LearningHerbs Blog

How to make licorice honey cough syrup

Here at our house, since the weather has changed, we’ve been dealing with on-going coughs. It’s so common for the change from warm sunny summer to colder, windier fall to lead to colds and coughs we wanted to give you a recipe for a honey cough syrup.

This way you and your family can move through any early fall illness quickly so you will be well for the upcoming holidays.

Licorice can be used to make a wonderfully soothing honey cough syrup. Licorice is a demulcent that will help break up mucus settled in your lungs, and it is an expectorant so it will help expel the mucus as well.

Licorice is also a calming herb so it can help us to get our much-needed rest when we are sick. Besides all of this it has a wonderful sweet taste (50 times sweeter than white sugar) that makes your medicine a pleasure to take.

The honey is anti-microbial, so it may help relieve the cause behind your cough as well as soothing your sore throat if you have one. One caution, though.

Please do not give your honey cough syrup to a child under the age of one. Honey can contain spores that could lead to botulism in the very young until they have built up enough beneficial bacteria in their digestive tract to deal with the spores.

So how do we make this licorice honey cough syrup?

First, make a decoction of the licorice. Measure out 1/2 cup of dried licorice root into a saucepan. Add 2 cups of water.

Bring the water to a boil and let it simmer for about 20 minutes or until the water is reduced by half.

Strain.

Add 1/2 cup of honey while the tea is still warm. Stir until the honey dissolves fully.

Cool and then pour into a glass jar with a tight lid.

Store your syrup in the refrigerator.

It will last in there for about one month.

Take one teaspoon of syrup as needed for coughs. One teaspoon every hour or two is probably a good rule of thumb for a stubborn cough.

Licorice is also very soothing for sore throats and stomachaches and because it is anti-viral can help cure colds and flus, so these are other good uses for your licorice honey cough syrup.

WARNING: Do not take licorice root if you have high blood pressure or heart issues. 

Get dried licorice root here.

May your cough be soothed!

-Kimberly

An Herbalist's Guide to Lawn Mowing

Well, if you're like me you have a hard time mowing your lawn. I mean, ALL those healing herbs! Being I live in Suburbia, I kinda have to keep it manageable. Luckily, I live in an unpretentious neighborhood where most of the lawns are currently adorned with the golden beauty of the dandelion. There is also a mainstream awareness that many have of not using chemicals on the yard to help the salmon streams. It's by no means perfect, but WAY better than when I lived in New Jersey.

Here is a little tour of my latest mowing...

YUP... this is actually last weekend. I wanted to mow last Saturday. But instead, we built snow people.

Here is the yard before mowing. There are lots of herbs I want access to even after I mow. So what's my solution? Pick a patch of the herb you want to keep, and mow AROUND them. :) My neighbor likes to make fun of me, but hey, I need access to my medicine.

It is hard to see here, for the plantain has not yet grown as large as it will. This patch will be a NICE patch of narrow leaf plantain. We need this handy for cuts, wounds, bee stings, etc...

This is a patch of yarrow. It is rare to find it in fields in these parts. So, I keep it available all year round. Kimberly used it on a deeper cut one of the kids had last week.

Though the golden dandies will be back in a day or two in full force (thank goodness!), we have a nice patch we can harvest flowers from any time. Where? In the herb garden of course! The soil is loose, and they are easy to dig. By harvesting them, we'll clear the garden for the other plants to grow.

To my surprise, I found a nice patch of sheep sorrel on the side of the house. This was not there last year, so it's a new surprise. We can use these leaves to flavor our salads in the Spring. It's the wild cousin of the sorrel you buy at the market.

OK! Well, I hope this gives you some ideas of how you can mow AND have your herbs at the same time.. :)

Connecting with herbs in January

Well, the last few weeks have given me ample opportunity to learn experientially about herbs.

First, I burned myself badly - twice. Out came the frozen comfrey poultices, root and leaf, that I had stored away in the freezer this summer. Well, that worked fine for the first burn, but the second one was a bit worse I think. My skin was red and swollen all around the burn. So, I pulled out my frozen calendula blossoms. I made a poutice with these, mashing them up with a little water in my mortar and pestle, lay down in front of a movie, and kept changing out the poultice as the flowers grew hot. They were pulling the heat from the burn.

Then, I threw my back out. First time I've ever done that. Yikes! Talk about painful. I could only kind of slide out of bed and crawl where I needed to go for almost a whole night and day. John gave me an acupuncture treatment which I am sure speeded up my healing process. And, out came those comfrey poultices again. I used them both cold and heated at various times over the painful days.

Well, by the time I had the where-with-all to take a look at my burn again it didn't look so good. I pulled the calendula blossoms out of the freezer again, but they didn't seem to be pulling much more heat out of the burn, and it looked angry and red. John suggested tea tree oil, so I made myself a wash, putting several drops of the oil in a small bowl of warm water. I then soaked a cloth in the water and put it on top of the burn, redipping it in the water every so often. It felt really good, cooling and tingly clean. And by the next day the burn looked like it was healing well. So I switched to putting some healing salve on it (the kind you make in the Herbal Medicine Making Kit) and keeping it bandaged, and now it's nearly completely healed!

Just as my back and my burn were starting to feel better, I caught a nasty cold - completely lost my voice for a day and now have a cough and stuffy nose. So, out came the elegampagne honey and the chamomile steams, and garlic oil on my feet at night. The cough continued to hang on, so today I started taking a dropperful of cottonwood tincture every hour at John's suggestion. I'm still couging, but it's not as deep and I'm feeling much better. Maybe by tomorrow or the next day I'll feel like myself again...

Thanks to my many herbal allies (not to mention the amazing healing capacity of my human body)!

Kimberly

Hailey's Vacation Cold

One of our blog readers pointed out that we've been pretty quiet lately, so I thought it was time I sit down and write something. I've had plenty of ideas over the past weeks, but have been busy pulling my notes together for my graduation presentation. I'm graduating in November from my 3 year Herbal Apprenticeship at RavenCroft Garden.

So, another thing that kept me away from the computer for a few days is that I took the kids to visit my mom in Arizona for a few days. It was so great to get a few more days of sun and swimming since it's been a pretty rainy winter here in Washington and now the cold and rain has really set in for the fall/winter/spring.

While we were away, Hailey got a cold. Her nose was running like crazy. I'm always frustrated when that happens and I'm away from my home herbal apothocary. But, when I started thinking about it I realized that my usual remedy for Haiely's colds is simply to rub garlic oil on her feet at night. My mom had garlic and olive oil in her kitchen, so I poured about a quarter cup of oil in a bowl and chopped up 5 or 6 cloves of garlic and let them sit in the oil through the day.

Just before bed, I rubbed the oil on her feet and put her socks on. Hailey doesn't mind this remedy at all. She actually asks for garlic oil whenever she's coughing or has a stuffy nose. (Rowan on the other hand, hates it. He doesn't like the smell of the garlic. So, I do it after he's already asleep.)

Two days later when it was time to fly home, Hailey's nose was running much less, and she was able to have a relatively comfortable flight home. (I hate flying with a stuffy nose, don't you?) She had a minor cough for a few days when we got back, but I just kept putting the garlic oil on her feet and she recovered quickly.

This is a great remedy for young children, because they don't have to swallow anything and deal with tastes they don't enjoy.

Herbal blessings,

Kimberly

Rowan's Summer Cold

Rowan caught a cold last week and we had such a successful experience with herbal remedies that I wanted to tell you about it.

He woke up with a stuffy nose, sore throat, cough, and achy muscles. It had been a busy week after lots of lazy summer days, and he was tired out. We canceled his day of summer camp and he rested the whole day. I mention that, because though it is not "herbal," rest is often an essential component for complete healing.

Rowan took a teaspoon full of elecampagne honey every hour. Rowan loves this remedy and it really helps with sore throats and coughs. It is made by simply chopping up 2 cups of elecampagne root and putting it in a quart jar, then filling the jar with honey, capping it and letting it sit for about 6 weeks. We then just leave the root in the honey and store it in our refridgerator to be used throughout the year.

In the evening before bed he requested a chamomile steam. We made a big pot of chamomile tea, and he put a towel over his head and the pot and breated in the steam. This really helps clear and heal a stuffy nose.

Then, we rubbed his feet with garlic infused oil and put he put socks on before bed.

The next morning, Rowan still had a slight stuffy nose, but was energetic and ready for camp!

Here's to quick summer healing.

Blessings,

Kimberly

Ever try a horseradish poultice?

I had to share this one...john

--------

Dear John,

Have you ever tried a compress/(poultice?) of warm grated horseradish as a remedy for a blocked eustacian tube? It works!!!

A few of years ago my son, who was 3 1/2 at the time, had his first and only earache. He was screaming..I was wailing inside. Our physician recommended very strongly to grate some horseradish, put it in a cloth, warm it and then apply it to the area behind the ear. (Only for a few seconds at first so as not to scald his tender skin.) Well after the first scream because of the heat of the horseradish...he smiled. "it is better mommy" I continued to massage it off and on with the warm compress and by golly it was over. He'd screamed in pain for three hours up to that point. we'd tried every natural remedy we could think of and nothing worked - thus the call to our homeopath.

Part II For the past two days my husband had been feeling increasing pressure, then pain from his ear to his throat. He actually made an appointment with this physicial yesterday. I suddenly remembered the remedy. He could barely swallow it there was such pain in his ear. I prepared the grated horseradish (which was dried out after living in our fridge for the winter, unused...waiting to be needed.) I dipped the cloth containing the small bit of horseradish I could scrape off that dried piece of "wood", into a bowl of warm water, applied it to the back of his ear and within a minute...I am not kidding...he smiled and said "wow, it is better, I can feel it draining."

So, I thought I'd share this just in case you hadn't tried it. The only person who I've ever heard mention this is this physician of ours who is near 80 years old.

All the best!

Carey

Got a sore throat?

For sore throats, try a cup of boiling water, 2 teaspoons of dried sage and a half teaspoon of sea salt.

Pour the water over your sage, steep for 10 minutes.

Strain, add salt....

Gargle the solution several times a day...

Hope this helps

-john

REI, hard drives and Boneset

What do REI, Boneset and hard drives have in common?

Absolutely nothing other than I am talking about all three of these things here...:)

SPECIAL THANKS to my guardian angel for nudging me to back up my hard drive on Sunday. For on Monday, my iBook CRASHED! WHEW! I have a new drive to install tomorrow already, and LearningHerbs command central will be up and running at full strength by the end of the week.

I am REALLY excited about the free talk I am giving at the REI Flagship store in Seattle. It's on, well, plants... and I am SO looking forward to inspiring some more folks to use herbs in their lives. You can get info here.

AND finally...Boneset.

Well, you know I give all this cold and flu advice on LearningHerbs. BUT I failed to mention the herb YOU NEED to take if you really got it. And that herb is Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum). I just ordered a pound of it from Mountain Rose Herbs because EVERYONE around me has the flu like crazy! So far I have been spared, even being a person who sees sick people in a clinic.

I will tincture some of it and use the rest as infusions should I get the flu. I make an infusion just like I say to in the Roots and Branches course. BUT I heat it up before I drink it. MAN is it BITTER!!! BUT you can feel the achy bones go away as you drink it. It is a very powerful remedy, YET it is a gentle herb. Very good for the immune system. Really gets it going when you need it. If you have a fever, it will help you sweat it out if you drink the infusion hot. I know this from experience.

In fact, during the 1918 flu epidemic, it was the most prescribed herb by the Eclectic physicians. (In my early 20's I ran a theater company called the Eclectic Players. I wonder if there was a connection there???)

Ok... just wanted to share that in case you get floored by the flu.

-john

Is comfrey safe?

I just got an email from someone who ordered a kit wondering if comfrey was safe to take. She was a little confused as to why I would include it in the Kit as she was not sure if this was true or not.

In the Kit, it is used externally in a salve, so no issues there. I personally use comfrey internally in an herbal infusion. Humans have been using it for hundreds of years. Also, no one can seem to find that controversial study people always talked about. It must be lost in the file cabinet with the one that tells us that all saturated fat leads to heart disease.

However, if there is any doubt about taking anything internally in your mind, then please do not use it until you are sure within yourself that it is safe. Don't just take my word for it...

-John

Influenza herbal class this Thursday

Hi all... Here is a class I hope to get to this Thursday... john

HERBS & INFLUENZA; How herbs used in the 1918 flu pandemic can be effective today.

Author Kathy Abascal, AN Rh-AHG has recently published her book on this important topic, and will discuss how we can implement what she has learned in her research. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

When: Thursday February 22nd at 6:45PM until 8:45PM

Where: Seattle Healing Arts Clinic
6300 NE 9th
Seattle, WA 98115

Driving Directions -
From Northbound I-5, take NE Ravenna exit,
take 2nd RIGHT turn onto NE 63rd street.
Find parking on the street.

From Southbound I-5, take NE 71st St exit,
go LEFT (east) off of exit,
then RIGHT (south) onto Roosevelt,
then RIGHT (west) to NE 63rd street.
Find parking on the street.