Tincture. Studies show that the active ingredients in arnica reach the affected tissue when applied by means of a tincture.70 You can make a tincture by pouring a pint of 70% alcohol over 50 g (two ounces) of freshly picked flowers or half that quantity of dried flowers. Let it stand for at least a week in a warm place.71 For use on a compress, dilute the tincture. The strongest the diluted tincture should be is 1 part tincture to 5 parts water. If you have sensitive skin, dilute it more, as much as 1:10. The tincture and water mixture can also be used for hand and foot soaks.
Salves and creams. You can make your own cream or ointment. Make the infused oil by the hot infusion method, heating one ounce of flowers to one ounce of oil for several hours.72 Strain and use the oil to make a salve (using method one, four, or five for creams and salves; see Chapter 3). Apply salves every 3–4 hours.73
Commercially produced arnica creams are available but are more widely available in Europe than North America. Be aware that some arnica creams are not herbal creams but rather homeopathic creams made with a very different method from herbal preparations.
Infusions. Use 2 g of arnica to ½ cup of water.74 Use it as a soak or a compress.
Dosage: How much do you use?
According to Commission E, ointments should not contain more than 15% arnica oil or 20–25% arnica tincture. Dilute the tincture no less than 1:5 (tincture to water). Stronger formulations can irritate skin.
What should you be aware of before using it?
Don’t use arnica on open wounds or broken skin. Arnica can suppress the mechanism by which the body fights off infection. Because of helenalin’s unique anti-inflammatory properties, arnica is best used on injuries that involve swelling or inflammation, but that offer little or no chance of infection.
Internal use of arnica is hazardous. Because helenalin interacts with the body’s enzyme systems,75 even small doses can be dangerous, causing elevated blood pressure, shortness of breath, and heart damage. An overdose can be fatal. The FDA classes arnica as an unsafe herb.76 Though internal use of arnica was not unheard of in less-knowledgeable times, almost everyone today agrees that the dangers far outweigh the benefits. Topical use of arnica does not appear to have the same toxic effects as internal use, though research into the hazardous effects of topical use is not as comprehensive as we would like.
Don’t use arnica near eyes, nose, or mouth.
Arnica can cause allergic dermatitis in some people.77 The likelihood of your reacting to arnica depends of a number of factors: how much helenalin is in the product, what other ingredients are used and whether they enhance or mitigate the effect of the helenalin, how sensitive your skin is, and whether you are allergic to the Compositae family of plants (a common allergy to the family that contains ragweed). If you have other contact allergies, try a small amount of arnica on a healthy patch of skin before using it more extensively. Limit the amount of arnica you use to recommended amounts, or less than recommended amounts if you have sensitive skin. Avoid long-term use. If the area seems to be getting redder and more swollen, discontinue use.78
Don’t use arnica during pregnancy.
Arnica is one of the herbs used in homeopathic medicine. Because homeopathy dilutes its ingredients (using its own distinctive process), homeopathic arnica may be safe for internal use. The effectiveness of homeopathic arnica, however, is still in dispute. It is widely used, perhaps more so than herbal arnica. Yet several studies show homeopathic arnica cream to be no more effective than placebo for bruising.79 For our purposes here, suffice it to say that if you use homeopathic arnica, you will be getting a different dose of arnica than if you use an herbal preparation. Therefore, these assessments and warnings do not necessarily apply.
Though the American arnica, Arnica chamissonis, has some of the same properties as Arnica montana, it has not been nearly as extensively tested. We don’t know much about its properties or dangers.
Ashwagandha
Scientific name: Withania somnifera
Also known as winter cherry, varaha karni, Indian ginseng, and ajagandha
Withania somnifera
Ashwagandha is a member of the Solanaceae or nightshade family. Various species of the plant can be found in India, Africa, and the Mediterranean. The root is the most common medicinal part, though the berries are used in India and North Africa to coagulate milk to make cheese.
Conventional wisdom has it that ashwagandha gets its name because its roots smell like a horse. (Ashwa means “horse” and gandha “odor.”) The use of ashwagandha goes back so far that we can’t begin to guess when it was first used. For more than 2000 years, it has been used as a part of the Ayurvedic system of natural healing in India. Though the tradition is long, it has been mostly limited to one branch of Indian medicine. The effects have been documented, but they are linked more to ashwagandha in combination with other herbs than to ashwagandha alone. Moreover, the toxic effects of ashwagandha are not well known. Some scientists insist that the leaves are toxic. Others cite their long usage, supposedly without ill effects. Nobody seems to be offering hard evidence either way. If ashwagandha does what the Ayurvedic practitioners and herb salespeople says it does, it could be a very valuable herb indeed. Right now, however, we can’t say for sure that the reality is as strong as the reputation.
What is it good for?
Endurance and energy. Most of the research done on ashwagandha has been done in India. Animal and test-tube studies abound, as do studies that mix ashwagandha with other traditional ingredients. Well-designed, focused human studies, however, are scarce.80 Studies with rats show that the rats can swim farther in cold water when given ashwagandha. Rats stressed by exercise showed less stress response to that exercise as well.81 However, we don’t really understand why ashwagandha should boost endurance in rats, and no comparable studies have been done with people.82 We do know that rats fed ashwagandha over the course of four weeks had heavier livers than the controls, something researchers attributed to increased glycogen.83 We also know that ashwagandha contains many steroids and glucocorticoids known to enhance liver glycogen stores, which in turn may have an impact on endurance.
As for clinical studies, however, we only have a couple. A study in which Indian children given powdered ashwagandha in milk for sixty days showed slight increases in the following areas: hemoglobin, packed cell volume, mean corpuscular volume, serum iron, body weight, and hand grip. The children also showed significant increases in mean corpuscular hemoglobin and total proteins.84 In another study 101 normal healthy men, 50–59 years old, were given three grams per day of the powder for one year. All subjects showed significantly increased hemoglobin and red blood cell count and decreased SED rate (a marker of inflammation in the body).85 In short, research has given us several pieces that might indicate that ashwagandha has some value as an energy tonic, but we can’t yet say that it increases energy or endurance in humans.
Adaptogen. Western herbalists have taken to calling ashwagandha “Ayurvedic ginseng” because like ginseng, its primary use is as an energy tonic.86 Ashwagandha is especially useful for tiredness and burnout that has a sexual consequence (impotence, lack of libido). At least two animal studies seem to suggest that ashwagandha may have anti-inflammatory properties.87 The root powder given to rats that had been made to swim to exhaustion caused a decrease in the waste products a body normally puts out when it is stressed.88 Some studies suggest that ashwagandha causes a mild depression of the central nervous system—an effect that would explain its use as an anti-anxiety or anti-burnout agent. An alkaloid in ashwagandha