Health and Wellness

We shine a light on some of the best plants and practices to nurture your health.

Health and Wellness Wildhacks

Foraging for wellness with Joanna Ruminska

Joanna Ruminska is on a mission to reconnect people with nature through the practice of foraging and wellness exercises. She’s encouraging people to make the most of the outdoor spaces around us

Joanna decompressing while out gathering foraged ingredients. Credit: Joanna Ruminska

Foraging is an ancient practice that used to be an integral part of human survival. These days foraging offers a relaxing experience that transports you from the worries of modern life. A time to forget work-life stress and look to wellness and decompression.

Joanna is a foraging expert and member of the Association of Foragers, who has been foraging since she was a small girl. She leads walks, runs events and offers courses all centred around different aspects of foraging in Devon and Cornwall, with her business Incredible Edible .

She is also a qualified nutritionist who uses her knowledge to understand the health benefits different plants and fungi offer.

Primarily based in Plymouth, Joanna’s Urban Nature Walks project, which she piloted last year, aims to expose people to the wellness aspect of foraging. “I run the project in deprived areas with the aim of encouraging people to make use of green spaces and parks,” says Joanna. “I use foraging as a reason for people to go out and explore these spaces more”.

Joanna’s walks are open to people of all abilities and are wheelchair accessible, opening the opportunity to forage to everybody.

After the success of the pilot program, Joanna gained recognition and now receives funding from Plymouth Council, ensuring she can run these courses for free and reach a wider area.

“It’s just reaching out to people who usually don’t go out and explore green spaces, who think they don’t have a reason to be in the park,” she says. “Giving them plant identification skills, gives them the reason to go out”.

“I used to do it with my parents and grandparents, but nobody ever called it foraging,”

Joanna has started implementing mindfulness exercises on her walks in order to show people the inherent connection we have with nature and uses elements of ‘forest bathing’, an ancient Japanese practice that encourages going out into forests, to focus this connection in a sensory way.

“We try to find a quiet space and just practice listening, observing, and including different senses in our walks, along with the foraging as the main activity,” she says.

Joanna noticed that people in urban areas seem to have a real disconnect from nature but growing up in Poland, foraging and being in nature formed a big part of Joanna’s childhood.

“I used to do it with my parents and grandparents, but nobody ever called it foraging,” she says. “It was just a nice way of spending family time on the weekend and collect ingredients to use for dinner”.

While foraging is second nature to Joanna, she describes a common conversion she hears on her walks: “‘It’s the first time I’ve been here, and I’ve lived here, for 20-odd years. I’ve never visited this place before,’”. As a result, Joanna aims to continue her project and reach as many people as she can so more people will have an introduction to the nature they’ve been missing out on.

For Joanna, it’s about finding “a reconnection with nature, that gives us peace, because it’s where we belong”.

By Rupert Birkett-Eyles / 13 June 2024

Foraging for wellness with Vicky Manning

Foraging is about much more than just food. Discover how expert forager, Vicky Manning uses foraging as a gateway to unlocking your wellbeing

Foraging expert, Vicky Manning, uses foraging as a way to slow down. Credit: Photographing Everything

Vicky Manning uses foraging to connect people with nature and show them the health benefits the great outdoors can have. Vicky describes herself as a wilderness therapeutic practitioner, trauma-informed coach, forager and outdoor educator. She is a committee member of the Association of Foragers. Based in Scotland, she runs The Little Foragers Kitchen, which offers a variety of foraging and wellness experiences.

Foraging is a passion Vicky has carried with her since her childhood excursions with her grandparents, collecting wild edibles that they used for medicine and cooking. She is now devoted to sharing her expertise.

“Spending time outdoors in a natural environment is good for your health because plants give us lots of chemicals called Terpenes,” she says.

Terpenes are any large group of volatile unsaturated hydrocarbons found in the essential oils of plants. They are responsible for the fragrance, taste, and pigment of plants.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences found: “Terpenes are abundant in higher plants, citrus, conifers, and eucalyptus and are widely distributed in the leaves, flowers, stems, and roots of these plants.”

At California State University, another team of researchers found that specific terpenes could have healing effects, “One such Terpene is curcumin which holds anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anticancer, antiseptic, antiplasmodial, astringent, digestive, diuretic, and many other properties.”

Vicky uses foraging as a gateway into the benefits nature can bring us, especially as a way of dealing with stress.

“Foraging makes you slow down. If you’re going out to collect a particular plant, you need to stop and slow down and look very carefully at what you’re collecting. If you don’t, you could pick the wrong thing, and you could kill yourself,” she says.

“It warms people’s confidence up and empowers them to think, if I can cope with this, now I can cope with whatever’s happening in their personal life.”

Although there are dangers for inexperienced foragers, she says, “The added bonus is that you’re outdoors in the natural environment and you’ve been exposed to all of these Terpenes which have a beneficial effect on your physiological and mental health too.”

An important part of Vicky’s mission to provide wellness through foraging is her Trauma Therapy programme – an eight or 12-week programme, that takes a small group of people out into a natural environment with the aim of “empowering individuals to take control of their own health and wellbeing through the power of the great outdoors”.

“The activities that they’re doing are very mindful, they have to focus on what they’re doing,” says Vicky. A combination of breathing exercises, bushcraft, building fires and shelters and cooking creates a “community aspect outside of their comfort zone”.

Overcoming new problems through new experiences is what Vicky believes is the transferable skill people need to conquer their problems in everyday life. She provides an example:

“If you are having a stressful, awful time out with the group, but you managed to get the fire lit and it’s absolutely pouring with rain, that’s a real achievement”.

“It warms people’s confidence up and empowers them to think, if I can cope with this, now I can cope with whatever’s happening in their personal life.”

The programme encourages people to learn how to use the outdoors for your mental wellbeing. Credit: Photographing Everything

The programme provides an intimate experience that focuses on putting the mental health and the wellbeing of individuals at its centre. The experience is all about learning new practical, outdoor skills, but also learning about yourself and how to better your wellbeing.

“People are encouraged to share if they want to, but they don’t have to. And everybody gets treated equally, nobody is treated any differently because of their issues,” says Vicky.

Nature wellness has seen an increase in popularity in recent years, with the first Nature Therapy Conference held earlier this year, providing a space for therapists, practitioners and anyone who works therapeutically outdoors to share their practices, through workshops and guest speakers.

“Foraging and mindfulness go hand in hand” says Vicky, it is a journey where “everybody succeeds and nobody fails.”

For more information about the Little Foragers Kitchen please visit the website or find them on socials.

By Rupert Birkett-Eyles / 3 June 2024

Earth Nurse Health and Wellness Wildhacks

Earth Nurse: Elderflower

Elderflower

Our series on the bizarre and wondrous healing properties found in nature

Historical context

Many of us are familiar with the idea of yin and yang. Traditional Chinese Medicine has this restorative balance between opposing energies at the heart of its philosophy.

While yin and yang – or, for that instance, any paradoxical energies such as happiness and sadness, or stress and peace – can promote wellness if they are balanced and flowing freely, TCM believes that even minor imbalances to this delicate framework and disrupt our life force and energy, known as qi (pronounced chee).

Flowers – ranging from magnolia blooms to chrysanthemums and lotus stalks – have been used for centuries within TCM, often in concoctions such as herbal teas. In fact, TCM has one of the most robust flower-derived dietary medicine traditions of all the holistic healing frameworks.

Often, it’s the acrid and bitter taste of these sweet-smelling flowers that is believed to have a positive healing effect. Herbalists often turn to elderflower to treat cold and flu symptoms, especially congestion and fever. And, as with many things that come to the fore when one becomes well-versed with the rhythms and cadences of nature, in a sort of divine dance, the creamy spray of flowers blooms in perfect time to help alleviate pesky hay fever symptoms.

While the UK may associate elderflower most with cordials and sorbets, it has long been used in vinegar form to soothe a sore throat, as a floral water for skin and eye conditions, and to soothe inflammation. However, in Chinese medicine systems, its functionality lies in its ability to diffuse and ‘float’ upwards through the body to dispel phlegm and pathogens from the body.

Usage and evidence

Elderflower’s musky, floral notes make it one of the most palatable flower-infused medicinal concoctions in TCM – and it’s plentiful in the summer months.

TCM celebrates Elderflower as a way to dry ‘dampness’ or congestion within the body, and transform phlegm in the upper part of the body to regulate the Lung Qi and remove stagnant congestion or blockages.

In TCM, this impact is believed to be a result of elderflower’s ability to induce sweating and thereby warm up, then cool down the body. It is also thought to relieve edema and reduce excess water retention as a diuretic.

Here’s how Briar foragers can benefit from centuries-old wisdom to use Elderflower for detoxification and begin to feel lighter and sprightlier starting today.

How to use it

For medicinal purposes, elderflower blooms are mainly used in an herbal tea form, either on its own or mixed with another herbal tea.

Add elderflower blooms in a steaming cup of herbal tea and allow it to steep for 10-15 minutes with a lid on. Chamomile tea works best.

To enjoy elderflower tea on its own, put one spoon of dried elderflowers or two spoons of fresh blooms in nearly boiling water and leave to steep for 10 minutes.

NOTE: This article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical advice or professional services. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health provider regarding a medical condition.

By Aysha Imtiaz / 3 June 2024

Earth Nurse Health and Wellness Wildhacks

Earth Nurse: Fennel

Fennel

Our series on the bizarre and wondrous healing properties found in nature

Historical context

Fennel is anecdotally valued by many as a digestive aid. Culturally, chewing fennel seeds is a common practice for many Indians and South Asians – a sort of natural, after-dinner mint to cleanse the palate. In India, many families keep a mixture of lightly roasted, sweetened fennel seeds on their coffee or chai tables. In fact, sometimes fennel makes its way into the tea itself, imparting a delicately sweet, licorice-like flavour to the beloved staple. Many Indians associate fennel seeds with digestion, detox and weight loss because they believe it is soothing to the stomach and ‘cooling’ to the body.

This association is entrenched in the common belief systems by Ayurvedic practices.

Stemming from the Sanskrit words for life and science/ knowledge – (ayur) and (veda) – the ancient Ayurveda system of medicine embodies a holistic approach to healing. In its loosest translation, Ayurveda means the knowledge of life. This approach to health stresses the interconnectedness and delicate balance between the body, mind, spirit, and environment.

Fennel features prominently in many Ayurvedic preparations for its purported effect on the digestive fire, or Agni. It has also long been used in the Ayurvedic wellness space as a claimed lactation aid for nursing mothers, as well as to reduce bloating and cramps.

Usage and evidence

Some studies even outside of Ayurveda suggest fennel has potential positive health benefits because it is a source of folate and vitamin C.

However, it is important to remember these nutrients are only present in trace amounts, and it is unlikely that one would consume enough fennel to reap these purported health benefits.

Newer studies are exploring the estrogenic effect of fennel seeds, possibly leading to hormonal PCOS treatment in the wellness space.

Further clinical trials are warranted and, as always, adequate medical advice should be sought to treat any medical conditions. Pregnant women should avoid taking very concentrated forms of fennel, such as fennel oil or fennel supplements.

How to use it

In its seed form, here are some ways Briar readers can use fennel for wellness.

Steep one tablespoon of fennel to brew fennel tea. Add ginger and lemon to help boost its purported digestive properties.

Or, take it a bit further and make an Ayurvedic CCF tea that is widely prescribed by practitioners as it is believed to help ease constipation. CCF stands for cumin, coriander and fennel – simply add half a teaspoon of each to boiling water, continue to boil for 5-10 minutes and strain. Keep the liquid in a warm thermos and sip throughout the day. Remember, fennel often acts as a diuretic and may not be suitable for everyone.

Similarly, some ayurvedic practitioners recommend boiling fennel and a pinch of fenugreek seeds in water until the mixture is reduced to half and drinking it first thing in the morning (ideally before brushing your teeth). They believe this leads to reduced bloating.

Try cooking with fennel bulbs. Use them as you would use garlic – sliced, crushed, for tempering or even roasted and sauteed with green beans.

Lastly, try chewing on fennel stalks or seeds to make your breath fresher. Keep fennel seeds accessible to munch on and reach for naturally, as you would for a far unhealthier mint.

By Aysha Imtiaz / 3 June 2024

Earth Nurse Health and Wellness Wildhacks

Earth Nurse: Wild Garlic

Wild Garlic

Our series on the bizarre and wondrous healing properties found in nature

Historical context

People have historically turned to garlic as somewhat of an anti-inflammatory vegetable for centuries.

It is especially popular in the subcontinental homeopathic and alternative medicine space. Beyond using it to add a pungent kick to South Asian cuisine, temper daals and as the base for many curries, traditionally, in Pakistan and India, some natural medicine practitioners use garlic as a natural, holistic healing medical intervention.

Some preparations of garlic in Unani Tibb are more elaborate than others, and the complexity ranges from the simple – swallowing one raw garlic clove on an empty stomach every morning – to the complex – such as an intricate preparation of garlic-infused mustard oil, a popular remedy prescribed for hair growth. Extracts from dried garlic bulbs were thought to be a potent remedy to regulate menstrual cycles and aid digestion.

Eastern medicine practitioners claim garlic has the potential to manage symptoms of high cholesterol and address various skin conditions, though further clinical trials are warranted to substantiate these findings.

Unani Tibb, an Eastern medicine system widely practiced in South Asia, claims garlic has a purported alkalising effect on the body. Based on a medieval belief system that the body has four humours (blood, phlegm, and yellow and black bile) garlic, Eastern medicine practitioners say, helps keep a balance in place by allegedly ‘cleansing and purifying’ the blood and expelling excess phlegm from the body.

Usage and evidence

While we can’t speak to garlic’s ability to ‘purify’ the blood, some of the potential health benefits of garlic are beginning to be supported by science. Emerging research points to garlic’s anti-inflammatory properties, with 2024 research exploring its use in managing cardiovascular diseases. Recreations of some ancient remedies have even found that in unique preparations, garlic has been effective at treating diseases, such as MRSA.

There may also be some evidence of garlic as an antifungal, antimicrobial supplement. Studies point to garlic’s potential health benefits, particularly in weight management, modestly lowering blood pressure and possibly decreasing the ability of blood platelets to form clots.

Most of the positive effects come from Allicin, an organosulfur and colourless oil found in garlic. Still, many studies are based on patients consuming garlic compounds or extracts of aged garlic in high amounts, meaning cooking with a couple of cloves will not have the same impact.

When it comes to the documented health benefits of garlic, separating fact from fiction is important, and more clinical trials are warranted to substantiate these findings. It is important to consult a doctor and seek adequate medical intervention.

How to use it

Try adding extra garlic cloves when simmering a broth before you get a cold. While there is inconclusive evidence to show garlic’s impact on flu-like symptoms, it is generally believed to help boost immunity by reducing the severity or frequency of infection.

One study suggests consuming one clove of garlic a day (raw) to help thrombosis.

For indigestion, Eastern medicine promotes blitzing together garlic and milk. Boil the mixture until it is reduced to one third; strain and drink after each meal.

For a headache, a popular folk remedy is to crush a clove of garlic and mix it with olive oil, then apply it to the temples. Alternatively, boil a handful of garlic cloves for half an hour, then dip a tea cloth in the water to place over your head once it cools.

By Aysha Imtiaz / 3 June 2024