Herbs & Herbal Remedies @ Green Papaya

Beer for Better Health

Family: Moraceae; (includes Fig, Mulberry; Cannabaceae; Hemp, Marijuana

Genus and Species: Humulus Lupulus’Also known as: Humulus

Parts used: Glandular hairs of the female fruits (strobiles)

Hop is best known as the bitter, aromatic ingredient in beer. It also has a long history in herbal Healing, and some of its traditional uses have been supported by modern science.

Chinese physicians have prescribed hop for centuries as a digestive aid and treatment for leprosy, tuberculosis, and dysentery.

Ancient Greek and Roman physicians also recommended it as a digestive aid and treatment for intestinal ailments. The Roman naturalist Pliny touted the herb as a garden vegetable, the young shoots of which could be eaten in spring before they matured and grew tough and bitter. (People still eat the shoots, prepared like asparagus.)

Beer: Liquid Bread

Hop was a minor herb until about 1,000 years ago, when brewers began using it to preserve the fermented barley beverage we call beer.

Beer was an accidental offshoot of bread baking. As agriculture developed, late-prehistoric homemakers noticed that bread made from raw grain did not keep as well as bread made from sprouted grain. So before pounding their grain into flour, they soaked it in water to sprout it. If the water happened. to become contaminated with yeast microorganisms from the skins of fruit, it fermented into a crude sweet beer.

Ancient beers, probably undrinkable by modern standards, were nonetheless amazingly popular. Around 2500 B.C., 40 percent of the Sumerian grain crop was used in brewing. And the world’s first written legal code, Babylonia’s Code of Hammurabi, developed in 1750 B.C., described punishments for ale houses that sold under-strength or overpriced beer.

As the centuries passed, brewers added herbs to flavor their beers: marjoram, yarrow, and wormwood. Around the 9th century, the Germans began adding hop, both for its pleasantly bitter flavor and because it preserved the brew. By the 14th century, most European beers contained hop.

Outrage in England

Hop was well known in England. The vine grew wild there, and in folk medicine it was a popular appetite-stimulating digestive bitter.

But England’s fermented beverage of choice was ale, a sweet, ancient-style beer without hop. Around 1500, British brewers learned of hop’s preservative properties and added it, turning their sweet ales into bitter beers-and provoking national outrage.

Legions of hop haters petitioned Parliament to ban the herb as “a wicked weed that would endanger the people.” Henry VIII, an ale traditionalist, agreed and banned the herb from English brewing. It remained illegal until his son, Edward VI, rescinded the ban in 1552.

But the furor refused to die. A century later, English writer John Evelyn declared, “Hop transmuted our wholesome ale into beer. This one ingredient preserves the drink indeed, but repays the pleasure in tormenting diseases and a shorter life.”

Hop-Picker Fatigue

Beer brewing transformed hop from a spring vegetable into a cash crop. Hop farmers noticed the herb had two odd effects on those who harvested it. They fatigued easily and women’s periods arrived early. Over time, the herb gained a reputation as a sedative and menstruation promoter.

Hop has been used ever since as a sedative, not only in tea but also in pillows. The herb’s warm fragrance is supposed to induce sleep.

Seventeenth-century English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper recommended hop “in opening obstructions of the liver and spleen … cleansing the blood … helping cure the French disease I syphilis [. and bringing down women's courses [menstruation].” Culpeper also added his two pence to the lingering beer/ale controversy, writing that hop’s medicinal uses made “beer … better than ale.”

From Sedative to Patent Medicine

In North America, the Indians used native American hop as a sedative and a digestive aid.

America’s 19th-century Eclectics considered hop a digestive aid and treatment for the “morbid excitement of delerium tremens.” But they were unimpressed with its reputation as a sedative, warning it “often failed.”

Hop was listed as a sedative in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia from 1831 to 1916. Throughout the 19th century, it was an ingredient in many patent medicines, including Hop Bitters, a popular herb tonic in a 30-percent alcohol base. Its advertising slogan typified patent medicine claims in the era before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA): “Take Hop Bitters three times a day, and you will have no doctor bills to pay.”

During the 1950s, jazz musicians who smoked marijuana were called “hopheads.” and marijuana caused users to feel “hopped up.” Hop is botanically related to marijuana, but smoking the herb does not produce intoxication.

Contemporary herbalists recommend hop primarily as a sedative, tranquilizer, and digestive aid.