SAVE YOUR LIFE - 7

Volume Seven

How to make herbal tea

Okay, now we’re going to talk about making herbal teas. And there's really two ways to do this. They are called ‘infusions’ and ‘decoctions’. Let’s start with infusions. You know, this is the type of tea, that most of you are used to making. You either put a teabag in a cup and pour boiling water over it, or you’re using a T-ball, that you pack herbs in to close it up, and put that into the teacup and pour boiling water. You can even use an apparatus like this. But anyway you look at it, we’re putting herbs and pouring boiling water over them. That’s called an infusion. Now, we want to do that with only certain types of herbs, namely - the flowers and the leaves - the delicate parts of the plant. Those parts of the plant need very little encouragement to get the essential oils or the chemical healing properties out of those plans. Here we have some nice peppermint leaf. I mean we could all smell this in here, without even taking it out of the bag. This here is a version of something that you make coffee in, but it works fine for making an infusion too. Now, I suggest at home you get the unbleached filters, they’re brown paper in color, but I couldn't find any today. We’re just going to take some peppermint and put it in here. That's all you do. Couple handfuls is perfect and then all you do is - take your boiling water and pour it over the peppermint. The filter offers it some resistance, and this will drip slowly through. Peppermint and many of the sensitive parts of these plants, have essential oils in them. And if you cook it, or if you simmer it, you will smell all those oils in the room. But there won't be any left in the tee. When we take this tea – WOW, you’ll get a rush of menthol, one of the chemical properties of peppermint or whatever herb you use. This is a really nice and effective way of making an infusion. Remember, it takes very little encouragement to get the chemical healing properties out of these herbs, so we just pour the boiling water over them. Okay, we’ve made some great peppermint tea, I can smell it from here.
(It tastes good.)
Yeah, let's see what it tastes like.
(Good. You know, I love peppermint tea. And this is the best I’ve ever had.)
Yeah, it is strong. And it's important that, if you buy peppermint, it should be loaded with menthol, you should smell it, the vapors should go up into your head.
(You just kind of feel it in your throat and head.)
Absolutely, let's use good quality herbs. Thanks, Sandy.
The second type of herbal tea is called a “decoction”. A decoction we’re making, because the parts of the plants, that we’re using, are so hard – the barks, the roots, the berries, the nuts, the seeds. That the chemicals, the healing chemicals are locked into that plan and just pouring boiling water over those herbs, just won't take the ingredients. So we have to simmer them. In fact, I like to soak them first in cold water overnight. And always try to use distilled water, or the cleanest water you can, because it'll take out more of these chemicals, when you make an herbal tea. That water is more ‘empty’ and so it will pull out more the minerals, the nutrients out of these herbs - the things, that you need to help yourself get better.
So, what I like to do is, when I'm using hard barks and roots and berries, things like these teas, that are wonderful digestive teas. You can see, we have berries, we have barks, we have roots in here. So, please, overnight just put them in call distilled water overnight. And then in the morning turn the fire on, bring them up to a rolling boil, take it down to a simmer. I got a big part here going, we can smell it all over the house, this is a decoction. Remember, with the leaves and flowers - just pour boiling water over it, let it steep and have your tea. That's it infusion. A decoction - you must simmer for 15 minutes: the barks, the roots, the berries, the harder part of the plant.
When your simmering is done, just pour it through a strainer, just put this over a cup, pour it through. I always put the herbs in loose. You don't have to mess with putting them in cotton or anything, pour it through a strainer into your cup, let it cool a little bit and drink it.
And one final note here - I'd like to talk about syrups. Basically, all syrups are a way to preserve an herbal tea, an infusion or decoction. So what you can do, if you want to preserve this tea to last longer? That’s called “an herbal syrup”. And how do you do it? You make a very strong decoction, really let that simmer a long time, even all day. Let it simmer down to half the volume, so you evaporate off some of the water and concentrate the power of that herb. Then you can add one quarter part of maple syrup, it is my favorite, because it's a tree sap and it has wonderful mineral properties and also antibacterial properties to it. Maple syrup is a wonderful preservative, some people use honey, in the old days they used sugar – and  I wouldn’t suggest that. And other people use vegetable glycerin. 1\4 of any of those sweeteners and preservatives to 3\4 of that strong herbal tea and you have a syrup. And it will also hug your throat a little bit, so if you add some licorice and some ginger, you’ll have a nice tonic for the cold and flu.

Section #44:

Fomentations

Now we’re going to be talking about applying herbs to the outside of the body. This is called ‘fomentations’ and ‘poultices’. Fomentations are basically herbal teas, that we apply externally and use the healing chemicals and the nutrients to go right in through the skin. To make a fomentations, it's very simple, we've already made a decoction here and we have plenty of it. Now, we just want to sink cloths into that decoction, and apply them to the outside of the body. Any herb, that you want for healing on the inside, you can also use that fomentation on the outside over the affected area, whether it be the kidneys, the lungs, the bowel - whatever you can use those fomentations.
Hillary, come on in here for a minute! A great way is using a T-shirt, you can either cut up the T-shirt and you can just dip that in and use that as cloth. Just make sure you wash it first, but many of you have wanted to do fomentations on the head, like fomentations of Dr. Christopher's formulas over the head and the spine. And a wonderful way to do it is just use a T-shirt. And I'm going to use Hillary as an example here.
We’re going to have you come right around here. Take your glasses off for me for a minute. Basically all you do…this is a good way to apply fomentations to the head and rob a bank, or be a terrorist, okay?
But basically, all you're doing is - we would first dip this into our hot herbal tea, you put the T-shirt over the had, expose the nose, and then just tie the little sleeves of the T-shirt right behind your head. If this is all soaked in herbs, you can imagine how penetrating and complete this is, and if you turn her around, you can see - it goes right down her spine. So, this is a great way to apply herbs - a fomentation to the outside of the body. Thank you, go get us some money.
Okay, next - Castor oil packs. Hundreds of people have been asking us about how to use the Castor oil packs. We love to put Castor oil on the outside of the body. And this is a type of fomentation. Castor oil detoxifies, it breaks up congestion since it’s one of the most classic and wonderful healing agents we can use. And it is very simple to do. There are pieces of flannel, muslin or cotton. Here's some wool flannel, that works wonderfully and basically all you do is - warm-up that Castor oil in a pot, dip and soak the wool flannel in it, and wrap it right around the part of the body you want to use. This can be on your liver, this can be over your complete bowel. Now, I know that it's a bit messy to do that. So it's always important to then cover it with plastic. Now, Sandy uses Saran wrap and just wraps it around the body over that. And that’s great, because it promotes a little sweat. You can also use a trash bag, a baggy. Remember, to put your plastic down, so don’t make too much of a mess. If you're putting fomentation on the head, you can also use a ski cap. Put it on that fomentation and put the ski cap right on over it. Use your imagination, make your fomentations and get those herbs on the outside of your body.

Section #45:
Poultices, pt. 1

Okay, now were going to talk about the second way to apply herbs to the outside of the body. It's called a “poultice”. And with the poultice, instead of putting herbal tea on the outside of the body, we’re actually applying the herbs themselves. Now, how do we get the herbs on the outside of the body, and how do we get them to stick? There is one magical herb, that's a great healer and also perfect as a base for poultices. And it is called “slippery elm”. Many of you have heard of this. It's the bark of the tree and it's a wonderful, wonderful healing herb. Just a poultice of slippery elm alone is healing and soothing to the skin. Basically, you can make any poultice by using about half of slippery elm bark powder. Just put it in a bowl like I'm doing here, and then you can add any other herbs you want. But remember, the slippery elm should be about half of the poultice base.
Now we have a few other herbs here, that we’re going to add. It doesn't matter what herbs you want. It depends on your condition. If you have an infection or poisonous bite and sting, go ahead and put plantain in. You may even want to pick some fresh plantain leaves, and just rip them up, and put them in the poultice. You know, these are the leaves over here. But you can rip up any herb leaf and just freshly squeeze it, and put that into your poultice. This could be plantain, it could be dandelion. It all depends on what formula you’re making, and what you want to do.
Now, one of my favorites of course to add to this, is a little cayenne. I add cayenne to almost everything, because cayenne stimulates the blood flow to the area, and, of course, without that blood flow, you're not going to have a healing, maybe, at all.
Now, certainly you could add some goldenseal in here for infection, some garlic powder, some comfrey to heal - whatever you want, even some aloe vera. But just put your herbs in the bowl, and then the next things is, you just add water. And remember, my favorite water - is distilled water. Distilled water is the emptiest. So it extracts the most medicinal properties out of these herbs. Now, you notice, this is a bit like mixing flour and water. It's not very easy at first, and, of course, the slippery elm clumps. But careful not to put too much water in first, cause we don't want this to be very liquidy. Obviously, we need a little more water here, and in your going to see the magic of the slippery elm in a minute. See how the slippery elm is mixing up, it's turning very mucilaginous. That means, basically, sticky and gooey. And mix it up really good, because you'll find, that in here, there’ll be pockets of dry slippery elm. And if it gets a little wet, you can always add a little more slippery elm, if you've added too much water. And if you haven't had enough water, you can go ahead and add more. One thing you'll notice about slippery elm is - it's very sticky, and it really holds. I’m going to add just a little more slippery elm powder to this, because I want it to be just a little bit dryer. You know, when I go hiking into the hills, I carry this powder already premixed, I put the 50% slippery elm with the goldenseal, maybe a little garlic and cayenne. Also, maybe some dried plantain leaves. I have it in a little baggy, already premixed. I call it “My instant poultice”. And then all you have to do to use it, is just add water. You can even go down to a running stream, just add some water to it, and the next thing you know is you have a poultice. And there are some terrific things about making a poultice like this, that you’ll see right now. Look at the slippery elm, isn’t it wonderful? It's not only cohesive and holds all the herbs together and forms a wonderful poultice base, but it's also incredibly healing and soothing to the skin. You can see how mucilaginous it becomes here. Now, look at this, it holds right in that bowl. This is what's so great about this poultice - you put it on and it stays on. Look at that, hugs right in the bowl, a wonderful poultice base.
Sandy, Hillary come on in here. Let’s put a little poultice. Would you roll up one of your sleeves? Basically, the best way to apply this is just take a bit of it and put it on, and then rub it in. At first, it feels like it doesn't quite want to adhere to your skin. Sometimes - because of the natural oils you have, but if you keep pushing and padding, you can get it to be there. Don't make it too thick, thin it out towards only about 1\8 inch to 1\4 inch thick. And it will take about an hour to dry. And when it dries, it'll really hug on there. This is a wonderful way to pull the poultice on the body, a great way to heal wounds and bruises. You can use whatever herbs you want.
Now, look at Hillary. It's on there. I mean it stays. I use this when I’m out in the woods, hiking. Okay, you can barely get it off, and once it dries - you can even go in the water a bit, and it doesn't come off. Thanks, go let that dry and we will take a look at it a little bit.

Section #46:
Poultices, pt.2

Okay, now some of you may need a poultice, that’s a bit stronger. Maybe, you have a tumor or cancer or something poisonous, that you need to draw out of your body. Then, you might want to move to clay. Clay is one of the greatest drawers of poisons. We like a clay, that’s called “Aztec secret healing clay”. You can buy this in almost any health food store. I put together one here. That is clay, but I put other herbs in it. I put goldenseal and garlic to fight that infection, I put charcoal in this, maybe you can see how dark it is. There’s charcoal in there, because charcoal is the greatest absorber of poisons and toxins in the world. Cut apart any water filter, and you're going to find a charcoal inside of it. Charcoal will absorb over 3000 known chemicals, poisons and toxins. It'll even absorb drug residues. It’s amazing. I even put poke root in this, you know how great poke root is. To something like this, I've already prepared here some apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is one of the greatest additions to clay, it really helps your skin and it also helps draw. And I also have some tea tree oil in here for the infection, and I have some blood root in here, that we've talked about before. And what I’m going to do – is just pour this right in to the poultice, right into it. You can see the color of that. And then, the next thing is - I'm going to add about the same amount of water. Then all you do is - put the cap back on and start shaking. Start shaking, make sure you get it closed good. Start shaking this up and were going to see a chemical reaction here in a minute.
You can hear it, okay? Listen to this…Wow! This is a chemical reaction between the vinegar and the clay, and the herbs in here. You can see it starting to bubble. We’re going to release that and do a little more shaking. So, don't forget to shake this, and shake it really hard! Remember, this is one of the best ways to mix up clay, slippery elm – anything. It really mixes up well in jar. When you open it up, again you'll have that pressure release. And hey – you’re going to make a little bit of a mess, but who cares. It’s the kitchen, you can clean it up. And as you can see in here, now we have a wonderful clay poultice in here. It's a bit thin and that's the way you want it - a lot of water and liquid in there. Of course, we put in 50% vinegar, we put in about 8 ounces of vinegar with tea tree oil and blood root, and about 8 ounces of water to about 2 cups of clay with garlic, goldenseal, some plantain, and, of course, charcoal - that's why it is grey. Once you put this on your skin, just like a clay mask, it dries up and gets kind of white in color. And you'll feel it drying.
And if you want to intensify this at home – get your blender out again, and add some of your own ingredients. Look, we’ll put some poultice right in the blender, just pour some in, and then something. Here are some of our red clover tops. And if you can pick them fresh around your house, that’s even better. Just dump them right in! Remember our garlic, one of our greatest drawers. Don't be afraid to beat the garlic, remember…one of our greatest drawers…hey this is a poultice. If you don't get all the paper off, who cares – throw it in, 2-3 cloves of garlic. Put it in, put it all in your blender, you may want to add just a little bit more water, so it will blend well. And then go ahead and blend it up. Fresh red clover, fresh plantain, fresh garlic - put everything in there, all your healing herbs. Now we have a fresh poultice with dried herbs and vinegar and herbal oils. You’re talking about great healing here. This'll pull anything out of the body and detoxify it.
Now, let's bring in Hillary and Sandy and take a look at our poultices here, and I'll show you one more thing. Can you feel anything on your arms?
(Yes, a lot of heat from the cayenne.)
Yeah.
(And drawing, you can feel it pulling.)
Absolutely! And you will notice that, when they’ll take it off later. That area is very red. And for some of you, that are wondering: “Well, what do I do about this poultice?” In other words: “I want to go to bed”,-  or, - “I don't want to make a mess in my house.” That's okay - I'll show you how with a little gauze.
In fact, Hillary, would you even take a little bit of our new poultice, and put it on your arm?
Let’s take a look at that and see how that works. I’ll open up this gauze here. And one of the things you can do with the poultice, is – wrap the gauze right around it, wrap it, and if you press the poultice when it’s fresh, the poultice will come right through that gauze, it'll make like a little cast when it dries, it'll stay right on there. And you can also put that around the clay, and you'll see that clay comes right through the poultice, it’s right through, and it will become a little cast there. It's a great way to keep a poultice cleaner and keep it on.

Section #47:
Suppositories

Many people hear about using herbal suppositories, pectoris, sometimes they even call it boluses. This is a way, that you can take herbs and put them in your vagina, your rectum, even up into your nose and into your ears. It's a great way to do it, and it's so simple, it's so easy - anybody can do it at home. All you need is two ingredients - the finely powdered herbs, that you're going to use as the base, and some coconut oil. Now, coconut oil at room temperature is usually solid. It's a high saturated fat, so in order to turn it into a liquid, we’re going to put it right down into a pot of warm water, not boiling, but warm. And it's off the heat now. We’re just going to set it there to liquefy that, to bring it up to a higher temperature. Now, the herbs you use for your base can be anything, this just happens to be a bolus powder, or “Suppository powder” that I use. If you want to disinfect those areas, you can use goldenseal, a little garlic goes a long way, yellow dock is a classic, plantain to draw, even a little tea tree oil can be nice. There are many herbs, that you can use as the base for your bolus.
What we’re going to do, is put a little bit of this powder into our bowl.
Hillary, could you get me a spoon and a fork, please?
We’re going to put a little bit of this powder into the bowl, a little can go a long way. And then slowly you can see our coconut oil is beginning to melt a little bit here. We want to mix this to a pie dough consistency. You don't want to put too much coconut oil in. It's very important, that the herbs are finally, finely, finely powdered. You certainly don't want any twigs in here, you don't want any pieces of stalk. And if you're not sure they're real fine - go ahead and put it through a sieve, just one of your kitchen strainers of sieve again. Because, if you're going to insert this vaginally or rectally, you want it to be smooth - that's a very important aspect of making this bolus. And then just put your powder into a mixing bowl. Our coconut oil is melted. Make sure you dry it off really well to take all the water off the container. Cause you don't want to get any water in with this oil.
Any time you're working with oils, you want to keep the water away. You can see, that it's not totally melted – there’s still a little piece of solid in there, but that's okay. Let's get this open and we’re going to put some of this coconut oil onto our dry herbs. But don't put too much and then we just want to mix it up. And again - whenever we’re mixing powders with anything, don't put too much liquid in first. It needs to be dry. See, where you are at. Obviously, we need a little bit more, add it, but the patient, take your time, there's no hurry. When you're making herbal preparations, you want to relax, breathe, have a good time. And make sure you record all this in your book. We certainly have enough oil, in fact - we have too much oil. And this commonly happens, so we get our powder and we use a little more of that. The consistency, that I'm looking to create here, is a very dry flaky, almost a pie dough type of consistency. So I’m going to add a little more powder to this, and we’re going to dry it up a little more. And, of course, if I add too much powder, then you can add a little more oil. Keep working it back and forth, this is a great reason not to use all your oil and all your herb powder at once, because rarely will you get to the right consistency right off, right off at the beginning. So it takes a little practice.
I’m going to add a little more powder, because it's still a little too wet for me. And again, we’re looking for that dry, kind of flaky, crumbly, pie dough  consistency. Now, it's looking a little bit better…move our coconut oil…and you can see it's a little dryer, a little more crumbly, it's getting there, but I think we can add just a touch more of powder to this.
Let's try that. Yes! This is looking about the way I want it, it's dry, it doesn't even quite stick together. So, now that we have our consistency good, make sure that it's mixed really well, use a fork, go ahead and kneed it with the fork. We want to get this mixed very well, so the coconut oil is saturating the herbs. Remember, we want it nice and dry. And from here, a glass pie plate is an excellent thing to have to make these suppositories. Basically, we’re going to form these by hand. You can see, that this is pretty dry. And now what we’re going to do is, just make them into about the size, that you want to use for a suppository.
Make them a little more pointed at one end, and a little more bulbed at the other. Just like that, that's about the right size for suppository. Maybe a little bit bigger for a vaginal suppository, and a little bit smaller for a rectal suppository. The coconut oil is going to harden naturally at room temperature. But to help it along, it’s best to put it in the refrigerator.
When we've refrigerate these, we’ll bring them out a little bit, and they’ll be hard. But at that point, the minute you handle them - that coconut oil, when it touches your body, is going to start to melt. And so you want to use them quickly out of the refrigerator. It's always nice to put a little olive oil on the vagina or on the anus, so these slip in really easy. Because we’re not using a lot of oil with these, so they will be a little dry. But again, that coconut oil begins to melt. They will get a little bit softer. Once this bolus is inserted, your body temperature will melt that coconut oil, and these herbs will disperse all through the inside of your body. This is a wonderful way to make your own suppositories and bolus, and then put them in. It’s easy to do, anybody can do it. We’re going to put them in the refrigerator now. Okay, let's take a look at our suppositories, that we've refrigerated and see how they look. It doesn't take much in the refrigerator to get them to really harden up, you can see here, these are very hard at this point, okay? Hard as a rock! That coconut oil is done it's job, these are great suppositories. Make sure you lubricate yourself before you are putting them in. And, as you can see, the minute my hands started touching these, the oil starts melting. Coconut oil melts at about 80°. Once you put these in your body, it will disperse, the herbs will go throughout your vagina, your rectum - wherever you put them - and begin to heal you. Make your own suppositories. It’s easy. Do it!

Section #48:
Instructions on using the Eyewash

Another herbal treatment, that we have thousands of letters about and questions from patients, is “the herbal eyewash” used for centuries by herbalists, but then changed a bit by Dr. Christopher with the addition of cayenne pepper.
You know, I’ve used this eyewash with children, with adults, even with the elderly. I've seen the blind see, I've seen people with prescription eyewear with glaucoma, with cataracts. I’ve seen them throw away their glasses and be healed, using this eyewash. It is one of the greatest herbal treatments, some people think: “Oh, gosh, will the cayenne hurt my eyes?” That's ridiculous! I’ve used it hundreds times the cayenne pepper that Dr. Christopher suggested, and it never hurts the eyes. It heals them, you see better, and the diseases go away.
Hillary, come on in. We’re going to do some eyewash. Now, I’m going to use a tincture, that I’ve made, and I’ll tell you about that in a minute, and also how to do the tee. But basically with the tincture, we want to put 5 to 10 drops. Hillary's used it before, so we’re going to use 10. That has Dr. Christopher's double, this has double Dr. Christopher's recommendation of cayenne. But we’re going to even add a few more drops in of some 250 000 heat unit cayenne, and then we put in distilled water. This is about 10 to 20 times the cayenne pepper, that Dr. Christopher suggested. You’ll see that it won't hurt Hillary at all. Well, permanently, okay?
Basically, what Hillary's going to do is - always hold a rag or a paper towel under your eye, because it will drip out. And the first thing is just - shift your head back and get your eye use to what it feels like. That's what she's going to do. Then just drop it back down, then the second time up if you can open that eye - look here, look there do diagonal circles of the left, circles to the right, squares - do some eye exercises. Once you've done that, you can change the eyewash and do the other eye.
Now, Hillary may even have a little involuntary eye closure, where she cannot open her eye, because it burns. That's okay, that's just fine.
We’ve got a moan here.
Again, remember – we’re using 10 to 20 times the cayenne…she can't see, we’ll put this down…that Dr. Christopher’s suggested.
Many people have made the eyewash with the tea. That's a real hassle. And you know what? My patients just don't do it. The problem is – you’ve got to simmer a tea, you’ve got to steep a tea, then you’ve got to filter it 2 times, then you’ve got to cool it down. By time you do that, you won’t want to do the eyewash anymore, you're ready to have surgery. Okay, it's a hassle, nobody wants to do it. You can take those same herbs and even add others, and make yourself a tincture. We’re going to do that later. And not you have an alcoholic preparation, it is preserved, it last forever. Look at how fast we did it. We’d still be here for another two hours, fiddling around with the other eyewash.
Now, I’m not saying, that the other eyewash is bad, but I’ve found - if it isn't quick and easy, my patients won't do it. Okay, Hillary, can you open your eyes yet or not?
(A little.)
Yeah, a little. Keep working on it. It burns?
(No, it doesn’t burn. It is just a lot of heat.)
Yeah, a lot of heat. It really warms up those eyes and you notice your vision becomes clearer, it clears out those tear ducts, the mucous membranes are opened up and flushed - it's an amazing healing. You know, your tears contain a natural enzyme called meromydes(?) and it flushes that out, and that’s an antibacterial too.
How are we doing?
(Better.)
Okay, you'll notice the whites of her eyes, the scleraes are red. That's okay, it normally gets red. That's called ‘blood’. We’re bringing more blood to her eyes. That's what's going to get out the disease and flush it out of the body. Remember, you can drink all the carrot juice in the world, but if you don't get it in your blood, and that blood doesn't get to your eyes - you're not going to have a healing. This is the greatest treatment, I've seen hundreds, thousands of patients heal their eye diseases using this eyewash. Don't be afraid to do it, get it in your eyes, everybody sees better, Hillary's done it a lot. Thanks! She survived.
(Feels great!)
Yeah, thank you!

Section #49:
Ointments, pt. 1 3536

Okay, now we’re going to make an herbal ointment. Most people are afraid to even think about making an ointment, they think it's too difficult, to hard. It is easy, it's simple, but just a couple of basic things that you have to know. So let's make one.
The first thing is - what are we going to use for a base, you know. Many herbal ointments, that I look at in the health food store made with Vaseline. Yuck! Vaseline - put that on your car engines, leave the mineral oils for automobiles. I don’t want to put that on my body. And some of them are made with pig fat and beef talon. God! Who wants to use that rancid toxic stuff?
What we want to use is something that safe, that’s even going to help you. Olive oil. What a wonderful base, olive oil is healing, soothing, emollient to the skin, the greatest base. You can just use olive oil to heal yourself. So the best base for an herbal ointment is olive oil and beeswax. Beeswax is a wonderful hardner and its dependable. Coconut oil and cocoa butter, some people use those. But on a hot day, your ointment will turn into soup. Beeswax is much harder.
Now, where do you get beeswax? Well, you can find it in stores. I've even seen good quality at the hardware stores, designed to soap up your drawers, so they don't squeak. This is an organic beeswax, that I purchased at an organic market in Santa Monica. But the best thing about beeswax is - it contains other ingredients, like propolis and honey, that are also antibacterial. Just beeswax and olive oil alone make a wonderful ointment, but we’re even going to add herbs to that.
Look at this beeswax. If you could only smell it! It smells just like honey. Now, I’ve seen beeswaxes, that are white, and those are what they use in commercial ointment manufacture. You know how they make it white? They bleach it with toxic poisons. Don't get whiter, light yellow beeswax. This is the color of the beeswax you want to use. Now, how much beeswax? We have lots of proportions in the manual for making all of these, but generally - you want to use about 4 ounces of beeswax for each quart of liquid, that you use, each quart of your olive oil, that you've extracted your herbs in. Now, this can vary depending on your climate. In some areas, that are very cold, you can use less beeswax. And areas, that are very warm - you want to put in more beeswax, because on a hot sunny day, you don't want open up your ointment and have it drip down you. You want it to be hard, so the amount of beeswax is slightly dependent on the temperature, where you use it, and also - the consistency that you want your ointment to be. You may want to make one more like Vaseline. And if you're going to do that, then put less beeswax in. If you want a stiffer, harder ointment, that you can work into the body - put more beeswax in.
Hillary, could you get us that ointment, that we’ve made this morning? The olive oil and beeswax, that we’ve made for the butcher block and we’ll take a look at that. That's more the Vaseline consistency. Okay, so our olive oil – we’ve put herbs in this olive oil, and we’ve soaked them for at least two weeks, it's very important. And you can soak it for even longer.
Oh, here's the one we made this morning. And this is just olive oil and beeswax, and we made that to retreat our butcher block here. Now, you can see that this is quite soft, and this is more of a Vaseline consistency. We didn't put that much beeswax in here.
Oh, this smells so good, this alone will heal you, and heal your skin. In fact, someone's making millions marketing, calling it “unpetroleum jelly” and all it is - is olive oil and beeswax.
Hillary, would you get me a paper towel? Thanks.
So, now we've let our herbs soak in our olive oil and at least for two weeks. Now, you can use some fresh herbs, but it's quite dangerous, because fresh herbs contain water. And if there's one thing you never want to put in your ointment – it’s water. It'll go rotten and moldy on you.
You know, some of the top herbal books out there will tell you to make ointments with water and oil. And last I knew, they don't mix together and you'll end up with a rancid mass, it'll mold on you. And I’ve asked these herbalists why they wrote that? And they said, well, they’ve never really made ointments, but that's how they heard you do it. Believe me, it won't work. Don't get water near the area, where you’re going to make an ointment.
Now we have our herbs in here soaking for two weeks. You can use any herbs, but use them dry. Dried plantain for a plantain ointment, comfrey for a comfrey ointment, chickweed, mullein - anything that you want. Put them in here, you can put cayenne in here, you can put garlic, goldenseal - whatever you want to do, put them in your oil. And now the first thing we’re going to do, is squeeze them out.
Hillary, would you give me a hand here? Cotton cloth, you can just go to any store, that sells different types of material and buy a bolts of this or a piece of this. This is just natural unbleached cotton, very soft, you can almost see through it. And this is what we use to filter everything: tinctures, oils, you name it. Now, if you're on your own, and you don't have a great helper, you can just put a rubber band around here, but be careful.
Mainly, what are we going to do now, is take our olive oil, that’s had the herbs soaked into it, and pour right through this cotton into this bowl. Now, of course it won't do this very fast. It's going to take its time.

Section #50:
Ointments, pt.2

Okay, now we’re going to gather this cloth up. Just be careful not to spill out any of the herbs into this bowl, and then lightly bring it together. If you are little clumsy, you can always put a piece of string around there, but just hold it tight, and then lightly squeeze to force that oil through. It has the healing properties of these herbs impregnated into it, but you don't want to get the herbs in your ointment. If you get a few littler powders - then fine, it just makes a richer ointment. But generally, we want to make sure that we squeeze this out well. And you can even twist it a little bit and turn it, which puts pressure on it to get that oil out.
Now, what we’re going to do is, basically, we want to put this into a pot now. And then we’re going to add our portion of beeswax. You know, beeswax doesn't melt till it reaches 147° and I don't want to heat my olive oil up that high. Most people just take a chunk of this and put it in, and then cook that olive oil for an hour, and that makes the olive oil rancid, and destroys many of the chemical properties of the herbs.
Okay, Hillary. I think we’ve got it all out there. You can just take that to the sink. Make her do all the messy work.
Now we want to get our beeswax ready. And again - look in the manual, so you can determine the exact amount of beeswax, that you want to use. Now, beeswax is very hard. And if you try cutting it with a knife, then knife is going to get stuck in the beeswax. You might even cut yourself.
One of the best ways to do is - just break it up. One of the ways I do it, is just to hit it on a hard surface. Hey, there we go! Right in it, okay!
You want to take your proportion of beeswax and pre-melt that. I've already done that over here, and you can see - here is our beeswax, it is already melted, it's ready to go. In fact, it's a little bit too hot, so I’m taking it off the burner. Now we take our herbal oil and put that into the pan. We’re not going to pour that clump of beeswax in here.
And, Hillary, could you take this for me, please?
Now, we just have our squeezed herbal oil into this pan. And what we’re going to do, is - just warm them up a little bit. You know, the tool, that's very easy to find, and that can really help you with this, is just a little thermometer. I have a few of them here, and you can buy these in any grocery store. This one goes from, oh gosh, 0 - 220°F. That's a great range, so we can check the temperatures of our oil and beeswax. But, basically, the main thing you want this for, is to not to overheat your oil. That's the biggest mistake you can make. So, as we slowly warm up this oil, we’re going to check the temperature on it, and see what we have. Right now it's room temperature. It’s just going to take a minute to warm up. The whole idea is - if I can warm that oil up to about 120 to 130° just for a few minutes, I can pour this melted beeswax in and it won’t harden, it'll mix with that warm oil, give us enough time to get it into the jars, and that's where it will do it's heartening. So, I’ll show you how to do that now. Okay, our ointments are just about the perfect temperature, right around 128°. So, that's warm enough. W don’t want to heat it any higher than that.
Remember, this is precious, this is our olive oil with our herbs in it. We really don't want to heat this too high. Then we take our already warmed beeswax, and we can pour right into this, right into it. And since the olive oil's warmed up, the beeswax won't harden right away. Now, if  we didn’t warm the olive oil, the beeswax would harden immediately. So you want to make sure, that that olive oil's warmed up. And then, Hillary, can you get me a wooden spoon? And I’m going to clear my space a little bit here.
In fact, I’d like to hand you these knives, if possible. Thank you.
Now, we want to make sure that that beeswax has really mixed with the herbal oil, so we want to stir it, and really make sure it's mixed well together.
And you can see, we have no problem here. Now, here's a critical point - don't pour 347 jars of ointment to find out, that you put too much beeswax in or not enough. So how do we know that? The simplest way - just take it on a cool surface like this and drip it, and see what happens. You can also do it on an area like a tile top, anywhere you want. Drip it and look what's happened – it is hardened already, because this surface is cool. And feel that, and see if it's the consistency, that we want. I'll even drip a little more, so you can see that well, and spread it out. And check that! We’re not in a hurry here, we can always warm this up a little bit.
I tell you, I've cleaned out hundreds of jars, that had the wrong consistency, because I’ve put too much or too little beeswax in.
So take your time, there's no rush here, you can always re-warm this up a little bit. And let's take a look at our ointment here, look of that – gorgeous, okay? We have a nice ointment consistency here. I have to push pretty hard to get that to move around, I like that, now we’re going to go to the next step, which is - getting this ointment into our ointment jars.
I like glass, because, you know, so many people use plastic droppers and plastic ointment jars. But herbs can react with that, I've made heating balms and poured them in a plastic jars, only to come out on the morning and find, that the oils in: the peppermint, the wintergreen, melted right through that plastic. And all I had was soup on the counter! Glass is your best thing to use for putting your ointments in, your tinctures, and just about everything we make. If you can get glass - use it, and then always recycle it and use it again.
Now, how do we get that into there? You can pour, but we’ll make a gigantic mess. What we really want to do, is use a turkey baster. Their this type of food baster works perfect. Now, you can get plastic ones in the store, but I’ve even found this glass one. This is wonderful! This is just as good as a pipe, that you would buy from a laboratory supply house, and probably costs 1/10 of the price. So we’re going to use this baster to take the ointment out and put it right into the jars. It's very simple, just be careful not to suck the ointment up in, to the ball of the baster, or it will harden up here. You’ll have to run it into some warm water, and start all over.
So look how we do, we just draw that ointment up, put our finger over here, take it over, and squeeze it out, and fill up that ointment jar. Take your time, be careful. If you drip a little, bit that's okay. I always wonder about people making herbal preparations, that can do it to cleanly. And just once you get it over the jar, you can let go, fill it up with the baster. If it doesn't go up quite high enough, you can go ahead and add a little bit more. Take it right up to the top, and move it right over to the next one. And we’re going to fill these jars with herbal ointment.

End Volume Seven.