakness.
If this is the case, then the polypores like reishi deserve our special
attention. After all, they have been injecting chemistry into the forest
ecosystem for millions of years.
Reconnecting with these important medicinal species goes beyond
the surprise of finding their beautiful forms, glistening red, in the dark
of a deep forest. It gives us a chance to eat something that is neither
plant nor animal, endowed with an often amazing intelligence. We can
partake of the flesh of literal death-eaters, and in so doing may be able
to also transmute destructive tendencies in our body and spirit into
growing, life-giving expressions.
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tonIcs n 243
Red Reishi Stock
1 cup red reishi
1 gallon water
Stock vegetables of your choice
The traditional method of preparing these polypores is to simmer them,
usually for at least fve or six hours, though it is not unheard of to cook the
highest-quality wild red and purple reishi for up to two days. This longer-term
process extracts the polysaccharide chains known as beta-glucans very well
but also gets an appreciable quantity of the steroidal molecules (and their
saponins), such as ganoderic acid, that don’t dissolve in water very quickly.
This makes a simmering soup stock an excellent extraction medium for reishi.
a cupful of slices may be added to a gallon of water and vegeta-
bles, cooked over low heat for two or three hours, then removed (reishi
is very fibrous and not a tasty mushroom to eat). you might even be able
to use the same mushrooms a couple of times before composting them.
used this way, four or five days a week, reishi extends life, soothes
a disturbed and restless spirit, and nourishes the heart and circulation.
Red Reishi two-phase extract
Dried red reishi
100–150 proof alcohol
Glycerin (made from vegetable fat)
Water
since simmering reishi slices for allergy and sensitivity is a bit too much to ask
sometimes, i have used the following modifed tincture recipe to good effect
for extracting the full range of chemistry from this mushroom. in essence, we
will need to combine two “fractions” of molecules into a fnal extract, but
each one will need its own solvent and extraction process. The polysaccha-
rides will dissolve quickly into a simmering water bath; the steroidal and trit-
erpenoid molecules prefer a high percentage of alcohol. unfortunately, the
latter solvent can actually damage polysaccharides (think of 150 proof rum
directly in your mouth) and weaken the fnal product. Thus the “two-phase”
process. once you’ve tried it a few times, it will seem less complex.
WiMeSo.indd 243 2/22/13 10:07 AM
244 n tonIcs
first, take your dried medicinal mushrooms, divide them into two equal
parts and chop them well. using the frst part, prepare a tincture by covering
the mushrooms with a solvent made of 75 percent alcohol (150 rum, perhaps),
15 percent glycerin, and 10 percent water. The glycerin, made from vege-
table fat, is readily available at natural foods stores and helps maintain an
emulsion when the next steps are taken. set the tincture aside, and let it steep
for four weeks, shaking it occasionally. Then strain it and measure its volume.
after you’ve strained the tincture, take the second part of the dried
mushrooms and simmer them for at least one hour, preferably two or
more, in twice as much water as you used for the total solvent volume.
Keep adding water, if necessary.
at the end of the simmering, strain the mushrooms out and reduce the
volume of fluid you have left by boiling it down so that it equals the volume
of strained tincture. Take this off the heat and allow it to cool completely.
combine the simmered broth and strained tincture, mixing well with a whisk.
Make sure you are adding the tincture to the broth and not vice versa to
reduce the amount of concentrated alcohol the polysaccharides have to
endure. The final product should be roughly 35 percent alcohol by volume.
This two-phase process is useful for extracting the chemistry of al-
most any medicinal mushroom. it produces a cloudy and thick remedy
that can be used daily as an immune-modulating tonic (and for all the
other benefits ascribed to this storied substance), but it can also be em-
ployed on an as-needed basis for allergy symptoms.
Remedy Recommendation
The doses range from about thirty drops once or twice a day (a
good amount to start with for allergies and sensitivities) up to a full
teaspoon two or three times daily (for severely disturbed spirit and
heart, profound immune weakness or derangement, or recovery
and convalescence). It keeps for years and is convenient to carry and
administer. And the more you consume it, the less you’ll need. If only
all medicines worked this way!
WiMeSo.indd 244 2/22/13 10:07 AM
245
HaWTHorn
crataegus Monogyna
If you are brave and need some help in fulfilling your heart’s desires,
wise folk in the countryside might point you to a scraggly old tree in
the middle of a pasture, its branches leaning eastward from years of
flagging by the western wind, all covered in white blossoms. “Cut a
piece from one of its stouter branches,” they counsel in hushed tones.
“But be advised: if you do not chant the sacred words, a wicked curse
will follow you all the days of your life.” Should you still feel coura-
geous, you could wander up to the hawthorn tree, respectfully harvest
a small piece of wood, and carve it into a talisman to wear close to
your heart. The May, as this tree is also known, might then grant your
secret wish and bring you the joy you desire.
In rural England and Ireland, folks still wait for the hawthorn
to flower before tilling the fields or shearing the sheep. Its blossoms,
which usually begin to appear on May Day, signal a time of fertility and
growth and are considered a blessing from the goddess who watches
over forest and field. But just as the branches carry thick and danger-
ous thorns, this tree is thought to have a dark side, too. Approach it
with disrespect, or marry in the month of May, and she might hinder
your progress, wither your crops, and spoil all your hopes. When it
blooms, its flowers also remind us of the dual side of hawthorn: their
smell can be both pleasant and a bit nauseating and has been described
as the smell of arousal but also the smell of death. Its flowering boughs
are brought to the maypole for fertility rituals, but it is also forbidden
to carry them into the home, as this will surely bring death along.
Love and death, fertility and harvest—traditional herbalists
revered the hawthorn tree. It seems to hold the threads of fate for those
who live close to the land—and the modern research record assigns it
an almost equal importance. It is one of the most-studied medicinal
WiMeSo.indd 245 2/22/13 10:07 AM
246 n tonIcs
herbs, and the clinical results are always impressive, showing strong
anti-inflammatory effects, especially in the blood vessels. But just as
with the traditional uses, hawthorn shines at protecting the heart and
enhancing its function. Not only that, but it has an impeccable safety
record and can be confidently employed alongside conventional medi-
cation. All this is not surprising: its high flavonoid content makes it an
incredible tonic. The lady of the May wraps herself deeply in our physi-
ology, from our blood vessels to the double helix of our DNA. Like so
many tonics, she may be more of a necessity than a luxury. No wonder
such deep cultural rituals drive the use of hawthorn.
GroWinG and HarVesTinG HaWTHorn
The Western Hemisphere has its native hawthorns, too, mostly found in
the Pacific Northwest. In the East you can still find them by old farm-
houses and in the forest next to stone foundations. Settlers brought trees
with them and planted them close to home. Especially in New England,
there are groves that have naturalized, tended by birds for whom the
berry is a valuable food. Just like apples, these trees interbreed freely,
making our local hawthorns very diverse and difficult to label with a
standard species name, though all are of the genus Crataegus. Some of
the leaves are heart-shaped and finely toothed; others so deeply lobed
they resemble oak leaves. Some hawthorns flower early in the month of
May; others a bit later. But all present the characteristic blossom of the
Rosaceae—five-petaled, white, and shining. Their fragrance shifts as the
flowers mature, just as the country folk say. And for making tea, the
first flush of leaf and flower is the best part to harvest. It is definitely
an astringent mix, but research shows that it contains a higher concen-
tration and more diverse blend of flavonoids than even the fruit, which
is extremely rich in these important molecules and also the part that is
traditionally used. But the berries are difficult to infuse, unlike the leaf
and flower—so I gather the blossoms in the month of May to save for
tea, always with great respect and reverence.
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tonIcs n 247
Some hawthorn varietals set their berry early in the season, and by
September it is already flushing red. Technically, the small red fruits
are pomes, like apples, and contain two or sometimes up to four or
five small hard seeds, surrounded by a firm and delicious yellow flesh.
If you let them mature too far, the flesh becomes softer and quickly
starts to spoil, so I usually err on the side of caution and harvest the
berries just after they’ve turned bright red, while there are still some
green fruits on the tree. The harvest is difficult to dry properly, so I
usually process them right away. On my way home, I always make it a
point to bury a little of my harvest here and there, in spots that might
be spared the mower’s blade. With luck, a few will sprout—though, as
with appleseed, what you get is somewhat of a mystery. But all varietals
of hawthorn are useful for medicine.
You can also sprout seedlings at home. To do this, harvest the
overripe fruit, remove its seed, and dry it at room temperature. Next
spring take your collection, soak it overnight, and plant two seeds
per cell. Select the strongest sprout of the pair and, after a few weeks,
transplant each into its own half-gallon pot. These baby trees can be
kept sheltered for their first two winters, either mulched with straw
outdoors or brought into the root cellar. But soon thereafter the little
hawthorns can be planted out, either in the center of a circular gar-
den bed or, as they do in Ireland, in a row as a hedge border where
they function as a very effective (and thorny!) fence. If you want your
hawthorns to produce well, or if you are trying to make a nice hedge,
you will need to do some pruning in the early spring. This is actually
a tricky process, and I encourage you to consult with an arborist to
learn this ancient craft.
usinG HaWTHorn
For medicine, hawthorn’s tonic activity is all about the heart. Properly
harvested and prepared, it has none of the darkness the lady of the May
sometimes shows. It opens the circulation, reliably decreasing blood
WiMeSo.indd 247 2/22/13 10:07 AM
248 n tonIcs
pressure, but it opens the heart in other ways, too. When used over
time, even the posture changes, shoulders roll back, the forehead lifts,
and one can almost see a radiance emanating from the solar plexus.
Sure, this “energetic” effect is difficult to capture or assess objectively.
But you might be surprised at how connected our emotional heart is to
the physical muscle in our chest. Our autonomic nervous system and
our heart are part of the same organ system, as we saw when explor-
ing aromatic plants. So many times I’ve seen people, myself included,
respond to hawthorn not only with lower blood pressure and a steadier
heartbeat, but also with a softer, more tolerant, emotional connection
to the world.
Safe, foodlike, highly effective when used habitually, often quite
tasty—these red fruits embody all the qualities of a tonic. Though
their effects are most pronounced on the heart, pharmacological
research shows that they can substantially affect inflammatory balance
and epigenetics as well (which may be part of why they are so help-
ful to the cardiovascular system). It continues to puzzle me why their
use is not more widespread in the modern health care system. Perhaps
it’s become hard for us to trust that medicine might be found, already
perfectly complete, hanging off a scraggly, thorny tree on the edge of a
weedy farm field. Are we trying to say that there can be no good rem-
edy without human tinkering? Or have we become afraid of whatever
is unknown, unhybridized, uncontrolled?
Regardless, the hawthorn tree watches us from the edge of her field.
She is like a lover, half-wild, passionate, full in her affection but vengeful
in her anger. But she is also like a mother, older and wiser than her chil-
dren, revealing the secrets necessary for a full and safe life. She holds the
bookends of the most joyful season of the year, bringing in the May and
celebrating the harvest with her great gifts. And if we embrace her, with
affection and with respect, she opens our hearts and lets our feelings flow
to their fullest. Don’t underestimate her love, or deny her power. A true
tonic she is, desiring little praise, but holding us safe in her gentle hand.
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tonIcs n 249
hawthorn tea
A few tablespoons hawthorn leaf and flower
linden blossom (optional)
1 cup hot water
because of this heart connection, i often combine the leaf and flower of
this tree with the blossoms of the linden, to reinforce the aromatic effect
on tension with the tonic, nourishing, and rebalancing effect hawthorn
provides.
a few tablespoons of leaf and flower per cup of hot water is suffi-
cient, or you can brew up to one-half gallon at a time using two cups of
the herb. strain it out after letting it steep for at least an hour, and store
the tea in the fridge.
Remedy Recommendation
Usually a pint a day is sufficient and taken consistently over months
noticeably brings down high blood pressure. It is delicious sweetened
with a little raw honey or even maple syrup.
hawthorn Berry Jam
Fresh or rehydrated hawthorn berries (plain and simple!)
Vegetable mill
Hawthor n’s cardi ovascul ar effects are not l i mi ted to control l i ng bl ood
pressure. i n fact, the berry, i n extract for m, strengthens the contrac-
ti ons of an agi ng and fai l i ng heart. i t reduces symptoms of chest pai n,
shortness of breath, and easy fati gabi l i ty that come from a weak car-
di ovascul ar system or from poor ci rcul ati on i n peopl e of al l ages. and
i t does so extremel y safel y because, as wi th most toni cs, i t’s basi cal l y
WiMeSo.indd 249 2/22/13 10:07 AM
250 n tonIcs
j ust food. and whi l e exoti c frui ts such as goj i and acai are al l the rage
these days, i usual l y recommend that you save your money and focus
on hawthor n and bl ueberri es i nstead. They are as ri ch i n fl avonoi ds
and as effecti ve as any expensi ve toni c from far-fl ung cor ners of the
gl obe.
The best way to prepare the berries as an ongoing heart tonic is to
cook them into a thick, rich, unsweetened jam. i like to use the fresh ber-
ries, but if you have none, you can rehydrate dry ones by soaking them
in barely enough water to cover them and leaving them overnight.
Take the berries and simply cook them in a steel pot, over low heat,
stirring and mashing them in the process (a fork works fine for this). after
an hour or so you will have a rich, reddish-orange mass interspersed with
the hard seeds.
at this point, pass the pulp through a vegetable mill (the old kind
with the hand-cranked handle that goes around in circles). This sepa-
rates the seeds, which can be discarded. if you’re familiar with canning,
you can reheat the hawthorn pulp and preserve it that way. alterna-
tively, you can fill eight-ounce jars about three-quarters of the way and
simply freeze your jam.
Remedy Recommendation
Take about two tablespoons of this medicinal treat daily—as is,
spread on toast, mixed in oatmeal, or however suits your fancy. A
most delectable way to take your medicine!
WiMeSo.indd 250 2/22/13 10:07 AM
251
epilogue
In the early morning, when the air is still cool and there is a mist rising
from the lake, I often try to get out and run. There’s something about
the west wind through the leaves, rhythmic breathing, and fast foot-
falls that makes me feel more alive and engaged—more fully human.
Endurance running might be one of our most distinctive skills, at least
if you subscribe to the views of Daniel Lieberman, professor of evolu-
tionary biology at Harvard University. His research into the structure
of the human body has uncovered many details that, when taken as a
whole, lead to the conclusion that our physical frame evolved in the
context of a run—a really, really long run. Lieberman takes his study
one step further and, based on analysis of runners both barefoot and
shod, speculates that we run best when we have no shoes on and are
in full contact with the grass and dirt of the trail. In essence, he con-
cludes, we should think about movement from an evolutionary vantage
point: our bodies are used to running, and they’re used to running
with very little between them and nature.
But isn’t this exactly what we’ve found in our exploration of plants?
It seems that, as much as the prodigious strength of the Achilles ten-
don is a direct response to the patterns of movement of early humans,
our internal physiology is a direct response to the plant-based xenobi-
ome those same humans experienced in their quest for nutrition. In
running, in eating, in medicine (and more), we have been flexing our
WiMeSo.indd 251 2/22/13 10:07 AM
252 n epIlogue
technological muscle in order to improve our lives. And in many ways
we have succeeded beyond all expectations. But a growing chorus of
voices, from Lieberman to Richard Louv to those who feel too much
hygiene and antiseptics are hurting our species, is rising with one sim-
ple message: sometimes it is better to stay just a little more wild, just a
little closer to the soil, with less technology between us and nature. In
the context of what we ingest, advocates of real food, such as Michael
Pollan, remind us that this means eating unprocessed plants and ani-
mals that lived more like their wild counterparts. But I would like
to take this just a little further. Vegetables, though fantastic for our
health, are relatively tame species. It is the wild plants that are essential
for the function of our internal physiology. Their richer, more chal-
lenging chemistry allows us to achieve our maximum potential. They
provide a strong dose of xenobiotic chemicals, the lack of which has left
us like fish out of water. They interact with our beings at all levels—
many of which we have yet to discover.
Kevin Spelman is working on this process of discovery. His research
focus is on the interconnections between plants and human physiol-
ogy. He has explored the activities of botanicals on sirtuins—those
important modulators of epigenetic activity. He has helped to charac-
terize how traditional herbal medicines like echinacea affect the pro-
duction of immune system chemicals. But despite his research focus,
Dr. Spelman began as an herbalist, and still is. Nadja Cech, who grew
up on a huge and diverse herb farm in Williams, Oregon, now pub-
lishes research on immune-active polyphenols from plants and stud-
ies the complex synergy of chemicals in herbs like goldenseal. Her eye
turns to how complexity in the botanical world yields unexpected posi-
tive results when it interfaces with human physiology. In both these
cases, and in many more across the planet, I see research and scientific
inquiry driven by an underlying passion for plants. I see the tools of
technology, grounded in a relationship with nature and a process of
discovery inspired by the green world.
WiMeSo.indd 252 2/22/13 10:07 AM
epIlogue n 253
When we study plants, we realize how interwoven they are with our
physiology. What can this realization teach us? I believe it comes down
to this simple lesson: we turn to our technologies for handling short-
term concerns and for making our lives easier. But just as technological
medicine may be excellent at eliminating disease but has little to say
about how to make us well, all our modern advances still fall short
when it comes to building meaning, connection, passion, and pur-
pose in our lives. The net result is a culture that is excellent at quickly
pushing back against challenge but is also characterized by a creeping
malaise, mental health disturbances, imbalances in metabolism, and
a chronic, simmering inflammation that may be at the root of it all.
How did this happen?
When we developed the method at the heart of science, somewhere
in the sixteenth century, we began a systematic, rapid, and effective
process of sorting the accumulated knowledge of the human species
into two columns: on one side, the stuff that works; on the other, the
stuff that doesn’t. Of course, reality is sometimes more nuanced. Some
things work often, but not always; others work only in certain con-
texts; still others may never yield their secrets because simply observ-
ing them changes their essential nature (trying to gauge the speed and
position of an electron or understanding the interactions of preschool-
ers are but two examples). Yes, the scientific method has allowed for a
rapid pace of progress, and the discoveries it catalyzes change the world
every day. But it remains powerless until someone is willing to ask a
question. Then all it can do is disprove the hypothesis. You cannot
get at truth by removing untruth; all you can do is approximate. Of
course, there’s nothing wrong with this: our approximations become
more and more detailed over time. Nevertheless, I contend that there
can be no “gestalt,” no “theory of everything,” at the end of this pro-
cess. And this leaves everyone unsatisfied.
What we need is a method for framing questions, a guide for the
WiMeSo.indd 253 2/22/13 10:07 AM
254 n epIlogue
scientific process that is similar to what guides researchers like Kevin
Spelman and Nadja Cech. Just as we follow our heart but use our brain
to validate the heart’s intuitions, so, too, we can begin research with a
system-based understanding that emphasizes connection more than
component, that looks at whole ecosystems rather than isolated constitu-
ents. The experience of the numinous should be the driver of our search
for knowledge, not a desire for a reductionist understanding of the parts
and pieces of reality. After all, as Einstein said, “Science without religion
is lame. Religion without science is blind.” Religion, in this context, may
not be the best word (it has such a polarizing meaning nowadays). So
perhaps we can say that observing reality without being inspired yields
little understanding, while being inspired without being observant can
run you off a cliff. In the end, we need both—but our connection to
nature and the inspiration it yields should probably be the starting point.
My argument is that this lesson is clearly evident when examining
how plants work in concert with human beings. Technological medicine,
often focused on short-term gains, is having a difficult time with the
epidemics of mental health and malaise, diabetes and obesity, cardiovas-
cular inflammation and cancer. Yet when you look at traditional herbal
medicine, you find that aromatic, bitter, and tonic plants consumed in a
habitual, cultural context are the precise prescription for these ills. This
is neither a miracle nor some act of design. In fact, the explanation is
much more mundane. Our minds, our guts, our immune systems all
evolved in the context of consuming wild plants, and we have eradicated
this context quite effectively (though perhaps not consciously) over the
last two hundred years. So if, in the case of medicine, we discover that
unsolved problems find their solution in nature-based, cuisinelike tradi-
tions, I can’t help but wonder where else such an approach might yield
results. Urban planning? Waste management? Educational models? Food
production and distribution? Perhaps even energy generation?
The case for herbal medicine is clear, almost obvious in retrospect.
But just as bringing wild plants back into our xenobiome allows us to
function at our peak, I believe that a blending of modern technology
WiMeSo.indd 254 2/22/13 10:07 AM
epIlogue n 255
and the best of nature-based tradition is the synthesis that will bring
us to the next phase of evolution and understanding. Neither way is
enough alone, as both are incomplete. But in the end, it gives me such
great joy to think that humble, weedy, wild botanicals like the com-
mon dandelion might be the ones to lead us down this trail, into this
new turn of the human spiral. Their lessons might reach far beyond
the field of medicine, catalyzing change throughout the culture. These
herbs provide positive evidence that we are deeply, inextricably, inter-
twined with nature. Plants are part of us—or, to put it more gratefully,
we are their children. So let us turn our ears toward these ancestors.
They speak softly, but their words ring true.
WiMeSo.indd 255 2/22/13 10:07 AM
256
notes
cHaPTer 1. a cuisine for Medicine
1. “World Health Organization Fact Sheet,” 2008.
2. Wooltorton, “Several Chinese Herbal Products,” 449.
3. Mills and Bone, Principles and Practices of Phytotherapy, 111.
4. Weaver, “Science and Complexity,” 540.
5. von Bertalanffy, “The Theory of Open Systems in Physics and Biology.”
6. Edgar, Measure, Topology, and Fractal Geometry, 1.
7. Dobbs, “Newton’s Commentary on the Emerald Tablet of Hermes
Trismegistus.”
8. Capra, The Web of Life, 42.
9. Wachs, “Reflections on the Planning Process,” 141–61.
10. Barabási and Albert, “Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks.”
11. Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Though Bateson referred to it as mind,
he was describing consciousness as an emergent quality of a living ecology.
12. Jones and Quinn, Textbook of Functional Medicine, 37.
13. Kagan, Galen’s Prophecy, 2–4.
14. Kaviratna, The Charaka Samhita.
15. Wa, Zhongguo Yixue Shi (A History of Chinese Medicine).
16. Tama, Worcel, and Wyllie, “Yohimbine: A Clinical Review.”
17. Tierra, Planetary Herbology, 303.
18. Chen et al., “Analysis of Yohimbine Alkaloid.”
19. Veltmann et al., “Response to Intravenous Ajmaline.”
WiMeSo.indd 256 2/22/13 10:07 AM
notes n 257
20. Blumenthal et al., “Effects of Exercise and Stress Management.”
21. Basta, Schmidt, and De Caterina, “Advanced Glycation End Products and
Vascular Inflammation.”
22. Alberti, Simmet, and Shaw, “The Metabolic Syndrome.”
cHaPTer 2. aroMaTics
1. Dharani and Yenesew, Medicinal Plants of East Africa, 265.
2. Ni, The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, 100–101.
3. Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine, 297.
4. Hales, Statical Essays.
5. Berntson et al., “Heart Rate Variability.”
6. Donders, “Zür Physiologie des Nervus Vagus.”
7. Grossman, “Repiratory and Cardiac Rhythms.”
8. Berntson et al., “Heart Rate Variability.” Gives an excellent historical over-
view of the subject of HRV.
9. Hon, “The Electronic Evaluation of Fetal Heart Rate.”
10. Hon and Lee, “The Electronic Evaluation of Fetal Heart Rate. VIII.”
11. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “ACOG Practice
Bulletin #70: Intrapartum Fetal Heart Rate Monitoring.”
12. Burns et al., “An Investigation into the Use of Aromatherapy in
Intrapartum Midwifery Practice.”
13. Ewing, “Heart Rate Variability.”
14. Gill et al., “RR Variability and Baroreflex Sensitivity”; Huikuri, “Frequency
Domain Measures of Heart Rate Variability”; Kleiger, “Decreased Heart
Rate Variability”; Saul, “Assessment of Autonomic Regulation.”
15. Ewing et al., “Differing Patterns of Cardiac Parasympathetic Activity.”
16. Ewing et al., “Measurement of Parasympathetic Activity.”
17. Zuanetti et al., “Prognostic Significance of Heart Rate Variability.”
18. Buccelletti et al., “Heart Rate Variability and Myocardial Infarction.”
19. Singh et al., “Reduced Heart Rate Variability and New-Onset
Hypertension.”
20. Buchanan et al., “Measurement of Recovery from Myocardial Infarction.”
R. M. Carney’s team at Washington University in St. Louis continued
to expand on the research into the twenty-first century, addressing the
WiMeSo.indd 257 2/22/13 10:07 AM
258 n notes
connection between emotional health, heart disease, and HRV but also
focusing on mortality risk. See the bibliography for more of Carney’s work.
Additionally, see Singh et al., “Brain-Heart Connection and the Risk of
Heart Attack.” Finally, for an excellent review of the development of
the heart/mind/HRV link as expressed in heart disease, see Pizzi et al.,
“Analysis of Potential Predictors of Depression.”
21. McCraty et al., “The Effects of Emotions on Short-Term Power Spectrum
Analysis.”
22. McCraty et al., “The Effects of Different Types of Music”; McCraty and
Childre, “Psychophysiological Correlates of Spiritual Experience”; McCraty,
“Heart Rhythm Coherence”; McCraty and Childre, “The Grateful Heart.”
23. McCraty et al., “The Impact of a New Emotional Self-Management
Program on Stress”; McCraty et al., “Analysis of Twenty-Four Hour Heart
Rate Variability.”
24. McCraty and Childre, “Coherence.” This article builds on previous work,
including McCraty and Tomasino, “Emotional Stress, Positive Emotions”;
McCraty, “Heart Rhythm Coherence”; McCraty, Atkinson, and Tiller,
“Cardiac Coherence.”
25. Thayer et al., “Heart Rate Variability, Prefrontal Neural Function.”
26. Baddeley, “Working Memory.”
27. Masterman and Cummings, “Frontal-Subcortical Circuits.”
28. Friedman and Thayer, “Anxiety and Autonomic Flexibility”; Friedman,
“Autonomic Balance Revisited”; Thayer and Friedman, “The Heart of
Anxiety.”
29. Ahern et al., “Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability Changes”; Lane et al.,
“Neural Correlates of Heart Rate Variability during Emotion”; Lane et al.,
“Activity in Medial Prefrontal Cortex”; Lane et al., “Subgenual Anterior
Cingulate (BA25)”; Nugent et al., “Anatomical Correlates of Autonomic
Control”; Nugent et al., “Alterations in Neural Correlates.”
30. Hansen, Johnsen, and Thayer, “Relationship between Heart Rate
Variability and Cognitive Function.”
31. Thayer et al., “Heart Rate Variability Is Inversely Related to Cortisol
Reactivity.”
32. Hansen, Johnsen, and Thayer, “Vagal Influence in the Regulation of
Attention.”
WiMeSo.indd 258 2/22/13 10:07 AM
notes n 259
33. Thayer et al., “Heart Rate Variability and Its Relation to Prefrontal
Cognitive Function.”
34. Macht and Ting, “Experimental Inquiry.”
35. Cavanagh and Wilkinson, “Biological Activities of Lavender Essential
Oil”; Diego et al., “Aromatherapy Positively Affects Mood.”
36. Kubota et al., “Odor and Emotion-Effects of Essential Oils.”
37. Galetta et al., “Lifelong Physical Training Prevents the Age-Related
Impairment of Heart Rate Variability”; Nesvold et al., “Increased Heart
Rate Variability during Nondirective Meditation”; Peressutti et al., “Heart
Rate Dynamics in Different Levels of Zen Meditation”; Nakahara et al.,
“Emotion-Related Changes in Heart Rate.”
38. Bradley et al., “Effects of Orally Administered Lavender Essential Oil”; Xu
et al., “Pharmaco-physio-psychologic Effect”; Lewith, Godfrey, and Prescott,
“A Single-Blinded, Randomized Pilot Study”; Chien, Cheng, and Liu, “The
Effect of Lavender Aromatherapy”; Peng, Koo, and Yu, “Effects of Music and
Essential Oil”; Wu, The Effect of Inhalation of Lavender Essential Oils.
39. Manley, “Psychophysiological Effects of Odor”; Lis-Balchin, “A Preliminary
Study.”
40. Chang, “Aromatherapy Benefits Autonomic Nervous System.”
41. Matsubara, “The Essential Oil of Abies sibirica”; Matsubara, “(–)–Bornyl
Acetate Induces Autonomic Relaxation.”
42. Matsubara et al., “Volatiles Emitted”; Chen, Effects of Inhalation of Mint
Extracts; Arizono et al., “Reminiscence Therapy”; Cha, Lee, and Yoo,
“Effects of Aromatherapy.”
43. Mezzacappa et al., “Coconut Fragrance and Cardiovascular Response to
Laboratory Stress.”
44. Park et al., “The Physiological Effects of Shinrin-yoku.”
45. Tsunetsugu, Park, and Miyazak, “Trends in Research Related to
‘Shinrin-yoku.’”
46. Della Loggia, Tubaro, and Lunder, “Evaluation of Some Pharmacological
Activities.”
47. Liu et al., “Enteric-Coated Peppermint-Oil Capsules”; Göbel, Schmidt,
and Soyka, “Effect of Peppermint.”
48. Göbel et al., “Effectiveness of Oleum Menthae Piperitae.”
49. Singh and Singh, “An Ethnobotanical Study of Medicinal Plants.”
WiMeSo.indd 259 2/22/13 10:07 AM
260 n notes
50. Uri and Felter, King’s American Dispensatory.
51. Rushforth, Trees of Britain and Europe.
52. Houghton, Valerian: The Genus Valeriana.
53. Sarris et al., “The Kava Anxiety Depression Spectrum Study.”
54. Hoffmann, Medical Herbalism.
55. Hoffmann, The New Holistic Herbal; Tierra, The Way of Chinese Herbs.
56. Hoffmann, The New Holistic Herbal.
57. Hoffmann, lecture on “Herbs for Cardiovascular Health.”
58. Kaptchuck, The Web That Has No Weaver.
59. Manniche, Sacred Luxuries.
60. Chevallier, The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants.
61. Classen, Howe, and Synnott, Aroma.
62. Rimmel, The Book of Perfumes; Wilson, The Plague Pamphlets of Thomas
Decker.
63. Culpeper, Culpeper’s Complete Herbal.
64. Tainter, “The Rise of Synthetic Drugs.”
65. Kirk-Smith and Booth, “Chemoreception in Human Behavior.”
66. Kirk-Smith and Booth, “Effect of Androstenone on Choice of Location.”
67. Lis-Balchin, Aromatherapy Science. See the chapters on pharmacological
and clinical research as well as appendices 11–15 for collated research on
activity organized by specific essential oil.
68. Lall and Meyer, “In Vitro Inhibition of Drug-Resistant”; Yarnell, “Botanical
Medicines”; Fang et al., “Experimental Study on the Antibacterial Effect”;
Weckesser et al., “Screening of Plant Extracts.”
69. Abdel-Tawab, “Boswellia Serrata.”
70. Cuaz-Pérolin et al., “Anti-inflammatory and Anti-atherogenic Effects.”
71. Hoffmann, Medical Herbalism.
72. Lixandru et al., “Antimicrobial Activity of Plant Essential Oils.”
73. Hoffmann, Medical Herbalism.
74. Gladstar, Herbal Healing for Women.
75. Culpeper, Culpeper’s Complete Herbal; Ciganda, “Herbal Infusions,” 235–39.
76. Juergens et al., “Anti-inflammatory Activity of 1.8-Cineol.”
77. Franova, Nosalova, and Mokry, “Phytotherapy of Cough.”
78. Duke, The Green Pharmacy Herbal Handbook. This features garlic, which
is aromatic, but tonic, too, as a primary agent for treating Raynaud’s.
WiMeSo.indd 260 2/22/13 10:07 AM
notes n 261
79. Kohlert et al., “Bioavailability and Pharmacokinetics.”
80. Izzo et al., “Spasmolytic Activity of Medicinal Plants.”
81. Lis-Balchin and Hart, “Spasmolytic Activity of the Essential Oils.”
82. Vuorela et al., “Calcium Channel Blocking Activity.”
83. Lis-Balchin, Deans, and Hart, “Bioactivity of New Zealand.”
84. Van Toller et al., Ageing and the Sense of Smell.
85. Kandel, Schwartz, and Jessell, Principles of Neural Science.
86. Ibid.
87. Toller, “Assessing the Impact of Anosmia.”
88. Morley et al., “Olfactory Dysfunction.”
89. Wysocki and Pelchat, “The Effects of Aging.”
cHaPTer 3. biTTers
1. Pliny, Natural History, XXV 4.
2. Scarborough and Nutton, “The Preface of Dioscorides’ Materia Medica.”
3. Watson, Theriac and Mithridatium; Norton, “The Pharmacology of
Mithridatum”; Kürschner, Raus, and Venter, Pflanzen der Türkei.
4. Citová et al., “Determination of Gentisin, Isogentisin, and Amarogentin.”
5. Behrens et al., “The Human Bitter Taste Receptor.”
6. Hooper, “How Host-Microbial Interactions.”
7. Dobzhansky, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense.”
8. Carpenter, The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C; Blencowe et al., “Folic Acid
to Reduce Neonatal Mortality”; Oh and Brown, “Vitamin B12 Deficiency.”
9. Sigma-Aldrich, “Williams’ Medium E Formulation.”
10. Heiser, Seed to Civilization; Schoeninger, “The Agricultural ‘Revolution’”;
Cordain et al., “Origins and Evolution of the Western Diet.”
11. Danielson, “The Cytochrome P450 Superfamily”
12. Rosenthal, “Herbivores.”
13. Guengerich, “Influence of Nutrients.”
14. Danielson, “The Cytochrome P450 Superfamily.”
15. Bennett and Wallsgrove, “Secondary Metabolites in Plant Defense
Mechanisms.”
16. Singletary and Rokusek, “Tissue-Specific Enhancement.”
17. Ming-Shun, “Inducible Direct Plant Defense.”
WiMeSo.indd 261 2/22/13 10:07 AM
262 n notes
18. Seery, Holman, and Silver, “Whatever Does Not Kill Us.”
19. Li et al., “Human Receptors for Sweet and Umami Taste.”
20. Nelson et al., “An Amino-Acid Taste Receptor.”
21. Huang et al., “The Cells and Logic for Mammalian Sour Taste Detection.”
22. Laguerette et al., “Do We Taste Fat?”; Lindemann, “Receptors and
Transduction in Taste.”
23. Behrens et al., “Bitter Taste Receptors.”
24. Meyerhof et al., “The Molecular Receptive Ranges.”
25. Sternini, “Taste Receptors in the Gastrointestinal Tract.”
26. Rozengurt, “Taste Receptors in the Gastrointestinal Tract.”
27. Sternini, “Taste Receptors in the Gastrointestinal Tract.”
28. Deshpande et al., “Bitter Taste Receptors”; Singh, “Functional Bitter Taste
Receptors.”
29. Rolls, Roe, and Meengs, “Salad and Satiety.”
30. Schier, Davidson, and Powley, “Ongoing Ingestive Behavior”; Geraedts,
“Gastrointestinal Targets.”
31. Wicks et al., “Impact of Bitter Taste on Gastric Motility.”
32. Little et al., “Sweetness and Bitterness Taste of Meals.”
33. Dotson et al., “Bitter Taste Receptors.”
34. Dotson, Vigues, and Munger, “T1R and T2R Receptors.”
35. Bassoli et al., “Chlorogenic Acid.”
36. Cordain et al., “Plant-Animal Subsistence Ratios.”
37. Ibid.
38. Wein et al., “Use of and Preference for Traditional Foods.”
39. Gadsby, “The Inuit Paradox.”
40. Galen, Opera Omnia, 60.
41. Gladstar, Herbal Healing for Women, 112.
42. “Avena Botanicals Store, Bitter Tonics.”
43. Van Loon, Gabriel, Charaka Samhita: Handbook on Ayurveda, 28.
44. Edvell and Lindstrom, “Vagotomy in Young Obese Hyperglycemic Mice.”
45. Dockaray, “Luminal Sensing in the Gut.”
46. Hao, Sternini, and Raybould, “Role of CCK1 and Y2 Receptors.”
47. Bradwejn, “Neurobiological Investigations.”
48. Chen et al., “Bitter Stimuli Induce Ca2+ Signaling.”
49. Liddle, “Physiological Role for Cholecystokinin.”
WiMeSo.indd 262 2/22/13 10:07 AM
notes n 263
50. Sternini, “Taste Receptors in the Gastrointestinal Tract”; Dotson, “Bitter
Taste Receptors.”
51. Batterham et al., “Inhibition of Food Intake.”
52. Toft-Nielsen, Madsbad, and Holst, “Determinants of the Effectiveness of
Glucagon-like Peptide-1.”
53. Wegener, “Anwendung eines Trockenextraktes Augentianae (Application of
a Dry Extract of the Root of Gentiana).”
54. Glatzel and Hackenberg, “Röntgenologische Untersuchungen der Wirkungen
(Radiographic studies on the feed-forward effects).”
55. Guthrie, “A Clinical Lecture on Colic.”
56. Saller et al., “An Updated Systematic Review.”
57. Sannia, “Phytotherapy with a Mixture of Dry Extracts.”
58. You et al., “In Vitro and In Vivo.”
59. Gerard, The Herbalor General History of Plants; Fuangchan, “Hypoglycemic
Effect of Bitter Melon.”
60. Bassoli et al., “Chlorogenic Acid Reduces the Plasma Glucose Peak.”
61. Prabhakar and Doble, “A Target-Based Therapeutic Approach to Diabetes
Mellitus.”
62. Bakhshaee et al., “Effect of Silymarin”; Ross, “An Integrative Approach to
Rhinosinusitis in Children”; Bielory and Lupoli, “Herbal Interventions in
Asthma and Allergy”; Chan et al., “A Review of Pharmacological Effects
of Arctium lappa.”
63. Louv, Last Child in the Woods; Dunn, The Wild Life of Our Bodies;
Lowry et al., “Identification of an Immune-Responsive Mesolimbocortical
Serotonergic System.”
cHaPTer 4. Tonics
1. Macalister, “Lebor Gabála Érenn (The Book of the Taking of Ireland).”
2. Suh et al., “Pharmacokinetic Study of an Iridoid Glucoside.”
3. Waddington, “The Epigenotype.”
4. Carey, The Epigenetics Revolution, 127.
5. Campbell et al., Biology, 309–10.
6. Fraser et al., “Active Genes Dynamically Colocalize.”
7. Kuo et al., “Transcription-linked Acetylation.”
WiMeSo.indd 263 2/22/13 10:07 AM
264 n notes
8. Weaver, “Science and Complexity.”
9. Shore et al., “Characterization of Two Genes.”
10. Thiagalingam et al., “Histone Deacetylases.”
11. Rajendran et al., “Sirtuins.”
12. Finkel, Deng and Mostoslavsky, “Recent Progress in the Biology.”
13. Carey, The Epigenetics Revolution, 67. Or, to use Nessa Carey’s analogy, if
DNA is the script, methylation of nucleotides is the director’s typed instruc-
tions to the actors, and acetylation of histones the scribbled-in-pencil notes.
14. Anway et al., “Epigenetic Transgenerational Actions.”
15. Taberlay and Jones, “DNA Methylation and Cancer.”
16. Jenuwein and Allis, “Translating the Histone Code.”
17. Yuan, Minter-Dykhouse, and Lou, “A c-Myc-SIRT1 Feedback Loop.”
18. Rajendran et al., “Sirtuins.”
19. Lee et al., “A Role for the NAD-Dependent Deacetylase Sirt1.”
20. Alcaín and Villalba, “Sirtuin Activators.”
21. Chung et al., “Regulation of SIRT1.”
22. Ramiro et al., “Flavonoids from Theobroma”; Rigelsky and Sweet,
“Hawthorn”; Cho, “Flavonoid Glycosides”; Wang, Provan and Helliwell,
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23. Graf, Mibury, and Blumberg, “Flavonols, Flavones, Flavanones, and
Human Health.”
24. Yochum et al., “Dietary Flavonoid Intake.”
25. Pérez-Vizcaíno and Duarte, “Flavonols.”
26. Kirakosyan et al., “Antioxidant Capacity”; Kirakosyan et al., “Applied
Environmental Stresses.”
27. Iwashina, “Flavonoid Function.”
28. Gilbert, “The Genome.”
29. Janeway and Medzhitov, “Innate Immune Recognition”; Hoffmann et al.,
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30. Bengtson, “The Controversial ‘Cambrian’ Fossils.”
31. Alexander and Rietschel, “Bacterial Lipopolysaccharides and Innate
Immunity.”
32. Janeway and Medzhitov, “Innate Immune Recognition.”
33. Notarangelo et al., “Primary Immunodeficiencies.”
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34. Panda et al., “Human Innate Immunosenescence.”
35. Pier, Lyczak, and Wetzler, Immunology, Infection, and Immunity.
36. Belkaid and Rouse, “Natural Regulatory T Cells.”
37. Mosmann and Coffman, “TH1 and TH2 Cells.”
38. Belkaid and Rouse, “Natural Regulatory T Cells.”
39. Romagnani, “The Th1/Th2 Paradigm.”
40. Kidd, “Th1/Th2 Balance.”
41. Chan et al., “Interferon-Producing Killer Dendritic Cells.”
42. Schneider, “Human Defensins”; Li-Zhen and Zhi-Bin, “Regulation on
Maturation and Function of Dendritic Cells.”
43. Janeway and Medzhitov, “Innate Immune Recognition.”
44. Lin et al., “Polysaccharide Purified from Ganoderma Lucidum.”
45. Strachan, “Hay Fever, Hygiene, and Household Size.”
46. Folkerts, Walzl, and Openshaw, “Do Common Childhood Infections
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47. Correale and Farez, “Association between Parasite Infection and Immune
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48. von Mutius and Radon, “Living on a Farm.”
49. Remes et al., “Which Factors Explain the Lower Prevalence of Atopy”;
Loss et al., “The Protective Effect of Farm Milk.”
50. Perkin and Strachan, “Which Aspects of the Farming Lifestyle.”
51. Sadako, “The Effects of Gardening Therapy.”
52. Louv, The Nature Principle, 5.
53. Kelly-Pieper et al., “Safety and Tolerability”; Matkovic et al., “Efficacy
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54. Gao et al., “Effects of Ganopoly”; Tang et al., “A Randomized, Double-
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55. Pollan, In Defense of Food, 142.
56. Teeguarden, The Ancient Wisdom of Chinese Tonic Herbs, 96.
57. Duke, Ginseng: A Concise Handbook, 112.
58. Zhu, Chinese Materia Medica, 555.
59. Ibid., 562.
60. McMeekin, “The Perception of Ganoderma Lucidum.”
61. Winston and Maimes, Adaptogens, 17.
WiMeSo.indd 265 2/22/13 10:07 AM
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62. Lazarev, “General and Specific Effects of Drugs,” 81–86.
63. Brekhman and Dardymor, “New Substances of Plant Origin,” 410–26.
64. Selye, The Physiology and Pathology of Exposure to Stress.
65. Schar, “Adaptogens in the Eclectic Materia Medica.”
66. Brekhman, Man and Biologically Active Substances, 58.
67. Grieve, A Modern Herbal, 385.
68. Tyler, Herbs of Choice, 166.
69. Hoffmann, Medical Herbalism, 501.
70. von Bingen, Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica, 80.
71. Gerard, The Herbalor General History of Plants, 1001.
72. Schar, “Adaptogens in the Eclectic Materia Medica.”
73. Haller, Medical Protestants.
74. Scudder, The Eclectic Physician, 49.
75. Jones, The American Eclectic Materia Medica and Therapeutics, 203.
76. Scudder, The Eclectic Physician, 53.
77. Fox, “ACTH and Cortisone.”
78. Larkin, “Cortisone.”
79. Schlotz et al., “Perceived Work Overload.”
80. Ho et al., “Septic Shock and Sepsis.”
81. Yehuda et al., “Low Urinary Cortisol Excretion”; Cleare et al.,
“Hypothalamo-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis”; Badanes, Watamura, and Hankin,
“Hypocortisolism as a Potential Marker.”
82. Buske-Kirschbaum et al., “Altered Responsiveness.”
83. Dimsdale, “Short Term Catecholamine”; Gusenoff et al., “Cortisol and
GH Secretory Dynamics.”
84. Seckl and Walker, “Minireview.”
85. Culpeper, Culpeper’s Complete Herbal.
86. Cohn et al., “Reduction in Intestinal Cholesterol Absorption.
87. Park et al., “Biotransformation of Ginsenosides.”
88. Ploeger et al., “The Pharmacokinetics of Glycyrrhizic Acid.”
89. Olukoga and Donaldson, “Liquorice and its Health Implications.”
90. Ghosh et al., “Molecular Mechanism of Inhibition.”
91. Zhu, Chinese Materia Medica, 572.
92. Francis et al., “The Biological Action of Saponins.”
93. Cox, Sjölander, and Barr, “ISCOMs and Other Saponin Based Adjuvants.”
WiMeSo.indd 266 2/22/13 10:07 AM
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94. Kensil et al., “Structure/Function Studies on QS-21.”
95. Zhu, Chinese Materia Medica, 550.
96. Mills and Bone, Principles and Practices of Phytotherapy, 421–22.
97. Schepetkin and Quinn, “Botanical Polysaccharides”; Gordon, “Pattern
Recognition Receptors.”
98. Babineau et al., “Randomized Phase I/II Trial of a Macrophage-Specific
Immune-Modulator”; Tang et al., “A Randomized, Double-Blind and
Placebo-Controlled Study”; Gao et al., “Effects of Ganopoly.”
99. Usui, Asari, and Mizuno, “Preparation and Antitumor Activities of
h-(1Y6) Branched (1Y3)-h-d-glucan Derivatives.”
100. Tsukagoshi et al., “Krestin.”
101. Ueda et al., “Immunochemo-Therapy Study Group—Gastric Cancer”;
Ohwada et al., “Beneficial Effects of Protein-bound Polysaccharide K”;
Ohwada, “Adjuvant Therapy”; Toil et al., “Randomized Adjuvant Trial”;
Hayakawa et al., “Effect of Krestin as Adjuvant Treatment.”
102. Sanderson, “Dietary Modulation of GALT.”
103. Schepetkin and Quinn, “Botanical Polysaccharides,” 327.
104. Moorman et al., “National Surveillance for Asthma.”
105. Chung et al., “Regulation of SIRT1.”
106. Rajendran et al., “Sirtuins.”
107. Tuteja and Kaestner, “SnapShot.”
108. Gilmore, “Introduction to NF-κB.”
109. Graf, Milbury, and Blumberg, “Flavonols, Flavones, Flavanones, and
Human Health.”
110. Kawaii et al., “Antiproliferative Activity of Flavonoids.”
111. Greer and Brunet, “FOXO Transcription Factors.”
112. Singh and Agarwal, “Natural Flavonoids.”
113. Cherniack, “A Berry Thought-Provoking Idea”; Middleton, “The Effects of
Plant Flavonoids on Mammalian Cells.”
114. Wilhelm and Baynes, The I Ching, 24.
115. Cannon, “Can the Polypill Save the World?”
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WiMeSo.indd 300 2/22/13 10:07 AM
301
index
absinthe, 146, 163
Absinthe (Wormwood Spirit), 165
acupharmacology, 149, 150
adaptogens, 208–10
adrenaline, 28, 217, 218
alkaloids, 63, 118, 125, 231, 232
Allium sativum (garlic), 107–11, Plate
6, Plate 7
amaro/amari, 145–46
animal smells, 79, 80
anosmia, 80–81
antidotes, for poisons, 116–19, 144–
45, 156
appetite control, bitters for, 130–31
Arctium lappa (burdock), 17, 173–77,
Plate 11
Arimid, 185–87, 228
aromatherapy, 64–68, 70
aromatics, 34–111
aromatherapy, 64–68, 70
ceremonial uses, 34–38
essential oils of, 58–59
garlic (Allium sativum), 107–11,
Plate 6, Plate 7
ginger (Zingiber officinale), 102–6,
Plate 4, Plate 5
heart rate variability (HRV)
increased with, 38–48, 57–60
in herbal medicine, 60–74
importance of, 6, 80–82
lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), 17,
61, 90–95, Plate 2
linden (Tilia europea), 62, 96–101,
Plate 3
muscle-relaxing function, 69–72, 74
peppermint (Mentha x piperita), 61,
68, 83–89, Plate 1
pharmacological approach, 75–80
arrhythmia, respiratory sinus (RSA),
40–41
Artemisia absinthium (wormwood),
161–67, Plate 8
arterial muscles, 75–77
asthma, 204–5, 223, 231
astragalus (Astragalus membranaceus),
17, 207–8, 213, 235–39, Plate 14,
Plate 15
Astragalus Broth, 238–39
WiMeSo.indd 301 2/22/13 10:07 AM
302 n Index
Astragalus Nut Treats, 239
atrazine, 136–37
Avicenna (Canon of Medicine), 39
Barabási, Albert-László, 24
baths, Linden Flower Bath, 101
belly, relaxing, 69–70
bergamot, 59
Berthoud, Hans-Rudolf, 153
birth and labor, 45
bitter melon, 156
bitters, 112–83
burdock (Arctium lappa), 17, 173–
77, Plate 11
dandelion (Taraxacum officinale),
168–72, Plate 9, Plate 10
“Goldilocks principle” of stress,
126–28
in herbal medicine, 143–52
importance of, 7, 157–60
lacking in the Western diet, 140–42
myths and stories, 112–19
as part of the xenobiome, 150–51
pharmacological approach, 152–57
turn on and challenge of, 126–28
wormwood (Artemisia absinthium),
161–67, Plate 8
yellowdock (Rumex crispus), 178–83,
Plate 12
bitter taste/flavor, 124–26, 140,
158–59
bitter taste receptors (T2Rs), 128–32,
152–53, 154–55
bloodletting, 214
blood sugar, 30, 31, 131, 140, 141
Blumberg, Jeffrey, 198
Bone, Kerry, 20
Botany of Desire, The, 12
Brekhman, Israel, 209–10
broth, astragalus, 238–39
burdock (Arctium lappa), 17, 173–77,
Plate 11
Burdock and Seaweed Appetizer, 176
Burdock Tea, 176
Buske-Kirschbaum, Angelika, 218
California poppy, 62
CAN (central autonomic network),
53–56
cancer, 31, 32, 33, 190, 196, 224–25,
225, 227
cancer therapy, 221–22
candies, wormwood, 166–67
Canon of Medicine (Avicenna), 39
Capra, Fritjof, 21, 22, 25n
carbohydrates
rise in consumption, 141
in the Western diet, 132–40
whole-grain versus refined, 139–40
cardiovascular disease, 30, 48, 51,
63–64
Cecht, Dian, 184–86, 227–28
ceremony, 34–38
challenge, 7, 126–28, 132, 137–38, 209
chamomile, 13, 62
Chech, Nadja, 251
Childre, Doc, 51
Chinese medicine, 148, 206–8, 214,
221, 235
chocolate (Theobroma cacao), 17, 229–
34, Plate 13
cholecystokinin (CCK), 154
WiMeSo.indd 302 2/22/13 10:07 AM
Index n 303
coconut fragrance, 60
coffee substitute, roasted dandelion
root, 171–72
compress
Hot Ginger Compress, 106
peppermint, 89
consciousness, shifts in, 35, 36
cortisol, 217, 218–19
Crataegus monogyna (hawthorn),
245–50, Plate 17
Crataeus, 116–17, 143
cuisine for medicine
herbal medicine as, 4–5, 7–8, 14–19,
26–33
overview, 10–14
See also herbal medicine
Culpeper, Nicholas, 64–66, 67, 211
dandelion (Taraxacum officinale),
168–72, Plate 9, Plate 10
Dandelion Root Tincture, 172
depression, 29, 49
diabetes, 32, 33, 131, 138, 156–57
digestion, 5, 70–71, 139–40, 141
digestive enzymes, 141–42
digestive/metabolic activity (second
hub), 5–6, 30–31
“dirty blood,” 150–51
distillation apparatus, making, 88–89
Divine Plowman’s Classic on Herbs,
The, 235
DNA, 193, 194, 195, 196
Donders, Franciscus Cornelius, 41, 46
Dotson, C. Shawn, 131
eclectic medicine, 213–16
ecological interconnections, 119
economics, 24–25
emotions/mood
heart rate variability (HRV) affected
by, 48–57
impact on quality of life, 33
stress and, 32
epigenetics, 190, 191–99
essential oils, aromatics, 58–59, 75–77
Ewing, David, 46–47
executive-function tasks, 55–56
exercise, 30, 51–52, 56–57, 158
extract, Red Reishi Two-phase Extract,
243–44
fats, dietary, 8
fertility and reproductive health,
32–33
fertilizers, synthetic, 136, 137
fetal heart rate, 43–46
fevers
peppermint compress for, 89
reducing, 74
fiber
high-fiber diet, 180
plant fiber, 130
soluble, 175
in whole grains, 139–40
flavonoids, 188, 198–99, 211–12, 224,
225, 232
forest bathing, 60
Framingham Heart Study, 47
frankincense, 45, 69
Gaia hypothesis, 23
Galen, 144
WiMeSo.indd 303 2/22/13 10:07 AM
304 n Index
Ganoderma tsugae (red reishi)
(Linghzi), 240–44, Plate 16
garlic (Allium sativum), 107–11, Plate
6, Plate 7
genetic expression
epigenetics, 190, 191–99
described, 31-32
gentian, 119, 156
ginger (Zingiber officinale), 102–6,
Plate 4, Plate 5
Ginger Compress, Hot, 106
Ginger Tea, 105
ginseng root, 206–7
Gladstar, Rosemary, 147
glucagon-like-protein 1 (GLP-1), 154,
155
“Goldilocks principle” of stress,
127–28
greens, leafy, 7
Hales, Stephen, 40
Hammacher, Konrad, 44
hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna),
245–250, Plate 17
Hawthorn Berry Jam, 249–50
Hawthorn Tea, 249
hawthorn tree, 211, 248
heart attack, 46, 47, 49, 51
heart disease, 28, 46, 57, 68–69,
80–81
heart failure, 211
heart rate variability (HRV)
aromatics increasing, 38–48,
57–60
high frequency (HF), 46, 54–56,
57–60
as measurement of heart health,
38–48
stress and emotions effect on, 48–57
heart tonic, 247–48
Heavenly Revelations, 189
herbalists, 3–4
herbal medicine
aromatics in, 60–74
benefits of, 4
bitters in, 143–52
as cuisine, 4–5, 7–8, 14–19, 26–33
effectiveness of, 20, 33
key strengths of, 16
practicing, 3–4
safety of, 8, 19–20, 27–28
systems thinking in, 28–29
tonics in, 206–16
herbicides, 136–37
HF (high frequency) heart rate
variability, 46, 54–56, 57–60
high blood pressure (hypertension), 28,
30, 46, 47, 48, 63, 68–69, 74
Hildegard von Bingen, 189, 212–13
Hobbs, Christopher, 147
Hoffmann, David, 63, 74, 147, 211
holistic/holism, 188–89
Hon, Edward, 43–44
honey, lemon balm infused, 94–95
hop plant, 62–63
hormone imbalances, 147
hormones, 154, 155, 216, 217
horticultural therapy, 204–5
Hot Chocolate (Mayan-style Cacao),
233–34
HRV (heart rate variability)
aromatics increasing, 38–48, 57–60
WiMeSo.indd 304 2/22/13 10:07 AM
Index n 305
high frequency (HF), 46, 54–56,
57–60
as measurement of heart health,
38–48
stress and emotions effect on, 48–57
Huang Di (yellow emperor), 38, 50,
207, 235
hubs, physiological
digestive/metabolic activity (second
hub), 5–6, 30–31
genetic expression (third hub), 31–32
neuromuscular tone (first hub),
29–30, 57–60
overview, 5–6, 24–25, 26–29
viability of, 32–33
human physiology
how plants work in our bodies, 8–9
key physiological “hubs,” 26–33
as networklike system, 25–26
See also hubs, physiological
hygiene hypothesis, 204
immunity
adaptive, 201–2
inflammation linked to, 223
innate, 199–201, 202–4
tonics and, 7, 190, 203–4, 212–13
incense, 34–36
industrialization, 134–35
infection, 65
inflammation
in the belly, 139
bitters managing, 7, 157
flavonoids reducing, 225
immunity linked to, 223
reducing, 5–6, 69
inflammatory disease, 31, 33
Institute for Functional Medicine,
26
Institute of HeartMath, 51
internal coherence, 51–52, 55, 73
in the flow, 50, 52, 55, 57
jam, hawthorn berry, 249–50
Jamaican dogwood, 62
kava, 62
kyphi, 35, 118, 126
labor and birth, 45
Last Child in the Woods, 205
lavender, 59, 61
Lazarev, Nicolai, 208
lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), 17, 61,
90–95, Plate 2
Lemon Balm Infused Honey, 94–95
Lemon Balm Tea, 93
Lemon Balm Tincture, 94
Lieberman, Daniel, 251
linden (Tilia europea), 62, 96–101,
Plate 3
Linden Flower Bath, 101
Linden or Tilleul Flower Tea,
99–100
Linghzi (red reishi) (Ganoderma
tsugae), 240–44, Plate 16
liver, 120–21, 122–23, 126, 131
liver function, 146, 147
locavore movement, 12–13
Louv, Richard, 205
Lovelock, James, 23
lung conditions, 72
WiMeSo.indd 305 2/22/13 10:07 AM
306 n Index
Margulis, Lynn, 23
Mayan-style Cacao (Hot Chocolate),
233–34
McCraty, Rollin, 50–51
meat, 122–23
Melissa officinalis (lemon balm), 17,
61, 90–95, Plate 2
memory, working, 53–54
mental health
aromatics for, 65–66, 67, 68
nervines for, 60–64
Mentha x piperita (peppermint), 61,
68, 83–89, Plate 1
metabolic syndrome, 30, 32
milk thistle, 156
Mills, Simon, 20, 149
mithridate, mythical antidote, 117–18,
143–44
Mithridates, 112–14, 115–16, 119,
143–44, 159
modern medicine, 15–16, 32
mood/emotion
heart rate variability (HRV)
affected by, 48–57
impact on quality of life, 33
stress and, 32
motherwort, 61
muscle
arterial, 75–77
relaxation, aromatics for, 69–72,
74
smooth, 75–76, 77
music, 187–88, 189
myths and stories
bitters in, 112–19
importance of, 4
mithridate (mythical antidote),
117–18, 143–44
tonics in, 184–87
nature-deficit disorder, 205
Nature Principle, The, 205
nervine plants, 60–63, 212
network, physiological, 25–26
neuromuscular tone (first hub)
aromatics and, 57–60
described, 29–30
Nong, Shen, 235
nut treats, astragalus, 239
Omnivore’s Dilemma, The, 11
omnivorous cuisine, 11–12
O viridissima virga (O greenest
branch), 189
“Paleolithic” diet, 141
pancreas, 140
Pendell, Dale, 165
peppermint (Mentha x piperita), 61, 68,
83–89, Plate 1
Peppermint Sun Tea, 85–86
peptide YY (PYY), 154, 155
perfume, 66
Petrini, Carlo, 12
pharmacological approach
aromatics, 75–80
bitters, 152–57
limitations of, 15–16
tonics, 217–26
physiological “hubs”
digestive/metabolic activity (second
hub), 5–6, 30–31
WiMeSo.indd 306 2/22/13 10:07 AM
Index n 307
genetic expression (third hub), 31–32
neuromuscular tone (first hub),
29–30, 57–60
overview, 5–6, 24–25, 26–29
viability of, 32–33
See also human physiology
physiology, human
how plants work in our bodies, 8–9
key physiological “hubs,” 26–33
as networklike system, 25–26
See also physiological “hubs”
plant smells, 79–80
poison, antidotes for, 116–19, 144–45
poison, Mithridates’, 114, 115–19
Pollan, Michael, 2, 11–12, 206
polypeptide YY (36-amino-acid
protein), 130–31, 155
polyphenols, 31, 198, 224, 252
polysaccharides, 203–4, 221–22
“prebiotic” starches, 175
pulse rate. See heart rate variability
(HRV)
pulse reading, 38–39
Pyramid Texts, The, 34
PYY (peptide YY), 154, 155
Quinn, Mark, 222
Rankin, Guthrie, 172
Raynaud’s phenomenon, 74, 104–5
real food, 2–3, 11–12, 19, 252
red reishi (Linghzi) (Ganoderma
tsugae), 240–44, Plate 16
Red Reishi Stock, 243
Red Reishi Two-phase Extract,
243–44
reishi (ganoderma lucidum), 208, 240
reproductive health, 32–33, 147
respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA),
40–41
Roasted Dandelion Root (A Coffee
Substitute), 171–72
rosemary, 59, 61
Rumex crispus (yellowdock), 178–83,
Plate 12
salty flavor, 7, 124
Santa Maria Novella, water of, 83–84,
86–87
saponins, 188, 219–21
Schepetkin, Igor, 222
Scudder, John, 214, 215
scullcap, 61
seaweed
Burdock and Seaweed Appetizer,
176
saltiness of, 7
Seery, Mark, 126–27
Selye, Hans, 209, 214, 217
sirtuins, 195–96, 197–98, 223–24, 225
“Slow Food” movement, 12
smell
animal smells, 79, 80
aromatics and, 37–38
blunted sense of (anosmia), 80–81
plant smells, 79–80
shift in consciousness evoked
through, 35
taste and, 77
smooth muscle, 75–76, 77
soluble fiber, 175
Soule, Deb, 147–48
WiMeSo.indd 307 2/22/13 10:07 AM
308 n Index
sour flavor, 124, 128
Spelman, Kevin, 251
spices, 70
spicy flavor, 124
spruce, 59–60
Staph infection, 199–200, 202–3, 223
stock, red reishi, 243
stress
adaptogenic tonics for, 209–10
effect on heart rate variability
(HRV), 48–57
emotions and, 32
“Goldilocks principle” of, 127–28
impact on quality of life, 33
neuromuscular tension from, 30
response to, 217–19
sugar consumption, 133–34
supplements, dietary, 1, 2
sweet taste/flavor, 28–29, 132, 138,
140–41
syrup, yellowdock, 182–83
systems theory, 21–26, 28–29
T2Rs (bitter taste receptors), 128–32,
152–53, 154–55
Taraxacum officinale (dandelion),
168–72, Plate 9, Plate 10
taste
bitter taste/flavor, 124–26, 140,
158–59
classifying medicines by, 6
smell and, 77
sour flavor, 124, 128
sweet taste/flavor, 28–29, 132, 138,
140–41
taste receptors (TRs), 128
toxicity indicated through, 124
See also T2Rs (bitter taste receptors)
taste receptors (TRs), 128
“T” cells, 202–3, 204
teas
Burdock Tea, 176
chamomile, 13
Ginger Tea, 105
Hawthorn Tea, 249
Lemon Balm Tea, 93
Peppermint Sun Tea, 85–86
preparing, 17
Tilleul or Linden Flower Tea, 99–100
willow bark, 14
thalamus, 77–78
Thayer, Julian, 52–56, 78
Theobroma cacao (chocolate), 17, 229–
34, Plate 13
theriac, 144, 145
thujone, 163, 165
thyme, 16, 68
Tilia europea (linden), 62, 96–101,
Plate 3
Tilleul or Linden Flower Tea, 99–100
tinctures
Dandelion Root Tincture, 172
described, 17–18
Lemon Balm Tincture, 94
Wormwood Tincture, 164
Yellowdock Tincture, 182
tonics, 184–250
astragalus (Astragalus
membranaceus), 17, 207–8, 213,
235–39, Plate 14, Plate 15
chocolate (Theobroma cacao), 17,
229–34, Plate 13
WiMeSo.indd 308 2/22/13 10:07 AM
Index n 309
harmonizing quality of, 187–90
hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna),
245–50, Plate 17
in herbal medicine, 206–16
immune-enhancing, 7, 190, 199–
206, 212–13
importance of, 7, 226–28
lacking in the Western diet, 223
myths and stories, 184–87
pharmacological approach, 217–26
red reishi (Linghzi) (Ganoderma
tsugae), 240–44, Plate 16
toxins
botanical, 128
herbicides and fertilizer, 137
neutralized through the liver,
120–21
sources of, 122
TRs (taste receptors), 128
Tso, Wung-Wai, 207
tulsi (holy basil), 61
uterus, 71–72
vagus nerve
heart rate variability (HRV) and, 46,
48, 73
role of, 77, 153
“tone” or activity in, 41–42
valerian, 62
Virgil, 90–91
Vogelweide, Walter von der, 97–98
Waddington, Conrad, 193
water of Santa Maria Novella, 83–84,
86–87
Weaver, Warren, 20–21
Web of Life, The, 21, 25n
wellness, 2, 3
Western diet
challenge lacking in, 7
creating a new diet, 2
in xenobiome alteration, 132–42
whole-food cuisine, 2–3
willow bark tea, 14
wormwood (Artemisia absinthium),
161–67, Plate 8
Wormwood Candies, 166–67
Wormwood Spirit (Absinthe), 165
Wormwood Tincture, 164
xenobiome
bitter plants as part of, 131–32,
150–51
described, 119–26
“Goldilocks principle” of stress and,
127–28
Western diet’s alteration of,
132–42
yellowdock (Rumex crispus), 178–83,
Plate 12
Yellowdock Syrup, 182–83
Yellowdock Tincture, 182
yellow emperor (Huang Di), 38, 50,
207, 235, 238
Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine,
38
yohimbe tree, 28–29
Zingiber officinale (ginger), 102–6,
Plate 4, Plate 5
WiMeSo.indd 309 2/22/13 10:07 AM
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HealtH/Herbalism
“Guido has written a classic. What is most masterful about Guido’s teachings and writing
is the way he weaves folklore, tradition, and science flawlessly together, making a sensible,
cohesive argument for the daily use of these common and important plants.”
rosemary Gladstar, herbalist and founder of United Plant Savers and
author of Rosemary Gladstar’s Family Herbal and Planting the Future

“I highly recommend this book not only for its content but also because, like Michael
Pollan’s Botany of Desire, Guido Masé’s book is a joy to read and is interspersed with
exquisite herb photographs that capture the spiritual essence of the plants he describes.”
micHael tierra, author of Way of Herbs and Planetary Herbology
and founder of the American Herbalists Guild
As people moved into cities and suburbs and embraced modern medicine and indus-
trialized food, they lost their connection to nature, in particular to the plants with which
humanity coevolved. These plants are essential components of our physiologies—
tangible reminders of cross-kingdom signaling—and key not only to vibrant physical health
and prevention of illness but also to soothing and awakening the troubled spirit.
Blending traditional herbal medicine with history, mythology, clinical practice, and
recent findings in physiology and biochemistry, herbalist Guido Masé explores the
three classes of plants necessary for the healthy functioning of our bodies and minds—
aromatics, bitters, and tonics. He explains how bitter plants ignite digestion, balance blood
sugar, buffer toxicity, and improve metabolism; how tonic plants normalize the functions of our
cells and nourish the immune system; and how aromatic plants relax tense organs, nerves, and
muscles and stimulate sluggish systems, whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. He
reveals how wild plants regulate our heart variability rate and adjust the way DNA is read by
our cells, controlling the self-destructive tendencies that lead to chronic inflammation or cancer.
Offering examples of ancient and modern uses of wild plants in each of the three
classes—from aromatic peppermint to bitter dandelion to tonic chocolate—Masé pro-
vides easy recipes to integrate them into meals as seasonings and as central ingredients
in soups, stocks, salads, and grain dishes as well as including formulas for teas, spirits,
and tinctures. Providing a framework for safe and effective use as well as new insights to
enrich the practice of advanced herbalists, he shows how healing “wild plant deficiency
syndrome”—by adding wild plants back into our diets—is vital not only to our health but
also to our spiritual development.
GUIDO MASÉ is a clinical herbalist, herbal educator, and garden stew-
ard. The cofounder and codirector of the Vermont Center for Integrative
Herbalism, he is a professional member of the American Herbalists Guild,
the American Botanical Council, and United Plant Savers. He lives in South
Burlington, Vermont.
HEALING ARTS PRESS
ROCHESTER, VERMONT
www.HealingArtsPress.com
Cover design by Peri Swan
Cover photographs courtesy of the author
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