I'm back after a long hurricane watch cycle. As a forensic meteorologist who works for the government, I am required to be on call at work during national weather events. So while most of the time I get to work out of my home, during these times I must be out in the field. For the next couple of days I will be crunching data while trying to get caught up with the farm chores. Thank goodness for family to take care of things while I am gone.
First thing I notices as I crossed the bridge into the valley I live in is the bottle gentian growing near the creek edge. It's about 3 weeks early but if this summer has taught me anything it is to let go of human created time frames. With the new weather patterns we are having, plants will grow when it best suits them and we just have to play catch up.
Bottle gentian is one member of this plant family that grows all over the world and the main one I use for a medicinal. We usually find it growing just as summer is drawing to a close, sometimes it even emerges after the first frosts of the year. It likes to have its feet wet so looking for it by streams, ponds, lakes...basically damp areas, is the best way to find it. It's leaves are opposite, meaning they come off the stem directly across from each other, and are mildly lance like. While my pictures suck (I will never make money as a photographer), the flowers are closed and somewhat bottled shaped.
Gentian is an older medicine than most people use now a days because we don't like bitters anymore. Bitters use to be a very important part of any person's diet, usually taken if one was feeling sluggish or as a preventative after a heavy meal. My great aunt still takes bitters everyday to keep her digestive track working well.
Bitters are used as a sort of irritant to the body. When you take a bitter, either as a tea, tincture or syrup you feel the effect immediately. You mouth begins to salivate a bit more. This is what bitters do. They increase moisture and healing bile to the whole digestive tract. Now, for many people biles is a bad thing. To put it bluntly (when did bodily functions become so hush, hush?) most people only experience bile when they are sick. Their body produces more of it to coat the digestive tract to protect it. Sometimes this extra bile comes out in ways that are kinda gross. But bile, and even extra bile, is usually good for us. It is our body's way of keeping the very thing that feeds it (the digestive tract from mouth to anus) safe.
When we eat rich foods or rough foods, sometimes our bodies simply don't make enough bile to move that digesting food through our system. In polite terms this is called irregularity. A person may feel bloated, their stomach may make those funny noises that seem to happen just as the room is quiet, diarrhea and/or constipation can happen, cramping and an overall feeling of not right is usually part of the symptoms. Bitters help you avoid all this by making the body keep itself safe. Instead of putting a drug into your system to fix the problem, bitters like gentian ask your body to do it for itself.
Gentian tonic can also be used for those who get motion sickness. Drinking plenty of water and taking a bitter can make us feel less queasy. If you get stomach upset in stressful situations, gentian can keep the digestive tract flowing properly when the rest of the body is tense.
Gentian can also help with those who have colon problems. A woman once called me because her doctor told her she had diverticulitis and would have to have surgery. I told her that I was not a doctor and I recommended she follow her doctor's orders but if she wanted to try something else first she could fast for three days and then slowly start eating again. If she added more fiber to her diet after her body had healed and drank a bitter twice a day she may be able to avoid surgery. She did just that and cured her diverticulitis without medical help. I'm not saying don't listen to a doctor--they get paid the big bucks for their knowledge--but here is an example of a woman who cured herself.
I have even heard of it being used in MILD cases of appendicitis where surgery wasn't required, instead antibiotics were used to clear up the infection. After the antibiotics had done their job, the person started using bitters to keep the bile flowing and keep build up from happening.
I am making a good size tincture of bitters from my gentian adding some dried willow bark to the jar as a mild pain reliever. You do not need to add the willow bark and if you are allergic to aspirin you should NOT add it. Willow contains salicin, the natural form of aspirin. My tinctures are made by stuffing a scalded jar as full as I can get it with the gentian plant (all aerial parts) then pouring at least 80 proof spirits over it. If you don't like alcohol, an apple cider vinegar tincture works as well, only you will need to take a slightly larger dose. I let this sit for at least 2 months before I strain off the plant material and put the liquid into a dark jar (or just store it in a dark place). This becomes the tincture than can be used twice a day. Twenty or thirty drops into an eight ounce glass of water will help your body regulate itself quite nicely or drink this after a heavy meal to get the digestive process going.
Gentian is just a good all around medicine for digestive tract ailments. Mint tea with a few drops of bitters can be a way to end a hard day when the stomach is complaining that you may just have over done it in the eating department. Bitters, an ancient medicine our ancestors knew about.
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