The following information has been gathered and compiled over a period of years, through personal experience, while traveling, teaching classes that include T’ai Chi, Qi Gong, herbal information, martial arts and other health related subjects. The article also contains feedback from students and anecdotal information from friends and readers of my columns. The following are my opinions and deductions from those sources.
We went to relatives over thanksgiving holiday and came back with an unwanted traveler. I was the first to come down with laryngitis and a cough and gave it to my wife. I was done with it in a couple of days but it hung on with Celinda for an extended period. One of the problems was a lingering cough that would be almost gone one day and then back in full force the next. A longtime friend in Missouri told Celinda, during a telephone conversation, that she had a similar cold and cough and used oregano essential oil in a vaporizer to cut the phlegm and help eliminate the cough. We didn’t have any essential oil, but there was lots of oregano leaf in our herb cupboard.
A small handful of oregano in a quart of boiling water, and a dishtowel, makes a great vaporizer, plus the whole house smells like a pizza. Besides helping with her cold, there was also another benefit. I’ve never seen any information about oregano being used as a moisturizer and skin conditioner but Celinda said her face was softer and more hydrated after tenting her head and inhaling the steam.
Oregano is a perennial herb and a member of the mint family. Oregano may grow as tall as two feet tall under ideal conditions but usually averages between ten and twelve inches. The plant has oval leaves and lots of pink flowers clustered at the tops of the branches. The plant grows well in most temperate climates and in window boxes during the winter. Bees love oregano and it’s a nice plant to have in the garden to help promote pollination.
The most beneficial medicinal uses are respiratory infections, bronchitis, arthritis, rheumatism, colds, flu, general infections, sinusitis, asthma, emphysema, glaucoma, amenorrhea and hypertension.
Oregano’s therapeutic properties include: antibiotic, anti-infectious, anti-viral, antiseptic. It’s a stimulant, an expectorant, an anti-parasitic, has anti-inflammatory properties and is used in many parts of the world as a deodorant. James A. Duke, is his book The Green Pharmacy, says that oregano is excellent for treating arthritis, as a tea for glaucoma sufferers and that it has seven compounds that help lower high blood pressure.
Oregano is very high in antioxidants, which may explain its broad range of medicinal uses. Antioxidants help prevent damage done by free radicals. Free radicals are highly unstable oxygen molecules that are missing an electron and attempt to steal the electron from a healthy cell. When that happens, mutations can form in the cell the electron is stolen from. Cancers are the product of cell mutations.
Many herbs aren’t recognized as effective by the medical establishment because they don’t directly affect or cure anything. Oregano helps alleviate problems by strengthening the entire organism and immune response, which is then capable of dealing with problems such as the flu, colds and other maladies.
