Labrador Tea, Mshkiigabag

When I first started learning about medicine, I always heard about labrador tea but never really pursued it because I figured this is such a redundant medicine, everyone always talks about it so it will never be lost, I'll learn about this one later.

Elders would even make remarks like: “Oh, that tea is what we would get when we cannot afford red rose, because it tastes really good”

So, all this sort of lead me to believe or 'realize' that it is not a really significant medicine. In short, it gave me dandelion vibes.

Big mistake.

Labrador tea is unreal.

Lets start with the utility uses.

Remember, in our traditional wisdom we teach that every plant is showing you what its good for; “the forest is our greatest teacher.” “Everything we need is outside.” All you have to do is learn how to watch the earth and you will learn everything you need to know about life. Which plants are medicine, what it is medicine for, when to pick it, how to pick it, if it has a utility use, if you can eat it, etc.

We have so much to learn.

With labrador tea, one of our teachers is Naanokshkaahns, the hummingbird. Not too long ago their population was declining rapidly. An unusual 50% mortality rate sparked some research, what made it unusual was of the 50% that died, both babies died in the nest. There was no “only the stronger of the two survived” The culprit of all these deaths and the rapid decline was a devastating mite. These mites would devour both the babies. Their next question was how and why were the other 50% were surviving, these hummingbirds must be making their nest with a deterrent.

Hummingbirds make the same nest they grew up in. Whatever smells they remember from their infancy, however soft it was, all the materials their parents used, they remember. Then they make exact replicas. They survivors of this mite attack were using the rusty colored fuzz from under the labrador tea leaf for padding. This fuzz had some anti-mite qualities that would help keep the environment safe for both babies in the nest to live. They would then grow up having to make their nest with this fuzz, this would continue to happen until hummingbirds conquered the mites

completely.

When I would ask about labrador tea, everyone always said the same things; 'it tastes great, and it has brown fuzzy under the leaf, rust colored fuzz' only a few mentioned that it grows in moss.

What can we learn from this?

Just like hummingbirds use labrador to keep small arthropods (mites) and perhaps large arthropods (spiders) away, we can use labrador tea to keep all small (or maybe large) arthropods away. These include mites, ticks, dust mites, etc.

What else can it 'keep away'

Inuit people have a name for us woodlands people, they like to call us lice. Hahaha. We had one for them, we called them Eskimo (raw meat eaters). We do not like to be called lice, they do not like to be called raw meat eaters, we still got along and had a great relationship. I have yet to find out why we call the Haudenasaunee people The Naadwe (rattlesnakes), maybe they made boots with them? But it was probably more due to the demand of the fur trade which temporarily shattered an amazing tribal relationship by creating a contest for trapping grounds leading us to start warring each other and creating derogatory terms to call one another. Maybe. Anyways a modern term for labrador tea is naadwe tea. A lot of our people know this as Naadwe tea. The reason for this is because labrador tea is a northern plant and our Haudenasaunee brothers and sisters are our southern relatives who are an agricultural society. We used to bring them, literally, boatloads of labrador tea from the north for their grain stores. Why? If you put a handful of labrador tea in your grains it keeps mice away!

'Ojiihns' is a word that means a little pest. It is used for all sorts of bugs/flies, its in pesky animal names like 'Waabaganoojiihns', which is a mouse. I love my language, want to hear something fun: 'mskwa'waabagan' is red clay 'Waabagan' is clay, 'Ojiihns' is pest, 'waabaganojiihns' is that clay colored pest.

So pepper labrador tea around your camp and be wowed by the lack of little mouse poops everywhere. Or in your grains to keep them from eating your food!

The older name for labrador tea is Mshkiigabag. Which literally means swamp/bog leaf. Swamp/bog is 'Mshkiig-aki', leaf is 'bag' (pronounced 'buck'), Mshkiigabag is the swamp/bog leaf. This leaf smells fantastic, citrusy, evergreeny, fruity goodness. Its a wonder how such a delicious smelling leaf can come out of such stinky places.

The colloquial name for this plant in inuit is Kayaksi. Which means little kayak leaf (please correct me if I am wrong, this is by memory, all I remember is it means kayak-leaf.. which is super cool). When the leaves of labrador tea are dried up the edges curl and it looks just like a little kayak. This is by-far, the cutest name for a plant I have ever heard.

What I really find fascinating is how

the significance of different plants and animals change as you travel north. This is evident even in the creation stories, where down here we have the muskrat being the animal that is able to dive and get the handful of earth for the turtles back, as you go north is changes to geese.

There are different plants we refer to as 'Gaagigebag' or, 'the leaf that is forever the same' Down here our Gaagigebag is Princes Pine (Chimaphila umbellata). We call princes pine this because this plant in the middle of winter is still dark green in color, you can dig it out of 2 meters of snow and ice and its still green. When you travel up north their Gaagigebag or 'leaf that is always the same' is labrador tea. They have the bogs that do not freeze, and labrador tea is able to stay in these bogs year round without changing. I think it is so interesting to observe the changes in significance.

Now lets talk for a bit about the medicinal significance of labrador tea.

Another thing I find super interesting is the fact that fasting is incorporated into ever calendar year of every ancient culture around the world. Some fasting practices, funnily enough, defy modern scientific models that show how long a human can survive without food or water. 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food. A lot of fasting practice has people consistently fasting water for 4-7 days, even in the middle of winter!

One of the largest physiological gains from fasting is the stimulation of your immune system. Fasting cycles almost always coincide with changes of season. Changes of season always get us. In these parts the fasting occurs in the spring and fall. You normally fast just before the seasons change. This is not a coincidence either. These are in the calendar so you go into the change of seasons with an immune system that is fully stimulated and ready to quickly obliterate any invader. Labrador tea stimulates your immune system just as much as fasting does. If you want a psychotic immune system, an immune system that tears anything apart before you even actually feel sick, you need to slam some labrador tea.

Labrador tea also has some severely outstanding effects on mercury.

Okay, so the fact is, we do not know the long term neurotoxicity effects of mercury. What we do know is that mercury can be eliminated from all parts of your body except your brain. It gets a little clogged in your kidneys, takes some extra time to get eliminated but your brain is a different story. Organic mercury is methylmercury. Imagine it like this. Mercury is slippery, like soap in the bathwater its hard to get a hold of, but methylmercury is like soap in the bathtub but with a perfect grippy handle attached to it, easy to grab and move about. Your body is able to grab mercury by the methyl. The problem is as soon as methylmercury crosses the blood brain barrier your brain snatches the methyl, that big beautiful grippy handle and BAM, we cant move mercury, so in your brain, mercury only accumulates. This is the problem, if only we can change the brain from stealing all the methyl to giving it, then we can eliminate mercury from the brain!  

Labrador tea has been in the 'culturally relevant complimentary treatment' spotlight for over a decade now. Its ability to take mercury our of your body and brain are what created this spotlight.

All of the dumping of mercury into the great lakes by the industry is to blame for mercury issues in the north. All the mercury we dump gets lifted into the air and literally rains mercury all over the north. Sorry my northern friends, its our fault.

In the north you find a huge dichotomy of people with extremely high levels of mercury and people with considerably low levels. Considerably low based on their exposure, of course. This dichotomy is precisely paralleled by the individuals level of traditional behavior. Meaning those who were regathering tradition and drinking the teas-of-old like labrador tea, had low levels. Those who still neglected tradition and these remarkable teas had absurdly high levels of mercury.

Our beautiful Akwasasne brothers and sisters are suffering a terribly unjust and overwhelming amount of mercury. It sounds like that old trade of labrador tea from the north needs to be resurrected.

Remember that 'culturally relevant complimentary treatment' spotlight I mentioned earlier. Researchers of the north wanted to find out if labrador tea can be good for anything else? Wouldn't it be nice if labrador tea can solve the epidemic of diabetes, obesity, arthritis, etc.

Labrador tea at concentration levels that of a cup a mild tasting tea improves insulin sensitivity by reducing blood glucose levels by 13%, reduced the response to oral glucose tolerance test by 18.2% and reduced plasma insulin by 65%. Also induces a 42% reduction in hepatic triglyceride levels, Stimulates glucose metabolism (akt pathway) by 55% and increases GLUT4 (skeletal muscle glucose transporter) expression by 54%. All while improving renal function and lowering adipogenesis.

Another stellar note is that labrador tea, tea, kills lung cancers only 9.7X slower than conventional chemotherapy with an IC50 of 43 (cisplatin+array IC50 is 4.4), kills colon cancer cells 4.3X slower than conventional chemotherapy (4-fu IC50 is 15), all without side effects. What is important to note though, is labrador tea can be administered at higher doses and it can be taken more frequently making it a much closer battle against the conventional chemotherapies, especially since it has no side effects.

Mshkiki, medicine, literally means “strength of the earth.” The areas needed for medicine (Mshkiki) are 'Mshkiig Aki', wetlands or swamps, wetlands are the strength of the earth. This is the wetland plant, Mshkiigabag.

This plant occurs in everywhere in Canada and even stays available all year. What is the interpretation? It should be a part of everyday life, in everyone's cupboards all of the time. Especially the tea cupboard (sorry RedRose). Chi-Miigwetch Mshkiigabagwaabo!

Alder - Adoopimish/Mkadewiigwaasehns

One of the coolest things about alder, other than medicine and pranking your mothers is how great of an example this tree is at showing just how effectively trees and plants communicate.

We are just starting to learn about the plant world, western knowledge it is really at an infant level of understanding the natural world.

Alder trees have both male and female parts on the same tree, so its almost always in-between genders. The remarkable thing that alder does though, is the entire community communicates until they have reached a perfectly even number of male and female parts. Some trees have more energy than others, some trees had the pleasure of giant flubbery moose lips coming by raking all the twigs off (essentially pruning) and one year it has less energy, but in future years it has more energy. In the world of alder it takes less energy to be a female than a male, so when you have more energy you have to have more male parts, and vice versa, if you have less energy you have more female parts. All of this communication, we have found out, is done pheremonally. A ton of cool studies were done in an enclosed space over a long period of time on only a few trees, they picked and prodded some trees until they had less energy and saw that it had more female parts. They got to witness the other trees that had more sunlight and more energy step up their game and cover for their buddies and make more man parts. It was really remarkable! All the trees and plants are talking to one another, making sure they are doing the best job they can. I love it!

Smelt fishing and tapping maple trees for maple syrup is right around the corner, a long cold corner. So is the hot weather

You remember sarsaparilla, the original 'root beer' Do you remember how it was an adaptogenic herb that has been made to help your body adapt to the stresses of cold. How it helped your body to be able to handle the bitter cold days, so you can continue to work?

Well, spring is next and guess what! There is a plant to use around this time to get your body ready for the heat of the spring/summer.

Meet alder, Mkadewiigwaasehns.

Here's how to do it:
Peel the bark, brew a tea. It should be a nice amber orange color. Let it sit on your table for 3 days, on the third day it should turn black like coffee, drink it.

This will help your body be ready for the summer. Live with the seasons!

Also the 'tags' or catkins is the trees way of spreading pollen. Birches and alders are one of the earliest sources of pollen in the air and as a result, the earliest causes of allergies. Here is your remedy:
Not too long ago we used to eat tons of these catkins. They have a unique flavor and are very rich in protein and fiber. Little did we know that this was a way of preventing the development of an allergy! Also a treatment.

The twigs make great chewing sticks. This is one thing that I like about chewing sticks. There is always an endless supply of flavors of chewing sticks out there! Remember: Any fibrous twig can be used for a chewing stick! (so many possibilities) Properly using a chewing stick has had folks in less than a week wake up with no bad breath in the morning! Challenge yourself! Try this for a week, and see what happens to you, I have yet to have one person who uses the chewing stick to have bad breath at the end of the week. For more information on this read my blog on oral hygiene.

Its fun to take these catkins; chew on them, let the pollen mix with your saliva and when you spit on the snow its bright bright reddish orange (good practical joke (to play on your mother))

Also, alder bark makes the most brilliant brown and yellow dyes. Ever. Most like it more than sumac.

So, take the circadian rhythm to the next level and start to live with the seasons: when spring is near, brew the bark and eat the pollen-filled catkins.

Alder bark among other plants helps your body use fat for energy rather than sugar, it increases lipid metabolization. So many plants do this! It makes me really believe that our bodies are meant to use fat for energy, and not sugar. Alder bark also increases insulin sensitivity all this makes for alder bark to have some pretty extreme anti-adipogenic qualities. Its a must in diabetes medicines. So when you are drinking this tea you are more effectivly controling your blood sugar, not allowing your body to store fat, and teaching your body how to use fat for energy.

This plant is not unlike any other plant on the planet. It has been created to show you what it is good for. One name we have for this plant is “Mkadewiigwaasehns” Which means little black birch. Now I would always ask why is there emphasis put on 'little' cant it just be a normal black birch? Alder really is truly the tree out of all the birchs that deserve the name 'little black birch'. Why? Because it never gets big! Simple as that. This tree doesn't get fat like everyone else out there, so we harness this trees abilities, to benefit ourselves. Just like this tree is able to control the size of its waist if we are using this tree for medicine we will be able to control our waist! Makes sense?

Here is perhaps another issue I might be able to clear up. The names of different birches in Anishnaabemowin. I am not fluent, I am not perfect, this is just what I gather from our expert knowledge holders:

Black birch, Betula lenta is Mkadewiigwaas. Pin cherry is Wiigwaasminaatik, Paper Birchs is Wiigwaaswaatik, Yellow Birch is Wiinsik, Ironwood is Maananoohns.

I harvested alder bark to harness its abilities to heal skin issues for my withdrawal symptom management kit. Top 3 complaints folks have in treatment centers are nausea, itching and headaches. Alder was there to take care of the itching. It is one of the most extensively used bark to bathe with. A strong brew of alder tea is simply poured into a bathtub and you soak, or the strong brew is used for a sponge bath. I chose this for the withdrawal symptom management kit to get rid of the itching clients have to deal with.

So there you have it Alder bark is a significant help to the obesity/diabetes epidemic, just about any skin issue, adapt your body to the coming hot weather, and it makes great chewing sticks! It really is a necessity in every household seeking our creation for healing.

Cedar

Cedar - Giizhigaa'aandak

Cedar – One of the oldest living trees in the world, known to be over 1700 years old (core samples). Cedar bough tea is used as an immune system tonic, it contains everything your immune system needs to repair and strengthen.

One special feature of cedar bough tea is that it purges the lymphatic system. When ailed by a virus or sickness, lymph nodes fill up and swell, causing discomfort, cedar purges the lymph nodes making more room for them to collect more waste, making your body extremely effective at getting rid of all this garbage. This is why you get better so quick when using cedar tea.

You only get rid of junk 3 ways: poop, pee, sweat. How does your body get rid of waste via sweat? Lymphatic system. The one system in our bodies that we know relatively little about. This system weaves in and around blood capillaries and lives in the 'dead space' collecting waste that it sends through lymphatic vessels until it is eliminated through your skin via sweat.

It truly is one of the most powerful ways to eliminate waste, and we do not take advantage of it. We wake up in an air conditioned house, we turn the car on, that already has the AC on HIGH, from inside and when we think its cold enough inside the car we sprint from inside and hop in the cold car, drive to our air conditioned work and when we get there we say: “Woo, thank God I almost started to sweat!” Then we go from work to our pre-cooled air conditioned car to our air conditioned home. We don't sweat anymore, at least not the way we used to. Those farming days where there was no escape from the blistering 40 degree summers when work still had to be done. We are doing everything we can these days to force our lymphatic system into lethargy.

Within the context of being a lymphatic system medicine, I don't think that cedar tea ingested is not the intended use, here is why: Before the industrialization of soaps, we used plant-based medicine tea to have sponge/basin baths! What happens when you use cedar tea to bathe? It purges your lymph vessles and nodes, relieving your skin of this constant slow leech of toxins and garbage that is slowly secreted onto the surface of your skin which is the cause of a ton of problems.

This reason alone is reason enough to adopt this way of bathing and never turning back, given the epidemic of skin conditions.

Cedar also is an extreme diaphoretic, meaning it makes you sweat. What this means for your skin is that when the cedar tea soaked cloth grazes by your skin it competely opens every pore on your skin and sucks out water, sweat, basically pressure washing each and every pore on your skin, making and keeping your skin so clean and clear, that it takes days, almost a week to get dirty enough to have to bathe again, not to mention the lack of body odor. Versus soap which closes and even deposits junk into the pore clogging it and creating a ton of tiny infections. This would be enough for every woman on the planet to never look back. Ceder oils have benefits in it that carry into the tea that you clean yourself with these oils in it are anti-bacterial, anti-septic, anti-viral, anti-microbial, anti-pruretic, anti-fungal, anti-anti-anti-everything.

Body washs are designed by man, and they are only meant to only get you through the work day (so by the weeks end you have to buy another bottle), plant based medicine is designed by the Creator of the universe, made to heal you, and keep you strong, healthy and cleaner than ever before!

What makes cedar different than all of the other trees around it, what makes it unique, what is its signature? Its an evergreen! What separates it from evergreens? Its leaves are flat and scaly, they are not needles. Lets take a closer look at those flat green scaly looking leaves and see what they have to say.

Talk to any biologist on the planet and ask him why cedar has all these grooves in the scaly looking leaves, what purpose do they serve? None, is a quick honest answer. The only way you can make sense of this style of leaf is that it has been created to show you that it looks like the lymphatic vessels in your body. Lymphatic vessels have the same branching pattern, they are flat, green, scaly and have valves to prevent back-flow, every vessel always ends 'open' because its designed to eliminate waste out. Every single cedar leaf has the same valves and they always end open! This is a signature from the Creator of the universe to show us and confirm with us that this plant is meant to heal our lymphatic system.

Now these are not the only amazing things about cedar. When you are under attack your body first sends guard cells;

Kurzgesagt - In a NutShell (The Immune-System Explained)

Macrophages

These are big boogery balls that slowly float around your body engulfing and consuming bad guys, pretty much exactly like the (horrible) 1988 film, The Blob. These cells also have secondary duties, like to call in water to the site to immobilize the infection to make their job easier.

Neutrophils

These are fast living, destructive and extremely aggressive zippy little cells that basically spray acid everywhere in attempt to kill invaders. These are actually what create the color of 'infection' the green color are living neutrophils, the yellow color is dead neutrophils.

When these two wondrous parts of your immune system are becoming overwhelmed by the virus/bacteria they send out signals that are calling for backup. Dendritic cells hear the plea and jump into action.

Dendritic cell

These cells go into the warzone and collects intelligence. One of the main decisions that it has to make is whether infection is a bacteria, virus or fungi? Once this decision is made it travels into a lymph node where thousands of helper and killer T cells are sleeping. It bursts in presents the intelligence it collected from the field.

Killer T Cells

Thousands and thousands of these cells are soundly sleeping in their home, lymph nodes. When a dendritic cell comes into the lymph node it wakes them all up desperate for help. The dendritic cell teaches them how to kill the enemy, but the training is to rigorous and sometimes less than 20% survive.

Helper T Cells

Then dendritic cells scour the lymph node finding all helper T cells that survived the training as soon as it confirms they are ready for action the helper T cells start wildly duplicating. Some turn into memory T cells, they kind of go back to sleep inside the lymph node until you need this particular set of intelligence yet, AKA immunity. Some go to the field of battle and some go around the lymph node to B cells.

B Cells

T cells roam around delivering all their intelligence and training to B cells. B cells take it all in and they know exactly what to do. They create millions of antibodies that flood the body. They work so hard shooting these antibodies all over your body that they get really tired really quick, but helper T cells come and encourage the B cells to keep going, to keep shooting.

Antibodies

The most powerful part of your immune system. Billions of these clever little bullets will flood the battlefield connecting to the membrane and backs of bacterias and viruses. Immobilizing and weakening them, making them more tasty to the big blubbery macrophages that come and eat them all. Antibodies create the environment needed to triumph.

Natural killer cells go around to find infected cells and order them to die.

Now what happens in most of us is we don't sleep enough, we don't eat the right foods, were too stressed out and everything sucks all of the time! So our immune system has trouble operating the way that it should. It becomes rather lethargic, slow and sluggish. We live in a society today that accepts when our kids get sick in October, its okay, they will get better in May, thats the way it is, thats what happens when they are in school, etc etc.

When we get infected out B cells are collecting improper intelligence, there is no helper T cells encouraging everyone and improper antibodies are made which allows the infection to persist for weeks. What we need is to stimulate our immune system. We need to wake it up, give it a good shaking and a coffee so it does its job.

Cedar has an amazing compound in it called Thujone that stimulates your immune system like mad. When you are having cedar tea your immune system has 30% more macrophages, 7% more lymphocytes (Killer T, Helper T) and the dendritic cells collect their intelligence needed, faster, and deliver it to B cells and T cells in half the time, Thujone also throws B cells into overdrive which administer multiple times the amount of antibodies.

So what happens when you drink cedar tea everyday? You most often get better before you even feel sick.

What happens when you start to have cedar tea once you already feel sick, you simply get better in record time.

My community has a living memory of always having a giant pot of cedar tea on the stove all the time, the importance of this tree is immense. The benefits of the bath and the teas influence on your immune system should be enough for you to be clawing at a cup a day. But it doesn't end there.

First Nations people have a crappy respiratory tract. You ever wonder why when H1N1 was going around, we were a priority for the vaccine? I think it was children, elders and first nations. Could it be because the government and Health Canada were making sure they were taking care of their first peoples? Well, that would be nice, and a first, but the real reason why is because they were legally obligated.

Because of our terrible respiratory tract. They know this and so, with knowledge comes responsibility. They had to take care of this.

What do I mean when our respiratory tract is lame? Its because it had an environmental line of defence against invaders like viruses, bacteria and fungi. This line of defence was salt. We came from the coast. We came from an area where breathing was medicine, all that salt water. Go to the coast and see if you can find someone that has a sinus infection, it wont happen. They even make commercials to advertise salt water in aerosol canisters to spray up your nose.

Normal respiratory tracts have a simple first line of defense, this is just being smooth. Too smooth for bacteria, viruses and fungi to adhere to. Now when we came from the coast with our lumpy bumpy respiratory tracts we are much more at risk for infection in this part of our body.

Is there a way to make our respiratory tract smooth like everyone elses? YES! Its called cedar. Cedar induces somatic genetic mutation specifically to the lungs, making them smooth again.

So now we have a plant available for harvest 365 days a year that we can use to:

- Make the greatest bath ever

- make tea that will either make me almost never get sick

- make tea that will make me get better lightning quick

- make tea that will make respiratory tract infections less likely

Hopefully this is enough information to keep a giant pot on the stove at all times!

Drink up!