The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Hawthorne

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey y'all, welcome to this week's show. We'll continue our series on the medicinal uses of trees. And this one's going to be a big one. This one is a really good one. You're going to want to know this one. And it is such a fascinating plant, actually. It's hawthorn. Hawthorn, it's a big family. There are 78 varieties of Hawthorne that are used in herbal medicine, at least, that have documented use. I think that's not even all the varieties of Hawthorne, and they can pretty much be used interchangeably, so I'd say just about any kind of Hawthorne can be used. anything any kind of hawthorn can be used i am not going to even begin to list all the ones that are native to my region um they're probably 80 i mean hawthorns are a very pretty ornamental tree very widespread you can find them cultivated you can find them wild they have um long uh history you know i love the lore of plants right according to christian tradition saint joseph's staff was made of hawthorne and

Starting point is 00:01:17 was aaron's rod also made of hawthor? I cannot remember that. But it's a symbol of Christianity. And the first Christian Christmas trees were actually hawthorn bushes. You know, the evergreens that we use now really only came about when they decided to try to replace some of the Nordic pagan holidays with Christian holidays to get the people more culturally Christian. Because, you know, people still like to celebrate their holidays. And so if you could associate a Christian holiday with a pagan holiday, it was a lot easier to get people to convert, basically. And so that's when they started using more of the evergreens that we think of as the modern Christmas tree. But the original was a hawthorn. And in fact, it's long been associated with Catholicism.

Starting point is 00:02:16 And when President Kennedy was assassinated, the Queen of England sent a hawthorn bush to be planted by his grave. That was actually very symbolic of the relationship between the two countries and the two churches, both the Anglican and Catholic Church. So, so many uses. And, I mean, edible as well. I mean, the hall berries, the fruit, make fantastic jelly and jam, certainly wine, pies, anything you could dry. You can dry them and snack on like you would raisins.

Starting point is 00:02:55 Long time survival food in Native Americans and early America. Really, probably popular until just the past couple of decades when the family disintegrated and people started moving all over the country and not passing down family land and staying in the town where they grew up and everybody forgot how to you know stay married raise children and cook for themselves eat the food that grew on their property you know Hawthorne is is very cool actually and let's see well we'll start with you know I referenced England so let's start with England in the 1600s Culpeper in his

Starting point is 00:03:43 time Hawthorne was so commonly planted as an ornamental in a fruit-bearing bush that he said, it is not my intention to trouble you with the description of this tree which is so well known that it needs none. It is ordinarily but a hedge bush, although being pruned and dressed it grows into a tree of reasonable height. He said the Hawthorne tree at Glatskenbury flowered yearly on Christmas Day, another reason Hawthorne had an association with Christianity. But he did not actually think it always flowered on Christmas Day. He thought that was a superstition. He goes on and talks about, oh, different traditions.

Starting point is 00:04:24 he goes on and talks about whole different traditions. One in Cheshire that flowered both in Christmas and in May, which is very interesting. But if the weather was frosty, not until January. That doesn't mean anything to us. There's so many varieties. We've got the black haw. We've got the possum haw.

Starting point is 00:04:42 I mean, these are just native to my region. I mean, so many members of the Cretaceous family. And he says of its medicinal value, the seeds and the berries beaten into a powder being drank in wine are held singularly good against the stone. He means kidney, bladder stones, such as that, and are good for dropsy, so diuretic. Dropsy use water retention, edema. The distilled water of the flowers stay the lask. And that's, what is lask? There's lask and flux in the old English herbal lore. One's diarrhea and one's excessive menstrual bleeding. So I think that may be the menstrual one. I'd have to look it up.

Starting point is 00:05:24 But, you know, basically it's astringent, and it's going to help dry things up. So most things like that are pretty much interchangeable, really. The seeds cleared from the down, bruised and boiled in wine and drank is good for inward tormenting pains. I'm not sure exactly. Inward tormenting pains, not sure, you know. Maybe we'll figure this out as we go along. If cloths or sponges be wet in the distilled water and applied to any place wherein the thorns and splinters or the like do abide in the flesh, it will notably draw them forth. That's an astringent property. It tightens the tissue and can help push a splinter or a thorn out.

Starting point is 00:06:06 And he says, thus you see, the thorn gives a medicine for its own pricking. And so doth almost everything else. So that was a big part of his philosophy. That, you know, we could see the signs of medicine in nature and just had to know how to use it. I definitely agree with him on that. and just had to know how to use it. I definitely agree with him on that. Galen wrote, you know, much earlier, much earlier, the haws or berries of the hawthorn tree, as Diascorides writeth, do both stay the lask, the menses, and all other fluxes of blood. Okay, there you go. Some authors write that the stones beaten to a powder and given to drink are good against the

Starting point is 00:06:51 stones. And D.S. Corrides did mention Hawthorne in his classic work, Demateria Medica, you know, ancient Greek text, but his main use for it, though, I don't think is going to be very valid. He thought that hawthorn berries consumed by a potential mother would ensure having male children, so I left out a lot of his information on the hawthorn because, you know, it just did seem to be a bit iffy, to say the least. More modern, Miss Greve said of the British tradition that Hawthorne was cardiac, diuretic, astringent, and tonic. Now this is a very important way we use it now. Hawthorne has an effect on the heart rate

Starting point is 00:07:38 and the strength of the beat of the heart. It can help regulate an irregular heartbeat. It can help with arrhythmia. And it can beat of the heart. It can help regulate an irregular heartbeat. It can help with arrhythmia. And it can help strengthen the heart. She said mainly, and again, I'm going to give my disclaimer. I'm not giving you medical advice. I'm just telling you what has been documented in herbal use over many centuries. She said it was mainly used as a cardiac tonic and organic and functional heart troubles.

Starting point is 00:08:06 Both flowers and berries are astringent and useful in a decoction to cure sore throats. Useful diuretic and dropsy in kidney troubles. In the Irish tradition, John Kehoe states that the fruit is dry and astringent. It stops flows of excessive menstruation. The flowers are very good for breaking up stone in the kidney and bladder. John Kehoe, I always say, he wrote the Irish herbal Herbarium Hibernicum, I think, somewhere around 1800. And I always joke that he is the least loquacious or talkative Irishman on the face of the earth. I mean, he wrote everything in just such terse, short language. He's a great reference for that

Starting point is 00:08:50 reason, but very not Irish in character. You know, as a Carol, I can say we have the gift for the Blarney. We tend to go on and on in more modern use. The fruits and plants for future states. The fruits and flowers of Hawthorne are well known in herbal folk medicine as a heart tonic, and modern research has borne out this use. The fruits and flowers have hypotensive effects as well as acting directly as a mild heart tonic. Acting as a direct and mild heart tonic, I think is actually how they wrote it. They are especially indicated in the treatment of weak heart combined with high blood pressure.

Starting point is 00:09:28 Prolonged use is necessary for it to be efficacious. It is normally used either as a tea or a tincture. The fruit is anodyne, anticholesterolemic, antidiuretic, antidisenteric, so that would be dysentery, diarrhea, and antidiureic, so that would be dysentery, diarrhea, and anti-diarrheic, also diarrhea, astringent blood tonic, cardiotonic, hemostatic and stomatic. It is used in the treatment of dyspepsia that's in ingestion, stagnation of fatty food, abdominal fullness, retention of lochia, amenorrhea, postpartum abdominal pain, hypertension,

Starting point is 00:10:06 and coronary heart disease. And, you know, I do have a friend that uses Hawthorne for heart disease and finds it very effective. In fact, more effective than the prescription medicines and it just blew his doctor away, you know.. So they go on to say all varieties of hawthorn can be used. It may be harvested twice in a season. Fresh flowering tips then ripe berries. Hawthorn is recognized for being good for irregularities of the heart. It dilates, strengthens, and improves coronary arteries. It is good for overexertion when we surpass the limitations of our age or fitness. Hawthorne is good for arrhythmia and angina. Hawthorne is especially good for the middle-aged. Many herbalists believe that Hawthorne may be used as an alternative to digitalis or even

Starting point is 00:10:58 used together so one can use less digitalis. So, when I tell you this is an important plant to know, yeah, it's an important plant to know. It could save your life or give you a much better quality of life. And in a, you know, grid-down situation, if you couldn't get prescription digitalis or other, you know, heart medications, you'd want to know Hawthorne's. The Rodale or book says Hawthorne has been valued as a heart tonic. This value has been increasingly studied in recent years. Promising results have been reported in connection with a variety of heart ailments, including angina pectoris, abdominal or abnormal heart action. It is also said to be effective in stenting arteriosclerosis, commonly known as hardening of the arteries.

Starting point is 00:11:52 They give a dosage that isn't going to make a whole lot of sense to you right now, but they do state that although non-toxic, Hawthorne can produce dizziness if taken in large doses. Hawthorne has also been used in treating arthritis and rheumatism and for emotional stress and nervous conditions. The reason I said it wouldn't make a lot of sense, they use the old pharmacist or apothecist measurement of grains. Unless you actually have a chemistry set, you're probably not going to be doing that. But they say they committed be made into a tincture of an ounce of Hawthorne berry powder to a pint this is a high proof alcohol this is more like Everclear or something I always use just 40 40 percent a proof vodka for all my tinctures so you might want you might need to increase the doses just a little bit if you use just plain vodka as opposed to Everclear or a higher proof grain alcohol because that extracts more from the plant material. But they said the tincture was given in doses ranging from 1 to 15 drops.

Starting point is 00:13:01 So even so, they're not giving you a lot of detail in how much to use. It's going to be very individualistic. If you use it, you're going to have to learn how it works for your constitution. The physician's desk reference for herbal medicine tells us that Cretagis is a well-studied herb for use in cardiovascular disease. Historically, it has been used for congestive heart failure, commonly in combination with cardiac glycosides, as it may potentiate their effects, thereby reducing the dose of cardiac glycoside drugs. Neurosclerosis hyperlipidemia is well documented. The active principles are procyanindins and flavonoids, which cause an increase in coronary blood flow due to dilatory effects, resulting in an improvement of myocardial blood flow. The drug is positively inotropic and positively chronotropic.

Starting point is 00:14:04 I don't even know what those words mean, okay? I'm not a doctor. I'm a plant guy. I'm a herbalist, but you can look them up. The cardiac effect of Cretagis is said to be caused by an increased membrane permeability for calcium as well as an inhibition of phosphodiesterase with an increase of intracellular cyclo AMP concentrations so yeah if you have a medical background maybe you know what that means show it to your doctor if you're trying to discuss Hawthorne with him so It's from my book, Medicinal Trees. But this comes from, it's actually just a quote I pulled out of the physician's desk reference for herbal medicine. So I don't know if you can find that online or not.

Starting point is 00:14:54 Give it a shot. I mean, you know, you can always just copy and print to take into your doctor because the PDR is huge. I mean, it's like a 3 000 page book or something it weighs gosh i don't even know 11 12 pounds and often very expensive quite an investment when i bought one but i thought hey i need to know about interactions before i start telling people how to use herbs and even though it's boring as sin it is a very very uh useful reference. Let's see where I left off. High dose may cause, oh, let's see. Increased coronary and myocardial circulatory perfusion

Starting point is 00:15:33 and reduction in peripheral vascular resistance were observed. High dose may cause sedation. This effect has been attributed to oligomeric procyanidins. Cretaceous extract has been found to prolong the refractory period and increase the action potential duration in guinea pig papillary muscle. Okay. I don't know what they're doing to those guinea pigs. I'm probably not going to get into that One study demonstrated that a Cretaceous

Starting point is 00:16:11 That's Hawthorne, by the way, extract Blocked the repolarizing potassium currents In ventricular myocytes of guinea pigs This effect is similar to that of class 3 antiarrhythmic drugs. So that's what they're saying. They're just saying in animal studies that it was shown to be similar to antiarrhythmic drugs, you know, an arrhythmia of the heart. And may explain the antiarrhythmic effect of Hawthorne.

Starting point is 00:16:39 Cretaceous, due to its high flavonoidid content may also be used to decrease inflammation, decrease capillary fragility, and prevent collagen destruction of the joints. So yes, very good for arthritis as well. And really just one of those essential plants to know. Most of the trees in this book are unknown to most herbalists. As I said, when we started out, most people think of herbs. I mean, when I started this series, most people think of herbs as, you know, little green plants. And they are. But the trees are big green plants or big brown plants or whatever. And they're often far more potent medicinally than the herbs most people think

Starting point is 00:17:27 of when they think of herbal medicine so that's why whenever i'm teaching anybody about herbs i start with the trees they're easy to identify um you know you don't even yeah get a cell phone app you know i naturalist or something. Something like that's pretty good. But two, three field guides or somebody that just knows the woods can go out and teach you to identify all the trees within, you know, a mile of your house in probably an afternoon. I mean, it's the easiest way to begin to learn plant identification. And you're going to have a medicine cabinet in your backyard. I mean, for just about any condition for which I would use herbs such as, you know, the ones I might grow in the garden or the seasonal weeds that I might

Starting point is 00:18:22 collect, right? I can probably find a tree, and oftentimes it's going to be more powerful in effect. That just seems to be the way it is with trees. Shrubs and woody vines as well. I've done a whole other book on medicinal uses of shrubs and woody vines. I like to start with the big plants first, and then we work down to the smaller ones you know with some exceptions you know you're gonna learn to identify the mint family very quickly so many of our medicinal herbs and culinary herbs are in the mint family

Starting point is 00:18:57 sage the wormwood artemisia's yeah others, you know, certainly Valerian and Skullcap, which is actually in the mint family, actually. in discussing trees in a shorter period of time that you can actually use, put to use right away, than I can any other classification of plant. It gets real murky when you get into mushrooms and such. Mushrooms take a lot of experience in identification, and their medicinal uses are not as well documented. Same with mosses and ferns. Ferns, yeah, I wrote a whole book on medicinal ferns. Again, that's really a much higher level than just learning the trees. I usually teach people the trees and then the herbs they're already going to have in their kitchen cabinet. So I start with trees and then I go to culinary herbs and then we get into more of the the traditional

Starting point is 00:20:09 herbs that most people use because you know I'm I have a very practical mindset I'm not teaching someone how to be a clinical herbalist you know it's going to see patients and and have to treat all kinds of weird stuff. I'm not teaching someone to be a plant geek. I'm teaching you to actually have practical information that you can use when you need it, in an emergency situation or whatever. Anyway, y'all, I think Hawthorne is great. It definitely, definitely includes some of these in your landscape if you don't have some already.

Starting point is 00:20:48 There's so many of them growing near creeks and such, so get out in the woods and look for them. They're not hard at all to identify. Some of them are quite thorny, quite thorny. And if you're looking for a good hedge plant to keep people and deer and such out of your yard, you really can't beat hawthorn. A thick hedge of hawthorn will do the trick. You know, I would probably combine it with a few other plants. You know, I mean, I could see putting prickly pear cactus and yuccas up front, and then maybe a row of hawthorn, maybe a row of locust trees uh some climbing roses oh definitely

Starting point is 00:21:26 some thorny uh blackberries to do a hedge to really prevent people from coming on your property and to keep the deer out of your garden um you know they call them hedgerows in england and they use them in place of fences all the time and they kept cattle in and people out but um yeah hawthorns is is just absolutely one of the best, really one of the best. There are a few others you might want to consider putting in there. I mean, autumn olive, if it's not prohibited in your area. Nitrogen fixing, it's going to help everything else grow, and it's going to grow very densely in there. Oh, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:22:01 I could probably come up with about five or six other good thorny plants that are useful. You know, as much as I love holly trees, I'm not big on a hedge of holly bushes. It has to be pruned a lot, and I always get scratched up, and it just really just makes me mad more than anything else. If I'm going to have something that has thorns on it, I want it to give me some fruit in return or some medicine and while holly does have some medicinal properties it's also fairly toxic

Starting point is 00:22:29 and really shouldn't be used by people who don't know what they're doing so anyway y'all I'll wrap it up there have a good one and I will talk to you next time the information in this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or condition

Starting point is 00:22:44 nothing I say or write has been evaluated or approved by the FDA The information in this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or condition. Nothing I say or write has been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not a doctor. The U.S. government does not recognize the practice of herbal medicine, and there is no governing body regulating herbalists. Therefore, I'm really just a guy who studies herbs. I'm not offering any advice. I won't even claim that anything I write or say is accurate or true.

Starting point is 00:23:05 I can tell you what herbs have been traditionally used for. I can tell you my own experience and if I believe in herbs help me. I cannot nor would I tell you to do the same. If you use an herb anyone recommends, you are treating yourself. You take full responsibility for your health. Humans are individuals and no two are identical. What works for me may not work for you you may have an allergy a sensitivity, an underlying condition

Starting point is 00:23:28 that no one else even shares and you don't even know about be careful with your health by continuing to listen to my podcast or read my blog, you agree to be responsible for yourself, do your own research make your own choices and not to blame me for anything ever

Starting point is 00:23:48 thank you

The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Hawthorne

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