Thursday 21 March 2013

Herbs and the Future

I'm pretty boring today. I had a nice long conversation with my sisters and father back home, then went to class. 

Class was fun though, we were talking about teas vs infusions vs decoction and succus. Here is the difference; a tea is steeping a bit of dried or fresh herb in just boiled water for about three to five minutes, an infusion is steeping a medicinal amount of herbs in water (1:20 herb to water by weight) in boiled water for 10-30 minutes, and a decoction is boiling an herb for a set period of time. On the other hand, a succus is basically juicing an herb and adding alcohol as a preservative. So today we made an infusion of chamomile, a decoction of different spices (which was basically chai tea, mmmm ;) ) and two different succi, one garlic and one lemon. They are going to trial the succi next week when i'll be home recovering, but it's great stuff to learn about! Plus i'm not too sad about missing raw garlic mixed with alcohol thats been sitting around for a week ;). 

We also had a presentation by a representative from The Herbal Extract Company of Australia. We compared their herbal extracts vs the Mediherb extracts we use in class and in clinic. Keep in mind these are both top of the line medicinal herbal extracts, but I liked the Herbal Extract Company's more. They seemed to be closer to the herb and had less of an alcohol taste, but maybe that is just my preference. I hope to someday be able to make my own herbal extracts to use in my own practice :). 

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