Elderberry syrup isn’t everything an herbalist has to offer to someone suffering from a cold, the flu, COVID, RSV, or any of the other respiratory ailments to which we humans are susceptible. Despite being the first to come to many minds when asked if they’re prepared for winter illnesses, we encourage you to broaden your view both of what elder does, and what herbs can do.

Elderberry is famous for inhibiting viruses by interfering with their capacity to replicate. Elderberry constituents have been shown in petri-dish studies to bind the neuraminidase ‘spike’ on the virus. It can therefore reduce the virus’ capacity to ‘break into’ our cells and convert them into virus-making factories.

Sounds good! Note, however, that this particular mode of action was identified through in vitro studies. The limitation here is that the required concentration of those constituents may not be attained in our bloodstream when we ingest elderberry syrup. It may not reach the tissues which are under attack by the virus. So while this is an interesting mechanism of action – and one we’ve taught about often when discussing elderberry – we now consider it as less relevant to the impacts of elderberry on viral illness.

So what matters more? The effects of elderberry on inflammatory patterns in the body. An efficient immune response includes inflammatory and anti-inflammatory actions, both at the right times and in the right amounts; elderberry supports this. And here’s the good news: so do other berries! Every berry with deep pigmentation – blueberry, blackberry, cranberry, serviceberry, aronia berry, and many more – will work to improve inflammation management within the body. At the same time, they’ll enhance vascular integrity and flexibility (particularly important given the capacity of COVID to damage these tissues).

So elder isn’t the only berry who can help us. And berries aren’t the only supportive herbs, either – nor are herbs the end of our options! First of all, elder offers flowers as much as berries, and those are helpful for managing fever.

Working with elder in formula with other herbs – like our homemade winter elixir – is an excellent way to enhance its actions. But there are also plenty of good herbs beyond elderberry syrup, including decongestants like sage, expectorants like elecampane, and aromatics like pine. Last but not least: nourishing food, gentle movement, and restorative sleep can each be just as important as any herbal remedies we choose.

Listen to the episode for a COUPON CODE to get our Cold & Flu course for only $20!

Herbal Remedies for Cold & Flu teaches you everything you need to know to conquer a cold or fight off the flu. We teach you how to work with herbs that are safe and effective for all aspects of the illness. These strategies can also be very effective when coping with COVID, RSV, and other respiratory infections, too! Our focus is on finding ways to support what your body is already trying to do as it works to restore balance.

Like all our offerings, these bundles of self-paced online video courses come with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more.

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

We’ve been running a clinical herbalism mentorship program of one kind or another for more than fifteen years. We have some thoughts! Today’s episode is all about our model for a clinical herbalist mentorship, what we think it needs to include, and how it’s structured to benefit our students and clients most fully.

For context, we do have prerequisites to join mentorship – you need to have your herbal know-how dialed in before you can join! Completing our Family Herbalist and Community Herbalist programs, and performing well on the exams, is the baseline. Our mentorship students are also working through the Clinical Herbalist coursework concurrently, because mentorship is less about knowledge and more about communication, connection, strategy, and practicality.

Our students participate – first as observers, then as clinicians with faculty backup, then on their own – in our Free Clinic and Student Clinic sessions each month. We hold roundtable meetings with them after each of these events, so that everyone can share their cases and get feedback or suggestions. When they’re ready to conduct their own sessions, we roleplay clients whose health issues – or personalities! – present a helpful challenge for that student. In this way they get prepared to take on whatever may come.

We also work with our students to get their systems & marketing on point. It may not be what attracted you to herbalism in the first place, but if you want to be a clinician, you’re running a small business! You need these skills in order to sustain your work for the long haul, so we see them as equally important to formulation strategies or protocol construction.

Overall, our goal is to provide a clear path, with supports all along the way, toward greater independence and confidence as a clinical herbalist.

If you'd like more information about the Clinical Herbalist Mentorship, you'll find it here, as well as information about the pre-requisites. 

If you’d like to walk this path and you’re starting at the beginning, check out our Family Herbalist and Community Herbalist programs! They’ll get you fully prepared to enter into clinical training.

Like all our offerings, these bundles of self-paced online video courses come with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

If you haven’t made herbal cold/flu/COVID care kits for your household yet, now is the time! Herbal care kits are one of our very favorite things. Here’s the premise: when you’re sick, it’s hard to think, no matter how good an herbalist you are. So get the stuff you’re going to need ready ahead of time! It’s like taking care of your future self.

Plus, it’s likely that you’re the herbalist in your household – so you’re going to need to take care of everyone else too! But life doesn’t stop just because someone gets sick, so if you make care kits for everyone, then even if they get sick at the most inconvenient time – no problem. You’re already ready!

There’s two steps to this process. First, think about each person in your household, and how they tend to get sick. Then, plan your kits based on that.

For us it goes like this: Ryn tends to get a sore throat and a cough, or a stomach ache, whereas Katja always starts with an earache or headache. Even if we have the same bug, that’s where things tend to settle in our bodies. So in our kit, we’ll put some generally-applicable items – like herbs to steam with – but we’ll also put things in for headache and earache/ear infection, as well as items for sore throat, cough, and stomach ache.

Today’s episode is all about how we make our care kits, so that you can make yours more easily!

The natural next question is, what are the things we should put in our herbal care kits, for ear infections and sore throats and coughs and and and…?

We’ve got you! We made the Cold & Flu mini-course for exactly this reason! It’s got everything you need both to prepare your body to stay strong when folks are getting sick, and to deal with all the symptoms if you do get sick. It even has a simple reference chapter that goes through each kind of symptom individually, so you can mix and match your strategies to meet each person’s specific situation.

Like all our offerings, this self-paced online video course comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

This week we continue our investigation into the best-selling herbal supplements in the US. First, an update: the 2024 Herbal Market Report data is here!

The overall picture is very similar to the 2023 data, with most items on the lists simply changing position. The overall market had a 5.4% increase, topping out above $13.2 billion for the highest annual sales on record. Direct-to-consumer commerce – via websites like Amazon, for instance – continues to be the largest fraction of sales.

In the mainstream list, the biggest story is the increase for “mushrooms (other)”, which reached #26 despite not appearing at all in prior years. This listing includes lion’s mane, turkey tail, and other mushrooms – but not chaga, cordycpes, or reishi (those are tracked individually). Also of note, the sales numbers for saint john’s wort in 2023 were adjusted to the tune of a $20 million increase! This would place SJW at #17 on that year’s list, instead of being absent from it. This makes much more sense, since SJW has been such a popular herb for so long.

In the ‘natural expanded’ list, the most notable increase came for “algae (other)”, which would exclude spirulina & blue-green algae as well as chlorella. Sea moss / Irish moss (Chondrus crispus), as well as other seaweeds, are the big drivers of this increased interest in “algae (other)” – largely due to TikTok trends around ‘detox’ and ‘cleansing’. Mullein, moringa, milk thistle, rhodiola, chaga, and oregano also had >20% increases, while the biggest decrease in sales came for wheatgrass/barleygrass, continuing a slow decade-long slide.

Today’s herbs, aloe and flax, are both plants whose modern incarnations and sales points are quite different than their historical applications. In the case of aloe, the stimulant laxative effect of its latex was historically its most valued power. Today, it’s more popular for the gentle demulcent/emollient effects of its gel. As for flax: its oil is very susceptible to oxidation and was previously used in things like paint and varnish more than for human consumption. Today, cold-pressed & refrigerated oil, or fresh-ground seeds, can be a good source of anti-inflammatory omega-3s and other essential fatty acids.

24. Aloe – Aloe vera

• Aloe in King’s American Dispensatory (1898)
• Aloes in A Modern Herbal, M. Grieve (1931)
• Aloe vera at Herbal Reality

25. Flax seed / Flax oil – Linum usitatissimum

• Linum in The Eclectic Materia Medica, Harvey Wickes Felter (1922)
• Flax in A Modern Herbal, M. Grieve (1931)

Flax & aloe are two examples of soothing demulcent herbs, which can calm irritated & inflamed guts. Our course on Digestive Health discusses the effects of demulcents as well as carminatives, antispasmodics, vulneraries, and other key categories of herbs which can help resolve the whole range of digestive upsets. Hippocrates said “all disease begins in the gut”, and supporting this critical system is often key to unlocking chronic health problems.

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

When Ryn first met Katja, she was in the habit of inflating her age a bit. Why? Because as an herbalist – at that time – it was preferable to present as older, even as an ‘elder’, if possible. Times have changed, and now “influencerbalists” dominate the social media world’s public face, for herbalism as for so many things. Staying young forever looks almost plausible, when it’s shown through short-form videos on a tiny screen…

It’s not, though. We’ll all age, and that will mean some things don’t work as well as they used to, don’t feel as good as they used to, don’t heal as fast as they used to. We’ll get tired, our hair will thin, our faces will wrinkle. All the amazing new products and one-weird-tricks will not stop these things from happening.

We don’t need to stop them. They’re part of life. In just the same way that yes, it’s OK to be a plus-sized herbalist, it’s OK to be an aging herbalist. Chasing immortality is a fool’s errand, and it can distract both from more effective means of mitigating discomforts, and from the benefits this stage of life brings. (Yes, they exist: perspective, experience, even a peaceful detachment – these are the purview of the elder.) Aging is OK.

We do have some herbs to recommend, though! In this episode we discuss…

• ginseng (Panax ginseng) – Famously an “herb for elders”, and indeed able to raise energy levels, enhance congnition, improve stress responses, and much more. Yet ginseng will be much, much more effective if its influences are supported by nourishing food and frequent low-level movement.
• solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum) – Our very favorite herb for restoring moisture, and thus flexibility, to the joints and connective tissues. You can purchase a solomon’s seal salve from Healing Spirits, or find tinctures, salves, and other sol’seal remedies from Cortesia.
• nervines, e.g. blue vervain (Verbena hastata), hawthorn (Crataegus spp.), heather (Calluna vulgaris), linden (Tilia spp.) – Consider working with nervines both for day-to-day mental & emotional steadiness, but also as aids to intentional introspection. Walking or sitting while pondering your past and present, with the support of nervine herbs, is a practice that will help you process your experiences and understand your current stage of life more deeply.
• demulcents, e.g. linden, marshmallow (Althaea off.), sassafras (Sassafras albidum), elm (Ulmus spp.) – As we age, we tend to dry out! These herbs help us remain fluent and soft. For elders, it’s often good to combine these with carminatives such as fennel, ginger, or cardamom.

If you’d like to start taking care of your body for the long haul – no matter what age you are today – our Community Herbalist program will equip you to do so! This program prepares you to support your family & community with holistic herbal methods.

Like all our offerings, this bundle of self-paced online video courses comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Herbs #22 and 23 on the top-selling herbs list for 2023 were milk thistle and black cohosh.

Today we continue our series on commercially popular herbs, and share our views as herbalists on the actions, benefits, and applications of these.

Milk thistle is widely known as an excellent herb for the liver, and this is a case where the common wisdom is correct. It’s one of the safest herbs out there, and fortunately, it is also widely available and inexpensive. Hepatoprotective and even able to regenerate damaged liver tissue, it is at the same time a very gentle and benign plant. But don’t try to make tea with it!

Black cohosh’s reputation is as a remedy for PMS and menopausal symptoms, and often this is attributed to phytoestrogenic activity or constituents. The reality is murky – and has remained so despite decades of argument and investigation on both sides of the claim. Regardless, black cohosh can often help. We find it best to view the herb through the lens of its action as a relaxant. If PMS or menopause are showing up with lots of tension, it’s worth a try and most likely to help. But we can also apply that action much more broadly, for injuries, spasms, and (certain kinds of) headaches.

22. Milk Thistle – Silybum marianaum

• Milk Thistle: Herb of the Week
• Milk Thistle at Herbal Reality
• Milk Thistle in A Modern Herbal, M. Grieve, 1931 – presented in this text alongside multiple other thistles, which allows for close comparisons among them.

23. Black Cohosh – Actaea racemosa

• Wuttke, W., Seidlová-Wuttke, D. Black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) is a non-estrogenic alternative to hormone replacement therapy. Clin Phytosci 1, 12 (2015). doi: 10.1186/s40816-015-0013-0.
• Mohapatra S, Iqubal A, Ansari MJ, Jan B, Zahiruddin S, Mirza MA, Ahmad S, Iqbal Z. Benefits of Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) for Women Health: An Up-Close and In-Depth Review. Pharmaceuticals (Basel). 2022 Feb 23;15(3):278. doi: 10.3390/ph15030278. PMID: 35337076; PMCID: PMC8953734.
• Black Cohosh at Herbal Reality
• Cimicifuga in King’s American Dispensatory, 1898 – has an impressively long list of indications and applications for this remedy.

If all you’d heard (before today) about black cohosh was that it’s “good for menopause”, you might want to check out our Reproductive Health course! We discuss the whole range of human reproductive variability and herbal medicines to support all kinds of people. We even bust a few reproductive-health myths and herban legends. (Hint: vitex is not “a miracle herb for all women”!)

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

When you’re using your herbal skills to help others – whether you’re doing that as a Clinical Herbalist in private practice, volunteering in your community, or even just caring for your own family – it becomes obvious pretty fast that your herbal knowledge is only part of the skillset you need.

You also need to creatively adapt what you know, so that it will actually work in that person’s life. Since every body is different, different strategies work for different people. Holistic herbalists are never trying to present “one right way” that everyone has to adhere to.

Which means that as herbalists, we need to be creative and flexible. We need to match our strategies to each person’s life individually – and that creativity can be challenging!

That’s one of the skills that we teach in our Clinical Skills course. Today’s episode is a segment of content on this topic, from that course, which we wanted to share with you. It’s self-contained, but it’ll also give you a peek into what our course material sounds like.

When we talk to a client, we listen to their health goals and priorities. We also form our own understanding of the case, and our own thoughts about what to prioritize – which herbs and interventions to try first. Here’s the thing: their priorities are more important than ours! If we discern some fundamental factor they aren’t aware of, it’s our job to teach them why it’s a priority. It’s our job to educate and negotiate – not to dictate.

Sometimes we’ll propose an idea and the client will be uncertain, or will outright reject it. When this happens, it’s not helpful to insist they follow our instructions. That’s not the relationship we have as herbalists – we’re not doctors, giving “orders”. So when the client expresses some resistance, we respect it. That respect may look like offering more information and context, or it may look like going in another direction entirely.

The motto for this mindset is: Support the resistance.

It’s easier said than done – but learning to do it is something we consider essential to the herbalist’s skillset.

If this episode caught your attention, then our Clinical Skills course is for you! Learn to practice legally, safely, collaboratively, and effectively. Get all your client forms & scheduling systems sorted. Cultivate consultation interview skills, and explore methods for planning personalized protocols. Everything you need to be a top-notch herbalist!

Like all our offerings, this self-paced online video course comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

On the top-selling herbs list for 2023 (the most recent data), the herbs in places #19-21 were Tribulus terrestris, Pycnogenol (an extract of Pinus pinaster), and garlic. Today we continue our series on commercially popular herbs, and share our views as herbalists on the actions, benefits, and applications of these ones.

The pine extract is an interesting item, given that it’s not an entry for the herb itself but rather for a specific proprietary extract from one species. It’s true that this extract has been well-studied and shown to exert good effects, but it’s also true that pine is much more than this one product.

Today’s trio also offers an excellent opportunity to apply herbal energetics to help us critique and navigate marketing hype. While tribulus is very popular as a body-building aid, its cooling nature tells us that it is most helpful for those who already run hot. Garlic is the polar opposite of that. While garlic is very famous for its capacity to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, these effects are not as straightforward in a hot, dry, tense body – garlic could cause adverse effects for such a constitution. So, looking through the lens of herbal energetics remains one of our best methods for matching the right herb to the right person.

19. Tribulus – Tribulus terrestris

• Tribulus terrestris at Examine.com
• Gokshura (Tribulus terrestris) at Herbal Reality

20. Pycnogenol® – Pinus pinaster

• Pine bark: cardiometabolic health (Herbal Reality)
• HHP 205: Herbs A-Z: Pinus & Plantago
• Pine wallpaper for phone & desktop

21. Garlic – Allium sativum

• Garlic at Herbal Reality

Every herbalist should understand energetics, and be able to apply them effectively. Our Energetics & Holistic Practice course has all the info you need to understand herbal actions, qualities, tissue states, and constitutions. These critical concepts set herbalism apart from other healing modalities and are essential to effective herbalism.

Like all our offerings, this self-paced online video course comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

That course is one part of our Community Herbalist program. This program prepares you to support your family & community with holistic herbal methods.

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Mutual aid projects are a natural place for herbalists to gravitate, and setting one up in your community is easier than you think! Our mutual aid startup guide is a free resource we offer you to help with this. You can download it right here:

Mutual Aid Startup Guide

In today’s episode we want to emphasize two key things about this: First, it doesn’t have to be an enormous undertaking. You can start with a small circle of friends, and build from there. The keys are consistency and continuity of communication.

Second, getting started can be very simple! So often, people feel hesitant to begin – thinking they need a fully fleshed-out concept and perhaps some financial backing before they start. But mutual aid can be something that fits into your schedule and that lifts you up instead of burning you out.

We discuss three examples to show what mutual aid can look like at different scales: a small personal support network, a medium community fix-it club, and a larger community disaster response team.

We hope this episode inspires you to get started, and if you have any questions, reach out to us!

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Use code HAWTHORN at checkout to get 20% off!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

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Sussing out herb-drug interactions is complicated! In this episode we take the example of Celexa + skullcap, and demonstrate the process of investigation we’d use to sort out whether a proposed risk is real.

We start with the Botanical Safety Handbook, because it has certain features which make it significantly better than other manuals or databases. These include the varied relevant experience and skills of the editorial team, its clarity about real vs theorized reactions, and other critical data points which are directly relevant to the herbalist’s practice.

Checking one resource isn’t sufficient, though. We also need to consider the fact that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’, and remember that constitutional variations can significantly change the efficacy of a given herb for a particular person. Information outside of scientific studies – such as the popularity of an herb or the prevalence of a drug, as well as traditional practices with plants – can help us to orient ourselves more precisely.

For further education about herb-drug interactions:

• Herb-Drug Interactions & Herb Safety – our complete course on this subject teaches you all the ins & outs of identifying potential interactions, avoiding them, and conducting reality checks on information you encounter about these risks.
• The Botanical Safety Handbook – our #1 resource for this information.
• HHP 101: How Herbs Are Different From Drugs – a key episode of our podcast, these concepts are helpful when learning how HDI may occur.

Everything’s on sale in July!

All our offerings are self-paced online video courses. They all with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, lifetime access to current & future course material, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

Use code HAWTHORN at checkout to get 20% off!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!