#DIY #Tinctures for #Newbies.

Just getting started, looks like it's really hard? No garden, no access to wild herbs, no money? Why not start easy, most of us may have some grains like organic rice or quinoa, spices like Tumeric, or Cinnamon ground or stick, peppers etc. Ok, there is no getting around the Booze for an Alcohol tincture. But you can use coconut oil (must keep it above 75 degrees F.) olive oil, other good cooking oils, apple cider vinegar, etc.

But you may ask why would a tincture be of any more use than just eating any of these things for our health. First, let me say some of the items I have suggested are (to my knowledge) not known or common health ingredients for Herbal Tinctures. And everyone must make up their own minds as what is safe or useful to experiment with and take.

But let us look at how and why Tinctures Work and are better than just cooking and eating the wort (plant). 1) Heat breaks down many useful compounds that are in the materia medica (the plant stuff we are extracting the goodies from). The tincture solvents do not do this. 2) Foods we eat go through a long acid digestion process in the stomach, before reaching the small intestines to be absorbed into the bloodstream. Once again more breaking down of the plant's complex organic compounds. For the most part, tinctures are absorbed quicker and may avoid much of this destruction. 3) It is my own belief that alcohols have other advantages in getting the compounds into the bodies cells over other solvents. I will address this later on in a more technical theory proposal to the group. Ok, have fun, never stop learning and where possible and fun, Doing It Yourself.
Druid's Guide to Herbalism, our Facebook study group. TDK