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The onset of cooler weather in October coincides with the beginning of the notorious cold and flu season. The common “winter illnesses” cause mild to significant discomfort for a great many people, and millions of days lost from normal work and school activities. (Less commonly, they can also result in some serious complications and—rarely—death. In recent years, flu-related deaths in the US were estimated at 12,000 in 2011-12, on the lower end, and a high-end figure of 56,000 in 2012-13.) Preventing colds and flus, and helping people recover from them sooner, is clearly a high priority.

Colds and flus are related to viral infections. Identifying specific viruses is a research procedure, not part of typical medical care. (The image below isn’t a Christmas ornament—it’s a simulation of the common cold virus.) Conventional antiviral medications remain prescription drugs, recommended only for people who are considered to be at very high risk for serious flu complications. While they reduce the risk of such complications, they only shorten the duration of symptoms by a day or two.

Standard medical advice currently includes the following ideas:
• Hand washing and surface disinfectants are crucial for preventing viral infections.
• Neither getting chilled outdoors nor dry indoor air are risk factors for winter illness.
• Lowered immune function in generally healthy people does not result in colds and flus.
• Drinking plenty of fluids is a good idea, but what you eat when you’re sick makes no difference.

Common sense, however, suggests that:
• Staying warm, and maintaining comfortable humidity in centrally heated environments, are both reasonable measures.
• If, as medical authorities say, people whose immunity is seriously impaired face a greater risk of coming down with and experiencing more serious symptoms from colds and flus, generally healthy people are also well-advised to take steps to keep their natural immunity at peak levels.
• Quicker recovery from winter illness is more likely with a simple, nourishing diet.
• Herbs with a strong history of traditional use for winter illness can play a useful role in avoiding or getting over colds and flus.

Staying home from work or school for a few days when you’re sick is generally best for everyone concerned. Rather than trying to keep going as usual (perhaps suppressing symptoms with decongestants or similar products), a regimen of bed rest, fluids—possibly including a well-selected herbal tea—may be the best way to get back to full functioning sooner. Staying home for at least 24 hours after fever has subsided in flu is recommended.

Here are a few points to consider:

Microorganisms are simply all over our bodies and our world! We tend to think about them only as sources of infectious illness. We tend to consider our immune system only when it is obviously either under- or overactive. In fact, our health depends—not on an absence of bacteria and viruses (never a real possibility anyway)—but on a relatively healthy balance of mostly benign micro-life on the outer and inner parts of our bodies, in concert with the constant functioning of our immune systems, responding to all those tiny “critters” appropriately and adequately.

Research at Yale University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2015, has demonstrated that lower temperatures tend to impair the immune response to the most common cold virus, the rhinovirus—which is constantly present in around 20% of normal subjects in the study, even when symptoms of illness aren’t apparent—and also allow the virus to replicate more effectively. These findings strongly suggest that the “old wives’ tale” about keeping warm to avoid “catching cold” is actually well-founded. (Covering the nose—where the rhinovirus lives and replicates— when venturing into cold weather, may be especially helpful.)

Since the digestive tract is clearly the most abundant zone for micro-life in our bodies, it is also a critical area for our immune activity. Common sense certainly suggests that keeping a favorable microbial balance there with a prudent diet is a basic part of staying healthy and recovering from infection. A 2017 study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown a specific effect of flavonoid compounds on bacteria in the gut that produce interferon to reduce lung damage from flu infections. Flavonoids are found in a number of foods and beverages, and are also abundant in many medicinal herbs.

A bit of research on herbs turns up so many that are renowned for treating colds and flus! Em’s Winter Defense Tea combines several herbs with a strong records for enhancing immune response, reducing inflammation, and controlling symptoms. Echinacea root is quite well known, and has been investigated extensively, with much of the research originating in Germany. Another plant widely used and studied for treating upper respiratory infections, especially flu, is Elderberry. Demulcent herbs such as Marshmallow and Licorice, with a soothing action on the throat and lungs, can help quiet inflammation. Wild Cherry Bark has been used for centuries to soothe coughs.

Another herb to consider is Catnip, especially well indicated for children’s colds, and for easing spasmodic coughs and sleeplessness. Less well known currently, Boneset was one of the first Native American plant remedies to be adopted by European settlers in North America, and remains highly regarded by herbalists for its immune boosting effects, preventing winter illness, and also alleviating symptoms after sickness becomes apparent.

Avoiding sickness, when we can, is always better than than treating it! Winter’s darkness is an especially good time to heed the mounting evidence for getting adequate sleep as an essential key to staying healthy. Exercise routines may be easy to neglect in the face of work and school demands, seasonal social events and family gatherings, but maintaining your workout provides the kind of beneficial short-term stress that actually enhances your resistance to illness. Meditation, prayer, and other practices that evoke the relaxation response have also shown positive effects on immunity.

Take care, and stay well!

Healing herbs are marketed in many forms, including capsules and tablets, alcohol-based tinctures and other concentrated liquid extracts, as well tea bags and loose herbs, sold singly or as blends. Em’s Herbals keeps a special focus on loose single herbs and tea blends featuring just a handful of ingredients.

Concentrated herbal products offer convenience: swallowing pills is quick, and familiar to most of us from experience taking standard over the counter and prescription medicines.

Squeezing a dropper from a bottle of tincture or fluid extract, into a little water or directly into the mouth, is also fast and easy. And brewing tea with a tea bag involves a bit less effort than brewing and straining loose herbs.

So why bother with making tea, using loose herbs?

1. Know what you’re taking.

You can see, smell, and taste the herb, and get a clear sense of what it is, and its quality and freshness. A fancy way of saying that is that herbs delivered in this form provide a unique opportunity to perform a neuroleptic assay—to use your senses to evaluate the product. That means that you don’t have to simply take it on faith that the product contains what the label says, and whether the plant material is still fresh and potent!

In this way you can check the appearance, fragrance, and taste of healing herbs through direct experience. (Unfortunately, many packaged botanical and nutritional products have been tested and shown to contain little or none of the ingredients shown on their labels. “Let the buyer beware” is a useful caution in this industry.)

Pills can be most deceiving, of course, since they are rarely tasted at all, and their appearance is seldom distinctive. The taste of alcohol is often the dominant flavor note in tinctures, and extracts of the same herb may vary considerably in their potency between different producers, and even between different batches from the same source. Tea bags are handy to use, and at least you can taste what you’re ingesting, but the actual plant matter is hidden from view.

With loose herbal tea, there’s nowhere to hide! What you see, smell, and taste, is exactly what you’re getting. Certified organic herbs, in a form you can identify: that’s the kind of transparency that empowers you, as an informed consumer.

And if you want to take your self-care to another level by extracting and preserving high quality dried organic herbs in the form of your own tinctures, oils, liniments, salves, or other products, the Em’s Herbals line offers you the perfect starting materials for those projects! We work with suppliers and growers—mostly in our own local region, the Pacific Northwest—to obtain some of the very best available herbs for you and your family.

2. Increase your intake of liquids.

A great many health conditions that users want to address with healing herbs will be directly improved by drinking more water at the same time!

Obvious examples of concerns that may respond to increased water intake include
• colds, coughs, flus, and hay fever symptoms
• urinary tract infections (UTIs) or other inflammations
• digestive upsets, especially when fluids are lost through vomiting or diarrhea
• headaches and other pain issues
• simple fatigue

Healthy pregnancy and breastfeeding definitely require optimal hydration, and a mineral-rich, sugar-free herbal tea, like Em’s Herbals Mommy to Be, is an ideal aid for these crucial phases of mother-and-baby’s life.

Combining appropriate herbs with additional water, in the form of tea, can be an excellent and practical way to reduce or alleviate symptoms and promote health.

3. Keep it simple!

Some herbal products that combine a dozen or more herbs in their formulas, so the activity of each ingredient may be very diluted, and the combined action of a complicated combination may be very hard to evaluate. On the other hand, Emily has designed each of our herbal blends to focus on just a few botanicals, each with a strong history of use for a particular concern or body system (sometimes adding one mostly to enhance the flavor and drinkability of the tea!).

4. Take a few minutes for yourself.

Whether you’re coping with an acute episode, hoping for help with a chronic issue, or just up against the daily grind, taking a moment for the simple ritual of brewing, steeping, straining, and drinking herbal tea can be a refreshing way to claim a bit of time out in your busy day.

The rushing around, the urgent tasks, the constantly shifting focus on various everyday business or family matters, can take up so much of our lives these days. All that often plays a huge role in creating the stress that makes us far more vulnerable to feeling sick, run down, or hurting.

Slow down! Step away from the screen. 
Put the kettle on. 
Pour the steaming water into your teapot. 
Pause, and enjoy the fragrance of the herbs as they steep. 
Pour and strain the tea into your cup. 
Sip. Breathe. Things are going to get better…

As autumn advances here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, many leaves turn bright colors, but very little other color is visible. Our sunflowers have fallen over, the last of our golden tomatoes have been harvested, pumpkins are out on porches. Still, the bright orange and yellow calendula flowers—volunteers in our garden, this year—remain vibrant! In fact, the name Calendula is said to refer to the perpetual flowering of this hardy plant throughout all the months of the calendar in many regions, where it is perennial. In more temperate areas, it’s grown as an annual, flowering from June until killed by frost.

Calendula is known to kitchen gardeners as an edible flower, adding its bright color to salads and many other dishes. Historically, the pot marigold has been used in Greek, Roman, Middle Eastern, and Indian culture as a medicine, food, and dye.

The many names by which it bas been called testify to its ancient and widespread presence in the world: Pot Marigold, Summer’s Bride, Husbandman’s Dial, Holigold, Marybud, Marygold, Bride of the Sun, Spousa Solis, Golds, bull flower; butterwort, care, cowbloom, drunkard, golden flower of Mary, gouls, goulans, kingcups, holygold, sun’s bride, water dragon, yolk of egg, poet’s marygold, publican and sinner, ruddles, Scotch marigold, shining herb, solsequia, Gold; Ringelblume, Studentenblume, Totenblume, Goldblume (German); souci (French); calendula (Italian); Nagietek lekarski (Polish); goedsbloem- wratten-kruid (Dutch); calendula gialla, fiorrancio, calenzola (Italian); calendula, flamenquilla, maravilla, flor de muerto (Spanish); maravilhas, marianas (Portuguese); ringblomma (Swedish); nogotki, lekarstvennye (Russian); chin-chan-hua (Chinese); janvah, azariyunah, azarboya (Arabic).

Early medical writings note its use for digestive tract ailments including colitis and peptic ulcers, detoxifying the liver and gall bladder, and for relieving muscle spasms, in addition to topical applications as an antiseptic, antihemorrhagic, and astringent.

Calendula extracts have been used to treat headaches, toothaches, gingivitis, eye inflammations, consumption, tumors, menstrual irregularities and other gynecological issues (it has a mildly estrogenic action), and scorpion bites. The rich color of “the poor man’s saffron” has lent its golden hues to butter, cheeses, and hair dyes.

Calendula officinialis flowers are best known as a remarkable vulnerary, gently disinfecting, reducing inflammation, and aiding the healing of cuts, scrapes, and wounds. Its antibacterial, antifungal, and immune promoting properties are widely recognized.

Active ingredients found in calendula flowers include phenolic compounds (such as flavonoids and coumarins), steroids, terpenoids, carbohydrates, lipids, tocopherols, quinones, carotenes, essential oils, fatty acids, and minerals.

Em’s Herbals provides beautiful whole organic Pacific Northwest grown Calendula blossoms, perfect for creating your own poultices, tinctures, and cosmetic blends. We also offer a premium Calendula Oil, organic jojoba oil infused with calendula, excellent for diaper rashes, eczema, and other skin irritations, as well pure Calendula Salve, a rich, buttery product that combines the infused oil with fair trade organic virgin unrefined Shea Butter, virgin unrefined organic coconut oil, and organic beeswax, a remarkable application for cuts. scratches, abrasions, and other inflamed skin surfaces.