The Healing Properties of Bitters

By Kiva Rose
Published on February 28, 2014
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Bitters offer many healing properties, though one must first get past the taste!
Bitters offer many healing properties, though one must first get past the taste!
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"The Plant Healer's Path" by Jesse Wolf Hardin, with Kiva Rose, includes many enchanting tales, medicinal plant profiles and favorite herbal recipes.

The Plant Healer’s Path (Plant Healer Press, 2013) addresses topics vital to an empowered, effective herbal practice, including many issues that have not been addressed by mainstream sources. Jesse Wolf Hardin, a renowned herbalist and co-founder of Plant Healer Magazine, brings to readers enchanting tales, profiles of many medicinal plants, and recipes favored by herbalists. The following excerpt is taken from “Discernment, Critical Thinking, and Response,” and explains the importance of bitters, an herbal remedy that aides in digestion and metabolism..

You can purchase this book from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: The Plant Healer’s Path.

Bitters are some of our most effective and widely applicable medicines. They are also easy to come by and simple to integrate into our lives. The longstanding popularity of proprietary bitter formulas bespeaks the usefulness of such preparations.

Very simply, a bitter is an herb with a predominantly bitter taste, and the activation of that taste in the mouth stimulates the secretion of digestive juices throughout the body. By necessity then, bitters must be tasted in order work their magic. Bitters theoretically stimulate the activity of the digestive organs, triggering or increasing the flow of acids and juices, releasing enzymes and generally improving both appetite and digestion. Many bitters are especially efficient at increasing the metabolism of fats and proteins. However, bitters do not just stimulate digestion, they also tighten/tone the mucosa.

It is overwhelmingly common in our culture to suffer from insufficient amounts of digestive fluids (including acids, biles and enzymes) resulting in nutrient malapsorbtion, chronic digestive infections and syndromes such as heartburn and reflux that many people associate with too much stomach acid. Lowered gastric secretion also significantly contributes to gut inflammation and thus food intolerances and allergies.

Many schools of traditional medicine view the stomach and digestive functions as the center of health and vitality. If the digestive fire is low, then the whole organism will suffer and there will be a cascade effect throughout the body. For the immune system to work properly, our digestive system must be working properly. All parts and functions of the body are connected and interdependent but the digestion, and thus the metabolism, are the core from which all wellness flows.

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