Detox With Herbs

Some herbs and wild plants are wonderfully suited to enriching the daily menu. If you consciously choose those that taste good, are easy to prepare, and also have a detoxifying and purifying effect, then you will benefit far more from their regular consumption than from a short-term detoxification or fasting cure. We introduce you to excellent detox herbs and explain how to prepare them.

Herbs for detox

Many people think that you should detox for a reasonable period of time, maybe a week or two, and then continue with the gluttony that led to the need for a detox in the first place.

A short break is certainly better than nothing for the body, but of course, it would much prefer a permanent change in some habits. Simply integrate detoxifying herbs and wild vegetables into your daily diet.

Plants are our primary food

wild plants such as B. dandelion, nettle, plantain, chickweed, linden leaves, burdock roots, and many more – are our primal food. They nourish and prevent disease at the same time. If there is an illness, these plants heal and relieve it.

They always ensure healthy harmony in our organism.

If wild plants have a certain healing effect on the human body, this does not mean that they are pure HEALING plants that may only be consumed for a special HEALING purpose for certain ailments.

Wild plants are not medicines, which are known to have harmful side effects.

Wild plants are primarily food. Their nutrient density is far higher than that of cultivated vegetables.

The medicinal properties of the wild plants are then only an additional bonus. However, there are no side effects.

Medicinal plants or food plants?

If due to an unfavorable diet, deficits arise in the body, toxins accumulate or even damage is caused and the person concerned begins to eat powerful wild plants again, then these understandably have the same effect as they always did: nourishing, detoxifying, cleansing, healing, repairing.

However, since a person only consciously feels some of these effects when he is ill or feels unwell, many plants were called HEALING plants.

In reality, however, these plants are our food intended by nature. This is what Hippocrates meant some time ago when he uttered the following meaningful sentence:

Let food be your medicine and medicine your food

Of course, this does not mean plants such as foxglove, yew, hemlock, or lily of the valley, which definitely belong to the poisonous plants and would not be eaten by anyone voluntarily because of their disgusting taste.

But which wild plants are particularly suitable for detoxification?

(If you would like to know in advance whether you are poisoned, i.e. whether you have a toxic load, you can do this very easily with the *Mineral-Check. You only need a hair sample or 10 fingernails from you. Your sample will be then checked for 8 pollutants/elements (arsenic, aluminum, lead, mercury, cadmium, titanium, tin, and nickel). After a few days you will receive the result by email, which you can – if necessary – discuss with your doctor or naturopath.)

Detox with burdock

Greater burdock is a very versatile plant. It is extremely robust and grows along roadsides, on banks, or on former rubble dumps.

Burdock root is often offered in the form of various preparations for hair and skin problems.

In autumn, the root, which tastes like black salsify, is also available as a vegetable in some health food stores or at farmers’ markets.

In reality, however, the leaf stalks, young leaves (the older ones are too bitter), shoots, and flower stalks are also edible.

The parts of the plant are either eaten raw in a salad (mixed with other leafy salads) or steamed as a vegetable.

Purifying, removing, and detoxifying blood with burdock

The folk medicine known effects of the Greater Burdock are extremely numerous. Root extracts are said to have antibiotic and blood sugar-reducing effects.

In the form of an ointment, the large-leaved plant is effective against a number of skin diseases, including dandruff.

However, a particularly highly valued ability of burdock is its blood-cleansing and detoxifying effect.

For this reason, it is recommended by phytotherapeutic doctors and alternative practitioners for bladder and gallstone diseases, liver diseases, gout, rheumatism, and diabetes.

The burdock root is even said to be able to reduce the accumulation of heavy metals in the body. Due to its detoxifying effect, burdock is also recommended as an accompaniment to diets with the aim of losing extra pounds.

To enjoy the detoxifying effects of burdock, it is recommended to make tea from the root and drink it two to three times a day.

Recipe burdock root tea:

Mix 1.5 to 2 tablespoons of chopped burdock root with 0.5 liters of cold water and leave overnight for 8 hours.

If you can or only want to drink warm tea, warm the burdock root tea just before enjoying it, but don’t let it get too hot.

This tea can also be used externally to wash skin problems.

Detox with coriander

Coriander is a member of the parsley family and is used primarily in Mexican, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern cuisines.

All parts of the plant are edible, usually, the leaves and seeds of coriander are used in cooking.

In the area of heavy metal detoxification, coriander has been used for some time to help dissolve mercury in the body, particularly in the brain.

However, a therapeutic accompaniment is recommended for this purpose, since coriander is said to be able to mobilize large quantities of mercury without eliminating it.

Therefore, it must also be ensured that at the same time, for example, with the chlorella algae or healing earth (bentonite), a component is added that really binds and drains the mercury circulating in the body.

However, if there is no severe mercury poisoning and you just want to get rid of everyday heavy metal pollution, coriander can be wonderfully helpful from a folk medicinal point of view – in salads, as tea, or in soups.

Detox with nettle

The stinging nettle is probably one of the best-known of all blood-cleansing plants.

It has very good detoxifying properties.

The stinging nettle eliminates toxins and metabolic waste by stimulating kidney function. More water is now excreted and with the water also a higher proportion of toxins and pollutants.

Nettle tea is said to have an extremely cleansing and regenerating effect on the digestive system, while at the same time activating the body’s natural defense mechanisms.

Drink the nettle tea pure or with some fresh lemon juice.

Apart from tea, many other wonderful dishes can be made from the nettle leaves (especially the young leaves from the shoot tip).

You can use stinging nettles practically anywhere spinach or chard are used.

Stinging nettles are good in soups, vegetable dishes, casseroles, and fillings or can be processed into a fine pesto.

You can even turn small amounts of nettle leaves into a fruity, healthy drink in green smoothies.

Using nettle leaf powder is even easier.

This can be used as a spice or as a smoothie ingredient. You can also simply stir it into juice and spice it up with an extra portion of antioxidants, calcium, iron, and vitamin K.

Milk thistle is used more as a dietary supplement in capsule form than as a food.

Detox with milk thistle

Milk thistle is a famous liver-protective plant. It prevents substances that are toxic to the liver from penetrating into the liver cells and promotes the regeneration of the liver and the formation of new liver cells.

Since the liver is our number one detoxification organ, milk thistle can confidently be described as a particularly outstanding medicinal plant that supports detoxification.

Milk thistle is used for liver damage caused by environmental toxins, alcohol, or some medications (e.g. synthetic estrogens, chemotherapy, etc.) to get the liver and thus the body’s detoxification mechanisms back on track.

Milk thistle is also prescribed for hepatitis to protect the liver from impending cirrhosis. These areas of application alone show how great the beneficial effect of milk thistle is on the liver.

Milk thistle can be drunk as tea. However, in order to get enough active ingredients, the milk thistle seeds must be ground up and then infused (leave to infuse for 10 minutes, drink a cup 3 times a day, half an hour before meals).

The seeds can also be chewed (about 2 tablespoons daily).

It is even easier to take milk thistle in the form of ready-made preparations that contain guaranteed and standardized amounts of active ingredients.

However, cheap products from the drugstore or the supermarket are not recommended due to their low dosages.

Pay attention to a high concentration of the active ingredients (at least 70 mg silymarin per capsule (“calculated as silibinin” – says so in the package insert; the daily intake dose can reach 200 to 400 mg silymarin.)

Detox with dandelion

The Japanese George Ohsawa, the founder of macrobiotics, is said to have almost fallen into ecstasy at the sight of the blooming dandelion meadows (on the occasion of his visit to the Black Forest) and exclaimed:

“Where this wonderful plant grows, you don’t need ginseng anymore!”
Apparently, he had intuitively sensed the inherent power of the dandelion. Unfortunately, today we may still pick the dandelions for the domestic rabbit, but hardly any more for ourselves.

Dandelion – a blood purifier of the extra class

The root of the dandelion in particular is a top-class blood and kidney cleanser, at the same time a great remedy for improving liver and bile function, helpful for healthy digestion, and ultimately a strengthening tonic for the entire organism.

Dandelion is full of minerals and antioxidants

The dandelion root is harvested from September to March, cut into small pieces, and prepared as a salad.

The leaves, flowers, and flower stalks of the dandelion are also extremely helpful. Its richness in protein and minerals alone and its abundance of secondary plant substances – in comparison to cultivated lettuce – is an enormous enrichment of the daily diet.

Aside from dandelion salad, you can also make dandelion tea by adding four cups of boiling water to one cup of fresh dandelion leaves.

Let the tea steep for 10-15 minutes and then strain it.

A tea made from dandelion root is also easy to prepare once the roots have been harvested and cleaned. To do this, use the recipe for burdock root tea (see above).

A quick and easy way to enjoy the detoxifying and draining active ingredients in dandelion is to use dandelion fresh plant juice or a high-quality dandelion root extract. One pinch of the latter is salivated up to three times a day.

Also easy to use is the detoxifying dandelion leaf powder, which – like the nettle leaf powder described above – can simply be stirred into drinks and smoothies or used as a spice.

Use detoxifying wild plants!

So if in future you only consume one or two of the plants mentioned daily or drink them regularly in the form of tea, you will achieve continuous activation of your metabolism and your detoxification organs.

In this way, you can immediately excrete a large part of the toxins that come in daily from the environment or the diet, so that they cannot be stored in the tissues and organs in the first place.

If you suffer from an illness, the plants mentioned can make a significant contribution to healing or alleviation, as they relieve the organism, vitalize the detoxification organs and support the immune system.

Therefore, use the power of wild plants, which our body has known for millions of years – both as high-quality food and as digestible medicine.