Oxymel – Honey and Vinegar

May 13, 2022 by Jurgen

Oxymel is a mixture of honey and vinegar, depending on the desired effect different herbs (or flowers) are added. The word comes from Greek and means acid and honey. It’s a great way to preserve plants and herbs.

Oxymel was used as a remedy in Persian pharmaceuticals writings of the Middle Ages and it also was used earlier by Hippocrates.

oxymel

In 2012 a group of Iranian researchers published a paper relating to Oxymel in medieval Persia. The honey-vinegar mixture at that time came both pure on its own and in connection with medicinal plants.

To this day it is considered an invigorating traditional remedy. The researchers found over 1200 different Oxymel recipes for different indications ranging from digestive complaints to breathing difficulties …

According to the researchers, the basic historical recipe is very simple:

One unit of vinegar
Two units of honey
Four units of water
Add dried or fresh herbs of your choice
Boil until a quarter of the mixture remains
Skim off the foam, if necessary.
Oxymel is best known as an immune-stimulating tonic.

Month of the Cuckoo – Scairbhin

April 5, 2022 by Jurgen

Cardamine pratensis – Cuckoo flower

The Scairbhín na gCuach (skara-veen) translates as ‘the rough month of the cuckoo’ and refers to the period comprising the last two weeks of April and the first two weeks of May a few weeks often marked with changeable extremes of weather patterns.

People working the land and in tune with the seasons know this as ‘the hunger time’ of the year because they were busy planting and tending their crops.

They believed that the Scarbhin was nature’s way of ensuring the crop’s success by the initial unseasonal warm weather allowing seeds to germinate, a sudden cold snap would then harden off the young seedlings and the following wind and gales would distribute the pollen – and this all coincided with the return of the cuckoo.

Cuckoos overwinter in Africa.

Centaury – The Stomach Bitter

February 14, 2022 by Jurgen

USES: Indigestion, Hiatus hernia, Gastric reflux.

Centaury (Centaurium umbellatum) is well known to herbalists as a ‘stomach bitter’ – one of the classes of herbs with bitter taste and used to aid digestion. For these herbs, it is important to taste the bitterness – and because of this, it is better to use herbs such as Centaurium as a tincture taken 5 minutes before meals.

Centaurium umbellatum

Centaury has been used as the classic stomach bitter for many years. Bitter herbs or bitter tasting foods used to form a significant part of the diet. Nowadays these have practically disappeared with the trend towards more convenient, inoffensive and easy to eat food.

HOW IT WORKS: Centaury owes its bitter taste to a group of compounds called bitter glycosides. The bitterness of food on the tongue plays a very important role in the digestive process. Naturopaths have long believed that digestion starts in the mouth and this has now been shown using physiological testing. The taste of bitter foods stimulates the appetite and triggers the secretion of digestive juices in the stomach, which improves the breakdown of food.

At the same time the hormone Gastrin is secreted by the walls of the stomach. This improves the digestive process, by improving the passage of food from the stomach to the intestines.

Another important action of Gastrin is to tighten the ‘valve’ between the oesophagus and stomach, which is important in reducing the symptoms associated with a hiatus hernia, such as gastric reflux.