Medicine Chest - gaining strength and clarity with burdock root

Burdock is a big subject, and I've had a hard time getting started on writing about it.

I've read a shit-ton of articles, book chapters, blog posts and summaries of science-y articles concerning burdock (summaries because I ain't forking out 40 bucks for the full study) in the last couple of days, so many that my head is over-full with other people's words.

My plan is not to offer you a synopsis of those, mind you, I read them just to jog my memory, so as to ensure I don't leave anything out. But - as happens so often - all I've done is clog up my brain with 'information'. What I aim to do when I write about the plants is to share my on-the-ground experience. That's a different thing altogether!

So I walked over to my china cabinet, grabbed the small jar of late summer burdock root tincture I made, shook it well to get the white, creamy stuff that sinks to the bottom mixed in with the dark amber stuff, dipped the tip of my finger in and licked it.

There. That's what I know about burdock.

With the bitter/sweet/vodka-y flavour on the tip of my tongue, up rushes my own relationship with burdock.

Now I can begin.



Burdock is dirt medicine. Ha!

(I am tempted to stop writing, right there, and let you mull that over - what the hell does she mean??)

I mean that burdock is the medicine that rolls up its sleeves, gets its hands dirty and demands that we do the same. It's a bastard to dig up, for one thing, but that digging goes further than just the work to get the root out of the ground. Working with burdock as medicine means reaching deep into the sub-soil of our beings.

Burdock can correctly be said to be a medicine for the liver & gall bladder, kidneys and digestive system (and by extension, the skin), but as it works on those it also works on our psyches and that - for some - is a tad unnerving.

Burdock is not for wussies - yet ironically it is the one medicine we most need when we're feeling or acting like wussies!

Our emotions and beliefs and experiences and memories are not simply held in our brains, they're in our organs, too, especially if we're not normally terribly attentive to these things but would rather 'file our stuff away'. The liver holds our unexpressed anger, the kidneys hold our un-faced fears, the gut twists around our unacknowledged instincts - etc. If you don't believe me, just try a month or so on burdock. You'll soon see what I'm on about.

That's an ancient understanding of the human experience that pretty much every society that came before ours took for granted and Western modern medicine has blithely, and to our detriment, tossed aside as so much superstition. And yet, with new research into the microbiome, we're (re)discovering how much the our mental health can be affected by the health of the ecosystem that resides in the gut. Then there's the discovery that there are "brain cells" in the intestines, the heart and even the eye. Over time, I suspect, science will come back around to what the old physicians knew all along; our consciousness, our "self", is not just situated in our brains, but throughout our bodies. Ergo, any medicine that affects any organ (positively or negatively) will affect us mentally in some way .. but let's not go off on a too much of a tangent here.

Burdock, in my experience, is the one medicine that can show us just how interactive the mind/body relationship truly is. In getting to know burdock, we get to know ourselves, too. Of course, most people don't take burdock for its psychological influence, that's a 'side effect' that most would attribute to just feeling better physically. And that's fine too. But I think it behooves me to let my readers know that it is possible to use burdock, consciously, as a way in, a way to gain deeper understanding of one's own inner landscape.

If you're looking for the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything, you won't find it in burdock. But if you're looking at your life and trying to find your meaning, burdock can help. We'll come back to that in a moment.

Physically, burdock supports the liver & gall bladder, the kidneys, the 'gut', the skin, the hormones and the sex organs. It slowly but surely (to use the old terminology) clears out obstructions, opens, cleanses, nourishes and tonifies.

This makes the long term use of burdock just the ticket for chronic issues, especially those that are hard to put a finger on; fatigue, a general yucky feeling, fitful sleep, lousy digestion, excess weight or being too thin, lack of motivation, an addiction to sugar or other stimulants (the list goes on and on). These kinds of issues will gradually lift off like fog in the morning with consistent, long term use of burdock root. Combining burdock with dandelion root is traditional for all of the above.

More specifically, burdock root can be used (alone or in a formula with other herbs) for hard to treat conditions like uterine prolapse, swollen prostate, leaky gut, joint pain and recurrent bladder infections. Again, however, burdock's action is slow but sure; working with burdock is a long-term commitment but worth the effort. What burdock does is not a quick fix, but it's (generally) extremely effective.

The consensus among most of us who've seen burdock in action is that it does all of the above by helping the body remember what health is and how to maintain it .. it's a deep shift.

As this clearing and opening and cleansing and nourishing and tonifying is going on, the more sensitive and aware person will notice memories coming to the surface. Emotions begin to rise, both positive and negative. The temper may flare, patience may be in short supply. Dreaming may be considerably enhanced. This is stage one, and it pays to grab hold and go with this stage. Examine what's coming up, especially any fears. Dismiss nothing here, but neither should you accept it all as 'real'. It all has meaning; this is the time to Ask Yourself The Deeper Questions, to find out what that meaning really is, not just on the surface.

This period can be more than a little disconcerting, and no less so to the people around you if it makes you question your relationships (and well it might!).

Coinciding with this stage, the symptom picture you've been dealing with may begin to shift. You may notice you sweat more, pee more, go to the bathroom more often. Rashes may get temporarily itchier and pimples might come to the surface. Hang in there, burdock is getting things moving, on all levels. Not all of this happens to everyone, every body is different.

And I won't lie to you - stage one can be trying for some folks. Others breeze through it.

But when stage two hits, wow. Whether stage one has been hard or easy, stage two is downright delightful. There's a feeling of well being, of strength, of clarity of purpose. Most of all, there's a feeling of being 'at home' in the body. Even if you can tell you're still getting rid of some 'junk', it's a good feeling to do so.

All parts of the burdock plant can be used in some way, and it's a food, too. The leaf stems (oh boy are they bitter!) if caught at just the right moment before the plant begins to flower, can be eaten steamed or pickled, if bitter is your thing. The root is delicious; nutty, earthy and sweet with just a whisper of mouth tingling bitterness. If you dig up enough of the root (I rarely do) or find it in a grocery store (it's called gobo) it makes a hearty addition to soups, stews or stir-fries.

I like to dry the root by slicing it into 'coins' like carrots, and keeping it near the wood stove for a few days until the pieces will snap, rather than bend. I sometimes use 3 or 4 slices of dried root in the same way I would use dried mushrooms, as an addition to a slow cooker bone broth. Sometimes I make a decoction by long slow simmering of a few pieces, then cool the liquid and keep it in the fridge for sipping. That liquid turns a delightful emerald green, a pretty neat trick for a root that's coal black on the outside and pure white within.

The leaves are used topically - in one particularly spectacular case, we used burdock leaves (with mullein) as a compress for a friend who had severely bruised and cracked ribs from an encounter with an overly friendly bull; the healing was nothing short of amazing. The mullein helped with the fractures while the burdock healed the bruising. I could have used yarrow for the bruising, I suppose, but my gut told me to use burdock .. sometimes I have no better explanation for the things I do with plant medicine than "my gut said so".

The literature on burdock says that the seeds are useful for the same conditions as the root, but in the acute, rather than the chronic stage. I haven't used them, though, so I prefer not to comment on them for now. I will share the warning I've read, however, which is to never, ever, nibble on burdock seeds before they've been thoroughly freed from the little hook like coverings they have (the ones that stick to your socks and sweater after a walk). Those coverings, so the warning goes, will embed themselves in your tongue - ow ow ow! I am grateful to have read that, as I'm one of those people who will taste just about anything when I'm out in the wild or the garden. The cure, apparently, is to put leaves of plantain on the tongue for a couple of days - can you imagine? Ha!

I've seen burdock root help people with really long standing issues; skin problems and/or digestive distress, to gain weight or lose it, and to clear out gunk accumulated from the overuse of supplemental prebiotic fibres (a surprising but not un-common problem for those who go overboard on resistant starch). I've seen food allergies or sensitivities (gluten, fructose) disappear. All of these cases took time to be fully successful, but that's just the way it is with burdock root. It's a friend for the long haul.

But all of these aside, my favourite burdock stories are the ones involving deep changes within, people who found clarity as burdock helped them heal their bodies. A woman who learned to see when she was being lied to. A man who found the courage to embrace his poetry as his life's work and leave his successful - but emotionally crippling - career. Another who was transformed when he lost his taste for booze. I've seen people who learned to say "no" while using burdock and others who learned to say "yes".

Personally, I use burdock root as a tonic for a few weeks at least once a year, or if I feel "off", not quite like myself, whether in body or spirit. Perhaps because I know what to expect, it works quickly for me, yet I still make sure to use it for a longish period of time so that its influence can really "take hold".

Burdock is a strong, very deep rooted plant. It can and does thrive in extremely inhospitable environments, breaking up rocky hard-pan soil, enriching it, which over time allows other plants to germinate and so create a healthy, more varied ecosystem. It appears in the barren places that have been stripped and abused by agriculture or industry and - slowly but surely - heals them by bringing nutrients and moisture up from deep below the sterile surface.

It does the same for our bodies that have been abused by bad food, pollution or drugs, and the same for our psyches that have been injured by life's insults and betrayals. It's especially good at bringing us back to life when we feel deadened, emotionless, or like we're stuck on a hamster wheel going around and around and around getting nowhere.

It's a good plant, burdock. Good medicine.

For a more in-depth look at how to use burdock, and why, I recommend jim mcdonald's take; here's the link. Matthew Wood considers burdock one of the "indispensable" remedies, his take is here. Between them they cover some of the ground I've missed here in this brief post - but remember, to understand burdock or any of the plant medicines, you have to experience them for yourself. I have a few other mentions of burdock here and there on this blog - just use the search bar or check that long, messy index on the side.