SLC S21 Week 2 - Basic Herbal Remedies for Daily Health.

Greetings and welcome to my blog. Herbal medicine has been a part of our everyday lives and it’s a great opportunity to learn more about it and all it entails. Thanks for this great lectures.

Prepare a herbal tea for digestion or stress/anxiety. Documenting the steps, proportions, and effects felt after drinking them.

There are alot of herbs that aid our digestion and some of them includes; peppermint, garlic, ginger, rosemary, cumin, cinnamon, liquorice, coriander etc.

	My Rosemary tea and I

Today I prepared rosemary tea as a herbal tea that aids digestion. Rosemary is a herb and also can be used as spice for food and it has so many health benefits.

	Dry rosemary

Regarding digestion, one can take rosemary tea after a meal maybe lunch or dinner as it improves digestion by reducing excess gas or acid. It also helps with loss of appetite and reduces bloating in the abdomen.

Rosemary tea comes in handy is treating indigestion as it reduces inflammation and helps to keep our gut bacteria balance healthy.

	Boiling the rosemary

	sieved and pouring into cup

I prepared rosemary tea by boiling a cup of water in pot and when the water was brought to boil. I added my rosemary and allow to boil briefly. I brought down the pot and sieved my tea and poured into a cup and it was ready to be consumed.

I used this after my lunch and before I was done with this assignment, I started feeling hungry again, it’s like the food digested even before I ate eat and I feel lighter in my tummy.

Sometime noodles make me Bloat but this time around, it was different. The tea worked. I took a tea cup portion from the one in the cup. It’s advisable to be careful with the dosages we take for herbs.

Research the best ways to store herbs at home; take pictures of your storage method and explain why it works.

Herbs needs to be stored well to ensure they last. Different types of herbs requires different storage techniques.

The reason for good storage of herbs is to ensure that they last over a period of time and so also be able to retain their effectiveness. The herbs method of storage would differ with the types of herb whether is fresh herbs of dry herbs.

Fresh herbs are susceptible to spoiling easily hence I use a breathable container or paper towels to wrap them when I have them and put them in the refrigerator to preserve them.

	Refridgerator for storing fresh herbs

I have more of dry herbs. And for my dry herbs, I keep them away from direct light and heat. I first wash the fresh ones and dry them before keeping them away for storage.

I ensure to keep them in a place where moisture will not get to them. I place them in containers like in the picture and label them so as to be able to identify them easily.

	Labelled and stored dry herbs

When they are stored like this, the would be able to last for long and still retain their effectiveness

Create your own herbal remedy for a common cold documenting the ingredients, preparation steps, and your experience.

For common cold health remedies, I used ginger. Ginger is known for its hotness and can come in very handy when dealing with common cold.

	My ginger tea and 1

I chose a simply recipe as it’s easily obtainable over here. All I needed was to prepare my ginger tea.

I sliced fresh roots of ginger and boiled hot water. I proceeded to put my fresh ginger into a glass and poured the hot water into them and allow to sit for some minutes.

	Fresh ginger

	Fresh ginger roots in cup

	Hot water added

Then I removed the ginger roots from the tea and it’s ready to be used. Ginger is a very good home remedy for cold. You can also decide to chew on fresh ginger roots as this will help to deal with cough and cold. It’s effective because it medicinal Properties helps in fighting viruses for cold and it’s antibacterial too.

Ginger is known to make people sweat and it said to be diaphoretic. Therefore it comes in handy when dealing with flu or cold.

Ginger is part of my regular routine tea and it’s very effective when I use it for cold remedy. The ginger tea was hot but the hotness effect is greater when you eat the ginger raw.

Infuse two different herbs (one for digestion and one for stress/anxiety) in water. Document the process, duration, and your thoughts on the end result.

The two herbs I used for my herbal infusion is rosemary which aids digestion as I explained in the first experiment and tumeric which helps in stress and anxiety relief.

	Rosemary and Tumeric

Tumeric contains curcumin as its active ingredient hence is helpful when trying to deal with stress and relief. Curcumin is helpful in reducing oxidative stress and inflammation hence relieves anxiety and stress.

Dopamine and serotonin are the chemicals in the brian that controls our behavior and moods and curcumin contained in Tumeric helps to boost their level which in turn affects our mood.

I prepared my infusion by washing and slicing fresh Tumeric roots. I added rosemary to it and poured in a glass of water. I allowed the infusion to stay over night and the next morning I had my digestive and stress relieving infusion.

	Rosemary and Tumeric in water and left overnight

I noticed the colour changed to a darker shade of orange and that’s because the properties of the herbs especially the Tumeric which has orange colour have infused into the water over time.

	The next day

	Sieving into cup

	My herbal infusion is ready

The smell wasn’t friendly but I had to take it to relieve myself a little bit. I’ve been stressed this season and I felt better after resting a while. I had to watch the dosage I took to avoid abuse.

Am very glad for this class because I’ve learned simply herbal home remedies that would come in handy when needed.

I ask @ruthjoe, @jovita30 and @divinelife to join the engagement.