Article by Henriette Kress
There are several ways to address a lack of energy.
One is to give yourself a push, like you do when you drink a cup of coffee.
Another is to reduce your stressors, and a third is to strengthen your general stress response.
Caffeine-containing herbs
A few herbs work exactly like coffee. You’ll find yerba mate, kola nuts and guarana in South American and yaupon holly in North America. The tea plant is from Asia, but its caffeine (or theine, if you like) isn’t as detrimental as that from the other plants.
Guarana is interesting in that its caffeine stays double the time of the other plants in our bodies (eight hours against the normal four). That means that it’s really not a herb for evenings or even afternoons. And it’s found in a lot of energy drinks.
Energy drinks with their caffeine (be it from guarana or from other sources) contribute to an epidemy of heart attacks in young people. So it’s really a very good idea to look elsewhere for energy.
Removing stress
Reducing our stressors is actually fairly straightforward. I give cinquefoil or agrimony to people who need to stand up for themselves, to do things that they think is important, to stop trying to please everybody and anybody. It’s a very gentle herb with no known side effects. Its effects on your stressors is slow but sure. Eat a pound-coin-sized piece of the leaf of any cinquefoil every day, and after a while you notice that most of the things that stress you out are gone.
I’ve been talking about the herb for years, and get great feedback on its effect. One women got a bully in her workplace removed with the help of cinquefoil. Another told me how interesting it felt when she didn’t volunteer for a weekend’s worth of work when tasks were given out in a meeting. She described it as a new kind of freedom.
So if you’re the one that has much too much to do simply because you like to please people, take some cinquefoil. Your stress will be much reduced, and you’ll have a lot more energy for things that are important to you.
Rose can help with stresses too, but it works a bit differently. A tea, tincture or elexir of scented rose petals give you velvet on the inside (you love yourself more) and spines on the outside: you get the courage to say “no”. Which again helps with stresses. The elixir is easy to make: fill a glass jar with fresh scented unsprayed rose petals, then fill it to one-third with liquid honey. Top it off with brandy, let steep for 2 weeks and strain. Take 1 tsp when needed.
If you’re really overwhelmed, take both cinquefoil and roses!
Helping us cope with stress
A very nice herb for more energy is nettle seed. It strengthens our general stress response and is loaded with nutrients. I’ve given it to people with burnout: if a client says “yes, I would, but I’m too tired to” three times during our consultation, they get nettle seed.
Take it with food: sprinkle it over your yogurt or put it into your smoothie or your omelette.
You should take enough to move you from a hectic stressed state to a calm and restful state. Normally, a teaspoon is required and enough. Very sensitive people only need a pinch a day, and very robust people require a tablespoon a day. If even that’s not enough, go for a pinch of the fresh seed instead.
The taste isn’t anything to write home about at first, but after a week of daily use you start to crave it. And after a few months of daily use you start to forget it in your cupboard: that’s a sign that you don’t need it anymore.
There are a host of other adaptogens, herbs that strengthen stress response, but most of them are roots and thus quite expensive. The most expensive of them all is ginseng, and because it’s so expensive, it’s very often adulterated. Researchers at the university of Helsinki looked into ginseng products in the 1980s and found that there was ginseng in only three of the 14 tested products. Ginseng hasn’t gotten any cheaper, so it’s likely that there is even more adulteration these days.
Take nettle seed instead. It’s easy to pick, abundant, and it works as well as the more exotic herbs.
Practical Herbs 1 & 2 by Henriette Kress, are available April 2018, published by AEON Books, priced £19.99 each. For more information see: http://www.aeonbooks.co.uk/
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