Lately there is growing interest in medicinal herbs such as nettle leaf.
A number of factors seem to be driving the use of herbs in treating common ailments.
For one, many are hesitant about the myriad of possible side effects with even the most seemingly innocent over-the-counter drugs.
Second, there is the high price of said drugs.
Third, of course, there is a huger rising in many for the simpler life of decades gone by.
Stinging nettle and many of its herbal cousins are getting a lot of attention.
Nettle Uses Nettle can be brewed into tea, tossed into soups, sauteed like spinach, infused for soaking baths, used in tinctures, and more.
You may wonder why you should bother -- nettle is not as easy to come by as spinach, for example.
Nettle beats out the spinach for two reasons.
One is that nettle is a weed growing in the wild, untended.
It will only grow where the soil is rich and the water plentiful.
You do not really know where that spinach grew or how, even if there is an organic sticker on it somewhere.
In terms of good growing and plenty of nutrients, nettle wins.
The second reason for going with nettle is the list of medicinal properties ascribed to it over the centuries.
For example, it is a diuretic.
You can access the diuretic action by brewing nettle leaf into a tea or by making a soup that has several green vegetables for flavor (nettle leaf has little flavor).
Nettle leaf is also known as an astringent, a hemostatic, and a tonic.
In generations past it was usual to collect greens like nettle and dandelion to brew into a tonic that was a blood cleanser.
Such a tonic is good any time of the year, but spring is when the young greens were available.
The old folks knew that plenty of tonic was needed to keep them strong and vital.
Some herbalists recommended picking branches of stinging nettle to slap on areas of the body experiencing arthritic pain.
I was a pretty brutal remedy.
A much gentler approach to try is making a gallon infusion of nettle to pour into the tub with warm water.
Soak as long as you can.
Add hot water when necessary if you stay a spell.
Do a study of nettle to get a better idea of the vast range of uses, like a scalp rub to deal with hair loss.
Study it up and try it out.
Where to Find Nettle If you live anywhere that is not covered with cement and asphalt, you have a chance of finding stinging nettle growing.
It is found globally.
If your nettle is growing on someone else's property, they will probably be delighted to have you harvest it.
Most folks consider nettle a pesky weed because of the needle-like spines on the leaves.