Mugwort 100 g, 50 g, 25 g

Mugwort – 100 g ($14.99), 50 g ($10.99), 25 g ($6.99)

Benefits:
Digestion  Mugwort may aid in treating some digestive issues. Some research suggests that when taken orally, mugwort can help relax the gastrointestinal tract and bile ducts. This allows for increased bile production, which can help break down food and help it move through the digestive system.  Research also shows the smell and bitter taste of mugwort may promote the production of bile and other digestive juices, such as stomach acid. These can help break down food and aid in digestion as well.  However, more research is needed on the use of mugwort as a digestive aid. Be sure to talk to a healthcare provider before taking mugwort orally.

Itch Relief  Some research has shown mugwort can relieve itchiness, particularly on scars. However, most studies have only reviewed mugwort for itch relief when combined with other ingredients. A small preliminary study tested a lotion containing mugwort and menthol on people with raised scars from severe burns. It found that the lotion reduced itch.

Antioxidant  There is some research to suggest that mugwort has antioxidant effects. Antioxidants protect the body’s cells against free radicals. Free radicals are unstable particles that form when the body converts food into energy or when you exercise. Smoking, as well as being exposed to air pollution or the sun, can increase the number of free radicals in the body. Free radicals cause oxidative stress, which can lead to inflammation, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. By consuming antioxidants, you can help protect against the damage free radicals cause.

High Blood Pressure  Mugwort might help in the treatment of high blood pressure, or hypertension, by lowering high blood pressure and increasing blood circulation. This effect on blood pressure has been seen when mugwort is used in a therapy known as moxibustion. Moxibustion involves burning a roll of herbs that contains mugwort directly or indirectly on acupuncture points, which are defined areas on the body within ancient Chinese medicine. Moxibustion may be used alongside acupuncture, where thin needles are inserted into these points.  However, there are certain limitations in the research on moxibustion’s impact on blood pressure. The studies included small sample sizes, and none of the studies looked at the long-term effects.

Menstrual  Some people use mugwort to manage irregular periods, since mugwort may be able to bring on menstruation. Research has shown that the leaves, flowers, stems, and fruits of mugwort have been used in various ethnic herbal medicines to treat both irregular periods (amenorrhea) and painful periods (dysmenorrhea). These uses have been found in India, Italy, and Vietnam.

Anti-Bacterial, Anti-Fungal  Several studies have shown mugwort helps fight bacteria and fungi.

For example, one study showed that mugwort can help get rid of candida, a common fungus that can cause infection in the mouth, throat, and esophagus as well as the vagina and bloodstream. Another study showed that the aerial parts of the plant—the leaves and stem above the ground—attacked multiple bacteria and fungi, including Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Salmonella enteritidis.  However, since the plant grows in many parts of the world, not every essential oil is identical. This means that two bottles of mugwort essential oils from different areas may have different properties.

At present, there is limited scientific evidence that mugwort can prevent or treat any medical condition. That being said, a 2020 study reveals that “numerous authors have confirmed the beneficial properties of A. vulgaris herb extracts, including their antioxidant, hepatoprotective, antispasmolytic, antinociceptive, estrogenic, cytotoxic, antibacterial, and antifungal effects.”  For many centuries, mugwort has been mainly used for treating gynecological problems and gastrointestinal diseases. As a result, mugwort will continue to be studied. Here are some of the researched benefits.

Joint Pain  Mugwort in conjunction with the moxibustion technique not only succeeds with stimulating fetal movement inside the womb — it’s also a successful therapy for certain forms of arthritis.

In one study, the same ancient Chinese technique was blind-tested on participants with osteoarthritis. Out of 110 patients, half were given the real-deal moxibustion treatment, and the other half were given the placebo version three times a week for six weeks. Neither the patients or practitioners knew which patient was receiving which treatment. At the end of the treatment, there was a 53 percent reduction in pain for participants in the moxibustion group and only a 24 percent reduction in pain within the group who received the placebo. Knee function also improved 51 percent in the moxibustion group and only increased 13 percent in the placebo group. The effects of the therapy were not necessarily permanent, but the results are certainly promising.

Reversing Breech Birth Position  In most cases, when a baby is just a few weeks shy of entering the world, the head of the baby will naturally begin moving toward the birth canal to prepare for delivery. But in approximately 1 out of every 25 full-term births, that does not happen. This is called a breech birth.

Ancient Chinese medicine starting using a method called moxibustion as a natural solution to this dangerous situation. So what is moxibustion? The leaves of the mugwort plant are formed into a short stick or cone and burned over the points of acupuncture, which inhibits the release of energy and circulates blood by creating a warming effect on the acupuncture site.

When moxibustion is being used to reverse a fetus in breech, the procedure stimulates a specific acupuncture point, BL67, located near the toenail of the fifth toe, creating blood circulation and energy that result in an increase in fetal movements. According to a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association, 75 percent of 130 fetuses reversed positions after the mother was treated with moxibustion.

Cancer, Malaria  Completed and current ongoing studies on the possible uses of mugwort indicate that links to the fundamental component of the plant, artemisinins, as being toxic to certain cancer cells. Relatedly, mugwort is a naturally occurring anti-malarial.

As scientists have continued to study the components that effect malaria, they’ve found links to artemisinins targeting mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum and the lysosome. Cancer cells contain a higher level of iron then healthy cells do, which in turn, makes them more susceptible to the toxicity in artemisinin.

In one study, scientists paired the iron heavy cancerous cells with the artemisinin. Once the combination was inside the cells, the result was enhanced toxicity — which means, more potential killing capacity towards the cancer. In the exact words of the hypothesis: “This tagged-compound could potentially develop into an effective chemotherapeutic agent for cancer treatment.” While this isn’t a proven method for treating cancer yet, it’s certainly something to be on the lookout for as the results of more studies and research unfold.

Flavoring  Most beer brewers use hops, or Humulus lupulus, to make their beer. But about 1,000 years ago, medieval brewers were using an alternate concoction of herbs called gruit, which included mugwort as one of the main ingredients. In fact, the English have a slightly different memory how the name “mugwort” came about than the ancient Greeks or Chinese. Because the gruit beer was served and enjoyed in a mug, the herb is said to have gotten its name because of that obvious connection.

The flowers are dried and boiled with other herbs to make a version of an herbal tea, then added to the liquid to create the flavor of the brew. The herbal mixture has a sour flavor. Like so many trends, this medieval trend of brewing beer has actually made a comeback. Certain popular breweries are creating gruit blends. There are even lots of recipes for brewing your own gruit beer.

Vivid Dreaming
Importance of Dreaming
There is more and more being discovered about the mood-regulatory functions of dreaming.

Dreams are an opportunity for the subconscious to go to work on the troubles and lessons of the day and integrate them into the deeper mind. They can serve as a form of emotional detoxification, in which highly reactive elements are broken down or joined with other complexes to be eliminated, rendered inert, or made newly useful.

Dreams as an indicator of sleep quality. People with poor-quality, restless sleep will either dream intensely and disruptively – often as nightmares – or else dream not at all. The latter is more likely when sleep is unsatisfactory on a chronic, ongoing basis.

Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) has helped a number of my clients with disrupted sleep, specifically those who wake in the middle of the night and have difficulty falling back to sleep. Mugwort combined with skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora), passionflower (Passiflora incarnata), betony (Stachys betonica), and/or motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) effectively improves the capacity to sleep straight through the night.

Mugwort’s Effects on Dream Quality
Mugwort, Artemisia vulgaris, is the primary herb I recommend for dreamwork. It is inexpensive, ubiquitous as a human-following and city-thriving weedy herb, and entirely reliable for its effects on dreaming.

Those effects are best described as intensifying or enhancing to dream texture, resolution, complexity, and recall. Mugwort “takes you up a level” from your habitual dream state:

• If you tend not to remember anything about your dreams, mugwort will help you [re]collect bits & pieces; if you have spotty recall, it will help you construct a more complete narrative thread.
• If you dream only in black & white, mugwort may introduce colors. (These often appear in the order they arise during infant visual development – red and yellow first, followed by the greens and blues and purples.)
• If you have solely visual dreams, mugwort-enhanced dreams might have other senses engaged. Sound, touch, smell, and taste tend to emerge in that order.
• If you already have good dream recall and rich texture to your dreams, you may begin to become aware of your dream state while dreaming with mugwort. Then you are ready to practice lucid dreaming, the active manipulation of the dream state at will.

Mugwort alone won’t make you a lucid dreamer overnight. This is a practice and requires consistent effort, including mindset-managing and intention-setting practices before bed, such as breathwork, visualization, and meditation. Keeping a dream journal is an important method for bolstering dream recall and enabling you to identify recurring patterns in your dreams.

Preparations & Doses
There are many ways to work with mugwort for dreaming:

• Tincture: 3 – 9 drops of standard tincture, taken just before bed. This is the simplest method for most people.
• Smoke: a pinch of mugwort in a pipe, alone or in a smoking blend, is as reliable.
• Tea: short hot infusion, 1/2 to 1 cup, as a component of a dream tea formula. We don’t want heavy sedatives here; cerebral circulatory stimulants combined with muscle relaxants seems to do the trick.
• Food: add to food. The important consideration is to consume the whole herb for best effect and fit it to your lifestyle.
• Dream pillow: dried mugwort herb mixed with others (usually lavender, mints, or other aromatics) in a small pillow or sachet, kept near the pillow so it can be smelled as you lie down to sleep. Incense may also be used similarly.

In any of these applications or formulations you might make, be sure to keep the sensory qualities of the herb undiluted. You need to taste it or smell it for it to work. With repeated use, you’ll build a sensory reflex by which the flavor or scent of the herb reminds you, mentally and physically, of the state of mind you’re trying to cultivate.

Other Herbs for Dreaming
There are a variety of traditional ritual herbs, such as Calea zacatechichi (“Aztec dream herb”) from Mesoamerica and Silene capensis (“Xhosa dream herb” or “African dream root”) from South Africa, which are reputed to enhance dream recall and intensity. These can be acquired with varying degrees of ease from online vendors, though clear information on sourcing and handling are not always easy to come by. Much of the draw of these herbs for North American psychonauts is, without doubt, derived from their “exotic” origins.

On the other hand, there are a few herbs that are more widely known in the North/West, though not often regarded as oneirogenic herbs, which I have nevertheless come to regard as useful for dreaming. These include kava (Piper methysticum) and calamus (Acorus calamus) – the two of them together have a complementary set of effects, which serves to relax and warm the physical body while opening the sensorium into wide-angle perception. This allows for easier transition into dreamspace, when taken before bed.

Botanical Name: Artemisia vulgaris
English: Wild Wormwood, Felon herb
Ayurvedic: Damanaka, Pushpachaamara, Unani: Afsanteen-e-Hindi, Gandhotkata
Also, known as: Mugwurz, Herbe de St Jean, Artemiria, Artemassaya, Duna murwa, Chinese Ai-hao-ai, St John’s Plant, Indian Wormwood, Flesbane, Dungwort, Mugwert, Maasipattini, Daimaa Damansa, Cingulum, Sancti Johannis
Origin: Hungary
Harvested: Wild
Parts Used: Leaves & root

General Information:
Mugwort grows wild in North America in hedges and waste places. A slender to moderately stout herb, 1-5 ft tall: the leaves are alternate, five to seven lobes, silvery-white beneath, nearly smooth above. Flowers are small Ovid, yellow to purplish, in numerous clusters from July to August. Odor aromatic leaves are slightly bitter. The leaves are smooth and of a dark green tint on the upper surface but covered with a dense cottony down benefit they are once or twice pinnately lobed, the segments being lance-shaped and pointed. The flowers are in all oval heads with cottons involucres and are arranged in long terminal panicles, they are either reddish or pale yellow. The mugwort is closely allied to the Common Wormwood but may be readily distinguished by the leaves being white on the under surfaces only and by the leaf, segments being pointed, not blunt

It has also been suggested that the name, Mugwort, may be derived not from “mug, the drinking vessel, but from moughte (a moth or maggot), because, from the days of Dioscorides, the plant has been regarded in common with Wormwood, as useful in keeping off the attacks of moths Europeans stuffed mugwort into their pillows to inhale all night because they believed that it helped them dream vividly

 

How to use:
We make these suggestions to help you get the best benefit from the herbs that you’re choosing to improve your health. Also we make these ideas and recommendations so that consuming them easier and better fit into your lifestyle by adding them to the food that you already eat.
For the full health benefit, it is best to consume (or use the whole herb in poultices) the whole herb. All of the compounds in the herb act best together, as nature intends. Extracts draw out the most prominent beneficial compounds and may concentrate them. What is not extracted can be helpful in ways that we do not yet understand.

Cut Pieces or Powdered Herb:
There are different ways to use cut pieces or powdered herb.
Food Preparation: You can add powdered or pieces of herb (if the pieces you buy are bigger than you like, a coffee or herb grinder will quickly reduce) to any yogurt, smoothie, apple or other sauces, spreads, salads or other foods more familiar to you that don’t use heat. Heat can be damaging to the beneficial compounds in the herb. Other options like oatmeal, scrambled eggs, pasta sauce, soup, cookies and anything else that fits your lifestyle, but minimizing (by adding near the end of cooking) the heat is helpful.
Also, for children, you can mix powdered herb with honey or glycerin to make paste. The thicker the paste, the more potent and herbal in taste. The sweet taste of honey and glycerin will help medicine go down. The resulting liquid is called an electuary.
For seeds in general, but especially small seeds, it’s best to grind these to break the protective hulls a short time before consumption. This makes all the benefits available, rather than some remaining locked inside the hulls that are unbroken by insufficient chewing.
To make adding herbs even easier, you could add a week’s worth of your chosen herb(s) to an amount of, for example, yogurt that you would eat in a week. Mix thoroughly and eat this each day of the week. So you make once /week and just eat each other day.
Hot Infusion: The basic method for dried herbs and flower is, take 2-3 tablespoons of dried herb in a cup or teapot. Pour hot water over it and cover it with lid for 10-30 minutes. The heat from making tea can degrade some of the beneficial compounds in the herb. This method minimizes this effect. For the full health benefit, it is recommended to consume what is left over after making tea.
Decoctions: Decoctions are suitable for roots, barks, large seeds & berries, and other dense material. The simple way to make decoction is, in a saucepan, add 1 tablespoon of dried herbs to 1 cup of water, Bring the water to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30-60 minutes with the pot covered. Squeeze out as much as liquid as possible. Best practice is to drink the liquid and also consume the solid material that remains. Herb pieces can also be used.
Powdered Herb:
There are different ways to use powdered herb.
Capsules: HerbsCrafters makes capsules guaranteed to be filled with the pure herb with no filler or any other products. You can also use powdered herb to make your own capsules at home. These capsules are best taken with liquid to aid in digestion and absorption and to ensure it doesn’t stick in your throat.
Poultice: Poultice can be made with an herbal powder and liquid (mostly water) to form a paste which is then applied to the skin. This method is very helpful for skin conditions.
Herbal shot: Powdered herb can be mixed with water, fruit juice or other liquid to make herbal shot.

Tips:
You can sweeten your herbal decoctions with bit of honey, natural fruit juice, stevia leaves powder or licorice root powder.

Precautions:
You should consult with a qualified healthcare practitioner before using any herbal products, particularly if you are pregnant, nursing, or on any medications.
All information on this website is for educational purpose ONLY.
This information has not been evaluated by Health Canada.
This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.