Dandelion is likely the most abundant and most identifiable edible flower in the country. For those people who seek to keep a lush, “weed”-less yard, dandelions are a thorn in their side. They are tough plants and though they aren’t native to the United States, they’ve certainly made themselves at home. But whether growing up through cracks in the sidewalk or all over your lawn, dandelions offer some healthful and tasty benefits. Read on to learn about dandelion benefits and how this over-looked edible can help you.
History of Dandelions
Dandelion use goes back centuries, when it was used in ancient Egypt and Arabia. They’ve been used in traditional Chinese medicine as well as Indian Ayurvedic healing. It’s believed the plant was brought over on the Mayflower intentionally specifically for its healing powers. Some sources say it was brought to provide food for honeybees. Once here, however, the plant spread like a “weed”.
The plant received its name from the shape of its leaves. Derived from the French dent de lion, dandelion literally means “teeth of the lion.” Cool, huh?
Nutritional Value
Dandelion leaves, or “greens” are perhaps more nutritionally potent than the lettuce you have in your crisper. They contain just as much iron as spinach, and four times as much vitamin A (beta carotene) as the popular salad green. One cup of dandelion also contains 535% of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin K and is a good source of vitamin C, calcium, iron, fiber, and potassium.
Medicinal Uses
There are many uses for dandelions, most of which involve the leaves. Historically and to this day, the leaves are most widely recognized as a promoter of liver health, as they stimulate the production of bile and work to detoxify the blood. One study, from the University of Annunzio Chieti-Pasaca in Italy found dandelion extract to significantly reduce oxidative stress and inflammation in rats with liver damage.
The plant is also a known diuretic, working to increase the amount of urine the body produces, and can be valuable in reducing water weight or blood pressure. It also has digestive benefits, working as a mild appetite stimulant and an upset stomach soother.
Another promising study, published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, indicated dandelion root tea was able to kill leukemia cells. Researchers said the active compounds worked to eliminate cancer cells while keeping healthy cells alive. They called it a “novel” non-toxic anti-cancer agent.
The University of Maryland indicates that some studies have shown dandelion to be an effective blood sugar regulator as well. They say it may also work to reduce “bad” cholesterol while increasing “good” cholesterol.
Harvest and Preparation
When harvesting any edibles, be certain they have not been treated with pesticides or “weed killers.”
How you prepare dandelion depends on what parts you are using. Always harvest when the plant is healthy and alive. If you are digging up roots, waiting until after a rain could make the effort easier. When you cut the leaves from the stem or root system, you will see a milky sap. This is where the medicinal properties of the dandelion leaves and roots lie.
Flowers – A good source of antioxidants; choose the full and bright yellow blossoms.
Leaves – Used in teas, tinctures, and meals; choose a mixture of young and older leaves.
Roots – Used in liver tonics, teas, and tinctures; choose the fullest and largest root systems on the most developed plants.
As with most herbals, the easiest way to experience the healing properties of dandelions is with a tea or a tincture. But, because these plants are edible and often included in salads and recipes, you don’t have to stop there.
Both leaves and flowers can be thrown in nearly any salad. The leaves are slightly bitter, so keep this in mind when you are thinking of what to include in your dandelion salad. You can also make a pesto out of dandelion leaves, and freeze what you don’t use. You can add it to soups, sauté it with some garlic, or eat it right out of the ground (we suggest washing it first).
Dandelions are the plants that homeowners despise and children love. But when you consider their healing and nutritional properties (and the cost of prepared dandelion greens), it makes far more sense to harvest the plants than to pull them or treat them with chemicals.
[Potent News Editor’s note: Just make sure that the dandelions you use don’t have 2 heads like some of these ones that we covered back in Potent News Blast #7.]
As if the medical marijuana industry wasn’t controversial enough—with opponents arguing it encourages drug addiction and crime and supporters citing years of research to the contrary—there are now children benefiting from it. While there are several cases across the country of children being given various forms of cannabis to treat disease and illness, the case of 6-year old Jayden David is getting a particularly heavy dose of attention, where marijuana helped the boy beat severe epileptic seizures.
Marijuana Replaces 22 Different Anti-Seizures Pills, Helps Prevent Seizures
Jayden suffers from something called Dravet syndrome—a form of epilepsy that results in frequent and painful seizures. In his short life, he has been rushed to the hospital a total of 44 times. In an effort to control the seizures, doctors had the boy on 22 different anti-seizure pills each day. Sure, they helped to control the violent seizures, but Jayden was left immobilized by their strength.
At his wits end, and nearly suicidal, Jayden’s father turned to medical marijuana. For the first time since he was an infant, Jayden went an entire day without a seizure.
“He’s in pain and suffering and crying,” explained his father of Jayden’s normal daily seizures. “You can’t help him no matter what. What are you supposed to do? You have to do whatever it takes to save their life.”
Jayden’s father, Jason David, uses a non-psychoactive form of marijuana. This means his son doesn’t experience any sort of high, aside of course from the high of being pain free.
While he still doesn’t talk, Jayden is now more active than ever, running, playing with friends, and swimming at the local pool. There was a time when he couldn’t eat solid foods or function because of the steady stream of pharmaceuticals. His father has taken to calling the medicine “miracle marijuana” as opposed to “medical marijuana”. This is similar to the experience another 3-year old boy had, where marijuana oil actually helped him beat cancer.
The form of liquid cannabidiols that Jayden takes is a tincture developed by Harborside Health Care in Oakland, California. This clinic is the same type that the federal government is gunning for in the War on Cannabis.
But as Harborside’s executive director Steven DeAngelo says, parents don’t come to a decision like this lightly.
“Parents don’t want to bring their children to something controversial like cannabis,” said DeAngelo. “They do it reluctantly, and they do it because they’re at their wit’s end.”
The David family is fortunate that they live in California. Though 18 states have some form of medical marijuana legislation in place, not all are open to the idea of medicating children. And for those that are, families must live in fear knowing the federal government has yet to respect state laws in regards to this healing herb.
Video courtesy: Michael Welch, Blanchard, OK.
A massive tornado that killed at least 91 people on the outskirts of Oklahoma City had wind speeds up to 200 mph. It directed much of its ferocity on the town of Moore, much of which suffered total devastation. The Oklahoma tornado is the worst to hit the United States since a May 22, 2011 tornado struck Joplin, Missouri, killing at least 158 people and injuring 1,100.
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Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society
Simon and Schuster, New York, 1953
Page 30:
It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.
This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. . . . It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.
Pages 50-51:
Fichte laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. But in his day this was an unattainable ideal: … In future such failures are not likely to occur where there is dictatorship. Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.
Page 51:
Children will, as in Plato’s Republic, be taken from their mothers and reared by professional nurses. Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.
by Elizabeth Renter
As if the medical marijuana industry wasn’t controversial enough—with opponents arguing it encourages drug addiction and crime and supporters citing years of research to the contrary—there are now children benefiting from it. While there are several cases across the country of children being given various forms of cannabis to treat disease and illness, the case of 6-year old Jayden David is getting a particularly heavy dose of attention, where marijuana helped the boy beat severe epileptic seizures.
PN 