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Meet Traute Klein,
AKA biogardener.

More on Medicinal Plants

Don't fight the dandelions, enjoy them
as a companion plant in your garden and your lawn.

Catnip, not just for cats
Herbs with sedative properties and what you should know about them before you use them.

Garlic, Wonder Drug
Natural antibiotic and first aid for breathing problems. In a respiratory emergency, relief comes in 10 minutes.

Cold Sores and Warts, Remedies and Prevention
The same natural remedies prevent and cure a variety of complaints.

Comfrey, a controlled substance?
Healer of bruises, sprains, and broken bones, I have found comfrey to be even more versatile than the literature suggests.

How not to Get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Here you will learn to use a comfrey poultice to combat an inflammation and what to do to prevent CTS. Sorry, article not yet ready.

Willow, the Aspirin Tree
Aspirin in its natural form has been used for pain relief for thousands of years. Learn where to find salicylates naturally.

Smudging for Health
Breathing in the right smoke can help to relieve congestion rather than cause it.

Herbal Pillows, Heat Packs, Cold Packs
Herbal packs for relaxation, for inflammation, and for congestion.

Good Old Mustard Plaster
Used correctly, this time-tested method will help relieve respiratory problems. Used incorrectly, it can turn you into a boiled loster.

Don't fight the dandelions, use them as medicine.

by Traute Klein, biogardener

Dandelions heal and cleanse, but their milky juice also attacks cells which are foreign to the body, thus getting get rid of warts and calluses. Third article in the series on dandelions.

Series on Dandelions

This is the third article in a series of four on the benefits of dandelions. The first one explains how I eat them, and the second one encourages you to drink them, and the fourth one tells you how dandelions benefit the soil. The other articles are linked in the left column along with other articles on medicinal plants.

Known Medicinal Benefit

Eating and drinking dandelions certainly has medicinal benefits. I have been told all my life that dandelion stimulates the liver to help the body to clean itself out. That is why it is popular in the spring, because that is the time when Europeans think of going through their annual "spring tonic." Whereas North Americans think of shedding pounds every spring, Europeans prefer to clean the toxins out of their system.

Evidently, dandelion stimulates more than just the liver. When I told my family physician what article I was working on, he reminded me of the meaning of its French name. Obviously, the word "dandelion" is derived from the French "dent de lion" meaning "tooth of the lion" because of the shape of the leaves. The French, however, prefer a more earthy name for the plant, "pissenlit" which literally means "piss in bed." Obviously, the French people have discovered that the plant is a diuretic, i.e. it stimulates the urinary system.

Warts, Calluses, etc.

I have, however, discovered that dandelion can be used as an external remedy to remove abnormal skin formations. A few years ago, just to experiment, I started dabbing dandelion juice on a little wart which I had on a finger of the left hand. Every time I picked a lonely flower off a plant, I would dab before I popped the flower into my mouth. By the time all the plants were asleep under a blanket of snow, I started wondering what had happened to my wart, because it was nowhere to be found. As a matter of fact, to this day, I can't remember on which finger it had been.

When I told this story to a friend in the sauna of the swimming pool, he had an even better story to tell me. He was plagued by several painful plantar warts on the bottom of his feet. A herbalist told him how to get rid of them. He packed his socks full of juicy dandelion plants and walked on them. I don't remember how long it took, but he did get rid of the warts.



Effective Ingredient

I have read that the effective ingredient in dandelion is the latex. That is why the white juice is so sticky. I have successfully used the same type of juice from a great variety of wild plants. Most of them are related to dandelion and sport the same pretty yellow flowers. There is one plant, though, which does not look anything like a dandelion, and its flowers are a beautiful dove blue. It grows wild on my land. It is tall enough that I can pick it without having to bend down. I appreciate that.

This article gives a cure for warts. I am writing another article on their prevention, based on the realization that unnatural developments are caused by deficiencies. The article is linked below. Even if you get rid of your current warts, you will get them back or else get similar problems unless you correct the nutritional deficiency which causes them.

I appreciate having a natural remedy for warts, corns, and calluses, because I am allergic to the main ingredient of over-the-counter remedies, ASA.



Dandelions and Soil Health

The last article in this series tells about the effect of dandelion on the health of the soil. It not only improves the soil, it is a barometer of soil health.