In the short term, fever treatment for the prepper is not that hard. First, the fever itself often doesn’t need to be treated, as it does no particular harm (more on that here). Second, the troublesome symptoms that often accompany fever that one usually does want to treat are often best treated by cheap, easily available, easily storable remedies such as acetaminophen.
Two fever options
There are two problems with this. First, some folks just prefer to get their drugs closer to the natural source. (Make no mistake, they’re still drugs even when they come in the form of herbs. In fact, they are usually several drugs (chemicals that impact our physiologies) packaged together in every leaf.) . Second, there’s the possibility that we won’t always be able to get those convenient to buy (but devilish to open) bottles of pills. What then? Herbal remedies.
This post focuses on two herbal remedies that are may be useful to those suffering from fever … or actually, from those other nasty things that come along with fever. I picked these two (I am not above puns, sorry not sorry) because they are relatively easy to find, easy to prepare, not dangerous as such things go, and have some evidence of usefulness.
Willow bark: The Original Aspirin
I’ve got some of these trying to grow beside my pond at The Place.
Various species of willow (conveniently including the common white and black willows, which includes the common weeping and corkscrew varieties) have so much aspirin-like compounds in their bark that the native people of the Americas had been using them for relief of pain, inflammation, and fever for …. well, before recorded history in the region at least.
Being partial to evidence, and knowing that some herbal remedies are very effective and others are, well, good only at provoking placebo effects, I did some exploring on willow bark’s effects in controlled, blinded scientific trials. And it worked.
It works better for pain than fever itself, but who cares about the fever itself anyway? Specifically, it worked just about as well for pain as did commercially available aspirin. (1) . It also about matched the effect of a commercially available COX-2 inhibitor drug (2) . The COX-2 inhibitors are very effective painkillers;Celebrex is one you may have heard of.
How do you find this Willow Bark stuff?
I’m not going to give directions, because it’s my view that anyone using herbal remedies should have two high-quality plant ID guides and use them. A quick description and picture might help you find the right plant, but might also lead you to confuse similar plants, and misidentification is a very bad deal when using herbal remedies. (More on safe use of herbals can be found here.) Please don’t go making tea out of things based only on a picture or two.
How do you prepare it? Harvest in spring after young (first year) branches have colored up but before sap runs. Cut branches and strip bark from cut end toward tips. Dry at room temperature and store in a cool, dry place. Historically, the bark was just chewed; but you can also make teas or tinctures. If you want a tincture, pack a jar with dried bark, cover with vodka, cap, and set in a warm spot. Shake once a day. After a month, decant the tincture. Store cool and dark. (3)
How much does one take? 4 to 6 mL of willow bark tincture three times daily was one published suggestion (3). If you prefer tea, you might boil 1 to 2 teaspoons of dried bark in 8 ounces of water, and take it three to four times daily. (4)
What are the risks? Stomach upset a common side effect, with more rare stomach bleeding and rashes with chronic use. The salicin in the willow bark is a blood thinner, if you’re taking a blood thinner to begin with you might accidentally overdose (Not Good!). It is also reported to enhance the effects of methotraxate and phenytoin (Dilantin). It can interfere with beta blockers and diuretics, so those on high blood pressure meds need to be extra careful. (1)
Feverfew: Does the Name Have It Right?
Feverfew looks like a lot of other flowers, no? Please identify carefully. Thanks Zeynel Cebeci* for the image.
Feverfew is an extremely widespread remedy, and used for similar conditions in many different cultures, which is a good sign that it’s effective. What it’s used for most is fever — or really, the immune reactions that provoke both fever and inflammation — and migraine prevention. One nickname for the plant is ‘medieval aspirin’. It’s also used both to cause abortions and help labor along. The quandry is that while many herbal remedies are effective and useful, there is also a large selection of such remedies that don’t end up doing much when carefully investigated; so I for one like to know which group a remedy is in before I commit to it.
Here’s the thing about herbal remedies though:
There’s not many groups that have the money to fund high quality research on how well they work and also care to find out. Drug research is funded because the companies have to prove their claims; herbal supplements to not have to prove anything, so research is limited. Feverfew has some quality research behind it, but it’s mostly centered on the aspects of the herb that aren’t well duplicated by traditional medicines; so we know a lot more about how it works (probably) to reduce migraines than how it works to reduce fever and related symptoms. Here’s what has been discovered:
In cell cultures, feverfew extracts suppress prostaglandin production and platelet aggregation. (5) Prostaglandin is a main chemical signal provoking inflammation, so this finding suggests feverfew would be effective in reducing fever and inflammation. Inhibiting platelet aggregation is significant because 1) it’s another indicator of anti-inflammatory action, and 2) that means it works as a ‘blood thinner’ to reduce blood clotting. Does this mean it helps reduce the misery associated with fever and other inflammatory reactions? Probably, but you don’t know for sure until you see it in a whole organism.
Fresh extracts, but not dried preparations, also inhibited smooth muscle contraction according to one researcher (5); but the Migraine Trust reported that feverfew caused smooth muscle contraction in the uterus (6). Why the contradiction? There’s no way to be sure at this point, but it’s true that there are some chemical signals that relax smooth muscle in the blood vessels but enhance it in the uterus. That would explain why feverfew both helps prevent migraines (which can be caused when blood vessels to the brain constrict too much) and is useful for enhancing contractions to speed birth (at low dose?) or causing abortions (at higher dose?)
While the evidence on migraines is mixed, the overall story I gleaned (5,6,7) is that regular dosing with feverfew probably reduces migraines in some people who are prone to them, but not all. People get migraines through different mechanisms, so it’s not surprising that some would be helped and some not.
Where can feverfew be found?
In the Americas, it’s an immigrant, but a very widespread one. It probably occurs in a ditch or field border near you, but again I’ll leave it to the real field guides to offer direction.
How does one prepare feverfew? In season, one can simply eat the leaves. You might want to hide them in a salad; they’re rather bitter. One can drink it’s tea, but it’s bitter and can irritate the mouth. To store it, harvest in summer, at a high-light time of day, when they’re flowering.
For more potent preparations, pick after the plants have been getting a little less water than they’d like. Dry only gently (air dry out of direct sunlight or at less than 140 F in a dehydrator) and use within a year; or make an alcoholic tincture by soaking leaves in vodka for awhile as was described for the willow bark. (6,8) It was reported that 30% of the activity was lost after one year, so making a new store every year would probably be appropriate.
How much does one take?
For migraine prevention or interruption, I’ve seen suggestions for eating 1 large or 3 small (4 cm) leaves per day, fresh or dried. (5,6) For reducing inflammatory reactions, 60-120 drops twice a day of a tincture made from 1 part plant to 5 parts alcohol was suggested (5).
What are the downsides and precautions? People who take it regularly do get accustomed to it; when they stopped it suddenly some reported nausea, anxiety, and insomnia. The authors (6) recommended tapering off dosages rather than quitting cold turkey. It’s got similar actions to aspirin and other NSAIDS (like ibuprofen and naproxen), so taking NSAIDS with feverfew risks overdose. Its use to cause abortions certainly argues against giving it to pregnant women!
Also, since it seems to be a blood thinner, you wouldn’t want to double up with a different blood thinner. None of these negative reactions was reported to be either strong or common though, so overall it seems to be a fairly safe treatment.
1) U of Maryland Medical Center. Complementary and Alternative Medicine Guide.Willow Bark. http://www.umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/herb/willow-bark. Accesses 1-15-18.
2) Chrubasik O. Künzel A. Model C. Conradt A. Black. Treatment of low back pain with a herbal or synthetic anti‐rheumatic: a randomized controlled study. Willow bark extract for low back pain. Rheumatology, Volume 40, Issue 12, 1 December 2001, Pages 1388–1393,https://doi.org/10.1093/rheumatology/40.12.1388
3) Joybilee Farm. https://joybileefarm.com/willow-bark-for-herbal-remedies/ Accessed 1-16-18.
4) Livestrong: White Willow Bark Health Benefits. https://www.livestrong.com/article/120807-white-willow-bark-health-benefits/#ixzz2PMxXGxI3. Accessed 1-15-18.
5) Pareek, A., Suthar, M., Rathore, G. S., & Bansal, V. (2011). Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium L.): A systematic review. Pharmacognosy Reviews, 5(9), 103–110. http://doi.org/10.4103/0973-7847.79105
6) The Migraine Trust. https://www.migrainetrust.org/living-with-migraine/treatments/feverfew/ Accessed 1-16-18
7) Ernst, E, and Pittler, MH. The efficacy and safety of feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium L.): an update of a systematic review. Public Health Nutrition Volume 3, Issue 4a, December 2000 , pp. 509-514
8) Farzaneh Pourianezhad, Sara Tahmasebi, Vahid Abdusi, Somayeh Nikfar, Mahmoud Mirhoseini.Review on feverfew, a valuable medicinal plant. J Herbmed Pharmacol. 2016;5(2):45-49.
*By Zeynel Cebeci (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
