12/10/2015 / By healingartsnews
When I first started infusing plant parts in carrier oils, I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. How would leaves, roots, and stems provide medicine that could be used topically to speed the healing of wounds? Can simple plants really soothe burned skin or bring down inflammation from a sprained ankle?
If it worked, why weren’t hospitals using these infused oils, pastes and salves in the emergency room to speed up wound healing, to help sprained muscles and to even mend broken bones?
After assisting my body’s healing process that same year from debilitating sinus infections, seasonal allergies and sciatica pain using botanical extracts, herbal teas, and nutritional medicine, I now believed anything was possible in the realm of nature. I had gained firsthand experience using healing ingredients from nature, and it was all available to me with no prescription and no side effects, all outside the medical system.
Let me tell you: It’s absolutely freeing feeling the body heal to a new state of higher quality, all the while knowing that the answers are everywhere because nature is pulsating with life-giving medicine.
The more I worked with plants, the more I admired the internal powers designed in each.
I started making salves out of plants like comfrey, arnica, calendula, plantain, St. John’s wort and yarrow. I soon realized that they are all very anti-inflammatory and revitalizing to the dermal layer of skin. By combining the infused oils of these plants with the right amount of beeswax, I could make a general, all-purpose salve that could be rubbed into the skin, providing benefits of healing.
The more I used these plants on the skin, the more I realized that the medical system is missing out on the very powerful medicinal properties of some common plants. I really took interest in the comfrey plant, because of its ability to speed up the healing of not only skin, but also broken bones! I found out that, in the Middle Ages, comfrey poultice was applied to speed up the healing process of broken bones.
The more I worked with comfrey root and leaf, the more I discovered how to speed up the healing process of the skin. Comfrey is loaded with medicinal properties that come in the form of allantoin, rosmarinic acid and tannins.
While working with any plant, it’s best to start slow and research the ins and outs. The comfrey root contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs), which can actually be damaging to the liver when ingested in large amounts. This is why it’s best to use comfrey formulations topically on wounds, burns and sprains, so the beneficial constituents can be applied directly to the affected area.
The secret to comfrey is the same secret that lies in maggot excretions and in breast milk. All three of these natural substances contain allantoin, which is the substance that speeds up the process of healing. This is why wounds heal faster after applying either maggots, breast milk or comfrey extract!
Today, I cannot go without our herbal salve made with comfrey and other beneficial plants. I and many others have used the moisturizing, all-purpose herbal salve on sunburns, gashes, scrapes, cuts, cracked, dry, bleeding hands, animal wounds, beard care, jammed fingers, sore nipples from breastfeeding and razor burn, among many other uses.
Sources:
http://www.allnaturalfreespirit.com
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