Podcast 373: Throat and Immune Tinctures

Master Herbalist Elijah Free describes his formulas – Song of the Nightingale is ideal for soothing sore throats, chest congestion, colds, lung issues, made especially for singers and public speakers who need to worry about their voice. It will also improve breath and mild stomach discomfort. Immunagen is the formula for building up the immune system to defend against infections especially when dealing with airplane travel, and working with small children.

Martin: Greetings, everyone! This is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast online radio and TV network. We are restoring vitality to you and to the planet! Today with me again is Elijah Free, master herbalist, and founder of the Earth Friend Herb company. Hello, Elijah!

Elijah: Hi, Martin! Great to be here today! Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Martin: Awesome! You are welcome! I would like you to please help explain to our listeners this formula you created that you named Song of the Nightingale. It’s quite an evocative name.

Elijah: Thank you! It’s actually a very evocative formula. This is a very old formula. I have to say this formula has probably undergone more changes over the years than just about anything I’ve done. This concept started when I was in my first or second year of practicing, so it was probably around 1982 or 1983. And I was doing the study of oils at that time. I was living in Massachusetts at the time, and in winter there was a plague of sore throats and chest problems. We weren’t selling herbs at that time, everything was just being made for my own practice. And I was still learning everything, I was very excited about my career – I’m still just as excited, probably even more! So we came up with this concept, and it’s actually what’s called a “tincture syrup”.

Martin: Please tell me when and why I would want to use it.

Elijah: Well, anything related to a sore throat, chest colds, anything to do with lungs or sore throat. If you are a speaker, if you’re a singer, if you talk a lot, that’s something you might want to use. If you are talking with people a whole bunch, it makes your voice sound gorgeous on it. We sell this to singers and all kinds of professional people like that, but it’s great for anything that has to do with the throat, lungs, and especially the chest.
When I work with my patients at Bodywork, I take some before every time I work with them. It gives me fresh breath that smells like mild, lovely peppermint. So if you’re around people, take a shot of it, probably about a quarter of a dropper. I do bodywork all day, and I’m up close with people. You could even eat garlic, and this product is going to take care of your breath. It also soothes the stomach. It’s one of the finest things for that. Now I’m going to mention because of the oils used in this product, this is not safe for small children, and it’s also not recommended for pregnant women for the same reason.

So now let’s talk about how we made it. It has a base of organic honey in organic vegetable glycerin. Then we make a herbal tincture extract, mix the whole thing up, and then we add the oils. Then we let it sit for about five days to just sort of let the ingredients come together before we package it.
I personally love this formula. The funny thing is, when I first made it, it wasn’t for over the counter, so we used herbs at the time that we could use in practice that we couldn’t sell over the counter, so it actually looked completely different back then, except for the oils and the base. And today, when fall and winter comes, that stuff just flies right off the shelves. Also, it works really well with Immunagen. So if you have a flu or cold and you’ve got all of the chest issues that come with them, you can use these two together.

Martin: All right! Well, now that you mentioned Immunagen, can you please explain how that works?

Elijah: Okay! Immunagen is our immune system formula. At first, we created three different formulas for different types of sickness you might experience. Immunagen is created to strengthen your immune system, and it can be used on a regular basis.

Years ago, when the market opened up, and all kinds of materials started to be imported to the US, you couldn’t really trust these sources, you had no idea where they were grown, how they were grown, if they were sprayed with something, or maybe even irradiated. So at that time, a worldwide standard had to be created for imports like that. So now we can get herbs from China, from India, from all over the world, and everything is inspected and held to the same standard. The places that we order from also do the same thing, everything goes through spectroanalysis before we can get it. So as a result of these changes, we are guaranteed exactly the quality we are asking for. We can actually get a certificate of authenticity on every raw piece of material that we get.

The reason I’m telling you that is when that happened, we could start designing our products differently, because there were things that we could not use around the world before, and now we could. And that’s when Immunagen happened. We have mushrooms from China. We have Prickly Ash bark from other islands, we have Condurango that grows up in the Andes, and so on.

Anyhow, I wanted to tell that story because the herb market has changed so drastically in the last 40+ years I’ve been in it, not always for the better, but this was one of the best things that ever happened to us and to the consumer.

Martin: Yes, standardized and certified ingredients, that’s an important thing, because we can make repeat batches of products with these imported materials with the same performance and same quality every time.
So the Immunagen, you would be taking that when you are faced with a lot of public cross contamination risk, like air travel or…

Elijah: Anything like colds, flus, lung problems, all sorts of things like that. We have a whole group of teachers that when the school season starts, like two weeks before the year school starts, they come and buy the big 4oz bottles we have, and they’ll take it the entire season and they don’t get sick at all.

Martin: Thank you, Elijah, for this quick introduction of Immunagen and Song of The Nightingale for our listeners! Thank you for listening, everyone! Be sure to check our website for more information about Earth Friend Herb products! This is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast – we are restoring vitality to you and to the planet!

Author: Nina Vachkova