Nicole (she/her) introduces the elements included in a plant profile, as well as the framework of 'tissue states' in herbal medicine.

Links & resources from this episode

• Prisoner’s Herbal Book
• Ukraine Herbal Solidarity Crowdfunder
• Secure housing for Wayne gofundme

Find them all at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast/

Support the show

Music from Sole & DJ Pain – Battle of Humans | Plant illustrations by @amani_writes | In solidarity, please subscribe, rate & review this podcast wherever you listen.

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host, Nicole

Rose from the Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things, plants and liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello everyone.

Welcome back.

Thanks for joining me again.

So in this episode, I'm just gonna be reading like a final kind of

snippet from the prisoners herbal, which is introducing how the plant

profiles are structured in the book.

And then yeah, the next few episodes will be doing like a real deep dive

into, into all the amazing plants.

So that's super exciting and for me, I just, I just got

back from Poland this week.

I was there with our Ukraine herbal solidarity project.

I know I keep promising an episode, but I promise I will do one soon focused all

about the project and what we're doing.

It was brilliant to check in with the Ukrainian herbalist at the site

who were doing such an amazing job of greeting people from coaches.

Giving them medicine to support them and their nervous systems,

whether it's valerian or skullcap or immune tonic or elderberry syrup,

if they've got coughs and colds.

Yeah.

They've been out there really a long time now doing that kind of frontline work.

And I just had like a little.

Yeah.

I just had a little brief check in with them and how they're getting on.

And I dropped a huge fan load of thousands of medicines off with them.

And yeah, just did some kind of like faffy jobs really like around the house.

Yeah.

Drove them to the site and had some talks about where things were going and you

know, where we're gonna shift our kind of energy and focus to next, which will

hopefully be distributing in Ukraine itself as the kind of evacuation site

gas station stop might be closing down.

It's been maintained by volunteers for months now, just from the local

community, local Polish people.

And yeah, I think that, yeah, every time they wanna close it down, like,

you know, hundreds of people arrive like the last day when they were planning

to close it down 35 coaches came, obviously that's like a lot of people,

so they decided to stay open for longer.

So it's all in flux, but we will do a bigger episode about that soon.

And then, yeah, just in terms of, just in terms of shoutouts friends

from Bristol anarchist black cross, I mentioned them last week, who've

been doing support work for people imprisoned after the demonstration

in Bristol last year, they're also supporting someone called Wayne.

And he is a friend of my best friend, Sam in prison.

She's kind of like a mother hen of the prison; prison wing.

And she took him under her wing and calls him her son and yeah.

Supported him and I remember like the worst day when she called me and said,

he'd been attacked by officers and yeah, he's black and a trans masc prisoner.

He's just been released after spending three years inside a

women's prison and we are doing a Crowdfunder to help him get housing.

So at the moment he's in a, in a bail house and they're charging him rent

and he's really struggling with it.

And, you know, these places, they kind of threaten to recall you back

to prison at the drop of a hat.

So we're really trying to get him somewhere independent

so he can get on his feet.

And yeah, I will put the link in the show notes if anyone can contribute

to that, that would be amazing.

Obviously, this first season is all about the prisoner's herbal.

And if anyone, you know, listening knows me, like, you know, that I care about

people in prison and I also care about.

Keeping people out of prison and it's actually pride month as well.

So yeah, if you wanna support a black, trans friend of mine, who's

left prison who really needs your kind of like financial solidarity.

That'd be amazing.

He's an absolute babe, like such a sweetheart and yeah, I just, I can't bear

the thought of him going back inside.

So we're trying to do everything we can to, to keep him out here.

Okay, so I'm gonna dive, dive into the show.

Now first part of the book contains plant profiles.

These are an overview of different plants with information about their

medicinal and edible properties, how to harvest and prepare them.

And some interesting folklore, the profiles also contain advice on

how to identify the plants below.

I have tried to clarify what some of the other sections.

Botanical names.

Okay.

So plants like many things within the context of a Eurocentric colonial

history have been through a process of classification, come to be called

taxonomy, Carl Linneus and 18th century Swedish botanist, physician,

and zoologist formalized this modern system of naming plants and animals.

This classification occupies a complicated territory.

It is part of the naming controlling, ordering and theft that happened

under white colonial expansion.

And it has some use in terms of creating a common language for

patterns and identification.

Botanical names can be useful because it means people from all over the world

can communicate about a plant and know they're talking about the same one,

because there are so many amazing folk names for plants in all different regions.

Using botanical names helps us to classify certain plants.

Latin is often used for botanical names because it is a quote

unquote dead language that is no longer changing though.

At times, cumbersome botanical names can hold useful information, showing

glimpses into medicinal attributes.

For example, motherwort is called Leonarus cardiaca and cardiac

means relating to the heart.

This scientific classification gives the genus and then the species name

in Latin, for example, Achillea millefolium which is Yarrow.

Of course, we often know plants more by their common names or folk names.

In this case, ya, all the names for plants scientific and folk can be a source

of information about the plant's use.

Comfrey whose folk name is Knitbone can be used to heal fractures and bone breaks.

Coltsfoot a lung herb grows in the shape of a Colts foot and in

Latin and its Latin name Tussilago Farra means cough dispeller

Plant family.

Okay.

Classification of groups of plants into families can sometimes tell us

about the nutritional and medicinal actions of the herbs that are

classified together in one family.

It can also help with identifying plants.

We are unsure about as we may recognize certain family characteristics.

Other species.

These are listed because you might be in a region with different species

of similar plants that share similar properties, knowing the plant families

and similar species can give us clues to the properties of plants.

We might encounter ecological role.

I always like to include notes on the ecological role that plants play, because

it helps me to be less anthropocentric, for example, human focused.

And remember that plants are also there for the birds and the bees,

and to help the soil in different ways, amongst other reasons.

And also like plants help other plants, right?

Like they release like compounds from their roots that may support other

trees, for example, with diseases.

So, yeah.

I like to kind of frame this now, nowadays as like kind of medicinal ecology.

Okay.

Sidenote knowing where to find a plant also really helps.

For example, knowing that Daisy prefer shortly cut lawns means this

is where we will start our search.

Chemical constituents.

I know these can look like a long list of geeky words, but I also know that

prisons are full of incredibly smart people who love learning about science.

Constituents are some of the chemicals and compounds found in certain plants.

They can help us understand how plants work medicinally.

There is an incredibly fascinating world of plant chemistry,

Temperature.

All plants have a different action upon the temperature in the body.

Some are very cooling and eating them may make us feel colder.

And if, for example, we have very hot inflammation on our skin we

might appreciate this cooling action.

Others can be very warming.

For example, if we are sick with a bad cold and have the chills, a warming

herb might be exactly what we need.

Knowing the temperature of a plant can help us make a decision about

whether it will help us or not.

For example, being cold and then taking even more cooling

herbs might not be a good idea.

And just like on a side note of this, like I think this kind of

this stuff is like so relevant.

Like I have such a warm constitution.

And when I have kind of like heating stimulating plants, like, it really

is like, not, not good with my constitution and my kind of like energy

and my like yeah, my kind of like style of being, if that makes sense.

I just, yeah, I just, it took me a long time to really like, get

this stuff, if that makes sense.

And you know, like other people, like they can just be so cold, like kind

of like thin and just always feel the cold, sleep with their socks on

If that's you you're gonna laugh.

Cuz I know people do that.

Like my partner, one of my partners does it and I just don't understand it.

But yeah, like for him having like cooling cold plants.

Isn't.

Yeah, it's not ideal, but you know, time and place, right?

Like someone could also be very hot with a fever and want something cool.

So I don't want you to have like a binary way of looking at this stuff.

If that makes sense.

I just think it's like a useful tool.

Okay.

Moisture.

Herbs can also have different effects on our bodies in terms of moisture.

Some plants may be very drying and they can work to make us sweat or pee.

More (a diuretic) are so they can have an overall drying effect on our bodies.

Others can be very moistening.

For example, if we have dry or hard stools and tense, constipation,

certain plants can help lube us up bringing more moisture to the tissues.

Or if we have a dry hacking cough, we want something silky and smooth

to soothe our mucus membranes.

And again, I think this stuff's really relevant.

Like I have got more, I'm like more prone to like dry heat and tension in my body.

So for me, like moistening relaxants are like the way to go.

Like, they're that absolute gold mine for my constitution and for my body.

And I think when you know that about yourself.

Like that's when we can like unlock some of these keys to herbal medicine to

make it like much more effective for us.

Tissue states.

Tissue states are a whole world of learning in herbal medicine.

And there are books dedicated to understanding them.

I've included them for reference purposes.

In case people would like to learn more an incredibly brief summary of them

might be that there are different ways that tissues in our bodies experience

illness and that these tissue states indicate certain excesses or deficiencies.

The list of tissue states in these plant profiles are the tissue states

that these plants can be very useful, useful for, for example, okay, I'm

gonna run through these now and I'll probably like Adlib a little bit

Heat or excitation.

So there may be a lot of actual heat such as a fever, inflammation, or a rash or

things maybe running faster than normal.

This would be like agitation or overstimulation emotionally

or physiologically, such as heart palpitations.

A herb that is warming can warm up a cold situation or get things that have

slowed down, moving again, a health situation that has a lot of heat may

benefit from a cooling or relaxing herb.

So for example I had costochondritis for like a couple of years and that kind

of like triggered seeing a herbalist and deciding to train in herbal medicine.

And yeah, I had incredibly like hot symptoms.

So I would have literal red rash across my chest.

I would have sharp stabbing pains lots of heat.

I was very agitated, irritated, hyper aroused with my PTSD.

Like I had this excitation in me, if that makes sense.

And you know, I'm gonna do like a whole other episode about PTSD and cooling herbs

and herbs to support the nervous system.

But you can see in that context, you really need things that can that can

kind of like cool you down and like moisten and lubricate, those tissues.

Okay.

Damp stagnation.

Imagine a swamp that is damp water hanging around, going smelly.

This often occurs because the body cannot eliminate fluids or waste products.

Well, this can also lead to inflammation as the body tries

to deal with the stuck fluid.

Herbs that can stimulate circulation and lymphatic movement can help move

things that are stuck or stagnant astringent herbs can also be helpful.

So, yeah, like here, we're kind of looking at, for example someone

might have like hemorrhoids and that could be, I mean, hemorrhoids can

be caused by all sorts of things.

Like also a kind of relaxed tissue state, but it might be that damp relaxation.

This is where the tissue is so relaxed that it can no longer hold form or fluids.

For example, organ prolapse, which is, you know, really serious Varicose veins or a

flabby tongue, or similarly excess fluid loss like diarrhea or excessive sweating.

This can also create a similarly swampy environment prone to disease.

So I know that like really doesn't sound very like scientific, but

obviously, you know, this book is written for the people in prison.

Who have like varying levels of, of literacy from, you know,

like incredibly well educated to people who can't read and write.

So it's kind of like, I'm trying to use like very accessible language in the book.

Okay.

For this tissue state herbs that are useful are those that

can help tone the tissues.

These are often called as stringent and they're tanning content

effectively tightens tissues up when herbs have damp actions, we

call this moistening or demulcent.

Moistening herbs are perfect when you have dried out situations for

softening things that have become hardened or for feeling dehydrated.

Dry atrophy, think of a desert here is where there is a lack of fluids such

as water or oil, which longer term can lead to a lack of function or atrophy.

For this tissue state we'd want oily and demulcent herbs.

Sometimes a gentle astringent herb can also help tone tissues

to stop more fluids being lost.

So like, for example, this is a tissue state that I often see in vegans.

Like I've been vegan for, for 20, 20 years now.

Maybe longer God.

But I can see it where people have like a kind of fat deficiency and they often have

like a very thin deficient appearance.

And yeah, I like to then give them herbs with like a high oil content,

like burdock or literally using things like infused lavender oil, like on

their, on their tissues regularly to kind of address that kind of that

kind of dryness and that atrophy.

Obviously, you know, it's like a bit more complicated internally, but I think

yeah, that's kind of like a thing I often see in people experiencing burnout

who maybe have some other forms of like deficiencies or, you know, like deficiency

of rest, deficiency of nourishment.

And yeah, I just, I always just wanna like dump them in a bath of oil.

Cuz that's what their nervous system needs like our nervous system needs fat.

To kind of support the myelin sheath around the nerve cells.

So yeah, it's really important tissue state.

All right.

Cold depression.

A sensation of coldness, as well as a general underactivity for example,

constipation, emotional depression, or the immune system being unable to get a fever,

going to respond to viruses and so forth.

Herbs recommended for this state will be warming and stimulating.

You know, you get people that are like, oh, you know, I never get colds.

But that can sometimes really be because their immune system's

actually under underactive and they might have a kind of like general

sense of depression in the body.

It's not just kind of doing what it needs.

It hasn't got that kind of vitality.

Okay.

Wind tension.

Imagine a guitar string that's wound up too tight.

Too much tension can constrict things like the circulation of blood or body fluids,

often leading to irritability, muscle, tension, and spasms for this state.

We want herbs that can relax excess tension.

So this, this is me.

This is like, I am that guitar string.

Yeah.

I can be very, very tense and anxious and kind of constricted.

So for me, again, it comes back to this kind of like softening moistening

relaxing herbs demulcents, things that can relax, like excess tension.

And, you know, like if anyone has, I mean, everyone's experienced some

kind of emotional distress, right for people who experience kind of

traumatic stress or struggling with post traumatic stress effects then yeah.

They often have this tissue state, like maybe you've got really sore back muscles.

Maybe you get spasms, maybe you are incredibly irritable and it might be

that you really need like relaxants.

Okay.

Laxity.

Laxity is when things are much too relaxed.

Often this comes along with dampness or dryness.

But in general, too much relaxation means your water will flow in weird ways.

Laxity can show up elsewhere in muscles that don't get enough movement or in a

mind that can't hold a train of thought.

Even in the immune system, when your defenses can't keep you from getting

sick, gentle astringents may be appropriate, as well as nutritive

herbs, you can definitely have more than one of these at the same time.

Just choose the herbs, that address whatever is most uncomfortable

and make adjustments as you.

In the end, all herbs share some qualities in common.

Most have anti-inflammatory actions, most have nutritional benefits and

most herbs can help strengthen your body's innate ability to find balance.

So if you can't exactly get what you wished you could work with what you

have herbal actions, this is the list in the medical communities, understanding

of how herbs work they can give us an understanding of the wide range of

actions that plants can have in the body.

There is a glossary at the back of the book that explains

what these actions mean.

Health challenges.

I have listed the general health conditions and challenges that plants

are commonly used for on the out.

So like on the outside of prison and how to practically use them in

prison, I have written how they can be directly used in a prison context with

recommendations on how to prepare them.

And different dosages.

Okay.

So that's like an introduction to the plant profiles.

And then in the next few episodes, I'm just gonna be doing like such

an epic, deep dive into all of these herbs, gonna be looking at dandelion

and nettle and self heal and rose and.

It's gonna be, it's gonna be super fun.

You'll be like, oh finally, we can talk about plants.

Yeah.

So thanks again for your support.

Take care.

Thanks so much for listening to the frontline herbalism podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the