As the days get cooler, many of us turn to the kitchen to cook up something warming, nourishing, and comforting. Did you know that many of your kitchen spices have a hidden agenda? They aren't just there to make your food taste delicous, they also have healing properties to them. Here are just a few of the more basic kitchen spices that have uses dating back thousands of years.
Common Kitchen Herbs That Aid Digestion
Fennel Fennel is an aromatic herb and a valuable carminative. Fennel helps to ease nausea, moves gas down and out of the digestive system, stimulates appetite and digestion, and is useful for colic and constipation—try making fennel seeds into a delicious cordial! Fennel’s antiemetic, antispasmodic, and carminative actions are attributed primarily to its volatile oils, which are also responsible for its strong licorice-like aroma. The aromatic volatile oils relax the gastrointestinal tract to reduce muscular pain and symptoms caused from tension in the gut (Bone & Mills, 2013).
Rosemary Rosemary is an uplifting digestive tonic that helps to relax and tone the stomach and is especially good for digestive upset resulting from mental tension, anxiety, and worry due to its nervine action. As a cholagogue, rosemary stimulates the production of bile and its flow from the liver, thus stimulating digestion and aiding in detoxification (Hoffmann, 2003). A friend not only to the digestive system, but also the nervous and circulatory systems, rosemary has long been used to increase circulation to the brain, improving focus and memory. In this way, it can also be helpful for headaches caused by nervous tension (Hoffmann, 2003). Try adding rosemary to a cup of tea, craft a rosemary vinegar for salad dressings and marinades, or add it to soup, stew, and roasted vegetable recipes. Rosemary can be grown indoors in a pot year round.
Cumin Like so many kitchen herbs, cumin is an ally for the digestive system, and is particularly helpful for lack of appetite, flatulence, bloating, slow transit time, and other signs of sluggish digestion. It can also be helpful for nausea and diarrhea. In India, roasted cumin seeds are often eaten after meals to ease the digestive process (Pole, 2012).
Orange Peel Use: Orange peel is a great addition to a carminative tea or tincture formula. Mildly bitter, orange peel strengthens digestive function and is useful for gas, nausea, diarrhea, and bloating and to stimulate the appetite (McBride, 2010). Orange peel is perfect for moist, stagnant digestion, as it removes phlegm from both the digestive and respiratory tracts. Orange peel is high in vitamin C and has been used to enhance immune function in general as well as during colds and the flu (Grosso et al., 2013). It has substantial volatile oil content (evident if you’ve ever been squirted in the eye while peeling an orange!), which has antibacterial properties. Alcohol extract of orange peel has demonstrated activity against cavity-causing oral bacteria (Shetty et al., 2016)—consider adding it to an herbal mouthwash blend!
This information has been adapted from the Herbal Academy
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