Herbs for First Aid & Disaster Response

There are so many fantastic herbs for first aid purposes, it’s hard to name them all! But if we focus our thoughts specifically on a post-disaster situation, this helps us narrow it down. Even better, think about the most likely emergency situations that might arise where you live, and you can keep your kit nice and targeted, your go-bag fully stocked. In this episode, Katja & Ryn share their must-have herbs for first aid both in the context of self-care and personal preparedness, but also in that of a large-scale emergency.

Prepping isn’t just for preppers! Getting familiar with first aid herbs and how to prepare them effectively, bundle them neatly, and work with them quickly under pressure is a skill that could save lives. Start planning today!

Our listener question this week: Are there any guidelines for knowing when an herb might have a drug interaction? (Listen in for the answer!)

Herbs discussed include pine, blackberry, yellow dock, goldenseal, Oregon grape, barberry, goldthread, rose, witch hazel, calendula, ginger, chamomile, betony, skullcap, passionflower.

Mentioned in this podcast:

• First Aid Kits For Everyone! – including our “tiny carry”, every day carry, & street kit breakdowns.
• Pine Resin Salve – video with step-by-step instructions.
• Go-To Joint Liniment
• The Holistic Herbalism Podcast, episode 036: First Aid for Burns & Sprains

The Emergent Responder Program is a deep dive into these concepts at the intersection of personal preparedness and community disaster response. It gives you the skills and confidence to function calmly and efficiently in an ongoing or post-disaster scenario, providing effective support for your loved ones and community – no matter what the situation is. And just like all of our programs, you get our 14-day, no-questions-asked, zero-risk return policy! So, what are you waiting for? Get started today!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:22

In Boston, Massachusetts, on the Internet, everywhere. Thanks to the power of

Speaker 2: 0:28

all right. Do you want to start this week? We're not doctors. We are herbalists and holistic health educators.

Speaker 3: 0:34

The ideas discussed in our podcast does not constitute medical advice, no state or federal authority licenses or blitz in the u s these discussions are for educational purposes only. Everyone's body is different. So the things we're talking about may or may not apply to you, but they will give you some information to think about and to research further

Speaker 2: 0:53

and we want to remind you that your good health is your own personal responsibility. The final decision in considering any course of therapy, whether it's discussed on the internet or prescribed by your physician, is always yours.

Speaker 3: 1:06

All right. So like always, let's lead with some shout outs. We have some Instagram shout outs this week. Yes. To Green jewel underscore beauty who requested a pod on reflux. We can definitely handle that one.

Speaker 2: 1:22

Yeah. In fact, I, I added it to the schedule for February 8th.

Speaker 3: 1:25

Cool. Yeah, we did a heartburn podcast a while back back at number 26. Um, mix it up with some thoughts about women in science. Um, so if you're super antsy, you can check that one out, but we'll take another crack at heartburn and reflux and all of the attendance stuff on February 8th. Yeah, sure. Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 2: 1:49

Alright. Um, dede seeing, no, uh, wrote to say that she listened to the headache episode four times and I really liked to learn that way too. I like to just listen to it until it's totally stuck in my head and I really have it in there. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:06

Yeah. Pretty Great. Uh, once upon a plant, the greys that's doing the dishes can be huger.

Speaker 2: 2:14

And, um, Liz acupuncture, but I think it might be lies at acupuncture and she's just sharing the a in between. You can let us know which one it is. That's what I would do. And that's what I would do to, you know, to share letters. Yes. Um, she was asking if we do online consultations. Yes, we do.

Speaker 3: 2:31

We do. Indeed. Yes. You can schedule an appointment with us no matter where you are in the world. I'm just go to Commonwealth or ups.com and click on clinic and there's a button right there to book an appointment. And you can choose a Weber conference consultation. Yes. With either of us. Yes you can. And we would be delighted to see you. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:52

Um, holistic house calls on Instagram. A good one. That is a good one. That's nice. Likes to tea and listened

Speaker 4: 3:00

to the pod.

Speaker 3: 3:01

Cool. And we have rich sides. So company who's making a sage rosemary and time steam to beat it had gold and presumably will then be inspired to make a sage rosemary time. So,

Speaker 4: 3:13

hey, that would be so cool. That'd be pretty good. Actually. Just don't put any goat's milk in it cause I'm allergic to that and uh, I would be so excited. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:22

Cool. Excellent. Um, hey folks out there in podcast world. Don't forget that you can become a monthly supporter of our pod and we'll even give you some secret goodies. Um, so if you want to get in on that, then just head over to com and[inaudible] dot com and down in the footer or on the podcast page, you can see quick and easy a little buttons to subscribe and um, we would be eternally grateful and we will try to keep coming up with other fun stuff to get here.

Speaker 4: 3:54

You just use your login to access the, uh, the page that has all the secret goodies on it. So it's the same login that you use to become a subscriber. Yeah. Excellent to no problem. All right, well this week we have a student question. Yes. And this one is from Jessica. She asked, are there any guidelines for knowing when an herb might have a drug interaction? And yes, there are. Um, so I mean obviously you can look stuff up in books and look stuff up in pub med and that can be a little bit frustrating because, um, well, you know, our mentor Paul Bergner likes to put it, nobody knows much. So you have to be careful and it's very complicated. Yes. Nobody knows much and it's very complicated. So you have to, yeah. And, and that is true. There's a lot of stuff that we just simply don't have data for. Um, so we proceed with caution.

Speaker 3: 4:50

And I like the way you ask this though, um, about guidelines because it's so much more effective and efficient to have a sort of concepts. Things like, Oh, if there's a blood thinner involved, then that requires caution with these types of herbs or this type of effect. Or, um, don't combine herbs and drugs that have the same kind of pharmacodynamic effect in the body because then you're going to get a multiplied action and it could be more than you need.

Speaker 4: 5:19

Oh, you might get multiplied. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's, that's how we like to think about it is with those kinds of guidelines, just because it's a little bit more, um, like, uh, it's a little more broad. You're more likely to catch a problem if you think in terms of guidelines like that instead of like this one drug and this one herb can't go together. But instead, if you're thinking in terms of like categories of places you need to be very careful, you're more likely to think about a problem before it happens. It's just, you can't really find a

Speaker 3: 5:58

definitive list of this drug in that urban plugged them into the computer and see if they interact or not. Such a thing doesn't exist. And even if it did at this point, it would still be very like monotonic you know, you would have maybe a connection between one urban, one drug or one urban, another drug, but not the 12th drugs. This person is taking in the 32 herbs that are in their life between their food in their tea and their tincture in there. Everything. Yeah. It gets complex really rapidly that way. So we have to think on like another scale or another level of, of uh, zoom for this one.

Speaker 2: 6:32

Yeah. All right. Well let's talk about some of those. The first one is, as you mentioned, blood thinners. Hmm. Um, blood thinners are complicated. They're tricky. Um, one way that we kind of think about blood thinners is that, uh, there's, there is roughly you can break blood thinners into two categories and one group of them you're not allowed to eat spinach and the other group of them you are allowed to eat spinach. And that comes down to the actual way that the, that the drug is working in the body and um, uh, the way that minerals are going to interact or not interact with that drug. And so if it is a blood thinner where you're not allowed to eat spinach, then always avoid all green herbs because they're like spinach, they have lots of mineral content and stuff like that. If it is an blood thinner where you are allowed to eat spinach, still be very careful and, and probably talked to the doctor about it or to a pharmacist. Um, but generally with blip, the nurse, we just, we do, we do exercise sort of extra bonus caution.

Speaker 3: 7:47

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you know, the, the major issue is the vitamin K content. If vitamin K one content and those green leafy foods and green leafy herbs. And all of that, that's, I'm kind of doing the opposite of what the blood thinner is trying to accomplish. So anyway, yeah. So that's a, that's a category. And you know, in that case, there are a lot of herbs that you're going to need to use caution with because it turns out of the great many herbs have lengthening qualities. Um, so yeah, that one does throw a wrench in the works. It doesn't mean that there's nothing we can do, but we have to proceed with a lot more caution. Um, you know, so that kind of drug or that category of drug and then, you know, some other categories of drugs, things that are like keeping you alive or that your life really depends on it. Like if you had an organ transplant and now there's an immunosuppressant involved so that your body doesn't reject to the new organ, um, we really don't want to mess around with that. We don't want to, um, take any herbs that could interfere with the function of that drug. Um, you know, and on a similar level really we would look at antipsychotic drugs are really, really almost any kind of psychiatric medication. Um, because that too can put somebody at really great risk if the way the drug, um, you know, being metabolized or affecting the body is altered in such a way as to make it less, less effective. So, yeah, so that kind of thing. Um, and what can we say? Yeah, I guess with, um, drug categories, those would be the major ones that would be looking out for, um, when there are, I guess another one would be to look at some other parameters of the blood. So we talked about blood thickness, uh, with a blood thinning drugs there. We can also look at blood sugar. And so if people are taking medications to manipulate blood sugar, um, uh, whether, you know, like usually this is to keep it down and people with insulin resistance and diabetes and so on. Um, and we need to be used a little bit of caution with herbs that also have blood sugar lowering effects. Because if you combine what the drug is doing and what the erb may do, um, then now you can get to a point where your blood sugar has gotten too low and now you have a completely different problem, but still a serious one

Speaker 2: 9:57

in that particular case. It's not necessarily unsafe to work with an herb. It is that you absolutely, positively must be checking your blood sugar levels, um, on an extremely regular basis. And people who have to do that tend to fall into patterns, um, because obviously it hurts to do that and having to do that multiple times a day as a pain. Um, but so if at any time you say, well, I think I really would like to increase my cinnamon intake, it's not necessarily out of the question, but, but it means that the likelihood that you're going to reduce or change your dependence on whatever pharmaceutical you're taking to manage your blood sugar levels is going to change. And so you need to be able to be in regular communication with your prescribing healthcare professional, um, to let them know if your blood sugar numbers change in. That could happen very quickly. So it, it's something that you need to be super, super proactive about. Let your doctor know that you're going to try that. Um, and this is true, even if you suddenly like eliminate all carbs from your diet also. Well yeah, if you suddenly went on a lake, super low carb diet, that also would screw up your numbers with regard to like your dosing of your blood sugar management, um, medication. And so that's another time when you a one l your doctorate in on that before you start and B want to make sure that you are testing with extreme discipline and regularity and frequency.

Speaker 3: 11:34

Yeah. Okay. So then what thickness, blood sugar and then also blood pressure can be a place where up drug interactions can be, um, can be problematic or, or something. You just need to be on the watch for. Um, and in that case it's really more about, um, about not having

Speaker 5: 11:54

that kind of additive effects again. Right? So not taking somebody who's on a blood pressure lowering medication and then giving them a really strong or concentrated dose of herbs that also lower blood pressure. Um, cause then they might stand up and get dizzy and fall, which isn't actually funny. No, I don't mean to make light of it. That's really a concern is that I didn't mean to laugh either. It was just cute how you said it. Yeah. But I mean if you reduce the blood pressure too much, then you know, having trouble getting it up to your brain and then you get thanked. So yeah. Yeah. So, um, you know those, those categories, those like basic parameters of the blood itself, when someone's on a drug to manipulate those, then herbs that also manipulate them. We just need to use a little more caution. And I think the general concept of saying it doesn't mean they're outright contra indicated and all in all amounts. And I'll purposes forever. It means you need to be aware of this potential for interaction and monitor for it. So you can check your blood sugar perimeters, you can check your blood pressure. You can do both of those at home blood thickness. I don't know if there's some tests for that. Okay.

Speaker 2: 12:59

No, that one I just am way more conservative about this because those drugs are really intense anyway and I, and so if a person's taking blood thinners every day, then that gives us, um, first off the information that they're doing that. But secondly, the information that if they're a person who requires that, that the body is already delicate. And so that's also a body. We want to be very careful with the Tom. So either like the, it's sort of like dual

Speaker 5: 13:28

raisins there. Yeah. You know, I'm kind of realizing that we're answering this question backwards in a way because what she asked was, are there guidelines for knowing when an herb might have a drug interaction? And here we started with the drugs and that makes sense because the general way this math works is, um, dangerous drug plus very safe herb equals potentially dangerous interaction. Yes. That's usually the way that goes down rather than rather than like vice versa or vice versus, um, so now that said, there are some herbs that do have a much higher potential than their fellows to result in a drug interaction the most same as the St John's wort. And it's worth knowing this is not because the St John's wort has some, you know, chemistry in it that goes around looking for pharmaceuticals to break or to mess up or to do anything weird like directly to that pharmaceutical substance. What's happening instead is that Saint John's were acts on the body, it acts on the liver and then deliver acts on the drugs. And what, what happens basically is that Saint John's wort accelerates the pace at which your liver is transforming or metabolizing the drug that you take. And in, in the simple case, what this can mean is that normally you take your pill, um, you absorb it, um, you metabolize it in the liver and some of it gets circulated to the bloodstream. And you know, over the course of time you're, your liver and other parts of your body are breaking down the drug and eliminating it from the system. And when you add St John's wort to that equation, that breakdown in an elimination happens more rapidly than usual. So that would be like the simple case. And that means that the total amount of time that you're under the influence of that drug or the degree to which it's influencing your physiology, it's going to be reduced because it's getting kicked out of the system faster than would have been expected. So there are some drugs where that's not a huge problem. Um, and there are some drugs that are taken in such high doses that you're not going to, um, eliminate their effects. Uh, because of working with St John's Wort, I'm thinking they're mostly of the birth control pill. Um, there's a lot of hype, there's a lot of scare stories around people taking a saint John's wort supplement and then getting pregnant even though they were on the pill. And if you really dig into most of them, they either involve completely outrageous doses or strange preparations of the herbs that nobody's actually consuming. I'm not like your standard off the shelf capsule or certainly,

Speaker 2: 16:05

or like some tea.

Speaker 5: 16:07

He certainly not your cups of tea or you're, you're droppers the tincture or things like that.

Speaker 2: 16:10

But on the other hand, cups of tea or droppers of tincture absolutely can reduce the amount of organ rejection drugs in your system. And so that, that can become a problem even at a much lower yes. Right.

Speaker 5: 16:24

So, yeah. So when we say that we don't worry about the birth control pill, that doesn't mean we don't worry about all pills because they're all really different. And we definitely worry about the organ rejection meds. The immunosuppressants, we worry about the psychiatric medications, we worry about blood thinners, we worry about, well not worried, but we are aware of this effect on thyroid medications as well. Um, we don't worry because those tend not to be like life threatening if they, you know, stop were to, were to stop working.

Speaker 2: 16:52

They're annoying, but not, it's going to be uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but you know, the think the difference there is that all those drugs that we just mentioned are drugs that are dosed very, very specifically, um, directly in relation to the weight of the person or the exact time that they're taking it or whatever. Whereas a birth control pill, it doesn't matter how much you weigh, you get the same pill. Um, so that is like the dose is just high enough that it can accommodate all different types of bodies, all different kinds of metabolisms. Whereas if you've ever been on thyroid medication, you know, it takes a long time to get your dose. Exactly right. And um, and it's very finicky because every body is different and they have to dose it very specifically to your own body's needs. So even messing it up a little bit is going to really cause you some, an audience. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 17:48

So you know, this effect that Saint John's

Speaker 6: 17:50

wort has as a result of the way that it influences the liver and some of the enzymes that it uses to do this metabolism. There are other herbs that have related effects, but in general, none of them are going to hold a candle to St Johns war in terms of the degree of potency they have in this regard. The closest thing is actually, um, grapefruit and it kind of points in the opposite direction where instead of accelerating liver metabolism, it slows it down. Um, so one way to, um, do a kind of first line assessment of whether a drug is going to interact problematically with St John's wort is to see if they advised you to not consume grapefruit juice or to not change your frequency of consumption of grapefruit juice while you take this drug. Because, um, those two plants operate on the same set of liver enzymes just in different directions. Um, and I say this because there are actually a whole bunch of different enzymes involved in this system, and Saint John's wort doesn't act on all of them, and not all drugs are metabolized by all of them. And so you can see there's many layers of complexity to this. But again, you know, most drugs and especially anyone that is carefully dosed that has, um, adjustments to the dose as you figured out what's right for your body, um, or his dose by weight or things like this. Those are the ones that were just on the very face of that kind of say, all right, no saint John's wort for you, um, as long as that drug is in your life. Um, so you know, that's a, that's a big place that we would be looking. Um, a couple of other like types or categories of herbs you need to be aware of having potential drug interactions. Um, one would be al of your demulcent herbs, so herbs that you make a nice cold infusion and get it good and thick and slimy and wonderful. Um, and the biggest issue here is actually just a matter of timing. Um, so you, what you don't want to do is make a nice thick marshmallow slime or uh, uh, Irish Moss grool or something and then use that to swallow your pill. With the pace of the concern here is that the polysaccharide do matrix from your herb is going to slow down or inhibit absorption of the pharmaceutical if you take them too close together. But fortunately the solution here is really very simple and it is to give a couple of hours between the time that you're taking your good sick demulcent preparations and the time that you're taking your pharmaceutical. So you may wake up in the morning, take your pill with some plain water, you know, do whatever you do for a couple of hours and then start on your nice cold infusion habit and go from there. There's a similar effect, a little different, um, with some of the high mineral herbs. So, um, if you're a person who loves a good long infusion of nettles or dandelion leaf, um, stuff like that, uh, that can interfere with absorption of thyroid medications on some psychiatric meds. And that is actually a mineral binding issue. So again, it is, it's not that you can't have metals if you have thyroid meds, it's just that you need to offset them by a couple of hours. If you have thyroid meds, um, you've probably been told to take it first thing in the morning and then you can't eat for a couple hours, um, after taking it. And so in this case, we are considering the, the high mineral and middle infusion as food and, and so that's just falling into that same category of it's, it's okay to have it. You just wait until it's been a couple hours and now your thyroid meds are in your system and it's time to eat. Now you can have your nettle and friends as well. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 21:44

All right. Well, um, I think we've gone on a bit about this one. There's a ton more we could say about herb drug interactions and we do have, um, you know, a whole, a whole segment on this that we cover in our advanced program, um, for students who are going to enter into clinical work. Um, and so yeah, there's definitely a ton more that they can and should be sad about herb drug interactions. So maybe we'll do some more bits and pieces of this on the pod again in, in future episodes. Um, but again, a lot of it is about understanding the way the earth works in the body. Um, so this requires us to know more than St John's wort is good for depression, but to understand that Saint John's wort has a suite of effects on hormones and processes in the body, including the liver, including these particular enzymes that are involved in drug metabolism. And so it does require us to understand our herbs on a little more detailed level and in some cases on more of a biochemical level, right? So we're seeing intersections between human physiology and chemistry and pharmacology. Um, and so none of that should scare us away, but it should give us a, um, an appreciation for the complexity involved and recognize that, you know, we're not going to find a list of this plus that equals frowny face. We need to, we need to be thinking more critically and more, more in like a systems, uh, pattern in order to do this well. So there we go. That was 20 minutes on her drug and I'm sorry, that's just the first one again.

Speaker 2: 23:20

Yeah. All right. So let's see, what else should we get to today? Well, should we talk about, uh, the emergent responder? Oh, right, right. That was our, that was our topic for today. Yeah, we got their minute 23. We're good. Okay. So the emergent responder program is two courses that I did, um, that are about, I'm responding to a disaster in your community, whether that is a hurricane or fires or um, or something manmade. Uh, this sort of information is helpful. Um, basically no matter what happens because having a good solid understanding of what to do in emergency situation means that you're going to be confident that you're going to have a plan for what to do and um, and, and be able to be a leader in your community and a person who helps everyone else stay calm. Because the reality is that after the initial, whatever is over, there's still a lot of work to do. And if everybody is calm and organized, we can get it done a lot faster. Um, then if everyone is panicking or doesn't really have a plan and they're not sure, should I, should I try to evacuate now or should it, you know, it's last minute and now all the highways are full and you can't actually get anywhere. These are skills that humans just used to have. If you think about, um, you know, people who used to live out in rural areas, if there was a fire, we didn't have fire departments, we didn't have hospitals, we didn't have whatever. And I'm pretty glad we have those things. I'm really glad. Right.

Speaker 5: 25:09

Grateful for the firefighters. Truly grateful for the trauma surgeons. Yes. That's awesome. That's really great. We're happy to live in a time and a place where those exists and that even some of us can afford them. Yes.

Speaker 2: 25:23

But even, even though we have those things, doesn't mean that we shouldn't have some basic skills to get ourselves out of a jam. That's better than having to just wait around for somebody to come and say in us,

Speaker 5: 25:34

well, because you never know when it is going to be available. And like the reasons why it might not be, don't always involve the fact that they've been completely wiped off the face of the planet. Right. Like there are there have throughout, um, just American history, there have definitely been like political reasons and race based reasons and all kinds of other terrible bad reasons for people not getting care and support and you know, basic protection services and things like this.

Speaker 2: 26:01

I'm even thinking about in hurricane sandy in the far Rockaways, um, that is an area that was um, sort of a marginalized community. It was a lot of immigrant communities, a lot of elder housing, and it already was an under resourced community. And when hurricane sandy hit, it took five weeks for anyone from FEMA or the Red Cross to get around to that area. But the wealthy areas had been attended to right away. So part of that is because obviously like there's some equity problems in the sentence you just said, but even if it not equity based, um, it also is just a fact that there are only so many first responders and they are also tired and have to sleep and worried about their own house and their children and they're out there putting their lives on the line. And if all of us have some skills, then not only can we pitch in and help, but there are fewer things that like the first responders only have to respond to the people who are really in danger and not the people who are halfway in danger but wouldn't have been if they had had some skills for themselves and a plan. Right, right, right. And then you know, the also thing is that many of the skills that we use in emergency situations are actually skills that we could use any old day of the week. I have a client who just came out of surgery and has an incision that needs care. And that's a really common situation. If you know how to, how to deal with a, an incision wound really confidently and how to identify when something is going wrong that can save you a lot of headache. And I'm so excited that we've got visiting nurses and we've got, you know, emergency rooms and all sorts of other stuff. But some basic skills can just make you more self reliant because the visiting nurse can't be there 24 hours a day. Yeah. Well, so this is a whole program to teach you all of that stuff.

Speaker 5: 28:10

There's a ton of amazing content in here. You guys cut your work done. It's really, really hard. And um, it's just a very unique kind of a program. Um, there's a lot in here that you're basically not going to find anywhere else. She's pulled together some concepts and some resources and some skill drills and things from a bunch of different places and kind of synthesize them in a way that I've never seen done before. Um, but makes a lot of sense. So I don't know, do you want to give like the big picture?

Speaker 2: 28:39

Um, well, the big picture is actually really, really big, but I think that it also needs to be, you don't have to be an expert in all of the skills, but if you know that they are factors that can help you a lot. Um, so the first part of the, the first course in this program is about managing an emergency clinic and getting that all set up. Um, and that is everything from what resources are you going to need? How are you going to allocate those resources? Where are you going to get them from? Two, how will you interface with government agencies once they get to you? If they get to you too? How can you transport people to hire definitive care? Like maybe there's no hospitals in your area, but 150 miles away there is a hospital. How are you going to get the people there safely? If they are wounded, how will you stabilize them before, before transport, transporting them and even how will you transport? What if, uh, there's, there's a bridge out or else, um, that one covers triaged. It covers death support, both how to, um, how to work with people who are dying as well as what to do with dead bodies, which on one hand is kind of gruesome, but on the other hand is actually super important information to have because when people don't know how to handle dead bodies, which nobody knows how to do anymore because when someone dies, we just take them to a funeral home. Um, then what, what happens is, and the World Health Organization has actually done a lot of studies around this is that choices get made in a, in a panic that just adds more trauma to everyone because, because the reality is that being able to bury the, the people who have died in, in ways that are appropriate for your culture and your traditions is actually a really important part of the healing process. So even though it sounds like a, a weird thing to, to make plans for it actually, um, it actually is very important. Yeah. And then there is a second, um, course, uh, in this program that actually deals with all the skills. So all of the first aid skills like the bandaging and the splinting and burns and all that kind of stuff. Um, elder care, childcare, emergency pregnancy care and emergency birth and, and, uh, labor care. Um,

Speaker 5: 31:10

yeah, we call this one first aid and longterm care. Um, to try to indicate that like, yeah, first aid skills are awesome, they're super important and irrelevant for like the first five minutes or the first five hours or somewhere along that stretch, you know. Um, but if we're looking at a post disaster situation or like a community disaster response kind of a situation, then you definitely need to be thinking beyond first aid you need second day. Do you need third aid? You need all the numbers. Um, and those, those skills can be substantially different from stopping bleeding and cleaning the wound and all of that.

Speaker 2: 31:47

If you know that you're going to end up in a hospital in a few hours, all you really have to do is stop the bleeding. But if you're not going to have higher definitive care for five weeks, then you need to know about infection management and you need to really feel confident about being able to do that because even a small wound can become a really big problem. Somebody actually asked me in an interview like to tell them like some big, I can't remember the question exactly, but what they wanted was for me to talk about some big lifesaving important skill and I, I could see that in their mind they were thinking about jumping out of a helicopter and like saving someone from, or like a traction splint for a broken femur. Yeah. Like sounding like, you know, kind of superhero kind of thing. And my response was, um, infection management because a two inch wound, uh, you know, some small thing that that looks fairly run of the mill if you're really focused on, or if you're not focused, if you're, if you are a little bit panicked or a little this or a little of that and not really focused on, hey, I need to take care of every single thing that comes through here and I need to be thinking about infection management for the future, then that's what's actually going to kill people. So most of the time you're not really going to be jumping out of helicopters. I don't actually know how to jump out of helicopters. So it's a good thing that that is not actually something that you have to do as often as it should, as they show in the adventure movies. I guess that's it, I guess. Well, actually, you know, we have teams of people who know how to jump out of helicopters and that's great. They can, they can do that. Um, but, uh, but we can take care of infection management and stuff like that. There's also stuff about environmental, uh, uh, stuff like hypothermia or heatstroke and bug slugs and parasites and water treatment and even stuff like security and communications, all that kind of stuff. Anyway, basically it's huge and we cannot talk about it all in one podcast. But what we can do is tell you some of our favorite, most important herbs that we keep in our first aid kits. Um, that we, we sort of considered a br. I can't live without them kind of herbs. Now we have a blog post on the website that we're going to link in the show notes that will give you the complete content list of all of our first aid kits. We have, each of us have three different first aid kits, a what we call a tiny Carrie, um, which is a first aid kit that is small enough to fit into a cargo pocket, um, and is really handy, especially if you're going somewhere that they don't allow you to bring a bag. Um, and then, uh, daily carry, which is, you know, like a first aid kit that fits in our backpack that we just take whenever we leave the house. Um, you know, going around the city or whatever if we're in the subway or stuff like, so that's a little bit of a larger first aid kit. Um, that is really sort of geared towards the everyday sorts of things that could happen in the training or in the

Speaker 5: 35:10

wherever. Yeah. Little, little basic wound care stuff in there. A little basic digestive upset, a little basic anxiety and um, uh, emotional discomfort management. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:23

And then we each have, um, what we call our st kits, which are much larger first aid kits. They themselves feel entire an entire backpack. And that's what we work from. If we are out doing, um, either work for a, uh, supporting in a protest or if we're doing work with populations of people who are living on the street or also that is the, those are the first aid kits that we would grab if we were leaving in an emergency situation. If we were evacuating. And those are large enough that we could operate fairly long term before we needed to be resupplied. Um, we definitely could, could get through, um, like a significant number of injuries before we would need to restock. Obviously if we were planning some sort of a community response clinic, we have much larger tubs of supplies then we would bring to that. But in terms of like an emergency, I have to grab this and go with me. That's what our large street kids are four. And so we made a list of some of the herbs that are in those kits that we think are really important. Yeah. And maybe you'll be able to tell as we talk about them. Which ones? Um, I picked in which ones he picked. I don't know. Maybe maybe they will buy now.

Speaker 5: 36:49

I Dunno. But this first one is really kind of both of ours. Yes. In a big way. Yes. Neither one of us can live without pine rest and Sabbath. This was something that we started making together. Like I don't think this was, I did with yours. That's two. I did not, I didn't do this before. I met you. Yes. Was the thing that we did do together. Yeah. So this is pine resin says and um, we talked about this a bunch of times on the podcast before we've got a, um, it's because we really love it. Video about it and their thing. Yeah. It's just so useful. So I'm short version is you find a pine tree, um, you harvest some of the resin in, in a careful way such as to not damage the tree and to be that some protection. Um, because the resident is basically like a part of the tree's immune system. Park, park, scab, parking, lymphatic, a sort of analog, you know. Um, anyway, so you gather some resin, um, you melt it into some oil on a low temperature and then you strain it out to get all the bark and dirt and bug legs and whatever out of it. And then they're in there and then you, um, uh, take that snow, you've got pine resin infused oil do, you melted a bit of wax into there and then you get into the little containers and let it harden up and now you've got Pine Resin Saf and this stuff is really fantastic for any minor wounds. Any dry wounds are ones that have scabbed over and you can put this onto their, um, Burns that are in a dry state. So it's either it's started as a first degree burn or it was, you know, like a second degree burn that has gone past the blistering and wet phase and has started to dry out. You can put pine or since have[inaudible] there,

Speaker 2: 38:26

whenever it starts to get bitchy[inaudible] that's when you know that you're in the healing stage, that you're ready for SAF.

Speaker 5: 38:32

Right? Yeah. Um, you can put side, it's really handy if you get like an abrasion where you haven't like cut deep into the skin anywhere, but you've, you've, um, you know, cheese grater it off a big, uh, a big area of it. Um, then pine resin side was really good for that kind of thing. It's also nice if you've got skin infections going on here. I'm thinking primarily of like a fungal issue, something like athlete's foot or Tinea or something like that. Um, you can put pine resin sat onto there.

Speaker 2: 39:01

It's also really lovely. It's got a lot of crossover because the pine resin, um, has all of those volatile oils preserved in it and they're quite potent. So this is also, um, something that I love to put on. Um, the like the skin on your nose that gets chapped when you have a respiratory infection and you've been blowing your nose a lot. Um, don't wait for it to get all chapped for this to start doing this. Um, to just put it there prophylactically way before that happens because what's happening is that not only are you protecting that skin, but um, you are breathing in those volatile oils and you are getting those down deep into the lungs where they are helping and an antimicrobial way to fight against the respiratory infection. Also just to keep in mind that in a, like we live such sanitary lives right now that, um, and in fact we live lives on one hand that are actually a little bit too clean, but on the other hand, um, we have really kind of forgotten about needing to stay clean. And both of those things are sort of happening simultaneously. And it sounds contradictory and it is. But, um, but one thing is that when you have broken skin, you are really susceptible to infection. And because we live really a sanitized lives, we don't think too much about the chapped skin around the cuticles of our fingers or if we do get chapped skin on her nose from blowing her nose too much. Like we don't think too much about that. I mean it's uncomfortable and unpleasant, but we also need to be thinking about, um, the infective potential in that area, especially if this is a post hurricane situation. And now there's floodwater and the floodwater has maybe untreated sewage in it or whatever else it might have in it. Um, and now there's also tons of mold and crud going on. And, and so at this point, the re the, the need for the physical barrier of our skin to be intact is really high, which means that we don't want to wait for your skin around your nose to crack because you have a respiratory infection from breathing and all that mold. We want to prevent that from happening right from the start. And so yeah, Pine Resin has that dual action there that I just love.

Speaker 3: 41:38

Yeah. So great. Could you get by without it? No. Yeah. And you know, it's, uh, in, in more minor applications, it's just like, oh, I got to cut, I'm going to get a bandaid on their weight before I put the bandaid on a nice little glob of pine resin on there and it really accelerates the healing. Um, please don't call it herbal neosporin because he'll just make me sad. But if you have to think of it that way to yourself sometimes, that's okay. It's so much better. So much better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Way Better. Okay. So that's pine rest instead of, um, next thing that I would want to include, um, if you don't mind me in here,

Speaker 2: 42:16

this was your addition to the list and I can't believe I forgot to put this on because it's so important.

Speaker 3: 42:22

Don't forget your joint lineaments yes. Yeah. So this is, um, well we've, we've actually done a whole podcast about this. Um, let me see if I can find, uh, oh, if we haven't done, no, we did. We did one about the joint support decoction maybe it was in the episode for sprains and strains. Yeah, I bet it was. Yeah. Podcast 36 first aid for burns and for sprains. Yeah, so we talked a bunch about joint linament there. Um, there's a recipe for it in our book or medicine for beginners. Um, I've got a blog post all about my goto joint ligaments on our blog. So you've got options for learning about this. But

Speaker 2: 43:02

you know, last night, actually I, uh, before you got home from doing free clinic, I pulled out some of your joint linament from one of the first aid kits. And that actually is a thing by the way, just to have a tiny tangent, is that it's a really good idea to work from your first aid kits is that way you're very familiar with where everything is. You're restocking things regularly and you're just really comfortable rooting around in them. They're very well organized, you know, they're well organized because you practice a lot. Um, and so that's better than like just having a kid that stays in the closet and you never open and instead you have like a medicine chest that you work out of in your, or like a cabinet in your bathroom that you work out of. Anyway. So I was grabbing some joint ligament out of your first aid kit yesterday. And um, my, my intercostal muscles all around my lungs right now are really tight and I got some kind of lung crud going on. And um, lately I've just felt really great with a little bit of ginger essential oil mixed into some kava oil rubbed onto my lungs before bed. And last night we ran out of the Kaaba oil. And so I was like, ah, what can, I don't want to just put it in plain old olive oil because I'm wasting my, like there's something that could be in there. So I was looking around to see if I, if we had any other infused oil that made, and

Speaker 4: 44:32

then I saw your joint limit and it was like, ah, that would be perfect. And it was one that had St Johns Wart Solomon Seal. It had alder, which I was really happy about for the lymphatic action. Yeah. Um, it had prickly ash. It had low, it had, it had basically, you know, the Solomon seal is really lovely for that connective tissue that is getting all tight right now and um, and the lymphatic action. And then you had a little clove essential oil in there. And so I put that into a bottle of mega mag that was empty but not yet washed. So I was like, oh, there's a couple of drops of magnesium in the bottom that's going to be good. And um, so cause that is such a great muscle, relax it. And then I added to that some ginger essential oil. And, and you guys know I'm not a huge fan of essential oil accepted this sort of a situation. Then I really, it really is called for to get that sort of deep muscle penetration. So I put some of that in and uh, all of this and then I felt much better. It really does deliver a lot of relief and all of that is to say that you've got joints in a lot more places than you think about joints. Nice. Like the, the, the areas between my ribs are not joints like my wrist and my ankle, but there are still, there's still a lot of connective tissue and a lot of movement happening in there. And right now that movement is more restrictive than I would like it to be. And so, so when we talk about a goto joint linament then don't just say, okay, well this is what I use for a sprained ankle, but really expand that idea in your mind of all the ways that you can work with that. Um, because if somebody, if somebody comes in, what they've got is pleurisy or what they've got is bronchitis or pneumonia and they've been coughing a lot and all of their intercostal muscles hurt, that goto joint limit is going to be awesome there. And basically all of the stuff that we're listing is stuff that we can work with in many different ways. We don't really want to carry something in our first aid kit. The only has like a single application and less that single application is so important that we really need it. And blackberry route is one that I'm thinking about doing a couple like that. Yeah, that's true. For the most part, we're going for as many possible ways that we can work with a particular thing, um, as possible. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 47:07

Cool. So don't limit is awesome and not just for your ankles. Yeah. Um, cool. So then the next one that we do you want to do blackberry route real quick since I just mentioned it. Oh, okay. We'll do that in its friend. Yeah. So I'm blackberry rude is a good inclusion in a first aid kit because it is a, a fantastic, uh, fast acting remedy for diarrhea. And You yourself need this kind of help or you've got somebody on your, your team or your travel group or whatever that needs this, um, do, you can solve that for somebody. You will make a friend forever. So that's nice. Um, so what we do with blackberry root in this context is take the dried roots and then make a tincture of them. And we like to make our tincture of blackberry routes in red wine, something nice and oaky with lots of tannins in it, which is traditional. Yeah. And a lot of the blackberry medicine itself is in tenants. Um, and combining some oak tannins and some blackberry tannins and some of the restaurant friends altogether is a nice way to kind of diversify your preparation, um, while still keeping it nice and targeted with that. What that one, tightening a stringent effect. Um, so yeah, so blackberry roots effective for that and we generally give a dose of like a teaspoon to a tablespoon and repeat that, you know, take a few doses every 15 minutes and then maybe you space it out a bit more afterwards. But generally by the third dose, you're, you're a little more contained. Yeah, they're a bit more, uh, stable in that regard. So yeah, that's blackberry route, really simple. Um, very easy. Hard to screw it up, you know, so that's nice.

Speaker 4: 48:49

And the flip side of that is yellow dark yellow dark is, um, one of my favorite laxative plants, partly because it's not habit forming, so we don't have to worry about this being something that somebody is going to get really hooked on, like Cascara Sagrada or senna can be. Um, it's really, it's really safe. You can even work with it if you're pregnant. Um, and one of the reasons is that part of the way that it functions is by stimulating bile. And so it's, um, working more as like a lubricant then as like a sort of forcing a, uh, a purgative action. And, um, that is, it's just a little bit more gentle, um, for my body, which tends to a little towards the stagnant side. I typically find that if I take some yellow route at night before I go to bed in the morning, I'm ready to have a nice spell movement. Um, somebody with, uh, um, speedier constitution may find that that happens a lot faster for them. But just because somebody has a zippy constitution or like a metabolism that's really fast doesn't mean that they can't get a little constipated, especially in an environment where maybe they're not drinking enough water. Maybe there isn't like there's not quite enough water for everybody. And so everybody's kind of rationing. Um, then that is a situation where even a person who isn't prone to constipation could find themselves constipated. Some other nice things about yellow dock is it is quite bitter. So this is going to double as a digestive bitter. Um, it's, it has the ability to help you absorb minerals better from your food. Um, and those are good things as well.

Speaker 3: 50:41

Yeah. Yeah. Good little plant. Yes. Cool. All right, so let's see. Um, an a sort of a different place in our first aid kit, we can think about some herbs that share a common constituent called Berberine. And this is a pretty well known antimicrobial compounds that a variety of different plants make. Um, so famous ones you might have heard of include golden seal and Oregon grape roots and also yellow routes, not to be confused with yellow dock root. Um, and what else people, uh, oh, barberry, right. It's kind of give gifts the substance it's name cause bare Barista Bulgaris as barbarian, Burberry, Berberine comes out of that plant. Um, so Barb areas one there. Um, and then in our part of the country we have a plant called gold thread or Coptis trifle. Yeah. And there's also a, there's a relative of that from China that's also fairly well known. Um, but yeah, so

Speaker 4: 51:48

in the southwest Alga Rita,

Speaker 3: 51:51

yeah, I'll be Rita. Um, which is kind of more like a tree sort of thing. Um, and Berberine turns up in a few other plants here and there. There's actually a kind of a cork tree that has some Berberine in it. And you know, if you are the herbs, um, but it's, go ahead.

Speaker 4: 52:05

The thing about Berberine is that often you will hear it called the herbal antibiotic and if that's all you hear about it, then that can get you into some trouble. Um, because on one hand, yes, technically that is true. On the other hand, it doesn't pass through the digestive tract. Now that's not a problem because in a post disaster situation, um, a topical antimicrobial plant, whether that is topical on the skin or topical in the digestive tract is super important. Um, so this is going to be helpful if, if there is, um, like water that's not being sufficiently treated and, uh, people are getting crud from the water, um, it's going to be great if maybe there's some food that was a little past its prime and there's some food poisoning going around. Um, but it's also really excellent for wound care as a wound wash or whatever else. And in a, in a real pinch, um, if I couldn't treat water, obviously I would always prefer to boil water or treat it with iodine or some such. If I couldn't treat water and I really had no other option, I would strain it through whatever cloth I had to get any particular out. And then I might add some Berberine constituent plant in just a sort of to understand that I'm still taking a risk but to kind of give myself a better shot at mitigating that risk. So there's a lot of ways that this can be applied. And not only is it about the Berberine content that is having that into microbial action, but also these plants tend to have a stringency action as well on the mucous membranes. So, um, that is particularly handy in the gut lining because when there's gut compromise, being able to astringe that area and like tighten it back up again, um, is also going to be very, very helpful.

Speaker 5: 54:10

Yeah. So, um, how to, how to work with these. You've got a variety of options. You can work with Berberine's um, in tincture form, certainly for taking them internally, then that's an easy way to go about it. Um, and you know, if you had say like an abscess or some kind of infection in the mouth, then that's a, a nice delivery method. It will sting, it will burn a bit, but it's also very strong. Um, you can, um, you know, mix it half and half with pure water if you want to and switch with that or you said as a wound wash, um, there still will be some collateral damage from the alcohol. You know, if you put that into an infected wound, but when your choices kill off a few cells or let the infection will continue you, you make that choice and you go with it. You can also keep this in your kit, in the form of a powder. Um, and then you could mix it up with some, some, you know, water or some tea and make a paste out of it and put that over wounds is recognize that because it's powder, you are going to have to then wash it out again thoroughly and completely in order to not leave irritating particulates in the mood. So. Hmm. Okay. Um, so yeah, but the easiest way really are the cleanest way to work with these plants is in a, in a water extraction and a t. So if you know that you're going to be in a place where you can boil water and you can work with these, then that's going to in some ways be the simplest way, at least at the level of the wound itself or the infection itself or the math problem or whatever it is.

Speaker 4: 55:40

Yeah. It won't be delicious, but it will be effective.

Speaker 5: 55:43

Yeah, that's for sure. Um, now one thing to keep in mind though is that, uh, rather than choosing a single herb for this and sending o w which of all those plants has the most Berberine's, um, you know, that's not necessarily the right way to go about this. What seems to be better for both fighting infection and um, well, all of the other things that we want to do with these herbs is to get a combination of multiple of them and also multiple parts of the plants. So a lot of this, you know, we can get into a bunch of phytochemistry here, but the basic idea is that it's not just Berberine. There are related alkaloids related antimicrobial compounds in each of the Berberine plants and they each have a different subset. So like gold thread has Berberine. It also has copped a scene, um, uh, golden seal. It has Berberine in it also has high dress dean and a few others

Speaker 4: 56:35

and they probably have lots of other things too. Oh, they just haven't studied yet.

Speaker 5: 56:39

They totally do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the idea is that you have this kind of cohort effect where like we sort of have like our, our mind Max centered around Berberine, but there's a lot of other branches that kind of traveled together with it and, um, are variously concentrated in each of the different plants that carry it. Um, you know, we, we focused on Berberine because it's easy to detect. Like it gives a yellow color to the root, to the root bark or to the branches are, and like the interior part of the, of the plant, it has a really specific flavor to that you can identify real easily. Yeah. Yeah. So those are, those are useful in terms of distinguishing them and then in, in, in, in seeing like, oh, this yellow plant has that same taste as that other yellow plant. Hmm. I get it. Or something going on here. So there's that. Um, but yeah, so keeping a blend of these herbs together is really the best way. So if it's a tincture blend, then I might put in golden seed, Olin barberry and some of the gold thread and some of the Oregon grape root and put them all together. Um, so that's one side of it. And then the other side of it is to combine the routes along with the leaves of these plants because, um, there's a, a different type of compound, um, with a long fancy name that people usually abbreviate, um, as MHC. But this is something that serves as a biofilm disruptor and it's, uh, uh, going to basically get into the, um, get into the bacteria or the microbes that it is you're trying to fight and disable some of their defenses and prevent them from joining hands and making red rover chains with each other. Um, and essentially this enhances the effect of the Berberine and the Hydrus Dean and the cocktail scene and all of the alkaloid and agents, killer friends basically that are coming through here. Um, and so combining a bit of leaf extracts with a bit of the root extract from these plants tends to bring all of those functions together and get you a much more effective remedy. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 58:43

In other words, this is yet another place where we see that diversity makes us stronger. So just keep repeating that to yourself. Diversity makes us stronger. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Excellent. All right, well the next time I list actually also thinking about wound care is rosewater and in particularly I like rosewater and witch Hazel mixed together actually for this, so you can get one or the other. But in my first aid kit, I do, um, have a blend of both together. And actually there's a commercial product that you can just buy and put right in your kit. It's cub, there's um, and they have a witch hazel rosewater extract that is alcohol free. And that's really important for me. It's I guess a little aloe in it as well. It does have a little bit of aloe and that means that maybe we're not going to put this on staff, but um, but it's pretty far down the ingredient list. Yeah. So Rosewater and witch Hazel both have some stringent action. Rosewater itself is also really antiseptic. It's very cooling and anti inflammatory and you can't forget that it also smells good. And when we are thinking about emergency situations, we tend to in our minds get very spartan, like sort of as a culture. We tend to get very spartan and very like everything has to have a purpose of strength and otherwise I don't need it. Um, but actually the smell of rosewater I think is a very important part of the medicine because if somebody is wounded and I am caring for their wound, they're in pain. And if what I am working with to clean their wound is also something that smells overwhelmingly of roses, that is distracting from the pain. It is something that people notice right away. And they're like, what? Why does it smell so good? And it, that ability to distract somebody from their pain is actually really, really important and it helps to sort of break that panicky place and get them way more grounded. So, um, don't neglect things that are lovely and things that are comforting when you're thinking about your planning process. Um, and you're like, oh, I need is a bunch of protein cubes and I'll be fine. Like, no, you also need a little chocolate. You're going to need a little chocolate. That's going to be important. Yeah. So anyway, rosewater it is the chocolate of wound care. Pretty Great. Yeah. You can keep it in a like a spray bottle or something. And yeah, I like a, either a spray bottle or a like a sport bottle with a good score, the top. Um, so you can get a little pressure behind it in case there's a little bits of dirt that you're trying to get out.

Speaker 5: 1:01:54

Right? Yeah. Cool. Okay. And then another herb, this can be related to wound care is calendula and with Calendula, Angela, again, you've got options to work with that. It can be in a, um, in a powder. It can be just the loose herbs and then maybe you're working with that on, um, uh, compress or you know, a poultice or something that, um, so it is a, is a wound healer. It has a bit of, um, antiseptic actions to it as well. Um, it's particularly helpful when you're coping with a fungal infection. So, um, that's a place where it's very called for, whether that's on the skin or it could be up in the sinuses. You know, you can, um, you can get this up into the nose with a nasal spray or you can do a Neti pot thing if you filter it real careful first.

Speaker 4: 1:02:46

I really don't love either of those. Um, they are just very uncomfortable for me, but I find that if I have a sinus infection, that's all like, um, you know, I can really tell a sinus infections are very frequently fungal and I can really tell what it is when the roof was my mouth itches. And what I find is if I drink some calendula, either tincture or tea, but hold it in my mouth for a long time, that actually seems to be extremely helpful. And it, it's, it's really quite sufficient. So you don't have to spray it up your nose if you're not into that. Um, I am not into that, so we will be in good company together.

Speaker 5: 1:03:28

Hmm. Yeah. Well you can also drink Hella Angela, and it's really very helpful for a variety of digestive problems. Um, it is a cooling agent. It's going to be a little bit drying and a little bit tonifying. Um, so if you were just having, you know, a bunch of dry cramping problems, then maybe this isn't the writer, but when there's inflammation, when there's laxity in the mucous membranes, and especially when there's leaky gut going on, calendula is one of the very first steps that we think of because it does a strange and it does tonify those tissues while encouraging the generation of healthy new tissue in areas that have been inflamed or even ulcerated, something like that. Um, so it's just a, it's an extremely helpful agent like that. And yeah, again, t tincture powder Poltis compress a soak serve really great with Columbia law. Um,

Speaker 4: 1:04:18

yeah. You know, also calendula has a lovely lymphatic action and that is something really important in the digestive system, especially if, um, maybe everybody's eating food that is not necessarily optimal for their own bodies. Um, then that's going to be very helpful, not just in moving that lymph also in healing any damage to the digestive tract. But, um, but it's important to recognize that that lymphatic action is topically stimulating as well. And so when there is a wound that you're caring for, then you know, you still need to move the lymph, even if it's up to the close, top part of your skin, like that's still is a factor involved. Um, and we need to make sure that just everything is flowing very freely, not necessarily like gushing, but just that everything's able to move around and, uh, that you don't have stagnation in that left because if you do, you can't more nutrition to the area through the blood and with no fresh nutrition, then you can't grow any new cells. So we need to have that, uh, internally and externally. So it's something that I really like to think a lot about with call Angela. Yeah, I appreciate that. Cool.

Speaker 5: 1:05:35

All right. So also related to some digestive troubles is one of your absolute favorites.

Speaker 4: 1:05:40

Ah, Ginger Kemah meal. And I know we've talked about this a million times, so we don't even really need to, um, except I do want to mention one thing, um, is that don't neglect to ginger Kemah meal as a wound wash as well. Um, Kim Emil is tremendously strong in terms of antiseptic action and wound care ability. Um, and ginger is a lovely antiinflammatory and also the warming action really helps, again to help with the keeping all of the flow going, but the circulatory flow, but just all of the flow in the area with that, that warmth. Um, so even though we usually talk about it in digestive terms or I've talked about it in, uh, for headaches and, uh, for emotional and psychological stuff like it is also has wonderful wound care applications. So it's sort of like two plants that like literally, if those were the only two plants you had, you could do an amazing amount of work. So good. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 1:06:46

So good. You know, we've kind of been focusing so far on like wound care and acute problems and stuff like that and, um, acute like traumatic sort of problems. I mean, we talked a bit about, you know, upset stomachs and digestive complaints and that kind of thing. But I always find it important to remind myself about first aid that, um, some of the most common situations that people need help with are actually more emotional and mental rather than strictly physical in nature

Speaker 4: 1:07:16

or even if they have a physical thing that you're dealing with, like we can't neglect the emotional and the psychological aspect of it. It's not like you can just bandage them up and ship them out. Like you kind of also need to give him a hug and there are herbs that can do that.

Speaker 5: 1:07:30

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean an anxiety attack is, is just as overwhelming as a sprained ankle or whatever else. Just as debilitating. Yeah. Yeah. It takes them off of, off of the team basically. So yeah. So we needed to have, have remedies for that. And I mean there are so many different nervines and we do often try to be like specific and choose the right one for the, for the situation and the individual and the constitution and everything else. But I'll also say that when I'm packing a kit and I don't know who it is I'm going to be working with or working on or anything like that, then I might put in a little combo of Betony with skullcap and passion flower. Um, because that is effective for a really decent variety of people, um, and for a pretty broad array of problems. So it's a nice blend for, for an anxiety attack. It's a good blend for mitigating panic. Um, it can also though help with some kinds of depressive states or people feeling like they've lost motivation. Um, but it's kind of major thing that ties all of this together is that this is a remedy for embodiment. This is a remedy for bringing people into their body, into the present moment, um, and getting them out of their worries and their fears and their anxieties about the future in the past. Um, so that's kind of like presencing medicine is very, very important, um, to get people to stay focused where they are. Um, I'm not going to call this a remedy for shock, but it's pointing in the same kind of direction. Yeah. You know, a lot of what's going on with shock is that the person is, is losing connection to the, to their body and um, a lot of the remedies for that are really, uh, about like get you here, like come back to the moment, you know, there drops of Cayenne tincture or whatever it may be. You know, it sounds harsh. It sounds intense and it, it is, it kind of has to be when it's something that, that severe but for like milder degrees of the same type of problem

Speaker 4: 1:09:35

or, or for after the Cayenne tincture,

Speaker 5: 1:09:38

right? Yeah. Then that bent knee skullcap passionflower Combo was really nice. It also doubles as a remedy that can be useful for people who are having some insomnia or some inability to settle down and rest.

Speaker 4: 1:09:51

That's going to be super important for you and anybody else who is doing response work because you get that adrenaline state and when it's time to sleep, you need to sleep, but it's really hard to do that. It's really hard to come down from that place and allow yourself to go to sleep because you're really in your emergency response space.

Speaker 5: 1:10:18

Yeah. And I guess, you know, that kind of is, that's a, that's a thing to pay attention to as well is that like you need to take care of the caretakers. Yeah. Great. So critical. And you go into this and a lot of detail in the emergent responder course, but you know, one of the big ideas is that you, you can have a team of folks who are gonna are gonna be the free clinic or the herbal medics or whatever you're going to help people out. And one of the people on the team is the, is the caretaker or the team, um, provider.

Speaker 4: 1:10:49

Yeah. The person who really is focused on caring for the team. And you really, you really do need to have a person who's dedicated to that because it, it is very, very important. Yeah. I want to see one of the things about your bet new skullcap and passion flower when there, yeah. Cause I just can't help myself. Um, you know, normally I'm, I'm in a position of advocating psychological and emotional first aid and including that and whatever. And it shouldn't all just be big heroic medicine. But, um, do you also need to say that that blend is really excellent for concussions and for, um, whiplash support and any kind of cervical spine injury support? Um, any kind of pinched ness in the, in the, between the shoulder blades up through the neck, um, that, that, that is going to be a lovely blend there as well. So try not to turn it into a heroic medicine, but cool. It's true. It just means you should have twice as much of it.

Speaker 5: 1:11:57

Yeah. Be prepared. So there's a lot of other things that we could talk about. I mean, we didn't really even talk about asthma attack.

Speaker 4: 1:12:03

Oh, I know. There's so much here, right?

Speaker 5: 1:12:05

Say Two words, which would be Lobelia tincture, but there's obviously more to it than that, but you know, so there's lots of different things that we could get to there. We could be talking about exhaustion and adaptogens. We can be talking about, you know, all kinds of different aspects. But a lot of the root of this is you need to think and prepare for what is most likely to happen. You know? So if you know, you're in a part of the country where, um, there's a particular, um, communicable illness that, uh, would be a part of a post disaster work, then you need to be prepared for that. So if there's bugs that are going to be in your part of the world and if you're not living in a, you know, modern, clean situation, then they're going to start to be more and more of a reality for you. You know,

Speaker 4: 1:12:47

even stuff like if you live in a place where fires are the issue, then lung support, lung support versus if you're in a place where cold or water is the issue, then you're thinking about, you know, okay, actually water is a lot of directions of problems, but you're thinking about it a little too much. Yeah, yeah. You're thinking about supporting the digestive system and supporting all of the body barriers and stuff like that. And if you are in a place where heat is going to be the major focus, then you're thinking about totally different plants. So, um, all the way around, it's, it's really just important to spend some time getting aware and like being prepared doesn't mean you're a crazy tin tin foil hat person. Like being prepared just means that you're a responsible adult. So it's not weird to spend some time really thinking about that and making sure that you are ready so that you are not, um, you're not somebody who needs to be rescued. You're somebody who can contribute to, to the rescue effort. Not that there's any, I mean, if you do need to be rescued than we just feel really grateful. Yeah. Right. Like then we feel grateful that there are people who are able to do that. And even if you plan, sometimes things go so go sideways and it's not a binary thing

Speaker 5: 1:14:12

either. Yeah. It can be like, all right, I'm here. I'm able to stay hunkered down for this period of time and then I do need a rescue because my meds are going to run out or my whatever's going to happen. Yeah, those are, those are real. But, but for anybody, no matter what your degree of, of mobility or baseline health or whatever else, there's always something that you can do to be a little more resilience, a little more. Um, not, not, I don't like the word independent so much, but,

Speaker 4: 1:14:42

um, so I'm listening to Michelle Obama's book becoming, yeah, the audio book right now. And I think that the, I mean she's just telling her life story in this book, but there was a really beautiful example of that in that her father had ms and they lived in a part of Chicago that had fires very frequently and they, um, when they were children, they decided, like the whole family said, well, dad can't run. And so we need to make a plan for what would happen if we had a fire. And so they did. And, uh, dad was a hero in the community and, and dad was a really strong person. Just he couldn't run. So they had to make a plan for that. And that doesn't mean that he wasn't going to also be able to be resilient part of supporting the community in other ways. But, but they all sat down and the like, there's this whole part of the book where they talk about how they made a plan for for that and so and breakfast and they, yeah, and they practice. And I think that's really important because even if you are a person who has, uh, a back injury or a chronic illness or, or, uh, any kind of a disability or mobility impairment, that doesn't mean that you can't plan to be of service and you totally can. Yeah.

Speaker 5: 1:15:57

Cool. All right, well if you'd like some help with your planning, then let's get one more plug for crutches, series of courses there. The, we call it the emergent responder a bundle. And that has two components to it. One is the community disaster response, first aid and longterm care of course. And the other one is the community disaster response, emergency clinic management. So you can take either one. You can take both. You can get a bundle pricing I think on there. Um, but get with your friends. Yeah. Share this knowledge, right. Get those ideas out there. So yes, you can find that I'm same where you find all of our other courses,

Speaker 4: 1:16:43

herbs.com/learn.

Speaker 5: 1:16:43

There you go. All right, well we'll be back with another podcast next week. Um, how tests are getting longer. They are getting a little bit longer. I'm actually going to be away next Friday and I don't know if we were planning to like, we have a plan. We have one. We have one. Okay. You have a secret plan, which I will learn about sometimes. That's right. And then they'll hear about it later. All right, everybody. Have a good week.

Speaker 4: 1:17:07

Bye Bye.[inaudible].