Re: Apple cider alternatives?

If you ask me (as well as qualified herbalists), chamomile, though generally considered merely a pleasure tea or a stomach medicine for babies & children, can be powerful if used over a period of time. Basically, it is a mildly bitter & sweet, gentle liver medicine. Even for breaking up stones! I can't afford to buy stuff like gold coin grass or chanca piedra, and the amount of ACV needed disagrees with me (1-2 T X 4 times per day). Malic acid is too strong also and I react poorly. I don't want to take tons of apple juice anymore.

So, I remember reading about Wise Women Ways and how sometimes the answers are right here under our noses in our own gardens and our own culture. We don't always HAVE to go to China or some other faraway place for our answers.

May I go off on a tangent a wee bit? There's a tv programme I watch about herbology around the world. One herbalist was an Irish-American woman who moved to Ireland to study and prescribe western herbs. She told her story: she had approached a native American , ie, "Indian" herbalist, in USA, asking to learn from her. The Indian herbalist refused to take her on as an apprentice, stating, "You have to find your own culture". A wise, wise woman indeed.

Thanks, Pioneer. I think I will do good on chamomile. It's good for the emotions, too, and I have my share of those. But it was a practitioner of chinese traditional medicine who finally made me understand what was going on in my GB and Live

"The chamomile preparations generally available in tea bags do not yield the full medicinal properties of this herb. You haven’t really experienced the medicinal effects of chamomile until you’ve prepared it by a method like the following: Take a pint or quart canning jar, and fill it about two-thirds with loose chamomile flowers; fill the jar with boiling water and immediately put the lid on. Let it cool to room temperature. It should then be somewhere between the color of Scotch and bourbon whiskey, and will have a very bitter flavor. This form is an excellent digestive tea with antispasmodic and mild cholagogue properties." from medherb.