mixing Herbs to use together?

I want to know how to use the right types of herbs together. For example when we use herbs for medicine sometimes they can be mixed to do two different things. How does one go about learning which ones can work together?

If you are interested in herbs for medicine I would check in the medicinal herbs section or check out Susan Weeds' website - she has lots of info there. Then you would need to further define what type of ailments you are treating.

If it is for cooking then this would be the forum with the best answers and you'd need to define what types of food you want to flavor.

I'm not sure if this is a helpful answer.

Yes Jeanine it's very helpful. I'll pop next door now. (to the other forum bit...) thanks.

Jeanine is her name spelt Susun rather than Susan? I found a website not sure its the one you mean.

http://www.susunweed.com/SusunWeed.htm

I never noticed that before - yes is it spelled susun.

susun weed won't teach much about combining herbs... She's really into simples I.e. Just using one single herb. She advocates finding one companion herb and using primarily that one for a year.

Mixing herbs is always done in Traditional Chinese Medicine so you might find a good reference there, especially if you can find a TCM herbal written by a westerner or vice versa. I have a few western herbals and none really go into much detail about mixing them unfortunately - mostly about what individual herbs do.

Thanks Peta. What's a TCM?

Traditional Chinese Medicine.

But you might be better off getting some basic western herbals first, as the TCM is quite confusing.

I suggest read some herbal books by 2-4 different authors and you may get some ideas to get you started. It may be even that you're asking the wrong question and you like susun Weed's simples approach best.

The how to herb book by Velma Keith and Monteen Gordon has some good herbal combinations and examples of how they are used . Great book my family has used for years

  Another great book about combining herbs is How To Be Your Own Herbal Pharmacist by Linda R. Page. It actually explains to you how to choose main herb for the ailment (and gives many choices), then suporting herbs, synergizing herbs, etc.
 Also, if you have drying herb, that fits your condition good, but you have dry skin or are always thirsty, you would want to add demulcent herb to your formula to bring moisture in. And you can add some mint or licorice or star anise to make flavor better.

As someone mentioned TCM does go into combining herbs in great detail. Of the 100+ herbs I've studied in TCM, there are only a few real No-No combinations. But even with the others you can also get unpleasant side effects or at a minimum, waste the herbs since they won't help you.

For the most part, if you look at what you're trying to treat, then match up the appropriate herbs, either Western or Eastern, and make a blend, then you should be fine since the herbs are all supporting various aspects of what you're trying to treat. I would suggest only doing this with relatively mild herbs. The old "do no harm" principle. Always look at contraindications for any herb as well. One example is to not use St. Johns Wort with someone taking MAOI drugs. This can be very dangerous. Or giving blood thinning herbs to someone on blood thinners.

If you are really interested in blends, then I've found TCM to be tops for that, but it does take a lot of studying to get to that point since the system is not based on Western terminology and it is very in depth but also very effective.

One other approach is to find a blend that you like and try to replicate that. That's assuming the original blend is from someone who knows what they are doing.

I have yet to consult this practioner in person but his site has some really useful information on both TCM and western herbs https://www.rjwhelan.co.nz/