HERB - Echinacea & Ragweed

[Katherine Blackthorne]

lklc wrote:

> Katharine Blackthorn wrote:
>
> > > (Mind you, I don't trust a "fact" just because it came from a HS
> >>teacher.  If I
> > > did, I'd wonder why Elizabeth -- who my teachers said only bathed
> > >thrice -- always traveled with a bathtub!)
> > >
> >
> > She carried stuff in it .   Heavens, you don't actually think she used
> > it for it's intended purpose? :-)

:-)  Of course not!  How could she?  (Frenchwomen....French Nuns!  :->)

> > > But IF it is the pollen coating that accounts for the nasty effects,
> would
> > this
> > > be true of the other members of the family?  And would it be relevant if
> > you
> > > weren't using the flowers?
> > >
> > > Or was my teacher just jumping to conclusions?
> > >
> > > --Katherine Blackthorn
> > >
>
> >
> I don't know, but I'd guess, yes.  Because, as I understand allergies, they
> are caused by foreign
> proteins.  Our body recognizes it as foreign by it's  shape.  The  same way
> we recognize any bacteria, virus, or foreign body tissue (transplants)by
> their shape.  I would guess, the pollen is a very large protein and this is
> it's actual shape.  However, it may be that this is a group of proteins that
> together reflect the shape of an individual protein.  (kind of like the way
> a large crystal reflects the shape of a single molecule).
> I can see from this why a round pollen might be
>  less innocuous as we probably encounter lots of rounds particles in our
> body.>

  OK, so if I'm understanding all this correctly, we have a family with
potentially nasty pollens.  (I'm telling you, ragweed looked like a weapon!)
But it's the pollens themselves, not the rest of the plant, that are the
problem.  So it may be safe for an asthmatic to take echinacia root, but keep
them away from chamomile flowers.  Or flowering echinacia, for that matter.
(Which I hope to have in my garedn in a year or two...and one of the women I
sew for is asthmatic.  Oh, dear.)

--Katherine Blackthorne
(1597 Englishwoman)
West Kingdom



============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.