The Coop Ep. #03: Combat Spring Allergies with Dr. Patrick Jones

Intro:

We believe food looks and tastes better when it comes from a mason jar and that every home should have a well used cast iron skillet. We believe in starting where you are in being a good steward and that homesteading is a mindset. First, we believe that our great grandmothers were right about almost everything and that the best conversations happen around the coop.

Anna Sakawsky

Alright, welcome everybody to episode three of the Coop. So my name is Anna Koski and I am the editor in chief of Homestead Living Magazine. So if you are new, just joining us for the first time here today. This is our new live monthly show. So once a month we host educational and inspirational conversations with the homesteaders and writers that contribute to Homestead Living Magazine. And today I am very excited to present to you Dr. Patrick Jones, who is an herbalist who works with both humans and animals actually. And so Doc Jones is on our, will be featured on our April cover, so coming up soon. And he has written an article all about using herbs to combat spring allergies. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today, as I’m sure you all know. But so some of the topics we’re going to cover, we’re going to cover how to harness the power of herbs to combat spring allergies.

We’re going to talk about specific herbs, so which herbs are most effective when it comes to allergy relief, how to grow your own herbs. And we’ll talk a little bit about where to source them if you are not growing your own or can’t forge your own or you’re kind of new to all of this. And then how to make teas, tinctures, proper dosages, all that nitty gritty stuff. So before we get into it, I’m seeing a whole bunch of people pop into the comments. Lots of people joining us here today. So people from all over the place. I would love to know though, from everybody joining us, if you yourself suffer from spring allergies or really any type of allergies. If you do, go ahead and pop it in the comments. And if you know specific things that you’re to and you feel comfortable sharing, pop that in.

And let’s kind of see, let’s get a temperature check of where we’re at and see how many people are actually suffering from spring allergies and are going to hopefully take some really useful and practical applicable knowledge from this and be able to apply it to your own lives here. So ragweed, yes, allergies, spring and fall. Allergies currently suffering. So funny. I know. I was just saying the other day to my husband that we’re right out of the frying pan and into the fire. We just got over all of that winter illness, which seemed to be really bad this year. Ours was particularly bad and I heard from a lot of people that whatever was going around this winter was particularly awful. So we just got over that and now we’re right into spring allergy season. So let’s see. So pine pollen sipping nettle tea right now.

So before we get into it with Doc Jones, I do want to just take a moment to quickly thank our sponsor. So I would like to thank the Homestead documentary. So the Homestead documentary is your ticket to modern home setting inspiration. With 20 episodes across two incredible seasons, you’ll meet 50 real life homesteaders that are turning their homestead dreams into reality.

From growing your own food to raising livestock and starting profitable homestead businesses. This series covers it. You can instantly binge season one and two for just $59 and start your homestead journey today. So head over to homestead documentary.com to sign up and start watching again, that is homestead documentary.com. Okay, perfect. Alright, I think we’re back. Alright, so we’re ready to get into it. So Dr. Patrick Jones is a practicing veterinarian, traditional naturopath and clinical herbalist dedicated to both man and beast. He is the founder of the Homegrown Herbalist School of Botanical Medicine where he shares his extensive knowledge of medicinal plants and on his property in filer Idaho, he grows over 120 species of medicinal plants himself. His approach to health involves utilizing nature’s pharmacy to treat common ailments, including allergies. He’s also the author of the Homegrown Herbalist and the Homegrown Herbalist Guide to Medicinal Weeds. So welcome Doc Jones.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Hello. It’s great to be here.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, it’s so great to have the chance to sit down and pick your brain live, taking the time to be with us here today. Alright, my first question before we get into all this, I have a really, really important question that I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time. What do you prefer to be called? Because in my emails to you, I never know if I should say Dr. Jones. Patrick Jones. Doc Jones, what is your preferred

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Doc Jones is fine

Anna Sakawsky:

Doc Jones. All right, we’ll go with that.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Exalted pah of green things. Either one of those is fine. That’s perfect, I’ll remember that.

Anna Sakawsky:

Alright, so for anybody who doesn’t know you and doesn’t know your background, can you share a little bit about how you got into herbalism in the first place and what made you decide to pursue it as a career, both in terms of helping humans and animals?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

So I was always kind of an edible plant kid. Gil Gibbons was my hero. I dunno if anybody remembers Yu Gibbons, but he used to do grape nut commercials. He’d say, you ever eat a pine tree? And if you can choke that down, you might could like these grape nuts too. But anyway, he was an edible plant guy, so I was always Boy scout doing that kind of stuff. And then you get into medicinals a little bit because plants are plants. Then I went down to Peru. I was lived in Peru for a while as a Christian missionary down there, and they still do all kinds of herbal stuff. I mean, they’re very, very still grounded in medicinal phyto chemistry and plant medicines. And I got treated for all kinds of things by sweet little old ladies that thought I looked like I needed some of this or some of that. And it always worked. Came home, went to veterinary school, and of course they beat all that out of you in vet school.

But when I got into practice, I was still doing a little bit here and there. And then I had a really bad case of a dog in liver failure, which I visited with a buddy of mine who I found out was an herbalist. I didn’t even know he was old rodeo cowboy, Mickey Young. And he brought me a bag of green powder, says, try this on him. And we did our little drug deal in the parking lot with the Ziploc bag full of green stuff, but it was liver herbs. She was dying of jaundice and I gave that dog, she wasn’t eating at all and she was trying to die. And modern medicine has nothing. I mean, we can keep ’em comfortable, but we had nothing for her and the family wasn’t ready to let her go, and so we’re just kind of doing our best. Anyway, I started, she wasn’t eating, so I just mixed the powder with some water and squirted it in her a couple of three times that day. And the next day she wanted to eat a little bit and three days later she went home, completely resolved and she had severe jaundice. I mean, the whites of her eyes were dark yellow and she was circling the drain.

But I’d been using herbs a little bit, but at that point I said, okay, I got to look into this. And I got very, very serious about it and started doing a lot of medicinal stuff with herbs and animals. And then the next thing you know, the owners say, well, yeah, you fix my dog. What about my sore hip? And oh yeah, well try some of this. And the next thing I know I’m doing that. I eventually went to naturopath school, they made me teach the herbal medicine lessons. They never gave me a discount for that. I said anyway, and I learned some other cool things. Acupuncture is some other fun stuff. So I had a veterinary practice center and for many years a naturopath practice too. So we were doing humans and animals, but I just found that herbal medicine was vastly more powerful than pharmaceuticals for all kinds of stuff.

Not everything, but all kinds of stuff. And so I just used a lot of herbs and because I was a veterinarian, I could do whatever I wanted. I had a piece of paper on the wall that says I could do whatever I wanted with your dog. And so I was doing things with herbal medicine that ours don’t usually get to do gunshot wounds and rattlesnake bites and sepsis and whatever I wanted. And finding that they worked really fantastic for serious stuff too. So it’s been kind of a fun journey. The veterinary practice was an extraordinary laboratory for me to try and do things that I would normally have had the opportunity to do, but

Anna Sakawsky:

That’s really interesting. I was going to say, so there are not the same restrictions I guess around treating animals versus treating humans. Do you kind of do an integrated approach or do you strictly use herbs?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

No, I use whatever works best. The turf war is silly because modern medicine’s great for some things and herbs are great for most things. Yeah, no, I did everything. Veterinarians are still in the position that doctors were in 20 years ago, which is we’re the doctor and we do whatever we want and get out of the way. We’re the ones that have the letters at the end of our name. Why are you telling us what we can do and not do? We can use extra label drugs, we can do whatever we want for the patient because our treatment protocols calls aren’t being written by insurance companies and accountants. They’re being written by doctors, which in the good old days, that’s how the physicians were too. And unfortunately, God bless ’em, and I know a lot of doctors, all my brothers are all doctors, great guys. And they got into it. They love people, don’t help people, but the industry is really restricting real healing and real ministering by the physicians to their patients. It’s just, everything’s flow charts and

Anna Sakawsky:

Absolutely. Really so. Well we could definitely get into that. We’ll have to have you back for another episode because there’s a few more topics in that. And definitely I would love to have you back to talk about using herbs with animals specifically. So we’ll have to talk about that down the road. But today we are talking specifically about using herbs to help combat spring allergies, specifically the season that we’re in, but allergies in general. So let’s start off with the foundational, I guess, science behind allergies. What are allergies and when we’re having an allergic reaction, what’s actually happening in our body?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

So what’s happening is an allergic response is an immune system function. The immune system is trying to solve a problem and the immune system is full of white blood cells that are going around making sure that everything in your body is you and anything that isn’t you, they’re going to kill it or eat it or make it go away. And so what happens is that sometimes the immune system gets hypersensitive to something and for no reason it decides that that’s a bad thing.

And that’s what’s happening with allergies usually because pollen from flowers and pine trees and whatever isn’t really detrimental to human bodies. I mean, it is not causing disease or whatnot, but the immune system sees that stuff and sometimes decides that’s a foreign invader and makes antibodies to it. And once you’ve got antibodies to something that’s a red flag for the immune system. And whenever it sees those antibodies stuck to something, it freaks out and has a reaction. And so there’s special cells in your body called mast cells, and they produce and release histamines and cytokines and other inflammatory allergic chemicals,

And they have little receptors on their cell membranes and those receptors get covered with the antibody to that pollen. And if a piece of pollen links to that receptor and triggers that mast cell, it degranulates and releases tons of histamine and now you’re having an allergic reaction. And the reason we do that is if you think about why the body’s doing what it’s doing and what it’s doing is you’re sneezing and you’re wheezing and your nose is running and your eyes are running and well, what’s the point of all that? Well, the point of all that is it’s trying to drive the stuff out. You’ve got something in your nose we don’t like and we’re going to flush it out. You’ve got something in your lungs we don’t like and we’re going to make more mucus and make you cough or make you sneeze and get that stuff out of here. It’s a defensive response. And so that’s basically what’s happening. Sometimes we get allergic to ourselves, which is autoimmune disease, which is a whole, we could have a whole two hour talk about that sometime, but it’s the same thing happening. The body decides that we are not us and starts attacking us, the immune system. And that’s often from something called leaky gut. And anyway, that’s a whole nother conversation. We cover that a lot in the homegrown school along with a lot of other things, but it’s still allergic reaction.

Anna Sakawsky:

So are histamines then, are histamines triggered when you’re sick as well? Is that what’s triggering that reaction? So it’s the same thing as, and that’s why we get the same type of symptoms as when you got a cold or a flu symptoms.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Exactly. Because when you get a rhinovirus or a coronavirus or a influenza virus, the body says your respiratory system is full of guys that aren’t you. Let’s get ’em out of here. And so you start sneezing and coughing and making extra mucus and yeah, that’s exactly what’s happening. So the same herbs that we’re using for allergies, you can use ’em for a cold too.

Anna Sakawsky:

Wow, that’s great information.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Solve the same problem. Yeah, I mean if you understand what the body’s doing and what the plants are doing, you see all kinds of applications.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Okay, perfect. Okay, that’s really good to know because especially when we hear histamines, antihistamines, we tend to think about allergies and especially with modern medicine and pharmaceuticals, typically if we’re going to get something over the counter, we’re getting an antihistamine for allergy relief. We’re getting cough and cold medicine for that. So I think we’re very used to seeing these things very compartmentalized. This is this and it’s completely separate from that, and you need this specific medicine for this and this that. But in the world of herbalism and holistic health, a lot of these have multiple applications. Is that right?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Absolutely. Herbs can be very indecisive. They’re usually good at 12 things,

Anna Sakawsky:

Right?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah. But oftentimes it’s for that reason. It’s that I’m doing this thing that I do, but it has all kinds of applications if you understand what the body’s really doing and why, and you understand why that herb helps and why.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, that’s great. Okay. Just quickly before we continue with the questions, I know there’s been a few people just in the live chat saying that they’ve had some trouble with sound or that they can’t hear. If you do have any trouble, try to refresh your screen. First of all, if you’re having issues, we will have a replay available after this. So not to worry you won’t miss out, but just in case, just try to refresh your screen if you have any trouble hearing or seeing anything. And then I see there are a few questions coming in, so just want to let you guys know that we will have time for questions and we’ll ask those questions of Doc Jones as we go. Don’t worry about that. I’ve got those on my screen. But the next thing I want to get into before we get to some of the questions is, well, first of all, we know kind of now what allergies are and what’s happening in the body. Why are certain people predisposed to them and others are not?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Well, that’s another very long lesson we could have. I think a lot of it has to do with gut flora. I think a lot of it has to do with overuse of antibiotics affecting gut flora. I think a lot of it has to do with one of three women having a C-section so their babies don’t get inoculated with gut flora when they’re born because coming through that birth canal, they get exposed to all kinds of wonderful things that they’re supposed to get exposed to populate their own gut. I think that glycinate has a huge effect on our immune systems. The autoimmune incidents in this world has done a hockey stick since we started using that stuff. But that again, is another long conversation. I think our diets are lousy. I mean, I think there’s a lot of leaky gut out there. There’s all kinds of things. There’s genetic predispositions, there’s bad luck. There’s all kinds of things, but also there’s a lot of isolation from natural things. I mean little kids that have dogs washing their face from the time they’re toddlers, and little babies have way lower instances of pet allergies than kids that don’t see a dog until they’re 10. So exposure and recognition and say, oh, this is a normal putter in my life.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Yeah. I’ve heard that about peanut allergies, that if you consume peanut butter or peanuts while you’re pregnant, that your child has a lesser chance of having peanut allergies. Is there truth to that?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I don’t know that one, but maybe. I don’t know.

Anna Sakawsky:

Interesting.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I do know. Well, yeah, I don’t know about the peanut thing specifically. That’s an interesting question.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Well, okay, so when it comes to spring allergies, there are a number of things or seasonal allergies I guess in general, right? There are a number of things that people can be exposed to that can cause these allergies. And then we have this histamine reaction. So when we are then reaching for antihistamine, whether we are getting something over the counter or we’re reaching for some herbs, which we’ll get into some of these herbs in just a moment. How do those medications or those herbs work in the body to combat allergy symptoms?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

They can work in a number of ways. Most of the histamine pharmaceuticals suppress histamine production and release. That’s what they’re doing. But there’s a lot of plants that do that too. So there’s basically, plants can suppress histamine production, they can suppress the release of the histamines that were produced. They can interfere with attachment of histamines to the tissues that want to have a fit if they see histamines. Also, the other tack with plants is that we can have high antioxidants that helps with allergy symptoms, anti-inflammatory things help with allergy symptoms. Herbs that stimulate liver function can help with allergy symptoms because they eliminate histamines. The liver eliminates histamines. And so those are basically the attacks we’re going to take with plants. And it’s a much broader spectrum attack than the pharmaceutical. And that’s always the case with plants. Plants are always doing 20 things to solve the problem. And a pharmaceutical, a drug has one chemical in it, but nettles does almost all of those things except for the elimination. It’s doing all kinds of stuff. And we can talk about that when we talk about metals if you want, but the multifactorial approach of herbs and offering the body 20 things and letting the body pick from the buffet what it wants is way more effective than giving out one chemical and say, here, do you like this? Do this. It’s all we got. And plus, plants are vastly more metabolizable and absorbable and easy to assimilate because our bodies have been doing it for a really long time. They know what to do with plant chemistry. If you take a pharmaceutical, the body says, what plant is that? I don’t even know what that is. It’s try this pathway. It sort of looks like that. And so you get more side effects, you get more issues, not a natural thing.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah. Let’s talk about some of the specific herbs, and let’s start with nettles because I think that that’s one that a lot of people are somewhat familiar with, whether they’ve used nettles before or not. They’re probably familiar with the plant stinging nettle. That’s actually one. It’s funny that we’re talking about this now. We just went through our cold and flu season, of course, and I have used nettles for allergy relief before, and my husband does as well because he’s got seasonal allergies. And that we have found, first of all, tends to work just as well or even better sometimes in some of these over-the-counter meds. But even through cold and flu season, I was drinking lots of nettle tea and it was helping with those symptoms. So like you say, that same histamine production reaction, it was helping with that as well. So very versatile.

We actually had, last year, my daughter had a wasp sting and we were up at a family cabin, at least a six hour drive and ferry ride from home. And we went to try to get her, of course, I didn’t have any herbs or anything on me. We went to try to get her over the counter antihistamines and we could not find a pharmacy anywhere that had them in stock or that didn’t have them under lock and key with nobody available to unlock these antihistamines. I dunno what was going on the whole way home. I kid you not. We got all the way home and stopped at several places. We could not find anything. And then by the time we got home, everything was closed. And so I did have some dried nettles on hand that I forged. They’re probably a couple of years old already, but I thought, let’s try this.

And I brewed her a really strong cup of nettle tea and by morning, the swelling in her hand had completely gone down. So that was actually my first, I had drank nettle tea and that sort of thing for a while, but that was the first time that I really saw an herb that actually work quite quickly where I think we’re used to, herbs are much of a more slow release. They don’t tend to have that immediate effect over the counter medications do, but in this case, it absolutely did. And so nettle is one that I use in my arsenal all the time. So let’s talk a little bit about nettle specifically and some of its uses, and then we’ll get into some of the other herbs as well.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah. So bear in mind that what was happening to your daughter was also a histamine reaction. You get stung or hives is a histamine reaction too. Anything allergic like that is being caused by those kinds of chemicals. So anything we say about these herbs can be applied to all kinds of things like that. So stinging, nettle, er, dica really a fantastic plant. This one is safe during and before we talk about herbs, let’s just say two things. First of all, if someone’s pregnant or nursing, be really careful. Some herbs are not safe during pregnant and nursing and some herbs that are perfectly safe for mom are not safe for that nursing baby. So don’t think just because this is a good herb and I’m pregnant anymore, that it’s okay for junior who weighs seven pounds. It’s getting an adult dose through the milk or may not have the organ development to process the herb like an adult dose. So be careful with that. The other thing is if you’re on pharmaceuticals, you have to be really careful too because sometimes herbs and drugs don’t play well together. So, that said, nettles is safe during pregnancy. In fact, my wife was a midwife for years and years, and boy, she had all her ladies drinking nettles tea all through the pregnancy. It’s also a fabulous nutritive

And it does all kinds of other amazing things. We could do a show just on nettles and all the stuff it does, but it’s a fabulous tonic. In fact, I tell people all the time, if you want to feel really good, throw a spoonful of powdered nettles in your morning smoothie every day spoonful of burdock and a spoonful of powdered nettles. And I mean, that covers all kinds of nutritional and tonic supportive functions that are just fabulous for your body. But for allergies, it has a lot of properties and antioxidant. It’s got some anti-inflammatory properties, but most of its functions relate to the histamine stuff. So it

Decreases production of histamines. So it tells those mast cells, you don’t need to make so much histamine calm down. And then it also inhibits release of histamines by the mast cells. Okay, so you made some anyway, even though I told you not to, don’t release so much, right? It’s just going to cause trouble. And then as if that weren’t enough, nettles is also running around and interfering with histamine attachment to the mucus membranes that are going to get irritated and itchy and sneezy and wheezy. And so it’s doing everything, even just in that small category of allergy prevention and control. It has all kinds of functions. And so the leaf is what we’re using for that. The seed and the root are medicinal too, but they do different things. But the leaf is what we’re going to use for allergy stuff, and it really is fantastic. I mean really, really, really helpful. And like you said, a lot of herbs are sort of gradual maintenance kind of things that you do, and that’s nice and you feel better, but it’s sometimes not a dramatic boom, you did something and it’s working. The allergy herbs do something and it’s working and you’ll notice right away.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

A lot of the pain herbs are that way too. They just boom, all of a sudden it doesn’t hurt anymore. So it kind of depends what you’re doing, what systems you’re affecting.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, well, I was really impressed with how quick and effective that was when we had to use it last year. And it’s good to know that it is safe. We actually had a question come in from Brittany about whether you’re pregnant or breastfeeding. Are nettles safe? So it’s good to know that those are kind of, seems like nettles are pretty safe across the board. Are there any contraindications with any other type of medications or conditions comes to nettles that you’re aware of?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Not very many. Annette’s, that’s a huge question because there’s 10,000 pharmaceuticals out there. One of the things that nettles does is it stimulates your kidneys. It’s a diuretic. And so if you’re taking a pharmaceutical that’s eliminated by the kidneys, it might make it eliminate faster than it should. So it’s not working as well or as long. But there aren’t a lot of drugs. I mean, a lot of herbs are a disaster with most drugs. Nettles is pretty mild, but you need to go case by case with that.

Anna Sakawsky:

And again, we didn’t say this at the start, but I think it always needs to be said as a disclaimer to check with your doctor or primary healthcare provider just to make sure that whatever herb you’re going to try using is safe for you and whatever conditions that you may have or medications that you may be taking. I do have another question that just came in about nettles. So we’ll put this up on the screen now. So Cindy asked if nettles are safe for people with Crohn’s disease, what knowledge do you have about that?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I’m not aware of any negative interactions with Crohn’s and nettles.

Anna Sakawsky:

Can they be helpful for,

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Well, it has some anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that would be very helpful as some nutritional properties would be very helpful. It has some antihistamine properties. Crohn’s may have probably has some autoimmune connections. So in that respect, nets is probably a good idea. But yeah, it’s not going to cure is a disaster of a condition as you sorry for anybody that has it. But yeah, there’s other herbs that can help with those kinds of things too. And we can get into, like I said, together another time and talk a lot about autoimmune stuff and

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, for sure, there’s so many, whatever, so many avenues we can go down for sure. As far as the spring allergies, let’s talk about some of the other herbs that can be helpful. So I know you mentioned nettles in your article. There are a few others that you recommend as well. Can we talk about some of those?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah, so Eyebright is another one. Euphrasia, that’s another good antihistamine. And it also interferes with histamine release and it’s also got a little more anti-inflammatory for the mucus membranes, particularly actions. So that’s a good one. Brigham Tea is one of my favorites. Nettles and Brigham Tea are the two real rock stars. I think Brigham Tea is in North America, in the southwestern states, we have several species growing Ephedra Viridis, Ephedra nevadensis. Those are the two I use. There’s some other species, but those are the two I almost always use. And Brigham Tea, it’s sort of a big shrub down in the desert southwest and it doesn’t have any leaves or it’s a very, very primitive plant. It’s sort of

Anna Sakawsky:

Sort of reminded me, when I saw the photos with your article, it reminded me of a horsetail or that type of plant.

Dr. Patrick Jones :

It looks like horsetail, which is also a very primitive plant. Those guys think this whole mammal thing’s just a flash in the pan, but yeah, but it doesn’t look anything like horsetail in real life. I mean visually, the jointed stems and the green looks like horsetail, but horsetail is like a hollow reed growing by a creek.

Brigham Tea  is a woody shrubby guy, and it’s twiggy that green stems are wooden, almost twiggy, but it has some antihistamine properties, but it also does a lot of things with the other end of the spectrum, which is the response to histamines. So the nettles is shutting them down and Brigham T does that too a little bit. The nails is shutting it down a lot, but the Brigham T is really fantastic for saying, okay, people, let’s calm down. It’s just histamines. We’re not going to get involved with this. And it shuts down congestion and extra mucus production and the itching and the inflammation of the mucus membranes and all the consequences of that explosion of histamines. Brigham T just says, ignore all that. We don’t need that. And so it’s really, really good for allergy symptoms of any kind. It’s also got tons of calcium and other minerals in it that are hard to find. It’s stimulant, a mild stimulant in a nice way, sort of energizing and enlivening. I like it for elderly people or people that have been fighting really long-term chronic illnesses that Brigham tea can, first of all, it’s really nourishing, but it also just makes ’em feel alive again and awake and they can get something done and it doesn’t have the crash. It doesn’t have that post caffeine crash that you get from caffeine.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Okay. While we’re on the topic of Brigham to you, I’m just going to pop up this question by Verina. Who asks, would you recommend Brigham for Europeans as it is now? That kind of poses a couple questions to me as well. First of all, is there any connection between using things that are native to your area, especially if you are allergic to certain things in your area? And then the other thing would be if you don’t live in an area where these things grow naturally or maybe you’re not able to grow ’em at home, maybe if you’re in Europe or something like that, do you know if people over there would be able to source that type of herb?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

It would be difficult to source. It’s a strictly North American species, at least the two I use. They do. There’s some Eres in the Orient e Ensis I believe is Mahu, which is banned in most states in the United States. It was causing some, well, they were making a concentrated extract of it and selling it at the cash register and gas stations as a super duper energy booster. And it was causing heart problems. It was way too concentrated and way too strong. They weren’t using the plant, they were using a concentrated extract to the plant. But the native North American e feathers don’t have those tendencies and are vastly safer. So to get to the question of geography and genetics and plants, I do think, in fact, I know for a fact that plants are distributed in ways that are surprising and inexplicable unless you believe in God, who I think was very smart. But plants, if you go to the equator, there are countless species that are anti-parasitic, so many anti-parasitic plants as you go further north where it’s colder and parasites are a vastly smaller problem, you don’t see nearly as many species that are anti parasitic. But we have all kinds of species that are good for respiratory viruses. We also have all kinds of species that are calming and good for anxiety Europeans, and we get grumpy and busy, we need to relax. But as far as genetic requirements based on locale, I mean my genes are Welsh and Brigham Tea works great for me. And so it doesn’t matter, I think that source what’s local, absolutely from a freshness and an organic and a locally available standpoint, absolutely do that.

But I think to say that this plant won’t work on me from Asia or Arizona and my jeans are from Wales is probably not a rule that’s tight enough that you need to worry about it.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay, that’s really good to know. Just a quick confirmation here. Adele asked, is Brigham Tea also known as Mormon Tea?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Absolutely,

Anna Sakawsky:

Yes. Okay. So if you see that somewhere, the Mormon tea, that is what we’re talking about.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Same critter.

Anna Sakawsky:

Same critter. Alright. Okay. So before we move on, I just want to get to a few of these questions because we’ve got a whole bunch coming in. So first of all, let’s see, I’m going to put up Cynthia’s question asking if there is a reference site to look up interactions with drugs and herbs. Do you know of anywhere where people might be able to find that information?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

There are some very good books. And if you do a search, first of all, don’t trust AI search engines. They’re idiots. They are idiots.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah. You had be really careful nowadays with that. I heard just speaking to a forger last week, and he was saying that you have to be extra careful nowadays because these foraging guides are essentially being written by AI and they’re wrong. And that could get into trouble,

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Especially with herbal medicine because what’s happening is the AI, little robots or whatever they are, they’re just surfing the web to look for stuff. They have no capacity whatsoever to decide what’s truth and what’s garbage and what was written by some blogger who knows nothing and what was written by a research study.

And so be careful when I do herb stuff, I do it occasionally just to see what it’ll say. And I would say 30% of the time there’s gross inaccuracies and incorrect things in the responses from the AI about herbal medicine questions. So be careful. Now that said, if you do a search, not asking the ai, but just do a search on your search engine and say drug interactions with echinacea, it will pull up websites from the Mayo Clinic or from other organizations that have done some research and say, don’t do this with it. Don’t do that with it. There’s also some good books I can send you. I some links you can put in your notes later.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, that’d be great. Yeah, we will have, just so everybody on here knows too. So we will have a replay coming out later today, but we’ll also be posting this on our blog later this week that should go up on Friday. So we can connect in between now and then if you do have links or sources or places that people can go, we are having a lot of questions just come in about specific interactions and contraindications and that sort of thing and too much honestly to get into on a live today. But if you do have any links that you can provide for us, we’ll put them in the blog post and we’ll send that out as well. So just so everybody knows, and you can kind of check it out from there. But again, check with your healthcare provider if you do have specific conditions or medications that you’re worried about for sure.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

And we always say that as a cover-your-caboose disclaimer, but the fact is that your physician knows why he’s giving you that drug. He knows what he’s trying to accomplish with that drug. And he will have a very different perspective maybe about what the herb is doing and what the drug’s doing if he knows rb. And sometimes the physicians oftentimes don’t know anything about herbs, and so they’re going to say, no, don’t do anything. I don’t know anything about ’em and I don’t know what it’s going to do to the drug. So no, I don’t want monkey wrenches in my machinery that I got going here, otherwise I don’t know what’s happening.

Anna Sakawsky:

For sure. And you’re right, and it’s left out of a lot of the medical training. I mean, I’m not a doctor from what I’ve heard from a lot of people who’ve gone through medical school, veterinary school, that sort of thing. Things like herbs, even nutrition honestly isn’t talked about enough. It’s really all about the pharmaceutical approach. Or you go online to look up something like, oh, is elderberry effective for this? And it’s like, well, not enough research has been done. And you got to think, well, why is that? Because these are things that in a lot of cases we’ve used for hundreds or thousands of years, and there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that they work, but it’s just that these studies haven’t been funded. And we won’t get into why that might be right. But there’s just, the research hasn’t been done because there’s no benefit to a lot of the pharmaceutical companies that are funding research.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

And that has been historically true. But I’ll tell you what, Anna, there is becoming an explosion of herb research in recent in the last couple of years that paradigm’s changing a lot. And so go to one of the research search engines, go to Google Scholar instead of just Google, and it only searches research papers and then say antiviral properties or just say antiviral and echinacea, use as few words as possible or antiviral in elderberry and it’ll pull up studies and you have to be able to read science to understand the studies. But there’s tons of studies on what chemical does. What One of our instructors in the Homegrown School of Botanical Medicine, Dr. Brandon Rose, has a PhD in physiology and he’s a professional researcher and he does all kinds of her research. And so it’s starting to happen. They’re getting all excited about it. Now they’re doing the opposite tack of what you just said is that there’s no money in it, so we’re not going to, now they’re saying, wow, there could be big money in that.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, there’s a lot of interest in it.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

They’re identifying that one chemical in that plant, which is also silly, but they’re doing that at least and saying, yeah, that really is a fantastic antihistamine or fantastic antiviral or whatever. And then they go off to make a drug similar to that chemical instead of saying, yeah, but the plant has 43 other really good chemicals that are also helping that chemical do its job. Maybe we should take the whole package.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah. Well, that’s good. That’s a great tip too. Google Scholar. I had never heard of that. So that’s a great Google Scholar. It only

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Searches, it only searches. Research websites. Research

Anna Sakawsky:

Studies. That’s great.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah.

Anna Sakawsky:

Alright, so let’s talk a little bit about lifestyle and other things that can maybe help us with combating some of these allergies. So first of all, with some of these herbs, are we taking them only when we have an allergic reaction or if you know, have spring allergies, can you start taking say nettles or whatever it is ahead of time? And will they help to prevent some of those symptoms?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Absolutely. Absolutely. You can do it as a maintenance thing. I have a lot of clients over the years have had that had serious seasonal allergies, and if they take a cup of nettles tea or a cup of Brigham tea a couple times a day, they don’t have many allergies. They’re taking way less pharmaceuticals and they’re feeling pretty great all summer. And so yeah, you can absolutely do it as a maintenance thing and you can also do it as an needed thing if you’re having a bad day and you need to take it three or four times, take it three or four times, but it can be used both ways.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Okay. Well that’s really good to know. Now, as far as other things that we can be doing, I know you said our diet, obviously our environment, lifestyle, that sort of thing can affect how things manifest in our bodies. But are there any specific dietary or lifestyle changes that could compliment the herbal treatments when it comes to allergies or spring allergies even in particular?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Well, I don’t know if there’s specific things just for allergies, but there’s things that are so good generally that they help your body do what it’s supposed to do. One thing I would say is that the gut flora and the micro, our bodies have billions of happy little bacteria living in our guts and they’re doing all kinds of stuff. I mean, they’re making neurotransmitters to make our brains feel happy. And one of the things they do is they balance the immune system and they modulate immune system function. And so if they’re happy, our body’s happy. So one of the things, so how do you make them happy, right? Well, you feed ’em, that’s what you do. And they live on insoluble fibers like cellulose plant fibers that mammals don’t even have the enzymes to digest. They love. So roots and cabbage and broccoli stuff that has a lot of fiber in it is a phenomenal nutritive and support for all those bugs. People take probiotics all the time and you’re taking a bazillion bacteria in a little capsule and then when they get there, there’s no lunch for ’em. So you invite a million people to lunch and then not have a nice lunch prepared. And so what you need to do is a prebiotic, which is foods that are high, this, we have a formula called prebiotic, and it’s just herbs that are full of fiber that the gut bugs adore and makes ’em really happy. And so from a nutritional standpoint, doing that is probably the most important thing. Eating stuff with less chemicals in it. The more agitation our immune system has, the more jumpy it gets.

Anna Sakawsky:

When it’s almost like then it’s fighting a war on multiple fronts then so the more you can eliminate, then it can just focus on dealing with this one issue.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

And that’s how we approach leaky gut is we heal up the gut and it decreases the antigens. And so the immune system calms down and it’s not looking for a fight. It is like soldiers sitting against the wall to North Korea and the Koreans keep throwing grenades over. Well, if those guys hear a twig break, they’re going to shoot. Right? So what we want to do is get those guys on a beach playing volleyball somewhere, right? Calm down, not so wound up and scared and ready to fight. Just decrease antigen loads, decrease reactivity, and that makes everything less intense, whether it’s allergies or stuff. Just clean up your life, clean up your diet,

Anna Sakawsky:

I’d imagine fermented, fermented foods would probably be helpful as well because of your healthy gut flora,

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Exactly. Whole organic foods. And if you can grow ’em yourself, fantastic. If you can’t grow ’em from yourself for yourself, there’s some sweet little old lady down at the farmer’s market that’s growing ’em for herself that would love to sell you some beets, go buy ’em from her. Access the resources to get the food that we’re supposed to have. And again, this is autoimmune and stuff, but a lot of the grains a of the foods that we’re eating are nothing like they were a hundred years ago.

And our bodies have no idea what to do with ’em. They don’t have the nutrients in ’em that they’re supposed to, and they have all kinds of other weird things they’re not supposed to. So if you can get your diet cleaned up and eat a really, I was talking to Michael Terra is a really great herbal, a great guy, and ages ago before I knew hardly anything about herbs, I actually did a consult with him over the phone for my mother-in-law who was having a disastrous health problem. And one of the things Michael Terra says, he says, stay out of the middle of the grocery store.  Just stay on the edges where it’s safe. Don’t go in the middle, no food in the middle. So all the box canned prepared foods are just kind of a wreck for us. Just eat a lot of produce, eat meat that comes from good clean sources that you trust and eggs and dairy from good clean sources you trust and you’ll feel better about everything.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, absolutely. Good tips for foundational health. Okay, so you kind of mentioned if you can grow the food yourself, right? Even, is that the case with herbs as well? Would you recommend to somebody, ideally you’re growing the herbs and you’re preparing your global medicine

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yourself. Yeah, that’s why the school’s called the Homegrown Herbalist School is because I think growing your own stuff is absolutely the best way to go if

Anna Sakawsky:

Somebody’s just, yeah, I was going to say, if somebody’s just starting out, maybe they have some gardening experience. Maybe for me, I started growing some vegetables, I had some knowledge of gardening, let’s assume that, but is looking to branch into more like medicinal herbs. Maybe they got some culinary herbs which have medicinal properties as well of course. But if they’re wanting to start like a medicinal herb garden, what herbs would you recommend starting with what are some that are maybe easy to grow and easy to use?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I’ll tell you almost all of ’em are easy to grow. They’re really, really easy to grow.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah, they’re almost hard to get rid of. I’ve noticed

Dr. Patrick Jones:

A lot of ’em are pernicious weeds. We were talking about horsetail earlier. My wife is an old Idaho farm girl and she knows all about weeds and we were out in the boondocks and I found this big patch of horsetail and I said, oh, I should dig some of this up, put it in the gardens. She says, oh no, you don’t. She said, no, no, you know where it’s you come get it. She says, I’m having enough trouble managing all your friends. What she said.

Anna Sakawsky:

I hear that we’ve got tons of horsetail here and then any of the medicinals that I have planted are just coming up everywhere. We’ve got horehound and mug wart and all sorts of things just popping up. Now what

Dr. Patrick Jones:

If you harvest them and use them? They’re vastly more manageable,

Anna Sakawsky:

Right?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

You’re,

Anna Sakawsky:

Because then you’re actually on top

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Of it harvesting ’em before they flour, like the mints. Some of the mints will grow from runners under the ground, but lemon balms pretty well behaved, and if you chop it down to use it three times a year, it’s not going to spread very much. It’s going to gradually from root expansion, it’s not going to do insane naughty things. We have a, that’s one of the things, we have a whole section of the homegrown school about gardening herbs and how to do it so they don’t take over your whole place and some fun strategies. And we could have, let’s do a thing on that. So

Anna Sakawsky:

We’re going to have to have you back a whole bunch of times. So many things that I want to talk more about with you now, just quickly, I want to also touch on children. I know that we’ve talked about some contraindications, pregnant nursing, that sort of thing. In general, when we’re talking about older children, maybe not in baby or toddler stage, but are most of these herbs safe for children in general? Obviously we’re going to need to follow, that’s the same kind of protocols of making sure that there aren’t specific interactions or contraindications, but are they generally just as safe for children as they are for adults?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

They are. My rule of thumb for kids is if they’re running around and talking and making sense, you don’t have to worry very much about her abuse. If there are still little people that aren’t running around and talking and making sense, you start being more careful. And if they’re infants, you’re really careful. But if they’re children, not toddlers, I get way less. And even toddlers, I don’t worry too much about any of the herbs we’re talking about. We talked about some of the liver tonic herbs for eliminating histamines, and those can be things like Burdock and Oregon grape and barberry. I wouldn’t use Oregon grape and barberry in little kids, but I would use burdock. I would use burdock and nettles a lot in little kids. That’d be really good for ’em. Put some in their smoothie too. But if that’s sort of my rule of thumb, and then I dose kids by weight, just if it’s half of an adult, give them half as much. If it’s a quarter of an milk, give ’em quarter as much.

Anna Sakawsky:

Oh, that’s a good way to kind of go about it without having to try to figure out specifics with weight and that sort of thing.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

That’s how I do it. Herbs have, for the most part, herbs have very broad margins of safety, and that’s

Anna Sakawsky:

How I do it. That’s good to know. Okay. I do want to get into some questions because we’re approaching the hour mark. I don’t want to go too much over, but there’s so much to talk about. So on that note about burdock, somebody actually had a question about how to harvest it now because you’re harvesting the roots, if you’re growing something like that, is there a specific time that you should be harvesting plants? If you’re harvesting them for the roots, what’s the best way to do this? Should you be leaving some to let it go back? How do you harvest? Okay,

Dr. Patrick Jones:

So with burdock, there’s some very specific things about harvesting the root, because burdocks a biennial, and so you’ve got your annuals that every year they seed flower to icy flower dye and your perennials that come up from the same root every year, like a tulip is a perennial murdoch’s a biennial. So the first year it comes up and does this low leafy thing. The second year it shoots up to flower, seed and dye. And so when it does that, when it shoots up to flower, it’s done thinking about roots. It’s pulling all the goodies upstairs to make flowers and seeds. And so as a general rule, roots are going to be a little better in the fall. Now the plant’s thinking about putting things downstairs again, but with burdock, you need to harvest that either in the fall of the first year or the spring of the second year before it shoots up to flower. And I harvest it in the spring. They’re a little bit bigger. They grow a little bit during the winter, but there’s no reason to leave any burdock root because it’s going to die anyway. It’s going to flower and die anyway that season. So spring of the second year is when I harvest burdock and the roots of burdock. And you’re going to leave some anyway because nobody’s going to get all of that. It goes down. Right.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Life’s too short to get all of it.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah. Okay. Good to know. Alright, we did have, let’s just see here. I’ve got a bunch of questions I’m going through. I know we did have some at the beginning. I can’t see them anymore, but I do want to touch on this. There were a couple questions that came in just about if you’re growing herbs in your garden and you have animals, you have pets or you have livestock or anything, is there any that you need to be cautious of being toxic to animals or?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I never have, and I’ve always had critters and gardens and things. The only garden herb animals, well, first of all, the carnivores aren’t going to get into it. Sometimes cats or dogs will get into the onions and in high quantities, onions and garlic can be toxic to cats and dogs. Sometimes dogs will eat grapes and grapes and grape leaf can be toxic to dogs, very toxic kind of melts their kidneys, which is bad.

Anna Sakawsky:

Oh, no,

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Not always. Occasionally, not always. I don’t even know why. But anyway, so there’s a few things like that, but honestly, animals are pretty good at knowing what to eat and what not to eat. The herbivores, there’s a reason God made things taste the way they taste. And that’s also true on the flip side, which is when they’re sick, they know what to eat, they have cravings and yearnings for specific things that they eat. Then we do that too, if we’d ever pay attention and listen to ourselves.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Yeah, for sure. Okay, touching on nettles again quickly. So there are a couple of questions Jody asked, what’s the difference between stinging nettles and purple nettles? And just to follow up on that, Marni had also asked, is nettle leaf horse mint for allergies? So I guess there can be different varieties of all sorts of different herbs, but in the case of nettles, are all types of nettles medicinal in the same way? Or what are we looking for?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

No, there’s several species that are called nettles. Horse mint, nettle leaf. Horse mint is a mint. It has nothing to do with nettles. It just looks like nettles.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Oregon grape has little berries that look like grapes, but they’re not related to grapes. You know what I mean? And so that’s one thing I’ll tell you that’s really important, Anna, is when you’re doing research on herbs, use the Latin name, not the common name. There’s probably 30 different plants called Indian tobacco just on this continent that are different species and are completely different from each other. So use the Latin name, know what plant you’re talking about. Dwarf nettle works about the same as stinging nettle, but tica is going to be the best species. Just use that one. It’s easy to find. It’s easy to, if you want to grow it, it has

Anna Sakawsky:

Some

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Things you might not enjoy in your garden about having sting growing there.

Anna Sakawsky:

Of course, yeah. There is the sting. And for anybody who doesn’t know the sting, when you do harvest nettles, as long as you’re wearing gloves, try not to get the sting from the fresh plant on your hand. But once they are dried, that sting goes away, right?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah, that’s right.

Anna Sakawsky:

Or cooked, or if you cook them. So do you grow your own nettles or do you forge them, or do you order them from somewhere? What do you do?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I order the nettles from a very reliable company. I do forage nettle seed because nobody sells it. That’s one of the herbs. I forage tsel root because nobody sells it. And I forage nettle seed, and of course the Brigham Tea, we are hiring someone to forage for us, but I don’t grow it in my garden. I have a whole slew of little grandkids and

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah. Yeah, you don’t want the, it’s funny. Well, we don’t grow it.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I’ve got it growing on my place, but I don’t grow it on your

Anna Sakawsky:

Property. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I love it. We use it a lot. And I actually quite enjoy it as a tea, but I am very wary start growing it here. I know I’ll never get rid of it then, but I used to forage it from, I used to work at a school and they actually had a patch in the school, and so of all the places, but the kids were good. They knew, just be careful that every once in a while they would get, somebody would change the soccer ball in there or something. But of all the places I was teaching at the school, and I would go harvest my stinging nettles from there in the spring. And this is a good time also to be harvesting some of these things because stinging nettles, for example, are coming into season right now. So some of these things that we’re harvesting, like you said, the roots we tend to harvest in the fall when the plant is putting its energy into the roots. I would presume that the opposite is true for leaves and the greenery earlier in the season.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah. Where’s the plant putting its energy? So in the spring, the leaves are going to be better. Now some leaves are better in a mature plant than they are in a brand new baby young spring plant. And I think nettles would be one of those. But you can eat nettles this time of year. I don’t know if anybody’s got it coming up yet. They probably do, but you can touch and eat baby stinging nettle, and it doesn’t sting at all. But a lot of the chemistry is therefore not mature. So in that plant, I do want it to be stingy. If I’m going to use it medicinally, I love to eat it as a green. I mean, talk about eating things that are really good for you. And when I’m talking about the powdered stuff in your smoothie, I’m talking about the stingy stuff, the adult plant.

Anna Sakawsky:

So dried and powdered.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah, dried and powdered. But yeah.

Anna Sakawsky:

Alright, so, okay, so let’s move on to that. And we’ve got a question about this, and I wanted to ask you about dosage and how we’re actually getting these herbs into the body. So Joe asked, what is the best way to use these herbs as a tea? You mentioned grinding them into a powder, putting them in your smoothie. There’s tinctures, which are typically an alcohol or glycerin based medicine. There’s multiple types of herbal preparation. So what is the best way to take these herbs

Dr. Patrick Jones:

To

Anna Sakawsky:

Prepare em?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

It matters almost, not at all. The herbs are going to do their job when they get to the office, when they get to work. And so it is just like you can get to work anywhere you want. You can drive your car, you get on a train, you can ride a camel. It doesn’t matter how you get to your office. Once you get there, you sit down and you do your job right. And the herbs are the same way. You can take the fresh herbs and eat ’em. You can make a tea, you can dry ’em and powder ’em and make a tea. You can dry ’em and powder ’em, put ’em on your peanut butter sandwich. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. You can put ’em in capsules. Sometimes that affects things because some things are doing stuff to your body before they get down to your small intestine where the capsule dissolves. But most things, I mean, if you’re taking cayenne to clear your sinuses, don’t put it in a capsule or your sinuses will never see it. You know what I

Anna Sakawsky:

Mean?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

That burn is part of the medicine, but you can make a tincture and there’s pros and cons to all those. We should do a lesson on that, A livestream on that’s,

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah. Oh, so many things to cover.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Tinctures have a huge long shelf life. That’s an advantage. They work faster, that’s an advantage, but they don’t have any fiber in them. And so you’re missing a lot of these herbs are phenomenal nutritive as well as being medicinal. So if you take burdock root as a tincture, it’s not helping your gut flora at all. No fiber in it. We strain it all out when we press the tincture. And so there’s pros and cons to everything. But the dose typically for an adult, for a powdered herb, dry powdered herb is around a teaspoon or two for an adult a couple times a day, two or three times a day for a maintenance boring thing. If you’re sick, take it more often. And again, what you do with that teaspoon full of powder, I really don’t make a tea out of it. Put in your smoothie, whatever.

Anna Sakawsky:

Yeah. Sarah actually asked, she said, I’m a coffee drinker. Can I add them to my coffee grounds? Would they have the same effect if you’re mixing them in? Sure. Yeah.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah, absolutely. As long as you’re not one of the things, you don’t want to boil ’em too long because some herbs lose a lot in the steam. Okay, so I don’t know how long, I’m not a coffee drinker, so I don’t know how long coffee boils in those coffee maker machines. Some herbs could care less. It won’t affect ’em at all. But if it’s anything in the mint family, I don’t want to boil it very long. When I make a tea, I boil the water, I take it off the heat, I throw the powder in, cover it, and when it’s cool, it’s ready. There’s an old process called Decoction where you take the herbs and you boil ’em for a half an hour or an hour to get the medicine out. Well, that was for roots and bark and heavy material. And if the old eclectics in the 17 hundreds that had a Vitamix blender, they never would’ve invented that process. A powdered herb takes a couple of minutes to leach all the medicine out of it. And so I just do simple diffusion on everything with powdered herbs. And like I say, I take it off the heat, throw the herbs in the water, put a lid on it, and I put the lid on it so that all the good stuff doesn’t get away in the steam. And then when I take the lid off, I shake all the good stuff back into the pot. Right.

But yeah, so yeah, that’s how I make tea.

Anna Sakawsky:

Alright, so tea is pretty simple. What about tinctures? So Ellie had a question about just how long do they last, first of all. So let’s just maybe just touch on tinctures quickly, because I think a lot of people have probably heard of them. Maybe not everybody knows exactly what a tincture is. If somebody is wanting to prepare a tincture, for example, what should they do? Is there a certain amount of plant material that they should mix with and what type of solvent should they use? And then how long can we expect them to last on the shelf?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

So the solvent that I always use is vodka. And the reason I use vodka is because it’s the perfect ratio. It’s about, it’s either 80 proof or a hundred proof and proof is twice the percent of the alcohol. Okay. So it’s either 40% alcohol or 50% alcohol, which means it’s half water and half booze. Right.

Okay. And in a plant, there’s some chemicals that are water soluble that like the water and some chemicals that aren’t like the alcohol. And so if you’ve got something that’s half and half, everybody’s happy. All the tea toters are happy, all the booers are happy. We all come to the party and we have a nice time. Pull all the chemistry out of that plant. If it’s a really oily resinous, sticky, hard to wash off your hands, plant any of the tree SAPs, things like that, frankincense and meh, stuff like that. I’ll use Everclear on those. It’s almost all alcohol and they’re not water soluble at all, so you might as well use the Everclear and get more out. But other than that, I use vodka for everything. Only use, and the only reason I use vodka instead of whiskey or gin or whatever, vodka is cheap. And this is a chemical process, not a social process. Right. If you want to spend a hundred bucks on some hundred year old whiskey, it’s the same proof as the $10 bottle of vodka. Go ahead and do that. It’ll work just as well. But why would you?

But it needs to be 40 to 50, 80 to a hundred proof is what you want. I don’t care what kind of blues you use, don’t ever use rubbing a alcohol that’ll kill you.

Anna Sakawsky:

It’s poison. Right.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

And then I always do everything with dried herbs. There’s some herbs you can tincture for and it works just fine. And I do that sometimes with stuff I know, but almost without exception, I dry stuff because the plants contain a lot of water, some of them. And if you put ’em in 40% alcohol and now you’ve added a lot of water, you can actually get below the threshold of where that’s preservative. And so now you open your tincture two weeks later and it stinks, a mold issue. Because the alcohol wasn’t strong enough to kill whatever it was in there. So I like to dry my plants. One tip is if you’re going to dry roots, slice them before you dry them or you’ll be buying new blender blades. And then I just grind ’em up in a blender. I mean, I have a really expensive, fancy stainless steel herb grinding machine that I bought and I never use it because the blenders work better and they’re faster and they’re easier to clean. Chop up.

Anna Sakawsky:

Could you just chop them up? I know I’m assuming the blending because that you’re going to increase the surface area and you’re going to be able to extract more of those medicinal properties. I’ve made my own kinesia tincture before and I just kind of chop it as fine as I can. Does that work in a pinch kind of thing? Sure, yeah. That will work.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

But I would tincture it longer. And in fact, I’ve had some, I make tinctures out of arrow leaf balsam root, which is the woodies hardest, most miserable stuff in the world, and it will not blend in a blender when it’s dry. It’s so hard. And so I chop it into little pieces and I tincture it for a week and soften it up and then I blend it and then do it for another couple of weeks. But it’s just a question of tiling.

Anna Sakawsky:

Right. Okay. And so how much plant matter to alcohol? For example, if we’re using vodka, should we, if we’re say you’re going to make a court jar of a teacher, it should be about half and half

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Or No, I do a one to five ratio.

Anna Sakawsky:

One to five. Okay. So

Dr. Patrick Jones:

By weight. By weight. So if I have one gram of dry herb powder, I’m going to do five grams of vodka by weight. And obviously you’re going to do more than one gram at a time, but that’s how you do it. It is just by weight. The other method is what they call the folk method where you put some herbs in the jar and you put some boos in them and cover ’em up. And that works just as well. It works just as well, but you have no idea what the concentration is. And I’m in clinical practice, I don’t want to figure out how strong this batch of whatever is. I want it to be the same as it always is.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. And then how long should you let it steep? I guess a couple weeks? Just a couple weeks at room temperature.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah, if it’s a powder, yeah, if it’s a powder, a couple of weeks keep it out of the light because light beats up the plants. So put it in a mason jar and keep it in your cupboard

Anna Sakawsky:

And then you strain it.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah, you strain it. I have a very, and that’s important. I strain herbs the day I need the bottle for something else.

Anna Sakawsky:

Oh, okay. So you just let them sit in there. I’ve done that multiple times. I’m like, I don’t know if that’s right or wrong. Can only,

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I do it at least a couple of weeks. I mean, I want a minimum of a couple of weeks, but it doesn’t hurt the tincture. Sometimes I’ll get an email from a student, oh, I made it. I went to your workshop last year and I just found the jar of herbs. I forgot to straight ’em in this tincture. That’s okay. Yeah, it doesn’t hurt ’em at all.

Anna Sakawsky:

And then whether you have the herbs in there or you’ve now strained it and you have this tincture, what is the shelf life of a tincture in general?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Years and years and years. I mean, I’ll probably be dead before most of my tinctures aren’t good anymore.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay. Well they last for a really long time. And if you’re using them at all, they’re not going to go bad on the shelf. I mean, I’ve taken tinctures that were over 10 years old and they worked great.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay, that’s good. Okay.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

 I just don’t worry about it.

Anna Sakawsky:

Alright, we’re just about 10 minutes past. I do want to wrap up this pretty quick, but we’ll go to a couple more questions and then we’ll kind of wrap up for now. And then as I said, we’ll have a replay and a blog post coming out with a little bit more information. We’ll share some of those links that you talked about earlier. But, so okay, here’s one. So Cheryl had asked, and there was a few people that liked this. So I think the few people want to know the answer to this. Have you heard of histamine intolerance? And if so, what can be taken to help?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Histamine intolerance would be, I mean, you’re going to use the same herbs because the body’s having a fit about histamine. It doesn’t like histamine. Well, that’s what we’re doing anyway.

Anna Sakawsky:

So the antihistamines, right,

Dr. Patrick Jones:

We’re eliminating it faster. The liver herbs like burdock and organ grape, we’re getting rid of it faster. That makes your body happy if you’re intolerant. The other herbs you talked about, the nettles and the Brigham T and the Iry, they’re decreasing production and release. So yeah, it’s the same thing we’ve been talking about. We all have histamine intolerance, we call it allergies,

Anna Sakawsky:

Right? Yeah. So that is essentially, yeah,

Dr. Patrick Jones:

It’s a much more severe example. But yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do. Same nail, same hammer. It’s just a bigger nail.

Anna Sakawsky:

So Cheryl, I can’t remember if it was the same Cheryl or a different Cheryl, but also asked is if freeze drying the herbs makes any difference in strength of the herb? I don’t know if you’re familiar with freeze drying or you’ve done any of it yourself or herbs, but is it the same as just dehydrating them? Is it better, is it worse?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I love freeze dried herbs. My only concern about freeze dried herbs is the temperatures that you’re using. Because like I said, a lot of the plants are not using volatile oils that have very low boiling points. And if your freeze dryer is going over 105 degrees or so, some of the plants, you’ll lose a lot of them. If it’s a mint for example, you’ll lose a lot of the medicine nettles too. Nettles doesn’t like to get super hot planting hates to get super hot.

Anna Sakawsky:

I think with the freeze dry–and I actually just got a freeze dry not long ago and I still don’t know enough about exactly what the process is–but I believe because we’re freeze drying them, we’re getting them really cold and then–

Dr. Patrick Jones:

It’s doing that. But then we’re heating ’em up to normal, but then it’s heating up inside, then we’re freezing them and then we’re heating them up and then we’re freezing them. That’s how it works. And You can set the temperatures and just make sure it doesn’t go over 105 degrees or so and then let it do its thing. But they reason, I mean they smell and look completely different than stuff you dry on a shelf, which is how I do it.

Anna Sakawsky:

So that was my other question. When it comes to drying, if we’re not freeze drying, then do you recommend just air drying or could somebody use a dehydrator?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I have used dehydrators, but I turn the heat down to nothing. All I want is the airflow. So turn the heat down as low as it’ll go and let the air do the work. Because again, heat for some plants heat’s a big deal. The way I dry stuff is I have wire shelving and we put screen door fabric on the wire shelving so stuff doesn’t fall through the wire shelving.

And you buy that at the hardware store and we throw the herbs on there and we put some fans on ’em and they dry. That’s how we dry herbs. Pretty high tech here at home, brother most. But we don’t use any heat because heat beats the heck out of herbs. And I get herbs, I can’t grow everything. I can’t grow enough of everything to keep up with myself. And, so I do buy some stuff and the stuff that I dry, when you open a jar of that, it fills the whole room with the smell of that orb. A year later it’s still doing that. And I buy stuff from really good herb companies that are all organic and I mean the owners are wearing tie dye and Birkenstocks and everything.

Yes, if they’re very committed. But you open up the stuff and you go, yeah, I guess that’s yarrow, right? Yeah, because completely different. And it’s because of the way it’s harvested, the way it’s dried in big commercial dryers, the way it’s stored in the warehouses and shipped and yada yada. And it’s a very different product. That’s why I say be a homegrown or blist and grow as much as you can of your own stuff.

Anna Sakawsky:

Okay. Well that brings me to what will probably be our last question. Just we do have to wrap up. So Sylvia asks, if you can’t grow herbs at the moment, where can we get these already prepared to use nettles and Brigham tea? So I would say probably if you have suggestions on where people could get the herbs themselves, if they want to make their own herbal preparations or where they can maybe purchase these herbal preparations already ready to go.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

So I know this really nice guy, I can’t remember his name, but he has this website, it’s homegrown herbalist.net. Homegrown herbalist.net I

Anna Sakawsky:

I think I might recognize him.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah, nice guy. Anyway, we have all kinds of herbs. 

Anna Sakawsky:

Fabulous beard.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yeah, he’s kind of old and can’t remember his name, but he’s a nice guy. Anyway, yeah, homegrownherbalist.net or.com or dot anything. We got all those domains anyway. We have single powders if you want to do just one plant. We have formulas in powders, we have tinctures. My books are there, the homegrown school enrollments are there. But we really do, we make everything ourselves. We don’t outsource anything. I buy raw materials from some herb growers that are man, they get scrutinized and if I get a bag of stuff and I don’t love it, it’s out the door. I don’t use it. And so we’re really picky about who will grow, buy stuff from when we are buying. We grow some of our own too, but if you want stuff that you can trust and is really high quality stuff, there’s companies I wouldn’t dream of buying herbs from because I’ve seen their garbage that they sell and it’s just astoundingly bad stuff.

Anna Sakawsky:

Alright, good to know.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

We’re there

Anna Sakawsky:

For you, visit you and you actually provide some of these things as well, right? You sell some of this stuff through your, I guess you

Dr. Patrick Jones:

We have a formula called histamine that has all the herbs we just talked about in it. That’s also, if you want an easy button, that’s an easy

Anna Sakawsky:

Button. Right. Okay. Well that’s great to know. So yeah, homegrown herbalist.net. And I know you’ve got products that you sell, but then you also have educational videos and a lot of more content and courses I think that you do as well for anybody who’s interested in maybe becoming their own homegrown herbalist.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Yep. We’ve got a YouTube there, homegrownherbalist. So yep, we have fun.

Anna Sakawsky:

Perfect. Well that’s fantastic. Well that is a ton of information and as I said multiple times throughout the show and we both said that I would love to have you back on and I’m sure that everybody who joined us here would love to return and have you back to talk about some of the other avenues that we didn’t have time to go down today. Whether it’s using herbs for animals and livestock or using herbs for colds and flu or various different things. So we’ll have to, and autoimmune disorders, so many things that we could talk about. So we’ll have to have you back. But thank you so much for joining us here today and thank you everybody who has stayed until the end here. So if you like this episode and are interested in what Doc Jones had to share today, then do be sure if you’re not already subscribed to Homestead Living Magazine, you can click the link below the video and you can subscribe and you’ll still have time if you subscribe right now to get the April issue.

And you’ll see Doc Jones’ lovely face on the cover and he’s got a more in-depth article all about using herbs to combat spring allergies. And the nice thing about getting that in print is there’s actually photos and images of these herbs as well. So if you are looking to, maybe you’re wanting to forage some Brigham tea or that sort of thing, you can see what the plant looks like. So nice to have that visual as well. So click the link below the video and make sure that you are subscribed so you get the April issue. Otherwise, we’re going to wrap up for today. So thank you so much for taking the time to join me here, doc Jones and all the hundreds of you that joined in today. So you’ll be getting an email soon with the replay link if you want to go back and revisit any of this.

And then like I said, we’ll have a blog post coming out later this week and I hope that you’ll all join me back here for episode four of the coop, which will be happening next month, April 7th, same time. And we’re actually going to be talking about herbs again. We’re going to have Kaylee Richardson of the honeyed on and we’re going to be talking about herbs and she’s also a beekeeper. So we’re going to be talking a little bit about how to use some of honey and some of the bee byproducts to compliment our herbal practice and lifestyle and holistic wellness practices. We can be integrating with all of these things for overall holistic whole body wellness. So join us back here for the next episode of the coop on April 7th. Otherwise, thank you so much and we’ll see you then.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Have fun. Thanks.

Anna Sakawsky:

Bye.