Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.Nettle
Takes the Sting out of Gout
Family: Urticaceae; (includes other Nettles)
Genus and Species: Urtica Dioica
Also known as: Stinging Nettle, Common Nettle, Greater Nettle
Parts used: Leaves and stems
Everyone agrees nettle stings hurt, but controversy surrounds the herb’s use in Healing. One modern herbalist calls nettle “one of the most widely applicable plants we have.” Many scientists, however, say the herb “has no pharmacologic value when administered orally.”
Nettle is no wonder herb, but externally it may help treat the pain of gout, and internally it may relieve hay fever symptoms and help treat high blood pressure.
Strong as Canvas
Nettle was used in weaving before it became popular in herbal Healing. Archeologists have discovered nettle-fabric burial shrouds at Bronze Age sites in Denmark. In Les Miserables, one of Victor Hugo’s characters calls nettle fabric as strong as canvas. And during World War I, when cotton was in short supply in Germany, nettle cloth was substituted.
Its use in Healing also harkens back to the ancient world.
Around the 3rd century B.C., Hippocrates’ Greek conternporaries prescribed nettle juice externally to treat snakebites and scorpion stings and internally as an antidote to such plant poisons as hemlock and henbane.
Roman soldiers flailed themselves with nettles in cold climates because the herb’s sting warmed their skin. This practice, called urtication, evolved into a treatment still used today for the joint stiffness of arthritis and the intense joint pains of gout.
From Nosebleeds to Mother’s Milk
Early European herbalists touted nettle tea to treat cough and tuberculosis, and strange as this sounds today, the herb was smoked to treat asthma. Herbalists also prescribed nettle to treat scurvy and stop bleeding, particularly nosebleeds. Somewhere along the way, nettle juice gained a reputation as a hair-growth stimulant, and it remained an ingredient in hair-growth nostrums well into the 19th century.
Seventeenth-century English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper endorsed all the nettle prescriptions which preceded him, and added some of his own: “The decoction of the leaves in wine is singularly good to provoke women’s courses [menstruation].”
American Indian women believed drinking nettle tea during pregnancy strengthened the fetus and eased delivery. They also used it to stop uterine bleeding after childbirth. Early settlers adopted this use, and nursing mothers also used nettle to increase their milk production.
The 19th-century Eclectics recommended nettle primarily as a diuretic to treat urinary, bladder, and kidney problems. But King’s American Dispensatory also called it “an excellent styptic” (blood stopper) and treatment for infant diarrhea, hemorrhoids, and eczema.
Contemporary herbalists recommend nettle as a tonic “to strengthen and support the whole body.” Many reiterate all the herb’s traditional uses, from milk promotion to hair restoration.