...and I just saw your post over on the Adrenal forum, remembered that I'd just got a book in the mail with tons of old & new Echinacea research in it, turned to the index, saw the words "Adrenal Glands"...and "Woah Nelly" rightbackatcha -- it looks as though I'm going to find that my favoritest herb in the whole herbal kingdom is ALSO beneficial for the adrenals!

DOUBLE WOOHOO! (of course, there's still lots of 'checking & confirming' to do, but it's lookin' sweet!).

How much tea? Well, hmmmmm, it's been *forever* since I had any tea - I've almost always used the tincture.

When I first started making the tincture, I had some fresh Echinacea purpurea root and being the inquisitive lil' "taste tester" I am, I remembered how American Natives had always chewed a piece of the root. So, I cut off a piece of the root about as big around as a pencil and about 2/3 of an inch long...popped it in my mouth and started chewing. Wow, it was as 'rock hard' as any root I could imagine, and within about 2 minutes I felt a surge of nausea...but I kept chewing and it went away. Then came the tingly-numbness. 'Seems to me like I'd been chewing it for less than 10 minutes, and my entire mouth was numb...and not just 'any numb' I mean 100% "novacaine numb"! I drooled at the mouth (lol) for well over 30 minutes, but the numbness didn't totally subside for almost 2 hours.

So, based on the fact that Native Americans had nowhere NEAR the severity of compromise that we have, and that they commonly chewed roots (I would assume bigger/thicker than what I had)...I would say that unless that tea numbed your mouth for longer than 2 hours, a few cups of tea daily would be very safe.

Let me check to see what Doc Christopher has to say...

...WOW, he made his "tea" (technically a decoction) by putting 1 oz of dried/macerated root (I just had Rocky measure/weigh some dried Echinacea root; 1 oz is a full 1/3 of a CUP!) into 3 cups of water...assuming 1 cup would be absorbed by the root. Then boil & simmer for 'however long it takes' (he said use your judgment, intuition and experience); in other writings he mentions several hours. Then press it out, pour in a jar to cool, and pour-off the part at the top that is weakest. And a 'standard dosage' of that would be 1/4 cup 6x daily (1 1/2 cups daily)

I think I told you 1 tablespoon of herb to 1 cup of water (right?). So his decoction would be over 2.5x the strength. So (grrrr, I hate the math part of being an herbalist)...if you made yours at 1 Tablespoon of dried root per cup of water, his dosage 'way back then', would have 3.75 cups of yours...and that doesn't count the volume he 'poured off the top'.

I typically take 1T daily of the tincture. As a general rule of thumb, I figure 4 droppers (1 teaspoon) of tincture = 1 cup of tea. So I basically have '3 cups of tea' daily, just in the form of a tincture.

Isn't it AMAZING what a difference there is when you make it yourself out of organic herbs?!

Tingle ON!

Uny