ABOUT
- Herbal Medicine
- The Clinic
- Richard Whelan

HERBS
- Alphabetically

CONDITIONS TREATED
- By Group
- Alphabetical

CLINIC INFORMATION
- Clinic Hours
- Clinic Location

This months ~ FEATURED ARTICLES
	High Blood Pressure
.
FEATURED HERBS
	Kola Nut
.
FEATURED VIDEOS
	Pregnancy Nausea

What is it?

The leafy part of the plant that is chopped and dried when the seeds are ripe. In olden times herbalists liked to prepare their tinctures from the green flowering unripe wild Oats and there is still differing opinion as to whether the green oatstraw is to be preferred to the more mature golden variety.

How has it been used?

Oats have been a staple food for many generations. The tradition of using the 'straw', the dried herb of the oats plant, as a medicine also goes back a long way and has a strong theme of being used for nervous system disease and debility.

Oats have been used to treat conditions such as headaches, migraines, shingles and fatigue. Oats tincture and oatstraw tea have been recommended for degenerative wasting conditions such as multiple sclerosis and there is a history of using Oats in epilepsy treatments.

Oats help lift a depressed mood and help people who are withdrawing from addictive drugs or alcohol.

TOP | HERBS A-Z LIST

Personal experiences

This last point above about the use of oats extracts in withdrawal from drugs or alcohol is intriguing. If you look into it you will see that this is not an isolated idea from one community, oats extracts have been rated as helping in the area of drug withdrawal by diverse people in different places around the world, including some really heavy duty opiate type addiction problems. Oats extracts seem to nourish the brain and nervous system at a profoundly deep level. You cannot overdo oats extracts. A generous handful of the oatstraw in a pot of tea will have a calming and uplifting effect on the flintiest of herbal skeptics.

Oatstraw combines perfectly with Valerian and Motherwort for physical tension and with Skullcap and Chamomile as a nervous system restorative.

Excerpt from Felter & Lloyd's Kings Dispensatory from 1898

Oats extracts rank among the most important restoratives for conditions depending upon nervous prostration, and for the nervous exhaustion consequent upon typhoid and other low fevers, and the accidental disorders arising from these complaints, as weak heart, insomnia, etc. In enfeebled states of the heart muscle it acts as a good tonic to improve the energy of the organ, and is recommended to prevent relapsing cardiac rheumatism. It has been much used as a remedy to assist the morphine-consumer to throw off the habit, and to sustain the nervous system while undergoing that ordeal.

TOP | HERBS A-Z LIST