The effort you NM folk put toward your posts blows us away. Informative, well written and decorated by beautiful photos, each one of these posts deserves a look through. What is so amazing is the power of this steemchain to bring us together to share these collective wisdoms.

Thanks to everyone here for your efforts this week. We appreciate all you do and love that we are leading from each other every day.

Stop Bleeding with Homemade Yarrow Powder

This postis a fascinating herbal remedy to stop bleeding. Achilles apparently used it with his men on the battlefield! Not only does @walkerland give us snippets of history, but a recipe for making yarrow powder to store for staunching wounds.

She writes:

**When used for wound care the leaves can be used to staunch the flow of blood. They can be mashed up and used as a fresh poultice or dried into a convenient powder. In addition to its ability to staunch bleeding, yarrow also contains beneficial antibacterial and antimicrobial properties that are also highly beneficial for wound care. The easiest way to use yarrow for wound care is in the form of a syptic powder, something that’s very easy to make at home. If you happen to have a food dehydrator you can have a batch of this powder made in under three hours, otherwise it will take a few days for the leaves to become dry and brittle. This shelf stable powder can last up to five years when stored correctly so it’s well worth the effort.

@walkerland always includes stunning images with her posts and I could read them for hours.

Would you believe we had two posts about yarrow on the blockchain this week? Check out @llfarms post too to add to your yarrow knowledge! We are trying to store this kind of stuff in the Archives on Discord, so if you need to know about yarrow, you can simply search there!

Photo by @llfarms - she's got lots to say about this wonder herb!

The Natural Medicine of Bamboo

@artemislives always has fascinating insights into the medicinal value of plants used in Thailand, as well as their cultural value. In this post she writes about the beauty of bamboo - not only as a food, but as a medicine and a balm for the soul.

She poetically writes:

And so we explore and appreciate the abundance of Mother Earth, and receive her medicine. No need for western style intensive agriculture or chemicals - bamboo thrives in a natural forest environment, renews itself endlessly, and is arguably one of the most sustainable & useful Asian plants. That sustainability makes it medicine to my mind, while the rustle of the early monsoonal breezes through its leaves never fails to heal and soothe my spirit.

A Recipe for Vivacious Hair Growth Using Homemade Shampoo

This post by @stuffing gives a recipe for homemade shampoo! The creativity and resourcefulness of NatMed folk blows us away.

She writes:

First step is cutting out all that toxic stuff I mentioned, I don’t dye my hair any more, I don’t go to hair dressers, I don’t use store bought shampoos and conditioners and I don’t use any sort of hair styling products unless they’re made from earthly nutritious products. Hair loss is a huge sign that something is out of alignment in your body, hair is not vital for survival, so the body will discard it and focus its energy somewhere else, at the chaos zone where it is needed. Hair loss is also mentally shocking and can be a huge blow to the self-esteem, so once you’ve got hair loss it can trigger stress which by all means, is not going to help the situation.

Western Osha

[This post] by @ofsedgeandsalt is fabulous - her plant explorations are always amazing as they focus not only on their medicinal value but wildcrafting and ethnobotany. Seriously a herbalist to follow - and a travelling one of that. She writes, of osha:

Osha is considered 'at risk' by the United Plant Savers, and organization that advocates for medicinal plants that are potentially sensitive to our current capitalist state of affairs. I actually interned with this organization back in 2011. This plant is at-risk partly because it over-harvested by commercial wild-crafters due to it's high demand on the marketplace. Despite this, the plant can be harvested in a sustainable manner by leaving some of the rootball and disturbing the soil around the plants for the seeds to go. Even if you don't harvest any, going around to stands and gathering seed and properly replanting them ensures the stands grow. It is my belief that a little human attention is good for increasing the populations of many plants that depend on some kind of disturbance to expand. Often this is from non-human influences, like flood, fire, other animals' fur or digging, wind, and more. But our intentional disturbance can be a good thing, not a bad one. On the other hand, capitalism and a growing human population and interest in natural medicines can decimate powerful plants like Osha.

@ofsedgeandsalt tincturing her osha

The Medicinal Cooking Collective - Diets For Ailments & Disease

Special credit must go to @eco-alex, whose amazing series challenge asks Steemfolk to discuss their responses to various ailments. Last week was about diabetes and you can find the curation post here. The second week is on cancer and you can find the outline here - we're loving reading the responses so far. Check out the #medicinal-cooking tag for some great writing and musings on natural medicines, such as special diets, herbs and other natural responses to diseases and other ailments. Sometimes trinitys are the best - #ecotrain, #medicinal-cooking and #naturalmedicine form a formidable hashtag trio!

Thoughts for Steem Challenge - Win Steem

The @naturalmedicine challenge for this fortnight is offering 7 steem worth of prizes - the original post said 4, but @riverflows is throwing in 3 steem of her own for her prize for the original @mountainjewel challenge, and we might even have a little more to reward you guys for the content you come up with! The half way mark is tomorrow. Still another whole week to enter - get 'em in! Read the challenge post here for rules.

Other natural medicine posts we appreciated this week included @porters, @trucklife-family, @eftnow (whose podcasts on tapping are always worth a listen) and @metametheus.

Please consider delegating to @naturalmedicine by clicking any amount below. The minimum entry for membership is 10SP, and helps support and celebrate your work with natural remedies, healings and nurturings on this gorgeous blockchain!

10SPII20SPII50SPII75SPII100SPII200II300SPII500SPII1000SP