Stinging nettle - how can you use to ease your hayfever?
If you want to use Stinging Nettles to ease your hayfever, listen up! You can pick fresh nettles to make a fresh herbal tea by simply popping the fresh nettles in a French press and covering with boiling water. Let it infuse for at least 15 minutes before drinking.
Other uses:
You can also use fresh nettles to make nettle soup, nettle pesto, nettle vinegar, nettle porridge even, an old traditional Irish breakfast. Nettle was an ancestral food in the UK and Ireland because they are so nutritious but you can also get the antihistamine benefits by eating them this way too.
If foraging isn’t your thing, you can buy Stinging Nettle drops in health food shops. Simply put 20 drops in some water twice a day and drink up.
You can even sting yourself with nettles, this is a process called urtication! It also helps with joint pain, tendonitis, things like that. But you absolutely do not need to sting yourself with nettles to get the benefits. Use rubber gloves like these if you are picking fresh nettles and don’t want to get stung, or simply buy the herbal tea or fresh tincture drops from your local health food shop!
The only problem with dried herbal tea is that dried plants tend to lose their efficacy about a year after harvesting so herbal drops of fresh nettle tincture is a great way to get the antihistamine benefits of nettles all year round.