5th week
- Echinacea
- Elder
- Fennel
- Garlic
- Gotu kola
Gotu Kola
This week we will study 5 new herbs. Since all of the 50 herbs are among the most widely-used and appreciated by herbalists for their healing power, some of them might really speak to you in some way and you can make them true allies in your life and for maintaining health.
I will post a short audio file by tonight talking about some of my experiences with these 5 herbs that I put in the lecture folder and I hope you enjoy it.
5/50 herb assignment
1) read the textbook sections on the 5 herbs for the week.
2) listen to my audio summary of the 5 herbs each week.
3) choose 1 herb to write a 1-2 paragraph summary about the traditional uses .
4) pick two of the uses you find that seem to be most important and try to support these two uses with 1-2 published scientific journal articles you find doing a pubmed or google scholar search. This would mean finding an antiinflammatory, antibacterial, sedative effect, or other meaningful activity that has been demonstrated, and/or a clinical trial or two. You should get a clue from the textbook because I do mention which herbs are supported by science and tradition. For instance if you chose valerian for sleep, you could easily find a couple of clinical trials that have studied this benefit in humans and had a positive result. Cite your references within the 1-2 paragraphs on traditional uses and the scientific support like this:
You can cite your a statement in this style: “Valerian has been used for centuries as a sleep aid.” (Bashir et al., 2010; Baldwin, 2015)
Then put the actual citation at the bottom of your text:
References
Baldwin, B. 2015. Randomized Double Blind Study on Valerian for Sleep. Journal title 35: 134-146. (where the 35 is the volume number and 134-146 are the page numbers of the article.
Bashi, R et al. 2010. Valerian as a sleep aid for the elderly. Nature 257: 1035-46.
Study List: 50 Herbs to Learn (from the textbook, Grow It and Heal It. We will cover approximately 5 herbs/week.
Please submit your work using the upload/comment area below this lesson.
