Juniper and keeping sickness away

Juniper is a beautifully fragrant evergreen shrub that dominates prairies and mountains. Uniquely, it is the most offensively prickly of all evergreens. This berry yielding shrub once extensively used and absolutely necessary, is now seldom mentioned. Every part of this plant is and should be used. The wood yields a resin used to purify and prolong the life of drinking water and offers a delicate violet-like fragrance and taste. The wood is also used in barbecues for flavor and to neutralize one of largest dietary sources of carcinogens we suffer from today, burned meat. The potent berries are used to flavor all kinds of meats, which reduce meat/fat oxidation up to 78%! The roots are boiled into a thick dark-fuchsia dye. The needle/twig tea and berry tea are devastating to bacteria's, viruses, fungus's and parasites. This has got to be one of the most versatile shrubs I have come across.

Three proofs of the medical claims of Juniper:

Traditional:

Juniper has been used as a type of 'flush' to get rid of accumulated toxins, but more importantly used in prevention. The presence of juniper is most used to keep communicable diseases at bay.

Scientific:

If you can handle the terribly clever prickly needles you can harvest the juniper berries. Juniper berries take 3 years to ripen. The first year they are white and poisonous, they will just obliterate your kidneys. The second year they are light blue and are still amazingly harmful to the kidneys but on the third year they are ripe and dark blue/black in color and are among the best kidney medicines nature provides. They are an efficient diuretic, stimulant, and are an extreme anti-microbial antiseptic.

The berry tea is simple. A teaspoon to tablespoon of dried powdered ripe berries steeped in a cup of hot water for 20 minutes with a very tight lid. Drunk in the morning and evening. Though not safe for pregnant women, this tea works relentlessly on solving kidney issues but its most remarkable effect for modern days are its anti-fungal action against the widespread overgrowth of Candida spp. It shows devastating anti-microbial action against 16 species of bacteria, gram-positive and gram-negative, 7 fungus's and a variety of viruses.

These beautiful attributes are largely due to these main compounds found in the volatile oil extract of the twigs needles and berries: alpha-pinene (29.17%) and beta-pinene (17.84%), sabinene (13.55%), limonene (5.52%), and mircene (0.33%). These compounds have been extensively studied invitro and invivo. Even convincing human studies using unusually low doses, exhibited effective anti-microbial antiseptic actions.

Its effects against antibiotic resistant strains of viruses and bacteria's are also note-worthy. This quality is attributed only to Alpha and Beta Pinene. 

Additional amazing uses of Juniper:

This plant is so effective at keeping sickness away that there are lofty claims that have been proven of juniper boughs simply hanging in the house to keep away the common colds and flues. Pots of the needle/twig tea be brewed and drunk to be a sufficient substitute for the flu shot. During the black plague in Europe, physicians were instructed to hold a minimum of 10 berries in their mouth when near infected patients, this is what kept the sickness away from them.

A compound called Streptozotocin, which is found in the berries is toxic to cells. This one compound belongs to a group of alkylating agents that are called nitrosoureas, these block the production of the DNA of cells but when combined with hundreds of other compounds that are found inside juniper, Streptozotocin is suddenly only toxic to cancer cells mainly of the pancreas.

Its anti-microbial antiseptic actions are transferred to water via resin drops. The resins are extracted from the wood and is dripped onto the water vessel. They prevent the build-up of a number of micro-organisms and keep water fresh for an extended period of time. These resin-drops give the water a nice violet-like flavor that makes it go down much easier.

It has its place in the culinary arts as well! Aside from the fragrant full flavor the berries give meat, they were used extensively to preserve meats until the mass availability of nitrates. As I mentioned above they reduce meat oxidation up to 78% and have been proven to be far superior meat preservative than nitrates. To top it all off the needle and twig tea is almost always a favorite out of all evergreen flavors, especially with children.

The Doctrine of Signatures:

Every plant has been created so that you know its one specific medicinal use. The signature feature of juniper, the unique feature that separates this evergreen from all other evergreens are its prickly needles.

Its blatantly obvious, when you observe other evergreens all their needles are soft and don't cause any amount of harm what-so-ever. On tamarack they are remarkably soft, balsam fir and hemlocks are a common bush-bedding, cedars are flat and soft, etc. However, when you look at juniper they are very uncomfortable and painful. Harvesting the berries leaves your hands with millions of tiny irritating holes in them if you don't wear thick gloves. All walking trails go well around juniper because of this brutal feature. When you observe other insects, reptiles and animals and how they interact with this plant you will find that they use it as protection, often making their homes in the shrub. We are to do the same.

When we use this plant to protect our bodies and our homes we seldom contract communicable diseases, even anti-biotic resistant strains, and when we do the severity is not worth mentioning. 

Juniper has been created to protect you from communicable diseases, from the simplest to the most complex. 

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