This article is by Karen Gay, the Mirror’s health and wellness editor.
Elderberry syrup is making a comeback these days and it is very simple to make but very expensive to buy. Back in the days when herbalists ruled the day for health care, Elderberry syrup was a standard winter tonic used to repel the flu and colds. With the advent of today’s medical system, the old ways have been lost or forgotten. Most doctors don’t recommend elderberry syrup even though there’s a small study in PubMed entitled “Randomized study of the efficacy and safety of oral elderberry extract in the treatment of influenza A and B virus infections” which concludes that flu symptoms were relieved on average 4 days earlier. The authors recommended a larger study but stated that “Elderberry extract seems to offer an efficient, safe and cost-effective treatment for influenza.”
I am drawn to traditional remedies and the keynote speaker I heard at our Weston A. Price Foundation conference in November brought home tome why this is. The speaker was Tom Naughton and he is a comedian and producer of the movie, Fat Head. In his hilarious talk to almost 800 people he drew upon the book The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki positing that large groups of people are smarter than the “anointed” few. Naughton pointed out that traditional remedies were developed over a long period of time, by trial and error. Diverse groups of people exchanged ideas on successes and failures and as a result over generations remedies became better and better. An example was a diabetes cookbook written in 1920 which advocated butter, cheese, meat, fish, and eggs.This diet represented the wisdom of the crowd over generations and now even the American Diabetes Association is beginning to gently backtrack about such ideas as reducing carbohydrates. It still is on the low-fat kick even though ancestral (read wisdom of crowds) low-carb high fat diets combined with intermittent fasting have been shown to greatly improve Type 2 diabetes. Now I’ll get off my soapbox and get to the important part about how you can make your own traditional syrup.
As I’m not a fan of flu shots I’ve been making my own elderberry syrup and gummies for several years now using recipes I found online. I order dried elderberries from Amazon and I get my honey locally from W.T. Wilkins, who also has his honey at Watson’s Hardware, or from Matt Cormans at the Onancock Market. My favorite syrup is from the Wellness Mama blogger. Her recipe includes a tea made from dried elderberries, raw honey, ginger, cinnamon and cloves. One tablespoon for adults and 1 teaspoon for children each day is the recommended dose. https://wellnessmama.com/1888/elderberry-syrup/.
A great elderberry gummy recipe comes from Sarah Pope, the author of the Healthy Home Economist. In this recipe she uses date sugar instead of honey because children under the age of one should not eat honey. Pope points out in another article that raw elderberries should not be eaten by children or adults. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/elderberry-jello-shots/.
If your child is older and you’d like to use honey and the same dried berries as you use when you make syrup for your gummies, then try this recipe from Real Food RN: https://realfoodrn.com/healthy-gummies-cold-flu-sleep/.
Are you tempted to buy elderberry syrup at the store? If you do, read the ingredients. Many syrups contain sugar or even fructose instead of honey and citric acid as a preservative. Be aware that most likely these products are pasteurized, eliminating most of what makes raw honey so beneficial.
There are literally hundreds of recipes out there on the web. Do some research on colds and flu or other health problems. You may find a diversity of opinion out there, but this is where all solutions start. Keep reading and reading until you begin to form an opinion yourself. Then test it out on someone else and have a gentle debate on the good and bad points. Then find another person and discuss and before you know it you’ll have shaped other lives and your life will be forever changed.
If you’d like to see the Tom Naughton keynote address that I referenced earlier, we will be showing the video at the February chapter meeting of the Weston A. Price Foundation. We meet in Exmore every other month. If you’d like to attend the meeting, send an email to karengreergay@gmail.com or join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/esvawapf/.
Here are some interesting links:
PubMed study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15080016
Amazon link to elderberries: https://smile.amazon.com/Frontier-Elder-Berries-Whole-Organic/dp/B000UVUHXY/ref=sr_1_2_a_it?s=local-services&ie=UTF8&qid=1544971286&sr=8-2&keywords=elderberry
Dangers of raw elderberries: https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/raw-elderberry-dangers/
Kearn SCHEMM says
Excellent piece. Elderberry blossom tea with honey is a fantastic remedy for colds, a true self-made medicine. Pine syrup easily made is another.
Paul Plante says
With respect to the statement in the original post, “(W)ith the advent of today’s medical system, the old ways have been lost or forgotten,” how about changing that to “with the rise of the AMA in America, the old ways have been purposefully crushed.”
With respect to that statement, which is historically true, there is an interesting and informative article on that subject on the internet entitled “The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Homeopathy in the United States” by Judith Boice ND, LAc, FABNO.
In that article, she gives us this following history to consider, to wit:
Homeopathy took the United States by storm when Hans Gram, a Dutch immigrant, introduced homeopathic medicine in 1825.
Why was this new medical system so widely accepted and eagerly embraced?
The medical world of the early nineteenth century was dominated by “heroic” treatments including bloodletting (draining up to 80% of the body’s blood supply) and purging with strongly cathartic botanicals and chemicals, including mercury, lead and arsenic.
The orthodox physicians had very little scientific basis for either diagnostic or treatment methods.
Homeopathy threatened the medical establishment because it offered an integrated, coherent, systematic basis for therapeutic treatment.
end quotes
Now, herbal remedies in this country have been around since the glaciers receded some ten thousand years ago, or let’s face it, people never would have survived in this country to see the AGE OF BIG PHARM dawn here in America.
And for BIG PHARM to grow, and my goodness, how it has, those remedies had to be discredited, and so they were.
As we are told in that internet article above, Paul Starr, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Social Transformation of American Medicine,” notes, “Because homeopathy was simultaneously philosophical and experimental, it seemed to many people to be more rather than less scientific than orthodox medicine.”
Prominent political figures, including Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, and Senator Daniel Webster chose to be treated by homeopathic practitioners.
Other luminaries advocating homeopathy included Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne and William James.
In the February 1890 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Mark Twain commented, “The introduction of homeopathy forced the old school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business.”
Homeopathy quickly gained a wide following among educated physicians.
Many of the initial practitioners and proponents of homeopathic medicine graduated from the most prestigious medical schools of the day.
In 1844, these practitioners created a national organization, The American Institute of Homeopathy, the first medical society formed in the United States.
Partly in response, the orthodox physicians created their own medical society in 1846.
One of the first actions of this rival medical group was to purge all members who were homeopathic practitioners, even though they had graduated from conventional medical schools.
This new medical society named itself the “American Medical Association” (AMA).
end quotes
There is the beginning of the schism in America that saw these old home remedies being discredited, so that modern medicine as administered by the members of the AMA could gain ascendency.
As that article tells us:
In addition to being threatened by homeopathy’s more integrated systems of medicine, the AMA chafed at homeopathy’s critique of conventional drugs and their suppressive tendencies.
Even more to the point, the AMA recognized the homeopathic practitioners’ impact on the AMA physicians’ economic status.
At an AMA meeting, one of the orthodox physicians commented, “We must admit that we never fought the homeopath on matters of principles; we fought him (sic) because he came into the community and got the business.”
end quotes
We are a capitalist nation, afterall, and there is big money to be made from treating the sick, but only if the competition is kept limited, especially cheap cold cures like Elderberry blossom tea with honey as a fantastic remedy for colds.
Getting back to the schism which has given us the for-profit medical system we have in this country today, that article continues as follows:
The AMA placed increasingly restrictive requirements on its membership.
In 1855, orthodox physicians would lose their membership for even consulting with a homeopathic practitioner or any other “irregular” practitioner.
Losing membership in the AMA at that time also meant losing their license and the ability to practice medicine.
The AMA’s policies also infiltrated the academic institutions of that day.
The University of Michigan, as an example, established a professorship of homeopathy in the medical department.
The AMA resolved to deny recognition of “regular” graduates if their diploma was signed by a homeopathic physician.
At that time all professors signed the graduates’ diplomas.
Three times the homeopathic practitioners took their case to the Michigan Supreme Court, but each time the court responded that it was uncertain of its jurisdiction to decide the case.
Finally the University of Michigan circumvented the issue by having only the president and secretary of the university sign diplomas.
Despite the political maneuvering within the medical communities, homeopathy continued to gain in popularity, particularly among the more educated upper and middle classes.
By the end of the 19th century, there were 22 homeopathic medical schools, more than 100 homeopathic hospitals, over 60 orphan asylums and senior living facilities, and over 1,000 homeopathic practitioners in the United States.
Much of homeopathy’s nineteenth century popularity may be attributed to its efficacy in treating epidemic diseases.
Statistics indicate the death rates in homeopathic hospitals from epidemic diseases were half to as little as one-eighth of orthodox medical hospitals.
During the cholera epidemic in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1849, only 3% of the 1,116 patients treated with homeopathy died.
In contrast, 48%-60% of those under conventional medical care died.
In 1901, the AMA lifted its ban on consultations with “irregular doctors,” perhaps because they had other methods they were putting in place to quell homeopathy’s popularity.
The publication of the Flexner Report in 1910 profoundly impacted medical education in the United States.
The report, ironically funded by the Rockefeller family—staunch supporters of homeopathy—gave poor marks to homeopathic and other “irregular” medical colleges.
Only graduates from schools with high ratings were allowed to take medical licensing exams.
Of the 22 homeopathic schools in 1900, only two remained in 1923.
Perhaps the history of medical colleges would have unfolded quite differently had John D. Rockefeller’s financial adviser, Frederick Gates, followed Rockefeller’s directive to give grants to homeopathic medical institutions.
Instead Gates, an advocate of orthodox medicine, gave away $300-400 million in the early 1900’s primarily to orthodox medical institutions.
In the early twentieth century, homeopathic medicine rapidly declined in the United States for a variety of reasons.
Homeopathic practitioners required more time with their patients to thoroughly address cases, while orthodox physicians spent as little as five minutes with patients.
In an effort to comply with the Flexner Report guidelines, the remaining homeopathic colleges focused more on basic sciences and medical diagnosis.
As a result, their homeopathic education suffered.
According to Dana Ullman, MPH, author of Discovering Homeopathy, “. . . the graduates from these homeopathic colleges were less able to practice homeopathy well.”
“Instead of individualizing medicines to a person’s totality of symptoms, many homeopaths began prescribing medicines according to disease categories.”
“The consequences from this type of care were predictably poor results.”
“Many homeopaths gave up homeopathic practice, and many homeopathic patients sought other types of care.”
Homeopathy’s advocates declined as the popularity of penicillin, the new “wonder drug”, blossomed.
The first pharmaceutical antibiotic, penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928.
By 1944, it was undergoing large-scale pharmaceutical production and was being used to treat patients on a global scale during World War II.
Interestingly, homeopathy’s renaissance was launched when antibiotics’ efficacy began to falter due to many bacteria developing resistance to this new drug.
The resurgence of homeopathy in the 1970’s was fueled primarily by the lay public.
end quotes
So it is good to see this article in here on an old-fashioned cure for the common cold.
Keep up the good work, it is appreciated!
Karen Gay says
Hi Paul, you are right on about the history of how we are now stuck with pharmaceutical cures as the best our modern medicine can deliver for everyday ailments. You didn’t mention the Flexner Report of 1910 which was ginned up by the Carnegie Foundation to get rid of herbal and homeopathic medicine and put in their places a monopoly, supposedly science-based, created by our oil giants. There’s also the attack by the American Medical Association in the 1960s and 1970s on chiropractors all over the U.S. Now the FDA is proposing to limit homeopathic medicine which has been on the rise because it is non-invasive, it works, and it can’t kill a hundred thousand people, as Vioxx did. I’m all for medical freedom with options because it uses the wisdom of crowds to hone in on methods that work.
Paul Plante says
And good afternoon to you, Karen Gay, and once again, thank you for taking the time to present us with this above thoughtful article.
The information is very much appreciated.
As for me, I rarely get a cold and if I do, I resort to lemon juice and honey in hot water.
Works quite well for me, anyway.
As to the Flexner Report, my above post covered it as follows:
The publication of the Flexner Report in 1910 profoundly impacted medical education in the United States.
The report, ironically funded by the Rockefeller family—staunch supporters of homeopathy—gave poor marks to homeopathic and other “irregular” medical colleges.
Only graduates from schools with high ratings were allowed to take medical licensing exams.
Of the 22 homeopathic schools in 1900, only two remained in 1923.
Perhaps the history of medical colleges would have unfolded quite differently had John D. Rockefeller’s financial adviser, Frederick Gates, followed Rockefeller’s directive to give grants to homeopathic medical institutions.
Instead Gates, an advocate of orthodox medicine, gave away $300-400 million in the early 1900’s primarily to orthodox medical institutions.
end quotes
As for me, I stay healthy through qigong and t’ai chi, which I always have with me, 24/7, and they have no worrisome side effects.
Paul Plante says
With respect to modern “medicine,” or perhaps “medication,” yesterday I was visiting, and the television was on, and as seems to be so often the case today when I am near a television, BIG PHARM is advertising yet another of its newest and bestest “treatments” for all the various ills and syndromes and conditions and such that plague not only the American people today, but increasingly, their poor dogs as well, and I am amazed that anyone would even consider taking that crap or even letting it near them, when they list all of the precautions and side effects of the “treatment,” because I have yet to hear them advertise a “cure.”
(Cures are bad for the bottom line, because they eliminate repeat customers, which are necessary to maintain profits, and hence, stock values)
It seems 1/3 of the commercial is telling you about how this new product will improve your life, and then the next 2/3’s are spent telling you all of the side effects that are going to make you worse off than before, and maybe kill you.
Strange times we are in, indeed!