I love this time of year when fresh herbs are bountiful, both culinary and medicinal as well as wild and cultivated. If you are fortunate and wise enough to keep a kitchen garden of herbs, close by to the home, you have quick access to this wonderful way to nourish your body with herbs. 

Walking out my front door and snipping:

• Chives: Onion & Garlic
• Tarragon
• Oregano
• Parsley
• Cilantro
• Rosemary
• Sage
• Marjoram… & on & on to compliment and complete entrees, salads, and make a delicious Green Goddess homemade dressing is my gift of Summer and a kitchen herb garden. Sometimes I just wander around and graze on the tantalizing tastes being grateful to the plants for the nutrients they offer my body cells.

Herbs are Food. Herbs are Medicine. Nourish Your Body With Herbs.

Herbs are plants with nourishing properties from the nutrients, enzymes, phytonutrients, and other chemical constituents in their lovely little bodies. Sometimes I did deeper into herbal medicine, wanting to learn all the chemical constituents of the plants I work with. Other times I back off and like to leave some things to mystery. 

“One of the biggest tragedies of human civilization is the precedence of chemical therapy over whole food nutrition.  It is substitution of artificial therapy over natural, of poison over food, in which we are feeding people poisons trying to correct the reactions of nutritional starvation.” -Dr. Royal Lee 

Herbs can be taken into the body in many ways: tea, tinctures, eaten whole as food, enjoyed as aromatherapy as I weed my garden, dried and encapsulated into capsules for Winter use, and made into vinegar herbal blends so I can make dressings all Winter long. It couldn’t be easier to nourish your body with herbs!

So often we get the message from mainstream media and medicine:  *Do NOT use medicinal herbs as they are potentially dangerous.  What separates an herb from being labeled medicinal vs. culinary?  Many herbs fall into both categories. 

Herbs are plants. Plants provide our bodies with nutrition. Carrots are another plant we consume. Carrots are high in carotenoids, precursors to Vitamin A, that have healing affinities for the skin and eyes (and many other healing affinities but that is another blog post).  People eat carrots knowing the nutrients in carrots are good for skin, normal vision, the immune system, and reproduction. Vitamin A also helps the heart, lungs, kidneys, and other organs work properly. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotenoid

Herbs are plants (leaf, root, stems, bark, berries, seeds) like a carrot is a plant, that have nutritional and healing properties with affinities for certain tissues:

• Hawthorne berry for the heart
• Saw palmetto for the prostate
• Red Raspberry leaf for the uterus
• Rhubarb root for the colon
• Milk thistle for the liver
• Nettle as a general nutritive herb
• Dandelion and burdock root for liver cleansing

The list does go on & on.  These are just a very few examples of herbs and the tissue/organ they have affinities for healing. The specific herb adds whole food nutrition to your body cells.  This body cell nourishment is comparable to other plants, such as the carrot, broccoli, beets, kale, sweet potatoes, squash, celeriac, etc. feeding your body cells with whole food nutrients.

*I recommend that people: 

1. read up on the herb they want to take.  Learn about the herb and its healing affinities before you make the decision to take it.
2. Contact your local herbalist for help in choosing the right herb, or blend of herbs, to add to your whole food dietary plan for health and healing. 
3. Eat a whole food diet. Your body cells require whole food nutrition to function properly in each moment, replicate normal – healthy body cells, and keep you whole for vital longevity. 
4. Herbs are amazing nutrition for the body but they cannot make up for a refined, processed, junk food product diet. I use the word product refined, packaged foods are products, not real food. 

Herbs are whole foods.  Use them wisely for whole-body healing.