Transcription
Welcome to the natural remedies seminar. In our natural remedies seminar, we're going to be looking at poultices and compresses. The first one we're going to look at is castor oil compresses. It's not a poultice; it's a compress. Castor oil penetrates deeper than any other oil, and wherever it penetrates, it can break up lumps, bumps, and adhesions. So, it's great for cysts in the breast, for breast cancer, great for irritable bowel, and great for constipation. It's very good at breaking up stones in the gallbladder, kidney stones, and bone spurs. If the bone spur has been there for three years, it might take three months; if the bone spur has been there for three months, it might take three weeks. Little by little, the body heals, so be patient.
Now, I'm going to make a compress. It's like a little pack; the thicker the pack, the more castor oil it can hold, and the more castor oil can go into you. What I've done is I've cut up an incontinence pad, opened it up, and put a few layers of cloth in there to make it thicker. I'm going to put masking tape on the edge. The beauty of this is that the plastic isn't really touching you, so the only thing that's touching you is the paper topping, and it's got that cloth insert. The plastic is on the back, and the plastic is really just to protect your clothes and stop oil from going everywhere, which you don't want.
So, I'm just going to seal those edges, and then I'm going to put the castor oil on. The reason why I'm doing this first is that we have our little pack ready. To secure that, I just staple the edges. I used to stitch it with a little cotton and thread, but my staff came up with this great idea of stapling it, and it takes about a sixteenth of the time, and it holds it quite nicely. I'm doing it now because it's going to take a little while to soak in. What I do is I basically do the middle third because as it soaks in, it'll spread out a little bit further. I can't hold that up now, but probably in about 15 minutes, I will be able to hold it up. You see, it's such a thick oil; it just sits on top, so you've got to give it time to soak through. I haven't covered it because then there's no leeway for the excess oil to go, and also when it goes on your hot body, the oil will thin and spread out a little bit more. So, you want to give a little bit of room for spreading.
This compress can be used maybe every day for a month, and then you might make another one because it's not drawing anything out of you; it's just a vehicle to hold the oil so it can go into you. This size I've made here is a great size for a congested chest, for the abdomen, and it could be for cysts on the ovaries, fibroids in the uterus, constipation, or irritable bowel. So, that's a nice size for those areas. How long would it take? Well, it depends on how big it is and how long it has been there. Consistency is the key.
The second thing I'm going to look at is the humble onion. The onion can be used cooked or raw. We'll look at cooked first. This is the first poultice that I ever did. My first daughter, I must have been 23 when she was born, so I think I was probably about 25 when she got an earache. I was trained as a nurse, even though I was a bit of a hippie and starting to grow my own veggies and all that sort of stuff. I did not know what to do about an earache, and everyone said to me, "Don't play with the ears; she could go deaf." So, it was really out of fear and lack of knowledge that I went to the doctor. He wrote her a script for antibiotics. I gave her the antibiotics; I didn't know what else to do. Within 24 hours, the earache had eased. When she'd finished the antibiotics, the earache came back. I did not know what to do. Six weeks later, and four courses of antibiotics later, the earache came back, but I still didn't know what to do.
So, when I went to the doctor, I said, "Will my daughter be on antibiotics for the rest of her life?" which I'm beginning to come to this conclusion. He was challenged by my question, so he sent me to a ear, nose, and throat specialist who looked in Emma's mouth, then her ears, and he said, "She's teething. Give her these drops to keep the eustachian tubes clear," and that was it.
Let's fast forward two years later. My next child is 18 months and gets an earache. I do not go to the doctor, and I don't tell anyone. I have to do something, though, so I went to the lady that lives next door. I was, what, 26 or 27 by now? She's 85. I said, "What did your mother do when you were a little girl and you had an earache?" She said, "Mum would steam up an onion on the stove." So, I went home, I steamed the onion up on the stove, and then I cut it in half under her directions so that what you're looking at is the rings. You keep the skin on, and it keeps everything in place. I wrapped the onion up in a cloth; a few layers of cloth will help to keep it warm but also just to shield the direct heat from being too hot. I tested it on my arm, and I put it on his ear. I covered it with a piece of plastic, and what that does is insulate it. He was just a little boy; I was breastfeeding him, and I could put the onion between his ear and my arm, and I could feel the heat. When he slept, I laid him down on the bed, but I laid him down on a towel that had been folded up about eight times because I knew that would keep it warm. You can keep it on for as long as you can keep it warm.
What did they do before plastic? They used a wool square, so you can certainly use a wool square. I make a lot of my clothes, and in the winter, I make a lot of woolly skirts, so I have squares. You can also put a woolen square just this side of the plastic so that the plastic doesn't even touch you, but it is stopping the moisture from going through and insulating it and keeping it warm. James slept for two hours. When he woke up, he was happy. I watched him all day and the next day and the next day. That was it. Just compare my experience: two hours of sleep with an onion on his ear and then my last experience with my first daughter: six weeks and four courses of antibiotics. No wonder I went into natural remedies; I was excited at the prospect.
So, I went down to the newsagent and I bought a book that had A, B, C, D, E, F, G in it, and I started my natural remedy book. Under E, I put onion compress. I have since learned that you can steam it and squeeze it, and if you squeeze it, you'll get a few drops of juice out. This is when it's hot, and it'll be boiling hot, but when the hot juice hits the spoon, it'll go to a nice temperature, and you can put that in the ear. You can even use one of these little things to soak it up and squirt it straight in the ear.
The other place that you can use a cooked onion is for a boil. A lady told me about this; she had a boil on her back, and she told her friend, and she said, "We need to cook up an onion." See, an onion is a drawer, and she put the onion straight onto the boil. Obviously, she waited until it wasn't going to burn her, but it was still quite hot. Then she put that plastic square over. Again, if you don't want plastic on the skin, and I can understand that, you can put a wool square there because wool will insulate, and then she taped it on and left it there for 24 hours. When she took it off, everything came out. She said she's never had a boil resolve so quickly.
So, what the heat does is it draws it to a head, and the onion's drawing it to her head, and then it all comes out. She was very impressed. So, the cooked onion can be used on an earache, and the cooked onion can be used for a boil. Once you've used the onion, you must discard it because it does draw poisons into it, so it needs to be thrown out.
Now, we're going to look at the raw onion. There are a couple of places you can use the raw onion, and one is for a sore throat. Now, if you want to tell a friend about this because maybe they've got a sore throat, they can go to YouTube and Google Barbara O'Neill, and there is an onion natural remedies lecture there on poultices. For the sore throat, you finely slice the onion into a few slices, and what we do is if the sheets get old, you just tear up the sheets, and then you put this sliced onion on the cloth. You fold the cloth over and then fold it back over, and then that will go around the throat like that. Then you can wrap a scarf around it, a nice woolly scarf, and you can go to sleep with that, and it'll bring relief to the sore throat.
I think we all know that when you cut up an onion, you're likely to cry, is that right? So, that's a clear indication that that onion juice is very good at breaking up mucus in the chest, in the throat, and in the head. What I'm going to do now might surprise you: I'm going to put the onion on the bottom of the feet.
So, why do we put the onion on the bottom of the feet? We put the onion on the bottom of the feet because the bottom of the feet, or the feet, I should say, are a reflex for the chest. We're going to put the onion on the bottom of the feet for if someone has a bad cough in the night. I'm going to use a plastic bag now. Misty Mountain, we buy boxes of starch bags, so they're made out of starch, and that would be the best. Now, if you don't have starch bags, you can certainly use a cloth. So, you might use a cloth, put the onion like that, and put it in the bag. Then what you do is you put your foot on the onion like that, and then you twist it around and put a sock on. So, the bottom of the feet is touching the onion, and then you put a sock on to hold it in place.
Now, my grandson, he was three at the time. I was visiting my daughter, and he had a bad cough. She gave him a hot bath, which always eases the cough, and put him to bed. He was coughing and coughing and coughing, and we thought he'll be asleep in a minute, but he kept coughing and coughing. So, after half an hour, I said to Em, "Let's do the onion." So, we got him up, we chopped up an onion, and put half the onion chopped up on one foot and half on the other foot, and put him to bed. Not one more cough! It's almost unbelievable; you almost have to do it to believe how incredible it is. Not one more cough for the whole night with the onion on the bottom of his feet. So, that's great for a night cough.
Now, I'm going to show you how to make an onion cough mixture, and the onion cough mixture is a very simple thing to do. You chop up the onion, and then you layer it in a jar with honey. So, we're going to chop it up small; of course, the smaller, the better because the larger surface area you'll have. I've got a jar here, so I'm going to put about half an inch in the jar and then drizzle honey, probably about a teaspoon. Then another layer of onion again, half an inch, and then another drizzle. Oops, that was a bit heavy-handed; doesn't matter. Then another layer of onion and another drizzle of honey, and a final layer of onion.
So, if you had a house full of people that had a bad cold or a bad cough, you might chop up another onion and fill your jar. Then we finish with more onion. I'm doing this early in our demonstration because by the end of the night, the syrup will have formed. You see, if I put the jar on the side, all you see is that thick gooey honey and onion. By the end of our demo, you will see a clear runny fluid forming, and that's the cough syrup. After 24 hours, you strain the onion out, and you're left with your cough syrup, and you keep it in the fridge.
How long can you keep it for? Well, a German lady told me that she'd had hers in the fridge for eight years because honey doesn't go off, does it? So, once you take the onion out, it will keep indefinitely. For a little child, maybe one under one, you might do a quarter of a teaspoon. For a two-year-old, you might do half a teaspoon, say three times a day. For a child from about 10 and above, you might do a teaspoon three times a day. So, if a child's got a cold, cough, or bronchitis, any respiratory issue, asthma, you give them the teaspoon three times a day and put them to bed with the onion on the bottom of their feet, and everyone will sleep soundly that night.
So, that's the raw onion. Now, we're going to have a look at a relative to the onion, which is garlic. I was reading one research paper that said garlic is six times more potent than tetracycline. Now, tetracycline is an antibiotic. To have it as potent as an antibiotic or to play a role as an antibiotic, you must have three raw cloves a day. An adult will have three raw cloves like that; for a child, you might halve the dose.
Now, in your books, there's a recipe for the flu bomb, and the flu bomb has six ingredients. This is how I remember it: I remember it by twos: garlic and ginger. Garlic as much as you dare, ginger probably about a quarter of a teaspoon finely chopped. The garlic you finely grate. I was going to say this is a great grater; that sounds like a pun, doesn't it? But I love graters like this, and when I'm cooking, I just grate straight into my pot. I'm going to use it in a minute, and you can even travel with that little grater.
So, you see, it's quite fine. You'd finely grate the ginger and the garlic into a cup, so there's your first two ingredients. The next two ingredients are one drop of eucalyptus oil. If you haven't got eucalyptus oil, you could use tea tree oil. One lady said, "Barbara, it says on the bottle you must not consume it," and I said, "Well, I'm not asking you to drink half a bottle. We've got some common sense, haven't we?" No, it's not very common today, I realize that. So, one drop; it's an age-old remedy. People have been using it for centuries.
Australia's the land of the eucalypt, and one 80-year-old lady told me this 40 years ago. She said when one child had a cold in their house, the mother would put a few grains of sugar on a teaspoon and a drop of eucalyptus oil, and they all had to have a dose. You know, it's been used for centuries. The reason why they say you must not take it is that 40 years ago, a little boy in Tasmania—you've heard of Tasmania, that little island at the bottom of Australia—he drank a few mouthfuls of eucalyptus oil and went into a coma. So, they banned it.
Now, there was such an uproar about it that they legalized it again, but if you buy eucalyptus oil in Australia, it's got poison on the bottle: "Do not take." And it's because of that. How many young men have died from drinking a bottle of scotch at a party on a Saturday night? Has the alcohol been banned yet? No, it doesn't make much sense, does it?
So, we're looking at the six ingredients. We've got garlic and ginger, one drop of eucalyptus oil, and cayenne pepper as much as you dare. Some can handle a sprinkle; some can handle half a teaspoon; occasionally, some can handle one teaspoon. We'll be talking about cayenne pepper in a minute. So, there's four ingredients. The last two ingredients are the juice of a lemon and a teaspoon of honey. So, it's a really expanded lemon and honey drink that many people have taken for colds. Then you add about half a cup of water.
So, if you feel a cold coming on, flu, or any respiratory issue—of course, what's all the go at the moment is COVID—you take a flu bomb three times a day, and it'll be gone in three days. Of course, at the same time, you've got to exercise, drink all your water, and eat very lightly. So, that's the flu bomb.
Another way some people take it is they'll have a bowl of hot soup, and they'll just grate the garlic straight into the soup, and you can certainly do that. But you've just got to have that clove three times a day to take the place of antibiotics. Even though they say it's equal to antibiotics, it's also antiviral, anti-fungal, and anti-yeast. So, it's a remarkable herb.
What about a little baby? How do you put it on a little baby? You finely slice a couple of slices, and then you bind it to the bottom of their feet. This can be done for a little one, and I'm going to do it with a piece of paper towel, which you certainly can do it with. You cut a strip. So, what I used to do with it was a piece of cloth, but you certainly can use some paper towel, and you'll see why. Excuse me, that's important.
So, I'm putting two slices of garlic there, and then I'm folding it over, and then that is wrapped onto the bottom of the baby's foot like so. Can you see what I've done here? The garlic does not touch the skin. If the garlic touches the skin, it will cause a blister. Now, it won't really hurt the baby; it's just then you'll have a blister, and you won't be able to apply the garlic until the blister heals. But if you put a piece of cloth or paper between the skin and the slices, it will not blister.
I used to then put a sock on or a little bootie. My son James was having a lot of chest problems, so I often did this to him. He was three, and I'd put his sock and his shoe on, and he'd off he'd go outside to play. With every foot he takes, he's treading on the garlic, and so the slices allow the garlic to be taken up little by little. It takes one minute for one drop of blood to go right around the whole body, and within a few minutes, you could smell the garlic on James's breath.
So, that's how you can do it to a little one, to a baby, is on the soles of the feet. But remember, you don't put it straight on the feet. Onion, you can, but not the garlic. The onion, when you put the foot, the foot goes straight onto the slices of chopped-up onion, but not the garlic.
Now, our castor oil has soaked through. You see that? Yeah, so that's ready to apply. You can also make it early and even fold that over and put it in a little bag and keep it for a later date. Now, when you are using the castor oil, probably about every two days, you might find it drying a little, and then you'll add a little bit more castor oil. So, you might find if you're using it for the month, you'll apply the castor oil every couple of days.
So, I'll tell you an incident that I had recently with the castor oil. I have to give you a little bit of background. When I lived in the rainforest for many years, whenever we drove through the creek to go out of the property, we'd lose our brakes. So, I got used to driving with my clutch. I'd slow down using my clutch; meanwhile, I'd be pumping my brakes because sometimes it would take half an hour before I had proper brakes again. I just got used to driving like that.
So, let's fast forward to where we are now, 25 years later, and we mostly have automatic cars. But my husband recently bought a car that had gears, and when I started driving it, you know the pathways we have in our brain? We're going to look at this on Saturday morning. I just flipped back into my old way. Around the corner, I'd use gears, and when I was slowing down, I'd use my gears. So, my left leg is getting a lot of use, especially because this was a four-wheel drive. It was sort of a—and I'm just a little lady, so it took a lot of strength.
After two weeks, my leg began to hurt from my knee down, and I thought, "Well, I've just overdone it." My leg is not used to it. So, I went over to the automatic car again. A month later, my leg is still sore. Now, when it's still sore, you've got to put your detective hat on and go a little bit further. So, I saw my son, who is trained in remedial massage, and he's fairly brutal. My son just tells me to breathe; it hurt. He said, "Mum, you've had an old injury on this leg," and I had. I remember 10 years ago, I was walking down steps, and I was talking as I was walking, and I tripped. The point of the step hit my shin, and it hurt. I put a poultice on it for a few days, and then that was enough, and I was fine. But I always had a little bit of a dent there, so I must have maybe dented the bone or something; I don't know. It never gave me a moment's trouble after that.
He picked up that an old injury can you see we've got a few threads coming together? An old injury, overdoing the leg, and now I'm in pain. He said, "This has got a lot of scar tissue there," which I'd never had pain there. Peter was brutal, and I decided to choose a gentler way to break up the scar tissue. So, I made a castor oil compress. I probably made it half that size, and I bound it onto my leg, my shin area down near my ankle, and I walked 24/7. I wore it to bed; I wore it through the day. I just wore it, wore it, wore it. I think I wore it for a month. After a week, I went and let Peter do another session on me, and I'd forgotten how much it hurt. I didn't see him again, but the point of my story is I wore it 24/7 for a month, and I noticed no pain. I have absolutely no pain there now, but it obviously penetrated deep and broke up that scar tissue. But I had to be diligent; I had to be very diligent with it. I decided to use the gentler approach over Peter's manual breaking up with his thumbs of this scar tissue.
The point is you've got to keep at it. One or two applications really won't do much; you've got to do it again and again and again and again. So, yes, I drive an automatic car now.
Now, we're going to have a look at ginger. Ginger can be used internally, and ginger can be used externally. Internally, it's an anti-inflammatory, but it's probably mostly known for its anti-nausea effect. If you buy car sickness or sea sickness tablets, it's compressed ginger. Now, the easiest way I think to have this is to grate it. So, you grate it on that little grater, and you'll grate about a teaspoon and put it in a little teapot. Pour boiling water on it and let it sit probably 10 minutes. Now, that might be too strong for you, but I love it. I love it like that. If it's too strong, you just water it down a little bit. If someone's very cold, maybe they've been caught out in the cold or something, and it's very hard to warm them up, give them a cup of hot ginger tea, and it will warm them up very nicely.
So, it can be used for nausea; it can be used to warm a person if they're chilled or cold. You saw too, it is one of the recipes in the flu bomb. I was at a function, it was a health seminar, and in the break, everyone went and had their herb teas, and there was a girl with a tiny little grater grating ginger. I said, "Ah, ginger!" She said, "I'm an entertainer; I'm a singer. I was in Greece last year, and I lost my voice, and a little Greek lady made me a hot ginger tea." She said, "I sung that night." So, I said, "She said I travel with my little grater everywhere I go."
So, very nice on a sore throat or hoarse throat. Now, we're going to look at what you can do with ginger externally. So, I always take a plate, and I always take the plastic square again. You can use a wool square next to that, but you still need that plastic backing so that it doesn't wet all your clothes and also so it insulates. Then we put a cloth over it, and it's usually around this size. Then I grate straight onto it.
So, why would I use a ginger poultice? I would use a ginger poultice for an inflamed joint. The easiest way to remember this is ginger is for joints. So, that would be gout; it would be arthritis, also a sore back, an inflamed back. Now, when someone's got an inflamed back, they usually put a hot water bottle on it, is that right? But if the back is hurting because of inflammation, the—where's my knife here? The hot water bottle will relax.
You know the reason why the hot water bottle relaxes is because when we're in pain, the muscles around that area tighten and cramp. Basically, they go out in sympathy with the pain, and you put a hot water bottle on that, and it relaxes those cramping muscles. So, you do get some relief, but it does not help the inflammation; it can even make it worse. But ginger, if you apply a ginger poultice anywhere where there's inflammation, the ginger pulls the inflammation out of the joint to the skin, and the skin gets really hot.
So, if you apply this to the lower back, the heat relaxes the muscles, and yet the ginger is reducing the inflammation. So, you do about that much, and then how you make the poultice is you put the left side over and the right side over, and the bottom comes up, and the top goes down. So, you can see I've made like a little package there, and then I turn that over. The part that's touching the skin is where you've just got one layer, and the beauty of this little package also is that you've got a few layers behind so that if it is quite wet, it will help to soak up any drips, and then you will apply that to the area.
Now, let's say that I have an inflamed joint. Then you would apply it to the area there, but you can see even with the plastic on, not much is touching the skin; it's only the very edges. Then you bandage that on. Now, if someone has an inflamed joint, say a wrist, ankle, knee, or toes, we apply the ginger poultice or even in a sore back. We apply the ginger poultice maybe about six o'clock in the evening, and within half an hour, if there's inflammation in there, the skin gets very hot. Then the person has the choice when they're going to bed: is that heat all right? Because if it's too hot, they can just take it off. But if it feels good to them, they can go to sleep.
If you put it on just before bed and the skin gets really hot, it could wake you up and cause discomfort. But when people have gout or arthritis, the heat is usually very, very nice. And again, for a sore lower back, it's very nice because again it pulls the inflammation out of the joint, and the heat relaxes those muscles that tend to cramp whenever there's pain.
So, I'll tell you the story of a lady who saw my lecture on YouTube. She emailed me the story, and she put the ginger poultice on her sore knee. She was so excited; it reduced the pain by 50 percent. The skin did get hot; you see, all the inflammation is being drawn out. So, the next morning, she made another one, and then she made another one for overnight. When she woke up in the morning, the skin was all swollen and blistered. She said, "What have I done?" I said, "You've overdone it. You've just overdone it. You've just pulled too much inflammation out, and it's irritated the skin."
So, if you do have an inflamed joint anywhere, just do it maybe for four hours in the afternoon or even overnight, but just don't do it non-stop because again, you can inflame the skin. Not a problem because you just have to leave the skin; maybe put a castor oil compress on that knee until it settles right down. One lady said, "My skin's burning," and I said, "Actually, it won't burn, but what's the joint like?" And she said, "Oh, actually, it's good."
We had one lady, and she said, "I've got this swollen finger." The joint was swollen twice the size. She said, "This has been paining me for two years." So, he made a tiny little ginger poultice, put it over, put a little bit of plastic over it to insulate, and then taped it on. This is called a paper tape; this is a really soft paint tape on the skin. In the morning, she was so excited that the joint had gone right down, and she could move her finger. That was just one night. Sometimes it takes more than one night, but that ginger is excellent for joints.
So, remember gout, arthritis. You can do it. One man said his big toe; he put it on his big toe, and all the pain went out. Then the next toe was painful, so he put it on there. Then the next night, it was okay to go on to the next one. He said it was jumping toes. I said, "Did it go to the next foot?" He said, "No." So again, you're just listening to the body.
Now, this poultice, once it's used, because it's vegetable matter, has to be discarded. But you could make it in the afternoon and fold it over like that and use it that night. Now, we're going to make a potato poultice. Now, I just told you that the ginger is for joints, whereas the potato is for tissue. The potato is very, very gentle. The potato can be used on sore eyes, conjunctivitis.
So again, we're going to put our plastic down and put our square down and use potato. So, potato is used for tissue inflammation, so swollen eyes, sore eyes, red eyes. It can be used for ingrown toenails; it can be used for a splinter that you couldn't get out. So, tissue inflammation, sprained ankle—very good on a sprained ankle.
So, the lady that had the swollen knee because she did too many ginger poultices, I said, "Do I put a potato on?" Potato is very cooling, so it's great for all tissue inflammation. The potato is also a drawer. So again, you spread that out. My girlfriend rang me one day when this was years ago when she had babies, and so did I, and I could hear her little boy just crying and crying. I said, "What's the matter with Louie?" She said, "I don't know what's happened, but his little penis is twice the size." He was 10 months old. "What are you going to do? If you go to the hospital, what are they going to do?" I said, "Quickly make up a potato poultice. Any tissue swelling, the potato poultice."
So, she made up a poultice maybe about that size. See, it's very cooling, and she laid it on the area. She put his nappy—you call it a diaper—and the little fella, within five minutes, it must have really soothed it; he fell asleep. You see, that just soothes any tissue that's swollen. She said he slept for two hours. What does that tell you? He's not in pain anymore. She said when he woke up, he was happy. She quickly changed his nappy or diaper, and everything was back to normal.
Now, sometimes you don't know what it is. Just if in doubt, just use that grated potato. So, what would it have been? Well, her little boy was crawling around the floor of their hippie home. You don't know whether he got a little bit of dirt in there or whether there was a bite. Sometimes you don't know, and you're not going to play around with that area.
So, can you see with the ginger? You would never put the ginger on tender areas, but the potato is very soothing and cooling. You would do that. I'll tell you the most remarkable story I've had with the potato. When I lived in the rainforest, there was a guy who lived on our property at the end of our paddock, you call it a field, in a caravan. He was a real hippie, and he was sickling the grass, you know what a sickle is, with bare feet. So, what's going to happen next? The sickle went into the back of his ankle.
Now, I heard about it, but I didn't see him for a few days, and one other guy said, "Have you seen Chris? His foot's up like a red balloon, and there's a red line going up his leg, and he's lying in bed smoking marijuana waiting for nature to heal." The body will heal if you give it the right conditions, and one of the problems with the marijuana is it was dulling the pain, but the pain was telling him to do something. So, I said, "Well, we'll bring him up." So, they brought him up, and the first thing I do—and Vanessa will show you this tomorrow night—I got two buckets of water, one hot, one ice cold, and I put his foot straight into the hot water.
Now, I had his foot in my hand, and I was just watching his face. If it was too hot, I put a bit of cold in because that first one can be hard to take. Three minutes, see? After three minutes, the blood slows down. So then you put it into the ice cold, and everything moves up again, as Vanessa will explain to you. While it's in the cold, I put a little bit more hot water in the hot, and then I say 30 seconds in the cold. After 30 seconds, things are slowing down, so you bring it back into the hot.
So, I did that three times: three hots and three colds. His pain had reduced by 50 percent. See, what that does is it brings fresh blood into the area, which drives all blood out, which gets the inflammation down somewhat. Then I made a very big grated potato poultice. You see, he had a wound that had healed on the outside and had not healed on the inside, and tetanus happens in an area of a wound that hasn't healed from the inside and sealed on the outside.
There's an element of horse organism; well, we had a horse in the paddock, so he was a perfect environment for tetanus. So, I put a big grated potato poultice on his foot, and I said, "Come back in two hours." He could limp now, so just that reaction tells me we're getting results. When he came back after two hours, I took this off, and the wound was oozing, and the red line had gone down about four inches.
Now, if he was still in pain and the red line hadn't gone down, we would take him straight to the hospital. You know, if in doubt, but we could see results, and he did not want to go to the hospital. So, if he didn't want to go to the hospital and we could see he was dying, we'd take him, of course, you do.
So, I did hot and colds again, and I did another grated potato, and I said, "Come back again at six o'clock," another few hours. Every time he came back, that big line was going down, down, down, and the foot was going down, down, and the foot was still oozing. See, this draws, and when you took it out, you could see the area where it was drawing. Then he put the grated potato on; we put it on after another hot and cold. All night, he came over in the morning; we did another hot and cold, and the red line was gone, and the foot was just about back to normal. It looked like a dried prune, but you don't care about that; you just want that to go down.
He said, "What will I do now?" I said, "You might be right now. See how it goes, but if it starts to hurt, if it starts to throb, and if that seals, we need to do all that again." So, I basically left it with him then, but it healed. You can imagine that could have been a very serious situation, so that was quite remarkable.
I've also seen this draw out splinters. You know, sometimes you get a splinter in a finger that's just too painful to get out. If you put the grated potato on, it'll keep that swelling down; it will not get, or what they call infected, and usually after a couple of days, you can just get a needle on the tip of it, press it, and it'll usually just come out. I've just seen that happen a few times, so the grated potato can be used in all areas of tissue inflammation.
Now, we're going to have a look at cayenne pepper. Cayenne pepper—we've got cayenne pepper in this little container here—cayenne pepper is a remarkable herb. Some people say we shouldn't use it because it's a stimulant. It is not a stimulant like caffeine or alcohol or marijuana; it's a stimulant. It's a blood stimulant. That means it's good because Leviticus 17:11 states that the life of the flesh is in the blood. So, anything that moves blood is going to be helpful.
There's a book you can get; it's by Sam Biser. It's called "Curing with Cayenne," and he shows in that book that you put cayenne with any other herb, and it'll intensify that other herb's action. It's a blood stimulant; it can be used internally, and it can be used externally. I think in your book, it shows how it does three main things: internally in the blood, it thins the blood, it strengthens the arterial walls, and it opens the capillaries.
So, let me tell you about an experience I had a few years ago. It was one of our retreats. I got the call: a lady had a heart attack. I was only three minutes away; that's why you have to be fit. I ran down; it was a cooking class with about 16 people, and she was lying on the floor. She was 80. Her husband said she'd already had a few that year, and they always called the ambulance, but they thought, "Let's see what they do."
I said to my off-sider, "Cayenne pepper, quickly!" We got the cayenne pepper. Now, there was a guy holding a pulse, and he said, "The pulse is almost gone." She was just white. So, I got—I don't know how much I got; you just in a hurry. So, I think I got about half a teaspoon, put it straight in her mouth. She was half conscious; I gave her a little bit of water to drink. The guy holding the pulse yelled out, "The pulse is strong!" This would have been two minutes, and you could feel that pulse come back, and all the blood came back to her face. She sat up and said, "What happened?" Everyone around was going, "Whoa!" I said, "No, it's not me; it's the cayenne pepper."
So, we sold out of cayenne pepper that program. What did the cayenne pepper do? It thinned the blood, opened the capillaries, and got a dramatic delivery of blood through the whole body. Remember, one minute for one drop of blood to go around your whole body. I have read about it, but then I actually experienced it.
So, cayenne pepper can also be used to boost hydrochloric acid. You take it internally; it'll boost digestion. Cayenne pepper can also ease a sore throat. Remember, it's in the flu bomb. It might give it an initial tingle, but then when that tingle settles down, it eases it. Some people are told to take aspirin for a blood thinner. In fact, I have read where it is recommended that anyone over the age of 50 should be on half an aspirin a day. You might have heard that.
Well, what the research is showing today is that aspirin causes stomach bleeds. It's the number one cause of stomach ulcers; it causes brain bleeds and eye bleeds. That's what the recent research is showing. Cayenne pepper will not cause that at all, but if cayenne pepper is in your blood and it sees a bleed, it'll constrict the blood vessels to stop the bleeding. Yes, it dilates the blood vessels when it's in the blood, but if it sees a break, it'll constrict.
That's a beautiful illustration of Psalm 104:14 that God gave herbs for the service of man. Remember, they're there to serve you. "Where would you like me? What would you like me to do? Thin that, seal that." That's the cayenne pepper. In fact, it's just about a first aid kit in one is the cayenne pepper, and you'll get used to it.
Now, you can use it externally. I'm going to show you how you can use it externally, and I'm going to show you how you can use it for poor circulation in the feet, cold feet. I find people that allow their feet to be cold, eventually their feet are numb, and eventually, the next step after numb feet is gangrene of the toes. You see, the blood's the life of the flesh, and any part of the body that's cold, blood's not going in there. So, blood's not feeding the area; it's not feeding the herbs, the nerves.
You cannot put cold feet into hot water or you'll damage the tissues. So, what can you do? You can make a cayenne compress to put on the bottom of the feet. To make a cayenne pepper compress, you get some paper towel and cut it to the size of the foot, which would be—let's just guess it'll be about this. I guess I'm guessing my size foot. You put it on; I've doubled over a couple of layers of cling wrap there, and then you put a little olive oil on there—not a lot because you don't want to soil your sheets.
So, I'm going to put it in this plate to show you how you can put it on lightly. So, I'm just going to dab it on. The reason why I'm putting olive oil there is in a minute I'm going to sprinkle the cayenne on it, and this causes the cayenne to stick to it. So, it's really just there for the cayenne pepper to stick to it. Now, that's about the right amount. As I said, any more and it will leak because this compress is worn overnight.
So, you can see I've just got a light sprinkling of oil there, and now I'm going to put the cayenne pepper on that. So, you put about a half a teaspoon for each foot. So, that's about half a teaspoon. You can see the way I'm holding it up; the cayenne pepper is now sticking to the paper, and the foot goes straight onto that. Then you put a sock on and leave it on all night.
If I put that on my foot, by four in the morning, I'm waking up wanting to rip it off because my feet are so hot. But if someone has no feeling in their feet or if someone regularly has cold feet, often by morning, they're feeling a little tingle. So, you would probably wear it every second night until your feet get hot. So, that's a very easy way to warm up feet because feet must be warm.
So, he'd put one on each foot. I've even made it and folded it up and left it at one lady's house that I visited, and she had no feeling in her feet—peripheral neuropathy. That's a side effect of chemotherapy where people lose that feeling in their feet. They can bring their feet along alive again with the cayenne pepper compresses. So, you could even make a few and fold them over like that, so I left them with their lady so that she could use them.
Let's have a look at our—oh, can you see that? So, we're already getting a syrup there, and you'll be able to taste this in a couple of days. Remember, you leave that 24 hours, and then you strain it out. Last and certainly not least is charcoal. Charcoal does not absorb; it adsorbs. What does adsorb mean? Adsorb means that it binds, and it binds poisons. It particularly binds poisons; it binds the poisons to its millions of little facets.
So, under a microscope, there are all these little facets like this, and it adsorbs poisons by binding them to those facets. It's been known for a long time. NASA filters their water and their air in outer space with charcoal. Many masks have charcoal in them to neutralize the poison. In hospitals, they use charcoal to filter the blood for dialysis, and in cases of poisoning, anyone who's worked in casualty knows that they give a dose of charcoal because if someone's been poisoned and they take charcoal, the charcoal will adsorb and bind that poison to its facets, and it's basically safe until it gets out of the body.
So, internally, it can be used for any case of poisoning, and it can also be used for diarrhea or vomiting. Many people that go to Asia always travel with charcoal tablets because if they get a bit of what's called "barley belly" or diarrhea, they'll take the charcoal. You can also use charcoal on the outside, and it can be used for bee stings, spider bites, snake bites, wasp bites. It's quite incredible the way once you apply that, the sting comes out almost immediately, or the pain, I should say.
Now, it's very messy stuff to work with, so I'm going to show you a mess-free way to make the poultice, and you can make this ahead of time and keep it in the fridge. When you mix charcoal with water, it's like mixing dirt and water; it doesn't mix very well. So, we're going to use psyllium. You can use slippery elm, or you can use ground linseed. So, we're going to use a teaspoon of psyllium to two teaspoons—or this is probably equal to this spoon is equal to two teaspoons—to two.
So, what we've just done: two teaspoons of psyllium to four teaspoons of charcoal. You always put the lid straight back on the charcoal because you don't want to drop it, and you seal it while you mix it. So, you want to mix that quite nicely, and what we're going to do is put water in there, and then we're going to let that mix or gel together, and we're going to roll it out so it's thin, and you've got a thin jellied charcoal poultice.
So, to that, you'd probably do about half a cup of water, and you move that around for a while, and it'll start to gel. Now, the beauty of this is that you'll roll that out, get the air out, and you'll roll it out so it's a strip, a thin strip. Then you put it in the fridge, or you'd put it in the freezer if you're not—if you don't think it's going to be used for a while.
Then, if someone has a bee sting or a spider bite or a snake bite, then you cut a section, cut it round, peel the top off, and it can be slapped straight on. It'll have that plastic topping, and you can bandage that on. So, it's very, very easy to do. I think every fridge, every home, every freezer should have some of these because when you do get a sting, it's very, very painful.
This can also be used—I'm just going to get the air out—it can also be used for conjunctivitis, red eyes, painful eyes. Remember we talked that you could use your potato for that, but you could also use this. It's starting to gel up a little bit now, so I'm just going to get a bit more of the air out. So, then you just squeeze that up, so you can see where it's nice and thin now. You put that in the fridge or freezer; it'll go quite jellied now.
So, you can see the psyllium is just to make it jelly, and that's very user-friendly. See, that's quite thin. So, if someone has a bee sting on here, you quickly cut an area around, take the plastic off, put it straight on the skin, and bind it on. Very quick and easy.
So, that's a no-mess, easy way to make your charcoal poultice for the outside. If someone's got a sore knee, they could put charcoal on one night, castor oil on another, ginger on another night, potato on another, and see what it does and see what your body says. "I like that one; I didn't like that one as much as that one." So, you can play with it. The different poultices and compresses do different things, and you will soon discover what works best.
Thank you for your attention tonight, and so ends our natural remedy seminar.