Damiana

Botanical Name: Turnera diffusa Willd. ex Schult. (older name Turnera aphrodisiaca)

Family: Passifloraceae (formerly Turneraceae)

Other Names: Mexican Damiana · Hierba de la Pastora · Old Woman's Broom

Parts Used: Leaves

Quick Look

Damiana is a fragrant, warming leaf from Mexico that lifts the spirits and steadies frayed nerves. Reach for it when someone is anxious, low and worn out together. It has a long reputation as a tonic for sexual vitality, though that reputation has never been tested in people.

Actions, Energetics & Taste

How It's Been Used

Nerves & mood. Its chief use today: anxiety, low mood and nervous exhaustion, especially when they come together. It lifts without sedating.

Sexual vitality. For more than three hundred years Damiana has been taken to restore desire and vigor in both men and women, and American physicians once prescribed it for that purpose. No human studies have tested the claim, and some doctors of its own day doubted it.

Women's health. Used for delayed or painful menstruation, and by herbalists today for menstrual irregularity and the change of life.

Exhaustion. Among the Maya it was a traditional remedy for recovering from exhaustion.

Urinary. A mild diuretic that soothes irritated urinary passages.

Digestion & bowels. A gentle bitter and mild laxative, used in Mexican tradition for stomach complaints.

How to Make & Take It

Preparations: Tea · Tincture

• Tea: 1–2 teaspoons dried leaf to a cup of boiling water. Cover and steep 10–15 minutes. Up to 3 cups a day.
• Tincture: 1:5 in 60% alcohol, ½ to ¾ teaspoon in water, twice a day.

Cautions

• Avoid during pregnancy and while nursing. It was traditionally used to bring on menstrual flow.
• Keep to ordinary doses. The plant may contain compounds that release cyanide, and very large amounts have been linked with convulsions.
• No drug interactions are documented, but it has never been studied in people.
• Low mood or anxiety that lasts, or sexual difficulty that persists, deserves a doctor's attention.

Know the Plant

Damiana is a small, aromatic shrub of dry, warm country. Its leaves are less than an inch long, wedge-shaped and toothed, with a fragrance something like lemon balm. Small yellow flowers bloom near the ends of the branches.

It is native from southern Texas through Mexico and Central America to the Caribbean and eastern Brazil. Other plants have long been sold under its name, so buy it by the botanical name.

A Little History

Damiana's use in Mexico goes back centuries. It entered American medicine in 1874, when Dr. F. O. St. Clair introduced it and a Washington firm sold it as a fluid extract. King's American Dispensatory (1898) recorded that it was "almost eulogized for its positive aphrodisiac effects," while noting that many physicians denied it had any. The Eclectic physician Finley Ellingwood called it "a mild nerve tonic," and the British Herbal Pharmacopoeia later listed it for anxiety and depression.

Dandelion

Botanical Name: Taraxacum officinale F.H. Wigg.

Family: Asteraceae (Aster/Daisy family)

Other Names: Lion's Tooth · Priest's Crown · Puffball · Pissenlit

Parts Used: Root and leaf. Both are also eaten.

Quick Look

Dandelion is the common lawn weed that is also one of the most useful herbs in the home apothecary. The bitter root wakes up the liver and a sluggish digestion, and the leaf is a gentle, potassium-rich diuretic. Reach for it for poor appetite, slow digestion, constipation and water retention.

Actions, Energetics & Taste

How It's Been Used

Liver & gallbladder. The root is an old remedy for a sluggish, congested liver, used to increase the flow of bile and help the body handle fats.

Digestion & appetite. A bitter tonic for poor appetite, fullness, gas and slow digestion. These are its official traditional uses in Europe.

Bowels. A mild laxative for chronic constipation.

Water & kidneys. The leaf is used for water retention and to flush the urinary tract, also an official traditional use in Europe. In one small study of 17 people, a leaf extract increased urination over a day. Larger trials have not been done.

Dandelion root or leaf? Both are bitter and both help the liver. Think root when digestion, the liver or the bowels need the push. Think leaf when water needs moving.

Skin. Used for eczema and other chronic skin trouble, on the old view that clearing wastes through the liver and kidneys clears the skin.

Joints. Used for rheumatism and gout for the same reason.

Food. Young leaves are eaten in salads or boiled as greens, the roasted root makes a coffee substitute, and the flowers are made into wine.

How to Make & Take It

Preparations: Tea · Decoction · Tincture

• Leaf tea: 1–2 tablespoons dried leaf to a cup of boiling water. Cover and steep 10–15 minutes. Up to 3 cups a day.
• Root decoction: 1–2 teaspoons dried root to a cup of water. Simmer, covered, 15–20 minutes. Up to 3 cups a day.
• Tincture: 1:5 in 45% alcohol, ½ to 1 teaspoon, three times a day.
• An old American method: ¼ to ½ cup of the root decoction, three times a day.

Cautions

• Do not use it with a blocked bile duct, gallstones, an inflamed gallbladder or an active stomach ulcer.
• Avoid it if you are allergic to the daisy family. The milky sap can cause a skin rash in some people.
• It can cause heartburn, and the old physicians did not give it when the stomach or bowels were irritable.
• European guidance advises against it in kidney failure, heart failure and diabetes, because of its potassium.
• No drug interactions are officially reported. Herbalists advise care with water pills, blood thinners and diabetes medicine.
• As a food it is considered safe in pregnancy and nursing. Medicinal amounts have not been studied. Talk with a knowledgeable herbalist or care provider first.

Know the Plant

Dandelion is a perennial with a thick taproot, brown outside and white within. Its long, jagged leaves spread in a flat rosette at the ground. Each hollow, leafless stalk carries a single yellow flower head, which ripens into the familiar round puff of seeds. Every part holds a bitter, milky juice.

It is native to Europe and has spread nearly worldwide. In America it grows in lawns, fields, roadsides and almost any disturbed ground.

A Little History

The name comes from the French dent de lion, "lion's tooth," for the jagged leaves. Maud Grieve wrote that it first appears as a medicine in the works of the Arabian physicians of the tenth and eleventh centuries, and that the English herbalists Gerard and Parkinson valued it. In America an extract of the root was listed in the United States Pharmacopoeia. William Cook (1869) called the root a mild laxative and alterative, and Harvey Felter summed up its use as poor appetite, weak digestion, a sluggish liver and constipation.

Dong Quai

Botanical Name: Angelica sinensis (Oliv.) Diels

Family: Apiaceae (Carrot/Parsley family)

Other Names: Dang Gui · Chinese Angelica · Female Ginseng

Parts Used: Root

Quick Look

Dong Quai is the best-known women's herb of Chinese medicine, a warming, sweet root used to build and move the blood. It is traditionally reached for when menstrual cycles are irregular, scanty or painful, especially in someone pale and cold. It is not a home remedy for everyone: it is avoided in pregnancy and with blood-thinning medicine.

Actions, Energetics & Taste

How It's Been Used

Menstrual cycles. Its great traditional use: periods that are irregular, late, scanty, absent or painful. This is the use that earned it the name "female ginseng."

Blood & circulation. In Chinese medicine it both nourishes the blood and gets it moving, and it is given for paleness, weakness and poor circulation, particularly where there is coldness.

Pain. Used for menstrual cramps, abdominal pain and the pain of injuries.

Bowels. It moistens the bowels and is used for dry constipation.

After childbirth. A traditional restorative for new mothers in China.

The change of life. It is widely sold for hot flashes, but in careful trials Dong Quai taken alone did no better than a dummy pill.

Dong Quai or Angelica? They are cousins with different jobs. Think European Angelica for cold, sluggish digestion and damp chest colds. Think Dong Quai for the menstrual cycle and the blood.

How to Make & Take It

Preparations: Decoction · Tincture

• Decoction: 1–2 teaspoons dried sliced root to a cup of water. Simmer, covered, 15–20 minutes. Drink 1–2 cups a day.
• Tincture: 1:5 in 60% alcohol, ¼ to ½ teaspoon, three times a day.

Cautions

• Avoid during pregnancy. It stimulates the womb and may cause miscarriage. Avoid it while nursing as well.
• Do not take it with warfarin or other blood thinners. Bleeding has been reported.
• It can make the skin more sensitive to sunlight.
• With a hormone-sensitive cancer, such as breast cancer, speak with a doctor before using it.
• It is not suited to someone with loose stools.
• European regulators reviewed it in 2013 and declined to approve it as a traditional medicine, saying there was too little evidence on how well it works and on safe amounts of some of its natural compounds.

Know the Plant

Dong Quai is a perennial of the carrot family, one and a half to three feet tall, with thick, branched, fragrant roots. It grows in cool mountain forests of northern and central China, at around 8,000 to 10,000 feet, and is widely cultivated there. It does not grow wild in America, so the root is bought dried.

It is a different herb from European Angelica (Angelica archangelica) and American Angelica (A. atropurpurea).

A Little History

Dong Quai has been used in Chinese, Korean and Japanese medicine for a very long time. The Chinese Pharmacopoeia of 1977 summed up its uses: "to enrich blood, activate blood circulation, regulate menstruation, relieve pain and relax bowels." It reached Western medicine in 1899, when the firm of Merck began selling an extract called Eumenol for menstrual complaints.