How Oregon Grape Healed Mono

When my friend’s nephew was diagnosed with mono recently, his doctor told him that he would likely miss school for a month or longer due to the symptoms, and this was a big deal, because he’s a high school senior, so it meant potentially not graduating. Fortunately, I was more than happy to pass along some of my homemade Oregon grape root tincture to him, and he made a full recovery — in terms of his symptoms — within one week. He’s back to feeling healthy again, and his family is pretty relieved!

I’m not surprised that it worked so very well. Herbal medicine really is effective, and for acute conditions, in my experience, it works quickly. My friend’s nephew is the second person I’ve given Oregon grape root tincture to for mono who made a fast recovery. I’ve also used it successfully for strep throat and cold viruses. The dose he used, and that I usually use, is two medicine droppers, four to five times daily, in tea.

Oregon grape, Mahonia aquifolium, is my favorite medicinal plant. It’s effective for many different ailments, from strep throat to Giardia to mono, and is especially indicated for viral diseases. Oregon grape is native to the Pacific Northwest and it resembles holly, except that holly is a shrub or tree with red berries whereas Oregon grape is an upright bush three to five feet tall or so with matte blue berries.

The roots and berries of the plant have a concentration of an antimicrobial compound called berberine, which stains their insides yellow. Berberine, which is also found in coptis and goldenseal, works synergistically with other chemicals in the herb to bring about healing. And of course, from a metaphysical perspective, the plant spirit is also playing an important role, as is the respectful manner in which the plant was harvested and turned into medicine.

Oregon grape is also an edible plant. The berries are a sour, tart flavor, and the young, soft leaves are citrus-y. The plant’s yellow blossoms are Oregon’s official state flower.

Oregon grape roots can be harvested sustainably because they grow rhizomatically, which means they grow horizontally under the soil like a net, from which numerous plants sprout up. So you can unearth the rhizomes a couple inches beneath the dirty, snip a six-inch (or so) section with garden clippers, and replant the ends. Then you simply rinse and chop the roots, fill a glass jar with them, fill it halfway with 190 proof grain alcohol and the rest of the way with water, screw on the lid, and leave it in the dark at room temperature to extract. It’s ready two to six weeks later, when you have a dark brown-golden liquid inside. (You could do the same with the berries).

In a survival situation without a tincture handy, one could boil the roots and use the heat to extract the medicinal compounds into a tea.

What I’ve just described would be called “folk herbalism,” in the sense that it’s distinguished from the more sophisticated systems of herbalism developed over thousands of years in China and India. Those systems are especially useful for treating chronic ailments.

I’ve been wanting to learn more about these traditions, so I recently enrolled in a distance herbal study course designed by the very respected teacher Michael Tierra, who is based in Santa Cruz, California, founded the American Herbalists Guild, and has formally studied and authored books on Traditional Chinese Medicine as well as Ayurveda (traditional Indian herbal medicine). He also trained with Native American healers and folk herbalists. His school is called the East West School of Planetary Herbology, which has a somewhat goofy name but is meant to confer respect for all traditions. It is a refreshing philosophy, and unfortunately rather rare. I’ve come across many more herb schools that have an elitist and condescending attitude toward folk healers and the shamanically oriented medicine people.

I’m only a couple hundred pages into this course, but so far, I’m learning tons, and would recommend it to anyone who is looking to enhance their knowledge at their own pace. You can take up to three years to complete the course, and it is comprehensive, with various directions, so that you can choose to stop after the first twelve lessons, which are supposed to give you enough learning to be a home herbalist, or going into the full thirty-six, with additional courses on pathology and disease and anatomy and even an option to apprentice for hundreds of hours to become a certified clinical herbalist. Another bonus is that it’s about half as expensive as an in-person school.

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Upcoming Classes in Portland, Oregon:
* Urban Foraging 101 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, June 16, in the NE Alberta Arts district. $40. Details here.
* Stinging nettle plant-spirit meditation from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday June 6. $20 to $40 sliding scale. Details here.
* Intro to Herbal Medicine Making, a hands-on class that gets your apothecary started, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, June 23, at 1611 SE Bybee. $45 includes all materials and includes a tincture and salve to take home. Details here.
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