Making Herbal Poultices

Herbal poultices are very similar to salves and ointments, but they often involve the use of freshly chopped herbs, more watery liquids, and they're applied as a temporary compress.

An herbal poultice is often used to reduce swelling, redness, pain and so on from various types of wounds and injuries. Some poultices can also pull foreign objects from the body as well, such as insect stings and splinters.

 

Herbal poultices are usually made using olive oil or mineral water, but aloe vera juice is quite useful too. Sometimes slippery elm is added to the poultice combination to help the medicinal herbs hold together better too. Most poultices are made by chopping, grinding, or blending fresh herbs, but powdered herbs can be used just as successfully too.

 

Once the poultice mixture is created, it's applied to one side of a clean cloth, and that cloth is laid with the poultice mixture against the skin of the area you're treating. The poultice can then be covered with plastic wrap, or wrapped in an ace bandage to keep it from soiling clothing or bedding.

 

An "old fashioned" remedy you may remember your grandmother or great grandmother using for instance, is putting mustard on someone's chest when they had a cold. And this is a commonly used, effective herbal poultice used by herbal specialists even to this day. Simply mix a tablespoon of dry mustard with four tablespoons flour and one egg. Mix it up and add a little water, then rub this on the chest and cover it with a clean cloth.

 

An onion poultice is also an excellent every day remedy for taking away pain and swelling, particularly from injured, pulled or torn tendons. Simply chop up some onion and mix it with aloe vera juice, then apply the mixture to a clean cloth and lay that cloth on the injured area. You can also mix in white willow to help relieve pain and swelling too.

 

An excellent poultice to use for infections, cuts, abrasions and wounds is a combination of Goldenseal, Comfrey, Slippery Elm and Aloe Vera Juice. The aloe vera juice helps carry the healing herbs beneath the skin's surface; Slippery elm helps hold everything together; Comfrey starts the cell regeneration for fast healing; Golden Seal kills the infection causing bacteria.

 

To help relieve swelling and pain from arthritis, gout, and other joint related problems, try a poultice of just white willow and aloe vera juice.

 

Case Study: A teenage girl twisted her knee on the way home from school one day, and the knee cap came completely out of place. After school officials pushed it back into place for her, they advised her to go to the hospital because she was unable to walk and the knee quickly swelled to three times it's normal size. Her mother created a poultice with aloe vera juice, chopped onions, white willow, and golden seal, then applied the poultice to the injured knee. Within 15 minutes all pain was gone, and 90% of the swelling was also gone within one hour. The girl was able to get up and walk around normally within just a few hours, and didn't even have a limp.