herbs for smoke inhalation or respiratory stress from dust, etc.

This year has been one loooong fire season in Montana and a lot of Western states. Brutal.

I'd made up some refrigerator tea with mullein leaves, chamomile, mint, and rose hips to be a mild, soothing tonic and probably need to make up some more.

Today, thanks to a friend, I ran across this article, which is a huge list of herbal resources in this regard. I highly recommend it. Way down in the comments, another herbalist chimes in that he thinks plantain is good for stressed lungs, too.



Prevention of and Herbal Therapeutics for Wildfire Related Smoke Inhalation

What is your favorite herbal tonic for respiratory distress?

Ah, our friends at Green Path Herb School have written a great post about healing from smoke, too!

Herbs for Chronic Smoke



From the article (though there is FAR more than this, so I highly recommend you read the whole thing!):

Breathe Deeply Tea:
1 part Verbascum thapsus (Mullein leaf)
1 part Glycyrrhiza spp. (Licorice)
1 part Thymus vulgaris (Thyme)
1 part Mentha piperita (Peppermint)
1 part Urtica dioica (Nettles)
Take ¼ ounce combined herbs by weight and put loosely in a canning jar, teapot or coffee press. Add 1 cup of boiling water and let steep ½-2 hours. Strain well. Drink 1-3 cups a day.

There are a different set of tips here:

Smoke inhalation - ways to protect the body and lungs from smoke

with simple, straight-forward tips to prevent excessive exposure (like using a wet rage over the nose and mouth instead of a face mask) than the first two. Though there are a lot of ads on this page.

We mostly stayed inside and ran HEPA filter fans (with or without the ion thingy) when the smoke was bad here. And have made mullein teas like the one from the Green Path Herb School article above.

I'm not too experienced with herbal remedies for the course particulates that wildfire smoke throws off, for that I rely on air filters (a cheap air filter taped to the back of a box fan works surpassingly well). But one thing I do try and have are houseplants! Many plants are natural air purifiers. I always try and keep some spider and snake plants around the house for just that purpose. Plus, they're pretty difficult to kill.

Kyle Neath wrote:I'm not too experienced with herbal remedies for the course particulates that wildfire smoke throws off, for that I rely on air filters (a cheap air filter taped to the back of a box fan works surpassingly well).

Smart! I saw a picture of a fan rigged up like that.

Kyle Neath wrote:But one thing I do try and have are houseplants! Many plants are natural air purifiers. I always try and keep some spider and snake plants around the house for just that purpose. Plus, they're pretty difficult to kill.

Of course! Another great tip! I forgot about the air cleaning effect of houseplants when thinking about this stuff because, well, forest fires and all that smoke is well, rather distracting to say the least.

Definitely plantain. Soaking your feet in hot water and a warmed up serve of your refrigerator tea will be nice to do, maybe even beneficial
With mullein especially, a poultice on your chest will be good for healing.

These are the few herbs I typically use and know of to specifically cleanse and strengthen the lungs.  Equal parts of fenugreek seed, pleurisy root, mullein leaf <-- 3 Lung Tea used by quite a few people with great results.

I've used a combination of mullein and ginger before with excellent results.  This is a very excellent combination to get you expectorating.  Just watch your dosage, because if you take too much it will be difficult to breath as your lungs begin to expectorate.  But once they are somewhat clear you can ramp the dosage up and you'll begin to knock loose everything in there and cough it out.

From my experience and all the herbs I've taken.  The ginger and mullein combination is at the top of the list if you want to break up the stuff in your lungs and cough it out.  But I like all the other herbs as well to help build/strengthen/cleanse the lung tissues.

Multiple dosages daily seem to be best with herbs.  With the ginger/mullein combo, I would take it three or more times per day to get results, and I've noticed that it seems to be best way to take most all herbs.

I appreciate your tips and experience, Joshua. I had to look up pleurisy root - butterfly plant! Wow.

https://www.herbal-supplement-resource.com/pleurisy-root.html

It's forest fire season again (in the northern hemisphere), so I think folks could use these strategies.

Take good care, folks!

I encourage you to do some reading on exactly how your lungs work. To most people, the workings of the lungs is honestly a mystery. And that is to your disadvantage. If you don't realize that mucous production from the back of your throat (NOT your nose) is actually mucous coming out of your lungs, and that said mucous IS beneficial to you- as it's carrying foreign particles from your lungs out of your lungs. Whether you swallow or spit, your body does need to get that mucous out. Once you realize that the mucous is advantageous, it's easy to figure out that if you're having breathing problems you should find strategies that thin down the mucous and help your body to get rid of it.

(they) like to talk about your lungs like you're going to die if you breathe smoke and get cancer blah blah blah. The truth of the matter is, your lungs are a very interesting organ and they actually have the capability to recover AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOT OVERLOADED and you figure out what you need to do to counteract what ever you got into.

Case in point. I got into some xylene a little over a year ago. If you ever hear of this s*** be very very wary. It will get into your lungs and cause severe breathing difficulties and according to mainstream medical literature they don't have any cure for it. What exactly was I doing? Painting a basement floor without adequate ventilation for about 3 hours. Once I got done I wasn't feeling good but that wasn't the end of it. It was the long-term feeling that I had of not being able to take a complete deep breath that was the most annoying thing. Fortunately, I figured out this summer after the problem returned with the humidity- after it got hard for me to take a deep breath that if I took activated charcoal morning and night all my symptoms disappeared. I'm also experimenting with DMSO which is basically super strong onions- sulfur. Look that up... lots of good information on that online. The reason why I mention dmso is because it will dissolve xylene, tobacco tar and about 10,000 other things. Not really, but the list is long and impressive.

Again- think logically- sulfur- before you dismiss dmso.

See also this thread on Ways to cope with thick wildfire smoke.

Joshua Parke wrote:

From my experience and all the herbs I've taken.  The ginger and mullein combination is at the top of the list if you want to break up the stuff in your lungs and cough it out.  But I like all the other herbs as well to help build/strengthen/cleanse the lung tissues.

Multiple dosages daily seem to be best with herbs.  With the ginger/mullein combo, I would take it three or more times per day to get results, and I've noticed that it seems to be best way to take most all herbs.

So cool. I made up a batch of the mullein, mint and ginger for lung crud just before Covid hit. We've found it quite helpful.