Wellness Wednesday: The Mighty Magic of Mint
Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, A Facsimile Edition, 2006.
Mint, page 59
Belknap/Harvard Press
As you know, Wellness Wednesday is devoted to offering up healthful tips for those of us living the gluten free lifestyle from local wellness expert Laura Farb. Even if you aren’t gluten free, however, these tips are as interesting as they are healthful, so pretty much everyone can benefit from them.
As the seasons snap to the colder months, if often marks the beginning of stuffy noses, upset tummies and extreme fluctuations in hot in cold. This is the perfect environment for a cold to settle in, bringing with it the telltale congestion, fever and a perpetually empty stomach.
Thankfully, there is the mighty magic of mint to save the day. In Chinese medicine, mint has been used for centuries to clear heat from the body. Sicknesses of any kind thrive on heat, so it makes sense to counteract it with the cooling properties of mint. Prescribed for everything through the ages from whitening your teeth, appeasing digestive problems, “stimulating the mind” and calming inflammation, mint truly is magical in it’s wide ranging powers to heal. It’s a mild decongestant, and also works well as a diuretic so if you feel like you might be retaining a little more water than usual, mint is the way to go.
To keep any illnesses at bay, it’s a great time of year to have a lemon and mint tea, or just chew on a few mint leaves if you feel like you might be coming down with a fever. But for those of us living with celiac disease or gluten intolerance, it’s really wise to keep some mint around so if you do get some gluten in ya, the cooling power of mint can alleviate the “St. Anthony’s fire” (where your insides feel like they are on fire) like symptoms that many of us have experienced after being unwittingly exposed to gluten.
Plus, we should all note that with all the holiday parties we will all be attending in the next two weeks, the chances of us being exposed are even greater than normal, so it’s even more important to be prepared.
Just remember, mint is mightier than the sword.
