The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Lemon Balm

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey y'all, welcome to this week's show. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I had no idea. It was quiet and an opportunity for me to get some work done. And I actually took a couple of days off from podcasting. I don't normally do that. But there's a book I've been working on all year. And it finished by the end of this year. So that was a couple of days for me to buckle down and get some work done. And hopefully you'll be out by January. So I'm looking forward to that. It reminds me. My books make really great Christmas. gifts. I've written, I guess, about 16 books now, everything from herbal medicine to religious topics to cookbooks, gardening, all kinds of stuff. Definitely for your friends, family, your loved ones, or yourself, please consider my books as Christmas gifts. Everything's available on Amazon. I'm not the biggest fan of Amazon, but you got to admit they do a great job. They're extremely efficient. They get things to you delivered faster than just about anything else on the planet that I've encountered. I mean, wow, you can't argue with their business model, that's for sure.

Starting point is 00:01:10 So getting into today's show, just remember, especially as we get closer to Christmas, they will get you things fast. So if it's a last-minute Christmas gift, if you need something, you know, by the day before Christmas, my book's Great Christmas Presents. And, of course, you can go in order them now, too. You don't have to wait the last minute. But today's herb is going to be lemon balm. Now, this is a really interesting herb.

Starting point is 00:01:33 It's in the MEP family. It's called Melissa Aficionalis. That's the Latin name. As I've explained before, officinalist means it was once in the officina. The officina was the apothecary in the old monastic hospitals. So if you see the word officinalis or officinalis, it means it's a plant that's been used for,

Starting point is 00:01:58 a few thousand years in herbal medicine and it's what we call an official plant it is these days more considered as like a calming tea herb and slightly relaxing the scent actually is mentally stimulating so you can kind of like calm your nerves and your muscles and kind of perk up your brain a little bit with a cup of tea but of course that tea that you might buy at the grocery store that's lemon balm tea isn't necessarily all that fresh and it's not going to be anywhere near as potent as the plant can be in fact lemon balm the strong fresh plant tincture of lemon balm is one of the strongest sedative herbs there is so when you take that lemon balm and you dry it you're losing some of that when you put it in hot water a lot of it's steaming off and of course as it goes stale

Starting point is 00:02:53 you're losing that potency much better in my opinion as a tincture so we'll get into that in just a little bit the lemon balm was once an herb of great religious significance a lot of ancient peoples thought it was a magical herb the lemon balm's Latin name Melissa derives from its significance in ancient mythology lemon balm is associated with bees and the Greek word for B is Melissa And going back to the ancient history of, like, Turkey, if I'm not mistaken, yeah, Dr. John R. Christopher wrote an article on this. I've got it here on my notes. The Ephesians basically worship bees.

Starting point is 00:03:39 They had a great goddess that was a queen bee. And because the Lemonbaum and all her like servants and everything were called Melissa, you know, bees. And because Lemonbaum is one of the favorite earth, herbs of bees. Let me just a sip of water here. I'm getting a little catch in my throat. There we go. They thought this herb was like sacred to their bee goddess. Frankly, very glad I don't worship bees. But anyway, they did. And of course, the honey was very important to their culture. You know, it's like some tribes worshipped cattle. Some worship pigs, but that was their primary meat source. Some worshipped grain, gods of, you know,

Starting point is 00:04:29 of wheat and barley and such, because they were bread and beer brewing companies, I guess I should say, countries. These apparently Ephesians and turkeys, Turkish, not turkeys, Turkish, worship bees because honey was so important to their culture. They thought, you know, it was like a gift the gods and they couldn't live without it you know it's just the way ancient people thought the Greeks held the herb in very high regard and they also believed it to have some magical qualities now but you have to remember that we think of like the Greek civilization as being very very ancient and where all these great philosophers and scientists and mathematicians came from if you put it in the context

Starting point is 00:05:19 of world history, the Egyptians, the Ephesians, Turkish, and all that, much older cultures. And the early Christian writers writing in like the first one, two centuries went to great lengths to show how the Greeks had gotten their philosophy and a lot of their religion and mythology from the Egyptians who had been heavily influenced by the Hebrews. So when you sort of find these parallels among different peoples and different religions that have sort of like the same mythology about the creation of the world or such as that, well, you can actually just start kind of tracing it back through ancient Egypt, ancient Babylon, Assyria, and all that. And, you know, I'm sure if you went back far enough, everybody had pretty much the same beliefs. But, of course, they dispersed over time.

Starting point is 00:06:11 So the Greeks also believed it was magical, whether they came up with that on their own or they inherited. inherited it through more ancient peoples. They, Pliny the Elder, said that also wrote heavily a lot about how it was associated with bees. So I think it's definitely more of an influence than something they came up with individually. But he stated that if Lemonbaum was tied to the sword with which one had been injured, the bleeding of the wound would stop. I'm assuming he never tested that out because, see, I don't think there's any chance of that happening. But, I mean, that was the mythology of the time, and apparently they believe it. Now, of course, Diaz Korides was much more scientific in his approach.

Starting point is 00:06:58 In his time, in ancient Greece, it was called Melissa Philem. So that would actually be the knowledge of bees, if I'm not mistaken. Interesting. I mean, it's all lemon bombs are so associated with bees. Anyway, he describes it, and he says, A decoction of the leaves, taken as a drink with wine and applied, it's good for those touched by scorpions or bitten by harvest spiders or dogs. It does have some antimicrobial properties, so that's a legitimate use.

Starting point is 00:07:29 A decoction of them is a warm pack for the same purposes. It is suitable for women's hip vass for moving the menstrual flow. It is good as a mouth rinse for toothache. As an inima or suppository for dysentery, it does have some stringent and antispasmodic properties. The decoction of the leaves take it as a drink with Salt Peter, that's potassium nitrite, I should say. And they really loved potassium nitrate back now. And, of course, this is where sausage making had probably been around before ancient Greece and Rome, but boy, did they love their sausages.

Starting point is 00:08:04 I mean, they were sausage fanatics. And really, it was, now, this is some matter of controversy as well. Slavic peoples, of course, also love. their sausages and such. And of course, Poland is probably, well, in Germany, Poland and Germany, but especially Poland in my mind, are probably the largest sausage producers in the world as far as quantity of good quality. Now, you may say Oscar Meyer in the United States makes a whole lot more sausages, but I'm talking quality as well as quantity. I mean, these people are nuts about sausages, which is why I love their food. But it's very likely that the polls and the

Starting point is 00:08:45 Germans learned sausage-making from the Romans, when the Roman Empire spread into that direction. By, I think it was around 1,100, 1,200, Polish sausage-making was world-renowned. So much to the point that, you know, Poland, of course, was a thoroughly Catholic country. The Pope actually established a summer residence for a couple of centuries in Poland. because the Italian popes thought the Polish sausage was just absolutely superior. So why not go cool off in Poland and hang around in hot Italy? Go eat some sausage, right? I mean, so much of our history of herbal medicine is so closely related with sausage making

Starting point is 00:09:32 because so many of the herbs were used to preserve meat. So I always love the culinary uses of what we consider now to be medicinal herbs. But anyway, so they were very well. aware of salt peter or potassium nitrate. At this point they did not know it could be used to make gumpowder or anything like that. They did know it would preserve meat and they had medicinal uses for it. So the leaves take us a drink with salt peter or potassium nitrate help those that are ill from mushroom griping. So if you eat the wrong mushrooms they can cause, these would not be the ones that kill you of course. But many edible mushrooms eaten raw can cause gastric cramping

Starting point is 00:10:14 and indigestion, basically. And, of course, some that are not necessarily edible won't kill you, but will also do that. So that would be called mushroom griping. He says, taken as a linkedus, which is a syrup, it helps difficult breathing, and applied with salt, it dissolves scrofluous tumors or goiters. It cleanses ulcers. Smeared on, it lessens the pain of gout, which is also called, and he gives several names of the peoples of that time would call it.

Starting point is 00:10:41 and it's interesting the Romans called it apiastrum same root word as apiary again we're going back to bees so yeah it's amazing how all these cultures associated the lemon balm with the bees so following the Christianization of Rome and long after the fall of the empire herbal medicine was practiced by monks nuns and priests who operated charitable hospitals and grew herbs for the healing the sick there's a website site devoted to the great herbalist St. Hildegard von Bingen, it's called Healthy Hildegard. It states that the origin of monastic medicine gardens comes from Benedict of Nersia, founder of the monastery of Montecisina, that's the Benedictines, in 529 AD, who said before all

Starting point is 00:11:27 things and above all special care must be taken of the sick. These early monastic medieval gardens were typically limited to the plant's indigenous to the local environment, but as missionary movements expand its frontier, monks returning from far off lands, introduced. new medicinal herbs and over time the monastic gardens would expand to include a wide variety of medicinal herbs for use and study. The Emperor Charlemagne declared that monasteries and Abbey's plant what he called physic gardens and train religious for the free care of the sick. All hospitals were free back then operated by the Catholic Church. There was no other church and all hospitals were operated by the Catholic Church for free. It's a pretty good model,

Starting point is 00:12:07 actually. Maybe we ought to go back to that. We wouldn't have to have Obamacare subsidies and all that if we could just go down to our local Catholic hospital for free care. For some reason, non-Catholic hospitals don't like to give stuff away for free. Anyway, and of course most of the Catholic hospitals in America now are Catholic by association, but the doctors and nurses are not Catholic at all, and they're certainly not monks or nuns, and they're not volunteering their services. So you may get a better price at a Catholic hospital because there's not a corporation trying to make money but they should have to pay all the staff so it's not that much cheaper honestly when everybody that

Starting point is 00:12:52 worked there all the nurses and doctors were actually monks and nuns and priests nobody paid a penny at all and like I said a pretty darn good model maybe we ought to think about going back to that maybe we should go back to having religious medical orders There used to be several religious medical orders. The Benedictines were one of the biggest ones. They operate hospitals literally throughout the known world. When, I mean, as the Europeans discovered South America and North America, I mean, the Spanish and Portuguese, the Jesuits and such would go in and immediately open hospitals

Starting point is 00:13:32 and start treating the natives as well as the soldiers and the settlers. It was, again, a pretty darn good model. I don't know why we think that, you know, doctors need to be highly paid and someone can't be both a religious person who's taken a battle of poverty and a doctor. That's a pretty darn good way to be a servant of Christ in my opinion. What are you going to do? So anyway, he wrote the order called the Physica. That would include all the plants that were to be grown and Lemonbaum, of course, was among them.

Starting point is 00:14:12 He wanted the gardens to be filled with lemon balm. This was from the clover leaf herbs encyclopedia. Charlemagne, who later became known as Charles the Great, ordered it to be planted in all monastery gardens, both for its beauty and fragrance. It is speculated that Charles wanted the gardens to be filled with lemon balm since at that time. Lemonbaum was used for promoting youth.

Starting point is 00:14:33 Charles the Great born in 742 AD, King of Franks from 768, and Emperor of the Romans from 800 A.D. to his death in 814 A.D. Now, interestingly, even though Lemonbaum was so important, neither of St. Hildegard von Bingen nor Abbott's Walford Strabo, who was a great herbalist, who was actually the tutor to Charlemagne's grandkids, mentioned Lemonbaum in their works. I don't know why. Excuse me. and with Straubo was the author of the first herbal book entitled Hortulis written in the Christian era and more than likely because he did include mints and several other members of the family

Starting point is 00:15:21 lemon balm was just so popularly used and so well known at the time that no one felt the need to include it in a book on herbal medicine because if everybody's going in their garden if the holy roman emperor and king of franks and all that has declared you must grow lemon balm in your garden you got it already so everybody pretty much knew about it but the father of the great physician chemist and alchemist who would be known as pericelsis was a physician at a catholic monastery and dr william bomb bass von hohenheim who was actually the physician at einsledown it was sort of a monastery and a retreat where people would go and he taught the young theophrastus all about herbal medicine which was the medicine at the time and he also studied chemistry and

Starting point is 00:16:15 he's what they call the father of toxicology he kind of came up with like chemotherapy and such as that and he used a lot more of the indigenous herbs and he actually made a tonic using lemon balm. He called it Primum on Melese. This was a tonic drink said to renew youth and was used well into the 18th century.

Starting point is 00:16:44 Paracelsus was much ahead of his time. I'm quoting here from Cloverly Farms again. He pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in early medicine and was the first one to use the name zinc for the chemical element zinc in about 1526. Dude was absolutely brilliant. very proud and kind of pompous and unlike by a lot of people.

Starting point is 00:17:06 Of course, back then, chemistry and really all the physical science were heavily associated with alchemy. So after his death, he was very famous. It was very rebellious. He would not join the medical guilds. He was basically the doctors and pharmacists would run him out of town. They actually would put warrants out for his death, even though he was known to be the great. physician of his era. He upset everybody at the universities because he was in German-speaking countries. And instead of just speaking in Latin, he would teach his classes in the local

Starting point is 00:17:44 dialect of German and invite people in who weren't paying tuition. So anybody from the countryside to come in and learn medicine, and that just really angered everybody. So they ran him out academia the medical guilds and apothecus ran him out of medicine he basically traveled from country to country in extreme poverty often barefoot and not even having a horse to ride treating kings and queens and people who would send him letters saying I need your help no the doctors can cure me and he would come up with these wonderful formulas and he had a group of students that came to follow him They also lived in pretty much poverty and rejection. And they became the next great wave of innovators in medicine in the 1500s.

Starting point is 00:18:36 It was a brilliant guy, pugnacious, feisty, you know, the whole bit. But, and very arrogant, by the way. He did write a little in his life. He wrote two, three books maybe. After his death, within the next one, two hundred years, there are at least 100 books written attributed to Paracelsus, Paracelsus von Bambastas von Let's see, Theophrastus, Paracus, Fambastus von Hohenheim. And, like, he wrote none of them, right?

Starting point is 00:19:07 A lot of them are on alchemy and mysticism and all that, things he absolutely rejected. He actually had a professor that was doing seances and such, and he condemned him. He wanted nothing to do with the occult and mysticism. and remained a faithful Catholic up until the end of his life, even though he had some issues with the Catholic hierarchy at the time. He argued with everybody.

Starting point is 00:19:32 I mean, he did not get along with anyone, but he was quoted in the end of his life saying he would not burn with Luther, and he rejected the Lutheran movement and was buried in a Catholic church. So interesting, super interesting guy. I mean, really interesting. But that's really one of the main sources. elixir made with lemon balm is one of the main documents we have of the medicinal use of lemon balm in the 14-1500s you know so as the tradition of monastic medicine involved in a german

Starting point is 00:20:06 folk medicine this you know the medical establishment takes over especially after the protestant so-called reformation they get rid of the catholic hospitals now doctors and nurses are going to be professional non-religiously associated people and everything of course becomes very expensive. But the monks and priests and nuns who were trained in herbal medicine began teaching it to the common people in the countryside so you could practice it at home. People who couldn't afford to go to the doctor, people who couldn't afford to go to the pharmacy could treat themselves and their family in their own kitchen. That's where the entire root of German folk medicine comes from. So, oh word, I keep going to tick on my throat.

Starting point is 00:20:52 So anyway, one of the, let's see. So the tradition of monastic medicine involves a German folk medicine, mainly through the writings and teachings of priests and religious, who wish to make the knowledge of verbal medicine available to common people. I'm back on my notes now, that's why I'm repeating it. And that was often in opposition to modern allopathic doctors. Doctors and pharmacists and medical guilds did not like this at all. But, you know, they didn't have a lot they could do about it.

Starting point is 00:21:22 Lemonbaum would feature prominently in the German folk medicine of the 1800s, 1800s, 1900s. Father Johann Kunzel lists Lemonbaum as being a helpful remedy for entangled substances, excrete disease substances, and entangled gases, widely used by people and given to cattle, and increasing the healing effect of other herbs. Okay, let's try that again. In case of whooping cough, bathe the child twice a day in a warm bath enriched with boiled pine twigs and rub the breast seven to 12 times a day with a fern tincture. Now, he doesn't actually mention which fern.

Starting point is 00:22:06 I have a whole book on ferns, so we can get into that another time. He says, every hour give him a sip of cough tea to drink. The cough tea being a combination of thyme, lemon balm, peppermint, common couch roots, It's couch grass or cat grass and sage. And for sleep, sleep is important because during sleep, the blood is detoxified from any harmful substance. That's true. The liver cleanses the blood while you're asleep.

Starting point is 00:22:34 If you don't sleep, then all kinds of disease substances develop from the many disturbances and from the many disturbances arise. A glass of good wine in the evening helps me to fall asleep, while others achieve the same with a warm foot bath. Many sleep well if they place crushed, slightly warmed onion, or garlic under the back of their head. Now, that's an interesting thing. I have not tried that, but a crushed onion or garlic under your head. Others drink a cup of lemon balm tea.

Starting point is 00:23:01 Many people fall asleep easily if they dip a pair of socks and hot vinegar, ring them out and put them on, and then pull on a couple of woolen socks over them and go to bed with them. That's actually a folk remedy that was very popular in America, really up through the 1950s. Your grandparents might have done that. I've never tried it. but people say it really, really works. I have no idea. So Brother Aloysius wrote,

Starting point is 00:23:24 Lemon balm is a perennial herbaceous plant that grows one to two feet tall. It grows wild in France and is frequently cultivated gardens. It contains fragrant oil and much camphor. The sap is hot and aromatic. The leaves which resemble those of nettle or dentate, a little wrinkled and hairy. The flowers are small, pink, or white. Okay.

Starting point is 00:23:43 It moves from May of June. During this period, the flowering heads are gathered and for medicinal use for ingestion, headache, migraine, convulsions, gastric weakness, a languishing stomach, cramps and nervous twitches, chronic catteras, that's congestion, and it is especially good for mucus complaints in addition to nausea, flagelets, hysteria, menstrual disorders. So, British tradition, Gerard, 1500s, says, oh, he quotes Pliny and Miletus and all those a lot. He says, the virtues, balm, drunken wine is good against the bindings of venous beats, it comforts the heart, and

Starting point is 00:24:22 driveth away all melancholy and sadness. Common balm is good for women who have the strangling of the mother. Never really have figured out what that means. Some menstrual complaint, basically. He said, being eaten or smelled unto. The juice thereof glues together green wounds being put into oil, onion, or balm for that purpose and makeeth a great efficacy. The herb stamped and infused in the aquavide that's basically bruised the leaves and flowers of the herb and put it in strong brandy

Starting point is 00:24:57 may be used unto the purposes aforesaid or vodka. I mean the liquor, not the herb, and it is a most cordial liquor against all diseases spoken thereof. The hives of bees being rubbed with the leaves of balm causeeth the bees to keep together. and causes others to come unto them so I guess that's why people associate balm with the B's so much says the good for infirmities of the heart balm makes a heart merry and joyful and strengthens the vital spirits another herb was Serapio affirmeth that it be comfortable for moist and cold stomachs and to stir up to concoction the stoppings of the brain and drive away

Starting point is 00:25:40 sorrow and care from the mind yeah lemon balm has a long association with relaxation with good mood improving concentration says the leaves mixed with salt help with the king's evil that's scruffula for swollen infected glands in the throat or any other hard swellings and kernels and mitigated the pain of the gout said it would help another menstrual disorder called the whites coal pepper about a hundred years later says that the herb is so well known to be an inhabitant of every garden that I shall not need to write any description thereof

Starting point is 00:26:22 although the virtues thereof which are many may not be omitted and as I said I think that's why it wasn't much written about during the Middle Ages because it was just so common you won't see a lot of writing about parsley either everybody was growing parsley you know it's another one he says let a syrup of the juice of it and sugar be kept in every gentlewoman's house to relieve weak stomachs and sick bodies

Starting point is 00:26:47 of the poor sickly neighbors as also the herb kept dry in the house so that with other convenience simple as you may make it into an electuary with honey basically syrup with honey according to according as the disease is the

Starting point is 00:27:02 well hard to decipher that one the Arabian physicians have extolled the virtues thereof to the skies although the Greeks thought it not worth mentioning seraphio saith it causes the mind and heart to become merry and relieveth the heart feignings and swoonings especially of such who are overtaken in sleep and driveth away all troublesome cares and thoughts of the mind arising from melancholy it is very good to help digestion opens obstructions of the brain and hath so much purging quality when he says obstructions of the brain usually he's actually talking about like sinus congestion you know you can kind of see how that would be thought of as an obstruction the brain if you ever had bad sinus pressure um oh see said it was good for the blood and um the leaves steeped in wine and the wine drank and the leaves also externally applied good for bites and

Starting point is 00:27:54 stings um yeah pretty pretty much repeating the same thing we've already said um good for expelling after birth after child birth um um um oh the earth oh the earth bruised and boiled in a lot of little wine and oil and laid warm upon a boil will we'll bring it to a head or rip it and break it is what he said now getting up to more modern use but staying in the English tradition miss Greve in the 1930s says medicinal actions in use is carminative which means it helps settle stomach essentially diaphoretic means it helps break a fever as just febri-fuge it induces a mild perspiration and makes a pleasant and cooling tea for feverish patients in cases of

Starting point is 00:28:40 Catara and Influenza. Balm is a useful herb alone or in combination with others, excellent in colds, attended with fever, as it promotes perspiration. Used with salt, used for the purpose of taking away winds or sores and easing the pain of gout. Interestingly, she mentions a man named John Hussey of Sidenham. We have a lot of hussies in eastern North Carolina,

Starting point is 00:29:07 so that jumps out of me. It's a very common name when I was growing up. she says he lived to be 116 he breakfasted for 50 years on balm tea sweetened with honey and herb teas were the usual breakfasts of Llewellyn Prince of Lamorgan who died in his 108th year so hey who knows maybe balm will help you live longer I have no idea it has does have an association going back to ancient times with youth she mentions it's good including poperies and such and mixed with wine and really interesting this was a popular cordial of the time a cup of claret that's a wine and then it was called a claret cup well you start by taking a bottle of it

Starting point is 00:29:54 and about a pint of german seltzer water yes believe it or not in the 1930s you could get seltzer water it was a mineral water that came from underground springs and actually carbonated so you were mixing together a bottle of wine with seltzer water and a small bunch of lemon balm, a little borage, an orange cut in the slices, and half a cucumber. And add to that a glass of cognac and a little bit of sugar. Now, that's like a punch, right? And people loved it. They said it would lift the spirits and make people feel better.

Starting point is 00:30:29 I've never tried it. I've never tried the Claret Cup, but I've seen that recipe of many old books. Maybe one of these days we'll give it a try. but think about that wine seltzer water brandy balm borage cucumber which also borage and cucumber tastes alike and orange it'd be interesting and a little sugar you know one ounce of sugar she says

Starting point is 00:30:51 it's not very much at all really very very interesting but she says that a bunch of balm improves nearly all cups in other words any any wine any punch any liquor drink that you made any cocktail. A little bit of balm was added to it. Now, currently, Plants for a Future says Lemonbaum is a commonly grown household remedy and a traditional as a tonic remedy that raises the spirits and lifts the heart. Modern research has shown that it can significantly help with the treatment of cold sores. The leaves and young flowering shoots are antibacterial,

Starting point is 00:31:25 antispasmodic, antiviral, carminative, diaphragmetic, digestive, aminaogamines that brings on mincees, febrifuge, sedative, and tonic. It also acts to inhibit thyroid. activity. An infusion of the leaves is using the treatment of fevers and colds, ingestion associated with nervous tension, excitability and digestive upsets in children, hyperthyroidism, depression, mild insomnia, headaches. Externally, as you treat herpes, sores, gout, insect bites, and as an insect repellent. Yes, you can rub lemon balm on your skin to drive away mosquitoes. The essential oil contains citril and citronella, which act to calm the central nervous system and are strongly antispasmodic.

Starting point is 00:32:05 plant also includes polyphenols, in particular those that combat herpes simplex virus, which produces cold source. The essential oil is used in aromatherapy and is used to relax and rejuvenate, especially in cases depression and nervous tension. So, all that is fascinating, but it's not as dramatic as a story told by the late herbalist Michael Moore, the communist movie maker, but the communist herbalist. You know, I took his classes, and he was quite the character. So he had in Arizona, and I believe it one time, no, wait a minute, it was in New Mexico. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:32:51 I'm trying to remember where he lived at the time. Anyway, there were a lot of bikers in the area, and this was the, it could have been California at that point, because he was a musician out in the L.A. area before he came inland a little bit. But anyway, he, there were a lot of bikers at the time, and this is like, you know, the 70s, and everybody's looking for the next high, essentially. And his herb shop was as much as a head shop, as they used to call it, as anything. And he's always experimenting with all these herbs that his clientele might enjoy. So he decides to do a fresh plant.

Starting point is 00:33:33 of lemon balm. Now I told you how the oils of lemon balm degrade as the plant dries and everything. This is where you really differentiate between lemon balm in its full potency and like a relaxing cup of tea. If you go out on a summer day when the lemon balm's in flour and it's perfectly fresh and you want to get there when the dew is essentially evaporated off the plant but it hasn't gotten hot in the noon time so that the oils start evaporate off you got to get the exact right time you harvest everything very fresh you rush in you toss it straight into a blender and if you can't get there quick enough you have to keep it cold on ice or whatever anyway you get home you put it straight into a blender with super high proof vodka we're talking

Starting point is 00:34:26 the highest ever clear you can get even better if you can get like pharmaceutical strength alcohol. Slap the lid on, do not let any of the gases escape, put it on puree, just absolutely juice it to death, you know, and then put that directly into a bottle or a jar, seal it tightly, put it back for about a month in a dark cabinet. Keep it cool, keep the sun off of it. What you've done is you've totally trapped all those essential oils, but this is a fresh plant tincture. So you can't do this with regular body. If you put that much fresh plant in with regular vodka, the water inside the plant will dilute the vodka and will cause it to start to mold or rot. So you've got to do it just very quickly, specifically like that.

Starting point is 00:35:12 So anyway, he makes this fresh plant extremely strong, extremely potent lemon balm tincture. And he takes about a teaspoon of it and goes to sleep. It just knocks him out. And he finds it be very pleasant. so he had started selling it in his store big old hairy hell's angel comes in there and he says I want something that'll just knock me out what have you got he said well I just tried this I just made this give it a try he gives him a dose of it the guy just like 10 15 minutes later just plops down in the middle of the store blocking the customers from moving in and out and just like sits there just zoned out dazed out for like

Starting point is 00:35:57 30 minutes. And he's like, I'll buy all that you got. So he tells him some of it. He goes out and basically instead of taking a teaspoon full of it, starts taking shots of it, gets on his Harley and goes tearing down the road with his buddies. And by the time they get about two, three miles up the road, they start coming to a stoplight. And his bike just starts slowly tilting over. And he ends up on the sides, skidding through the stoplight, getting all torn up, and ending up in a huge patch of poison ivy. So literally, that's how strong this little common tea herb can be. It's a member of the mint family, and the mints like the sages can often be incredibly strong. Psychological effects and physical sedative effects and such as that, always be careful, always use herbal medicine

Starting point is 00:36:55 and with care, and, you know, it wouldn't be a bad idea to make some of that fresh plant tincture back, not for recreational use, but for, like, when you break a leg or something, you know, when you're in serious, intense pain, and with those fever-reducing properties, so you think about when you have those really bad fevers, they call all the pains and your thighs and everything, that'd be the perfect time to have just a few, a small amount of that tincture. So anyway, that's lemon balm. Believe it or not, one of the most underestimated herbs in all of herbal medicine with one of the most rich, fascinating histories and powerful uses when handled properly. So y'all, have a great week. I'll talk to you

Starting point is 00:37:42 next time. Please buy my books and have a very, very merry Christmas. I'll talk to you a few more times between now and then and just wishing everybody all the best. Have it going. 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.

Starting point is 00:38:14 I'm not offering any advice. I won't even claim that anything I write or say is accurate or true. I can tell you what herbs have been traditionally used for. I can tell you my own experience and if I believe an herb has helped 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.

Starting point is 00:38:37 What works for me may not work for you. You may have an allergy, a sensitivity, an underlying condition 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, to be responsible for yourself to your own research, make your own choices, and not to blame me for anything ever.

The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Lemon Balm

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