Hi, I'm Shana Lipner Grover from Sage Country Herbs
and I'm here with Mountain Rose Herbs looking at plants
that you can easily grow in your garden,
which gives you access to abundance.
So let's check 'em out.
There are some plants that people call weeds.
Now the definition of weed is very malleable.
One of the common names
of this plant is St. John's wort.
Its Latin name is Hypericum perforatum.
But one of its other common names,
because most plants have multiple common names,
is Klamath weed.
And that is because this plant loves disturbance.
So it will grow in areas where the soil gets disturbed.
Well, what's the... here in Oregon, one of the primary areas
where the earth gets disturbed is in logging areas.
So there are times where you could be driving
through a mountainous region that has had some logging done
and you just see acres
of this vibrant, beautiful, yellow flower
and it's almost like it's all just waving at you,
it's so vibrant and beautiful.
And of course the most common thing that people often know
about St. John's wort is that it is an uplifting herb.
That it is often used for mild to moderate depression.
And while it absolutely has been used in that way
and can be used in that way,
that is not its original claim to fame.
Its original claim to fame is as a calming herb.
It has a direct relationship
with the nervous system and the nerves.
St. John's wort is amazing for nerve pain.
I've used it for things like after getting a tooth extracted
and the nerve of the, or the root of the next tooth over,
was exposed through the extraction
and woo, that was painful.
Every breath coming in is like, ah,
and St. John's wort was really amazing at not only helping
with the nerve pain, but another really amazing claim
to fame that is not talked about nearly enough is
that it helps the cellular regeneration,
which means that it helps encourage cells to replicate
and make new cells, which is what cells do anyway
when there is any sort of damage,
the healthy cells will replicate to fill
in that damaged area.
But that means that St. John's wort aids our physiology
in encouraging that which is going to happen already,
but just helping to encourage it more.
I love that aspect about herbs.
Instead of thinking about herbs as like the saviors,
thinking about 'em as our allies
that are helping our own bodies do what they're going to do
as long as we provide the right healing environment for it.
An herb can't override
when we're not actually providing a healing environment.
You know, if you're trying to, you know,
rest from like a torn muscle
and so you're out there running, not really going to help,
and St. John's wort, while it may help a little,
it's not going to be able to use to its best ability
for that nerve pain or for the healing,
if you're still stressing that torn part of your physiology.
So really wonderful, historically used
for things like burns,
because not only is it going to help with the nerve pain,
it's also going to help with that cellular turnover.
I mean, how do you heal from a burn?
You have to make the new skin cells to come up.
Well, it is encouraging that to happen.
So that's a wonderful thing.
Dental issues, cuts or scrapes,
wide variety of ways to use it.
Of course it's also a calming herb,
and nerve pain is not just that which you can touch directly
but I mean really, how does your body communicate pain?
Via the nerves.
So anything that is painful, St. John's wort could be part
of the protocol to help you mitigate that pain.
Now of course what has to be said is
how are you going to use it?
And that is because one of the other things
that is well known about St. John's wort is the fact
that it is what's called a CYP450 stimulant.
CYP450.
If you get into research, you will read this over and over.
It stands for cytochrome P450.
It is basically a pathway of detoxification.
This herb encourages and stimulates those pathways.
And in some ways that can be wonderful,
encouraging what is already going to happen
as our bodies are detoxing.
However, one of the issues that comes up is that
if somebody is on a pharmaceutical drug that needs to stay
in the bloodstream at a specific rate,
by encouraging the detox pathways of our liver,
we could be encouraging the flushing
of that drug too quickly.
Now a lot of this is hypothetical,
but there is that possibility.
And because this has a very direct effect
on the liver detoxification function, it's a good idea
to understand the physiology of the pharmaceutical drug
that somebody is using and the physiology
of how St. John's wort is actually working
within that physiology.
If you're using it topically, not nearly as much of an issue
than if you're using it internally.
There's also the idea of using it as a cup of tea
or as a tincture.
Very different experience
than taking highly concentrated extracts
that are also often standardized.
So what's "standardized?"
There are, when we look at how science views herbs,
oftentimes science wants to find one plant constituent
that is responsible for a lot of the action.
And while there often are
what we like to call active ingredients,
one of the things that's recognized
in the plant world is that those ingredients
that are considered active are not working alone.
And when we take them out, they don't tend to work as good
as when they're in with the whole plant chemistry.
So what standardizes is is kind of a combination
of science and nature.
Standardized is taking those active ingredients,
in this plant, they're called hypericinoids,
and concentrating those to 80%,
and then putting that back into the whole plant.
So you have the whole symphony
of plant chemicals all working together,
but what are considered the active ingredients are
at a higher concentration.
Ultimately, I really appreciate being able to...
Being able to use this plant in all different ways.
You can see the real beauty of this vibrant yellow flower.
And that is one of the really major ways
that we, in the folk way of looking at herbal medicine,
we see that this vibrant yellow is very similar
to that vibrant yellow that we get from the sun.
And that being exposed to this yellow is being exposed
to some of the energy of the sun.
And isn't it interesting that this plant can grow
like a weed in the Pacific Northwest,
in places where they often don't see the sun
for sometimes a really large chunk of the year.
And some people deal with what's called SAD
or seasonal effective disorder.
And oftentimes people can find SAD,
which is like a type of mild depression,
can find that using St. John's wort,
both using it internally, using it topically,
taking baths in it
or just sitting next to it can really help to uplift,
it's an uplifting herb.
So to recognize that sitting next to it is
in some ways energetically like sitting in the sunshine
and allowing your body to absorb some
of those positive aspects,
of being directly connected to that energy of the sun.
Now when we look into science, some of the things
that we find is the top six inches are by far
the most potent when it comes to medicine.
So people often think like, oh wow,
there's going to be a lot of herb when we harvest this.
But really what you're really looking
for is those top six inches.
You're also looking for the plant to ideally be in bud,
in flower and a couple flowers being pollinated,
so you get that full spectrum,
and when you really get into it,
you can squish one of these little flower buds,
and what you find is a beautiful red purple coloration.
And these antioxidants
that make that red coloration have a major effect
and they're very rich in those hypericinoids,
and have a major effect on our body's physiology.
So primarily we're working with the top six inches.
We want it to be in flower because we want to be able
to take in not only the beauty of it,
but also the the most potent part of the plant.
So there's so many wonderful reasons
to get to know St. John's wort,
but by far my favorite reason is
because it grows like a weed.
And I really feel like,
as herbal medicine gets more and more popular,
we need more people understanding
that weedy, invasive plants are
where we should be getting more of our medicine from.
Because when we focus on, you know,
that rare plant that is only grown
in that one special region,
often what we find is that it's really easy for our desire
for plants to get overtaking our common sense
about actually honoring the plant.
Plants are not here just for us to take them
in order to help us.
We should also be helping the plant.
And one of the ways that we can help plants
in general and ecology in general is to recognize the plants
that love growing out of disturbance or love to grow
in a wide variety of ecosystems,
so we're not going to wipe out that one rare plant.
We're going to really focus on cultivating our relationship
with plants that obviously want to be around humans
because this plant wants to be around humans.
It follows us because, well, it likes disturbance
and who creates the most disturbance?
Us.
So how cool to find a plant ally that actually wants to grow
in this disturbed environment,
and that actually makes it grow more robust.
And then in doing so,
it brings all these gorgeous yellow flowers
that help to uplift our spirits.
And we all need a little uplifting of our spirits.