Spring has finally sorta kinda sprung here, touch wood; Paul (my husband, hibernating partner through this long awful winter and faithful keeper of the fire to the point I think he deserves a medal) still has the the wood stove going at night and again in the morning to take the chill off, but the days are far, far better than they were. We had blizzards and ice storms in April! No fair!!
Anyhoo -
There's a blog I pop into once in a while where they're currently discussing the idea of cleansing toxins while losing weight. Because we store toxins in fat cells, when we lose weight, that crud all goes back into circulation; that can be nasty, and it's a very good reason NOT to lose weight too quickly. As I've been offering my 2 cents worth in comments there it's twigging my memory of all the really great options that we have available at this time of year for getting rid of what I like to call the grunge ..
Now as most of you know, I am not - at all - a fan of "detoxing" per se. To be precise, I am 100% against any and all methods that force the body to "purge" itself. When it comes to gall bladder cleanses, enemas and the like, I figure those who recommend them should be put up against a wall and shot at dawn. A pox on them all! Our bodies are exquisitely well adapted to do what they do, and if we think we know better than our livers how to do liver-ish things then we're just .. just .. wrong.
On the other hand, come springtime most of us are feeling kinda gunky and grungy and slow, am I right? Lucky for us, the very first plants of springtime - generally the weeds, of course - are exactly what our bodies need to do what they want to do anyway; properly digest our food and build some nice, fresh clean blood.
Every tradition you can name has their variation on what our great-grandparents called the 'spring tonic'. These first fresh greens were treasured, very often as foods, sometimes as teas. While most of us nowadays have access to fresh foods all year round and don't find ourselves forced to get by on nothing but salt pork and old turnips for the last few weeks of winter, these spring tonics might not seem as important. But our bodies are still weighed down by winter in other ways, lack of sun on the skin, breathing nothing but indoor air and (let's face it) probably some poor food choices and lack of movement take their toll. Taking advantage of the spring tonic plants still makes sense, we can still benefit.
It should be pointed out that by making these tonic plants into tinctures we can preserve them to advantage of at any time of year; whenever we feel run down or polluted. However, as useful as tinctures can be, they still don't quite replace the benefits we get from the fresh plants. Tinctures offer us the medicinal aspects of the plants; taking them fresh as foods or teas offer us the nutritional aspects - the minerals, the vitamins, the fibre, the endobacteria. "Cleansing" the body of "toxins" on a strictly medicinal level is one thing, cleansing while simultaneously supplying nutrients for rebuilding and strengthening the body as a whole is far, far better.
I have to add that the premise that the best time to cleanse is while restricting calories just doesn't sit well with me. When the body is running on a deficit isn't really the best time to go asking it to work even harder. A body that's underfed or undernourished lacks energy, it lacks the heat necessary to process extra toxins. (Ever notice that you're cold when you're restricting caloric intake? That's not a good sign. Healthy bodies are warm, inside and out.)
To me it makes far more sense to get the liver & gall bladder, kidneys, lymph and skin in excellent working order first, then, if desired or necessary, restrict calories. The interesting thing is that once the organs and systems I just mentioned are in good working order, extra weight may begin to melt away of its own accord (providing, of course, the diet is clean). It may not even turn out to be necessary to restrict calories; just a tweak here and there might do the trick. And for those who are too thin, the reverse will happen. A healthy body seeks its own best set point.
Enough with the preamble! Here are (a few of) my favourite early spring
(Not that they're coming up in MY yard yet because winter lasted so goddamn long, but that's beside the point.)
Cleavers - Cleavers is a big family, and has lots of names. Goosegrass, bedstraw, robin-run-the-hedge (I like that one!). The family name is Galium, if you want to look it up or do an image search (please do!). It's a very pretty plant; its leaves grow in whorls around the stems and it has clouds of tiny white (sometimes yellow) flowers. In my garden it's the first thing up and it grows prolifically, which is fine with me. I nibble it fresh, mostly, and sometimes sneak it into a soup, but traditional use (and most effective) is to make a tea. I like to make a big jar of it and sip on it all day. Yum.
Cleavers is what's known in herbal lingo as a lymphatic, first and foremost, and as I've mentioned before, that lymph system is mightily important for keeping our bloodstream clean and clear. Cleavers is also wonderful for the kidneys and urinary tract so yes, taking cleavers will make you pee. I hesitate to call it a diuretic; although technically that's its action, it won't dry out the body the way diuretic medications will. Cleavers tea, made from the fresh plant (drying cleavers renders it far less effective), has what the old writers would call a "salutory effect" on the urinary tract. It feels nice. It's soothing. If you're troubled by frequent urinary tract infections, kidney troubles or even prostate issues, cleavers is your pal. It's cooling and moistening to the insides. Matthew Wood says -
"It connects up the lymphatic system, from beginning to end, bringing all parts into communication. It removes fever, heat, swelling or stagnation in the lymphatics, and burning from infection, heat and dryness in the renal tract. It acts on gravely problems from clogged filtering in the kidneys. In short, we may say that Cleavers cools, moistens, filters, detoxifies, and promotes transportation within the hidden waterways of the body." source
There are many, many other ways that Cleavers can be of use to us, I've barely touched the surface here. And no, it's not necessary to be sick to use this plant in spring time. It's always a good thing to tone up the system when we can. Please note, if you have uncontrolled diabetes and are already peeing more than is healthy, cleavers is not for you.
Dandelions - You can find information on the why's and wherefore's of dandelion greens in a thousand articles on the internet. But what you might not have heard before is that the "dandelion" greens that you see in the grocery store probably aren't really dandelions. Through some creative backdoor shenanigans, the "food industry" is allowed to call them that, but in many cases those greens are chicory, a cousin. Not that there's anything wrong with chicory, it's fine. It's just not dandelion.
AND, even if what you can buy in the store turns out to be technically dandelion, it's nothing compared to the ones that come up by themselves by the side of your house or in your lawn. Greenhouse grown dandelions - coddled with fertilizers, protected from "harm" by antifungals, given "optimal" amounts of moisture and saturated with artificial light - are couch potatoes. Wild dandelions that grow in real dirt with real soil bacteria, that have to reach down deep into the soil for their moisture and food, that are blasted with solar rays (and starlight) and generally have to fight to survive are like the Kalahari Bushmen who have the endurance to run down an antelope.
I don't care if the label says "organic". If it's cultivated dandelion, you're still getting wimpy stuff. You're still not getting bonafide dandelion power.
There are lots of ways to use dandelion leaves. I don't happen to enjoy them cooked, I like them best as is, eaten on the spot. I wipe the grit off them, if necessary, then chew on them as I go about my garden business. If you try them that way you'll notice the intense flavour really gets your saliva going. That's a good sign, it's also triggering the gall bladder. The leaves act on the kidneys, too, again with a diuretic action but at the same time adding in scads of minerals. Check the sidebar here for more of my dandelion ramblings.
Chickweed - (just the mention of its name brings applause from some members of the reading audience, am I right?) This delicious, delicate plant with the starry flowers (it's official name is Stellaria) is a favourite with those of us "in the know". It often grows like a carpet over the rich soil of vegetable gardens when the weather is still cool, then, if it isn't ripped out by the gardener first, it fades in the longer, hotter days of early summer. Rather than ripping it out, best thing to do is snip it with scissors - it will return for a few weeks running - and eat it. It won't choke your baby lettuce or peas, I promise. Chickweed is tasty, tasty stuff. Use it in salads, make tea with it, use it on a sandwich instead of sprouts - but resist the urge to cook it, you'll lose the delicate flavour and it won't do the same things for your body.
What does it do? Well, chickweed contains saponins. Far from being evil, as I have seen written elsewhere, saponins are emulsifiers, meaning they act (positively) on the fat in our bodies and in the food we eat. Because hormones are fat soluble, chickweed supports the proper balance of hormones and takes some of the stress off the liver. Chickweed is also high in vitamins and minerals, as are all the wild spring greens, but it's in that hormonal support that it really shines. Women who suffer from dry lady parts know that a regular diet of chickweed (or taking chickweed tincture) moistens things up nicely, but it's not just for women - the prostate, too, benefits from chickweed.
Other uses? A tea can be used to wash the eyes, or a piece of cloth soaked in the tea used as an eye compress, even for conjunctivitis. And "old wives" have long recommended it as part of a weight loss program - they know whereof they speak, chickweed really does help the body to release excess fat.
Endobacteria - Put down those expensive probiotic supplements and eat weeds! Actually, all wild plants and garden vegetables grown in good soil without added chemicals contain, right within their cells, the bacteria we need to populate our own gut microbiome. As an added bonus, the fibre of the plants themselves feed those bacteria, and if you continue to eat good things like resistant starch in the form of cooked and cooled potatoes or rice, get some inulin from onions and garlic (you know the drill, right?), those bacteria will stay with you a good long time.
So spring tonic herbs are not only good for us, they're good for our gut bugs which in turn is good for us. And they come back year after year without being planted or tended in any way. Why wouldn't we take advantage?
Other stars of spring and early summer include - stinging nettles, the first young leaves of yellow dock, violet leaves and flowers, etc etc .. too much to include here, but if you use the search engine for this blog or check the index at the side, you'll find I've written plenty about them.
Questions? Comments?
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