Herbal protection

Image by: Maarten Jurriaanse

Plants are medicinal to protect themselves. They contain substances that kill or damage insects, bacteria and fungi, and these substances are our remedies.

“Insects communicate with smells,” says Kim Søholt Larsen. He studied chemical communications between insects, and adds “Why do you think plants smell? They smell to communicate with insects!” And plants aren’t scared to speak their mind. They say “welcome” to insects that help them, and “stay away” to insects that harm them.

There’s a lot on research on plants, and a lot left to investigate. When we measure active ingredients, we only find the main ones. “A chemical analysis finds the substances that you know you’re looking for, but there are a lot of substances that are there in really small amounts that affect the body in complex ways,” says Kim. You can experiment with plants, and test to see if they’re safe and if they work. “But there will always be effects that we don’t know, and then it’s important to remember that these traditional remedies have been tested for centuries, and if they were toxic or ineffective, we would know about it.”

One thing is to test the strength of a plant; another is to make sure that it doesn’t lose its powers. If you, for instance, forget to put on the lid on your cinnamon box, it’s not going to smell or taste like cinnamon an hour later. All its active ingredients, or cinnamon smells, have oxidized. “A way to stabilize the plants, so that they don’t go bad is to add vitamin E,” says Kim. “It’s a conservative.” But although there are ways to store and preserve the healing powers in plants, you can’t just go down to the lab on a Thursday afternoon and mix some more mint extract when you need it. "You’ll need to wait, or hurry, until the ingredient you need is ripe," says Kim.