Valeriana musings JoAnn Guest

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Valeriana musings JoAnn Guest May 03, 2005 21:16 PDT By Howie Brounstein

 

 

 

 

I was told by an herbalist friend of mine that the ingedient in valerian

which induces sleep is not water-soluble, so making a tea of it would do

nothing for sleep....not to mention the fact that Valerian root (which

is where the sleep stuff is) is notoriously odorous - I think it smells

like sweaty socks from a gym locker, personally : ) So if you take it -

and I know nothing about the toxicity or the build up of it in the

liver, I would take it in a capsule form which are readily available. It

didn't do much for me, tho, I had to take about four of them to help me

sleep. YMMV, Consult a professional herbalist or homeopathic physician.

Funny, just last month I was sitting round the campfire with a group of

students. We had spent the day digging Valeriana sitchensis, dodging

helicopters carrying water to the fires burning around the area,

botanizing, and other herbal-type stuff. Most of the roots were to be

washed in the river the next day, but some of it we washed after dinner,

chopped and ran through a hand crank wheatgrass juicer, and made some

fresh Valerian juice. While the guest speakers talked of Valeriana

chemistry, we tasted the fresh juice. The results, not unexpected as I

do this every year, was that everyone felt the smell, the taste of the

Valeriana, throughout their bodies. As one student starts renaming the

constellations to reflect teapots, tincture presses, and popular

herbalists, I think of how complex herbs really are, the closer we look,

the less we know. Some folks were strongly stimulated, others quieted.

Valerian acts differently on different people, depending on dosage and

personal constitution.

 

I beg to differ opinions with your herbalist friend. The water extract

of valerian is unquestionably effective, from years of first-hand

experience. In fact, I believe fresh root tea to be the most effective

way to ingest Valerian. But, there are constituents that boil away at

relatively low temperatures. If you boil the valerian root, as you

generally do with roots, than you loose much of the effect but leave

most of the smell. This is probably why your friend has heard that

Valeriana tea in useless.

 

Therefore, steep your valerian root in luke warm water for a day.

 

I grind the fresh root in a blender, cover it with water to form a mush,

let sit a day, squeeze it through some muslin cloth, and voila (or

should I say Valeriana) --- musky earthy tea fit for the heartiest of

taste buds. But a small cup will impart a strong sensation throughout

the body.

 

And, to top it all off, current research trends indicate that the main

active constituent is not what it used to be. In fact, even though

valerian chemistry is one of the more studied, the experts are no longer

sure what the active ingredient is. Another reason to use the WHOLE

PLANT, not some extract from dead material standardized to a certain

percentage of some possibly active ingredient, ignoring the other

constituents, destroying any possibility of natural synergistic effects

from the WHOLE PLANT'S complex of chemicals, perhaps even filtering out

truly important components.

 

I personally do not like dried valerian, and will always go with fresh

root, or fresh root tincture if the fresh root is unavailable. They

differ chemically, but the choice is indeed personal.

 

Howie Brounstein

http://www.teleport.com/~howieb

" It's easy to harvest wild plants, the hard part is not harvesting. "

http://ibiblio.org/herbmed/neat-stuff/valeriana.html

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AIM Barleygreen

" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

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