Healing: Stinging Nettle Benefits

Healing: Stinging Nettle Benefits
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Stinging nettles are an incredibly nutritious food and healing herb. Their bright green leaves and long, strong stalks can be used for their medicinal properties, but be wary when harvesting fresh nettles as the underside of the leaves and the stalks are covered with tiny, hair-like needles that deliver quite a jostling sting. Rich in nutrients and packed with healing properties, exactly what are all the stinging nettle benefits?

Nourishing Nettles

One of the reasons that nettles are such a widely applicable herb is nutrition content. Providing minerals (chromium, iron, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper, sulphur, manganese, silicon), vitamins (B complex, vitamin A as carotenes, vitamin C, D, and K) and amino acids, this plant offers nutrition to strengthen the circulatory, digestive, nervous, immune, endocrine, and urinary systems. Also, herbs such as nettles are not only loaded with nutrients, but their nutritional content is extremely easy for the body to absorb and utilize.

What difference can all this nutrition make? It can energize and revitalize, improve the quality and growth of new cells, and even enhance breast milk.

Beneficial for the Urinary Tract

Nettles tone the kidneys, strengthening their function and helping this organ resist infection. This plant has diuretic properties, meaning it encourages the release of toxins through urination. It can be helpful in cases of a urinary tract infection, water retention, and even kidney stones. As an astringent, stinging nettle can benefit any type of bleeding, such as blood in the urine.

Digestive Health

Try eating a cup of fresh nettles with dinner, sauteed in butter and garlic. Nettles can be consumed to address stomach aches, ulcers in the digestive tract, constipation, and diarrhea. How can this plant offer so much? It nourishes membranes, tones the liver, gallbladder, and spleen, provides fiber for constipation, and as an astringent can help treat diarrhea.

Women’s Health

Not only does this herb nourish a new mother and her nursing child, but it has a positive benefit for all stages of a women’s life. Stinging nettles help to balance hormones and to enrich blood. It will normalize the menstrual cycle, reducing the symptoms of PMS. It can also help to offset the loss of iron during menstruation. In the same way (as a hormone balancer,) drinking nettles tea can help with the symptoms of menopause as well menstruation.

For Healthy Skin and Hair

Stinging nettle is a universal herb for healthy skin. As an alternative it can be taken internally to treat chronic skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis. Used as a wash for the skin a nettles infusion will promote healthy, glowing skin by destroying bacteria, encouraging new cell growth, and promoting healing.

To stimulate hair growth and to encourage thicker, richer hair, use the same nettles infusion as a hair rinse as well as for a facial rinse. Try doing this every day for two weeks and see the effect it has on your hair.

Now that you know about stinging nettle benefits, go ahead, see if there are any plants growing in your backyard or head over to your local health food store for some dried herbs or a bottle of nettles tincture.

References

Weed, Susan S. “Healing Wise.” (Ash Tree Publishing, 1989).

Hoffmann, David. “The Complete Illustrated Holistic Herbal: A Safe and Practical Guide to Making and Using Herbal Remedies.” (Element Books, 1996).

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