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Centaury (Centaurium Erythraea)

August 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

This is a cute little plant that is easily missed if it is not in flower. The flower is either pink or white and close together on a squarish branching stem. It seems to love the chalk downlands so grows quite profusely on the South Downs as well as on the shingle beach.

Centaury

The whole herb is used which has Bitter properties.

All herbs with Bitter properties are excellent digestive system aids as they stimulate digestive juices to help breakdown the food entering the gut. This is why so many Aperitifs have bitter properties!

I use it in small amounts, as a tincture, to improve digestive function and to tone the gut up.

Linda Bostock
Medical Herbalist/Herbal Health Information

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Herb Walk Around a Shingle Beach July 2011

July 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

We live in a newly developed area, called Sovereign Harbour, three miles outside Eastbourne in East Sussex. The area was a shingle beach known as The Crumbles and was one of very few shingle habitats left in the U.K.  I have met many people who remember The Crumbles as they were and describe to me a wild area with different plants and animals inhabiting it.

There are still five sites within the area available for development, which are as yet, un-built on, due to harbour residents campaign to prevent over-development of the land, but which will be built on in the future.

Lucky for us, these areas still have an interesting variety of plants growing on them and also make good dog walking areas. The main species of birds I have seen, apart form the gulls, are linnets, greenfinches, sparrows, blackbirds and starlings. Lots of rabbits and foxes and some hedgehogs which, sadly, I only know about when they get squished on the road

We are also surrounded by marshy areas, Down land and Weald, resulting in several distinct habitats within a few miles from our house.

I was particularly interested to see three plants growing on the shingle which look very similar but which it would be very dangerous to muddle up.

Ragwort grows on most waste ground. It has poisonous properties and will kill a horse if it eats it.

St. John’s Wort is a nervous system supporting and repairing herb with anti depressant and liver stimulating properties. St. John’s Wort can be photosensitising both taken internally and applied externally as an oil, so if you are taking St. John’s wort, care needs to be taken in bright sunlight.

Tansy puts on a fantastic show and is often cultivated in herbaceous borders for its bright yellow flat head flowers. It is used medicinally in very small amounts to tone the female reproductive system and to kill thread worm (don’t self medicate with tansy, you need to know exact doses and it can cause abortion)

Evening primrose:- the oil from the seed is high in Omega 6 and is said to help with PMT. I personally am not an evening primrose oil fan or advocate but the plant is very pretty.

The other plants we saw on this herb walk were

Centaury, astringent and toning for all mucous membranes.

Tormentil , astringent and toning for all mucous membranes

Yellow dock, digestive system and liver stimulant.

Goat’s rue, reduces blood sugar (don’t self medicate)

St. John’s wort, Centaury, Tormentil and Yellow dock will have their own write up in the Herbs and health section

There are many other plants growing on the shingle, not the least of which is a beautiful Bee orchid which grows in the spring and I have to confess I hope that the planning permission battles will continue for some time.

.

Linda Bosotck

Medical Herbalist

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The Elder Tree (Latin Name ……..Sambucus Nigra)

July 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Parts used…….flower/bark/berries

I am not too proud to admit I probably use this herb more than is decent.

Elderflower on a Martello Tower

That’s because it does soo many different things and there is nothing better to reach for than elderflower tincture from my shelves, from the start of the hayfever season to the end of the coughs and colds season which is pretty much all year around!

Elder flowers are one of those things you either love or hate the smell of. They have a slightly sickly sweet smell that many people find overpowering.

But ignore the smell because you are looking at a flower that has such an astonishing range of actions it sounds like a complete herbal pharmacopeia all on its own!

It is antiviral, immune system stimulating, anti-inflammatory, anticatarrhal, diaphoretic (makes you sweat) diuretic and other actions you can look up but if I add in here it will just sound like showing off.

It is my herb of choice above Echinacea, if I am treating coughs, colds and boosting the immune system.

Although there are several anticatarrhal herbs such as ground ivy, from my experience elderflower is positively the BEST.

At this time of year it goes in every hayfever and anti-allergy mix I make up.

Because it makes you sweat and has relaxing properties, I also put it into mixes for high blood pressure.

Here come the warning bells ringing again…please do not self medicate if you have high blood pressure or any medical condition see a professional.

I pick the flower every year and dry it to store for use as a tea if anyone is feeling they have a cold coming on. It is the herbal equivalent of Beecham’s powders.

The berries, I collect to either make elderflower jelly (you need extra pectin) or a syrup for coughs throughout the winter.

The syrup is dead easy to make.

Pick however many elderberries you want and then make about one inch layers of berries with half an inch of granulated sugar in a  clean and heat sterilised jam jar. You will need to keep topping the jar up as the berries crush down.

Leave this preferably somewhere very mildly warm for about a week and then strain of the gorgeous thick dark red syrup and store it in another clean and heat sterilised jam jar. This is a wonderful soothing cough mixture which should be rich in vitamin C, iron and Bioflavonoids.

In the video you see the elderflower in a hedgerow at the Long Man at Willingdon, but if you look along any hedgerow you will see an elderflower tree dotted in amongst the other bushes. Later in the year we will go back and film the berries and I will show you how to make the elderberry syrup.

Linda Bostock

Medical Herbalist/Herbal Health Information

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Pulsatilla, the nerve tonic.

July 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Pulsatilla is a nerve tonic and relaxant. It has anti inflammatory and antispasmodic properties and is a mild analgesic (pain killer)

I use it for imbalances in the female reproductive system such as PMT and find it especially useful for period pains, especially when mixed with Cramp Bark, which is  a muscle relaxant.

Cramp Bark, is discussed seperately in the West Rise Marsh walk and on the web site.

Pulsatilla is also an herb I very often put into a mix to help people relax and get to sleep. When I first started to practice, with a case of facial acne which was proving difficult to clear up, so I phoned my mentor at the time who advised me to use Pulsatilla as it has skin cleansing properties. Well it certainly made the difference and I now rarely leave it out of any skin mixture.

I use it in tincture formwhich you will be able to buy from any good herb supplier. I will not advise any dosage here as strengths of tincture varies, so follow the instructions on the bottle.

You will also find it in tablet form and again please follow the instructions.

Do not confuse it with the Homeopathic Pulsatilla preparation which has completely different actions.

As usual, if you have any other medical conditions or are pregnant, please see a qualified Medical herbalist or your Doctor.

Linda Bostock

Medical Herbalist/herbal Health Information.

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About Me and Herbal Medicine

May 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Hi,

Linda

My name is Linda Bostock,

I qualified as a medical herbalist in 1993 after completing a four year diploma course at the school of Phytotherapy in East Sussex and have been running my clinic of herbal medicine since then, first in Slough and now in Eastbourne.

My oldest daughter had suffered very badly with allergies and food intolerance and had ended up at age 15, 5’7” tall, in hospital weighing 7 stone and very unwell. Despite me telling the nurses at registration that she had several allergies to medicines and listing them all and specifying that she must not be given anything orally without me being informed, she was given the drug Stemetil, to which she had a terrible reaction, causing her to have severe muscle spasms which affected her breathing.

The nurses and doctors at the time treated us appallingly, insinuating she was suffering from anorexia and as I had just had another baby she was attention seeking!!!! It took me about 4 hours of serious hassling to get a consultant to come and see her at 2 am, who laughed and said yes, Stemetil was known to have that reaction.

So I sat by her bed all night thinking this child, this precious, fantastic person I had nurtured for the past 15 years was going to die because nobody in that hospital cared. At 7 am I made them take her off her drip, picked her up from her hospital bed, carried her back to the car, took her home and phoned our G.P.

By the time we were together enough to ask to see her notes, they were predictably “lost”. Our G.P. Dr. Eyres was a slightly quirky slightly unorthodox man who would ask you if you had a cigarette on you that he could borrow, when you went in to the surgery (none of us have ever smoked so we never did), but who I trusted completely with my children’s lives.

Between the two of us we cared for her by putting her on a strict vegetarian diet and not giving her any foods that contained additives. She recovered slowly and now, at age 40 is married with her own three gorgeous children.

But I decided then that I would never sit beside a child’s bed and feel so hopeless and helpless. So with 2 big children, 2 little children, husband, house, garden, cats and working as an auxiliary nurse at the local hospital in the evenings (yes the same one) I embarked on a four year diploma course of herbal medicine, at that time the only accredited one in the world, which I did so that I could keep my children healthy, but discovered it was what I was supposed to be doing in life.

I will be taking you on herb walks on this site and pointing out the wealth of medicinal plants we all have growing in our local areas, even in towns. I will give an explanation of the medicinal properties of the plants, hopefully using examples of conditions for which they have been used in my Clinic.

I’ll also be reviewing topical conditions and treatments and a variety of over the counter products available for their treatment. It is very important to know when to self treat and when to seek professional help either from your Doctor or from a fully qualified herbal medicine practitioner and I will advise on this.

Please contact me below, if you would like to share any experiences with me. I would also be very interested to hear about medicinal plants that you have seen growing in your part of the world.

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Linda Bostock, EzineArticles Basic Author

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