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What is it?
The dried 'berries' (actually they are soft little 'cones' like those from Pine trees) of Juniper, a tree that if given room can mature to a magnificent 10 meters. Juniper has been highly regarded as a purifying medicine by many cultures, its effects are very powerful.
The Greeks used Juniper as a purifying herb and the original Olympians believed the berries increased physical stamina in their athletes. The ancient Egyptians used Juniper extensively as a medicine and also to embalm their dead. The Chinese, American Indians, and old European cultures of medicine all highly regarded Juniper as a blood purifying kidney tonic. One of the great European herbalists of the 20th century, R.F. Weiss, prescribed dandelion in the spring and juniper in the autumn for chronic arthritis, gout, neuralgia, and rheumatism.
I do a blood test with my patients that we look at together through a microscope-to-screen relay at over 1000x magnification. The people who benefit the most from Juniper have blood with a murky, congested appearance with noticeable particles of 'debris' in the plasma. Other people who do well on Juniper often get a sense of heavy tiredness, retain fluid or get a dull, heavy pain in their low backs. I think it is the strongest of all of our medicines to cleanse and strengthen the kidneys. I often use Juniper tincture but another common way I use Juniper comes from Father Sebastian Kneipp, a highly regarded 19th century German Doctor who was visited by people from all over Europe for his treatments. He said “When a new patient arrives I always start in by advising the taking of six juniper berries the first day. On the second day I raise the amount to seven. On the third to eight—and so on, adding one berry each day until the total of twenty is reached. The effect of these juniper berries on the ailing is so marvelous—so miraculous—that the patient then gladly persists with the remainder of the entire treatment" The best way to take Juniper in this way is to chew and swallow the berries with plenty of water first thing in the morning.
Further note on Juniper ~ Wrongly Maligned! Just about every book or article on Juniper berry carries the caution Once a caution like that gets into the books then usually nobody thinks to question it. Fortunately, in the case of Juniper, this caution has been well questioned. It was traced back to the first time it appeared in print to a man called Potter in 1898. Potter in turn got his information from experiments done at the time with animals using high doses of the isolated essential oil from Juniper. However a recent toxicological study on rats also using high doses of juniper oil found no damage to their kidneys. The authors determined that the reputation for juniper oil as a renal irritant came from the use of oils containing high levels of pinenes which are known irritants to the urinary tract. Higher levels of these pinenes would result from co-distillation of needles branches and unripe berries with the ripe berries, a practice that no longer occurs today. It was concluded that ripe juniper berries and juniper oil distilled only from the ripe berries can be used entirely safely.
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