Good afternoon Susan,
A flat teaspoon of powdered fennel seed is about 1,000 mg. A heaped teaspoon is about 3,000 mg. A tablespoon is a lot: 15,000 or 20,000 mg.
I prefer to get most of my vitamins and minerals from food too. Some are difficult to get enough of: folic acid (frozen spinach) and silicic acid (apple cores, horse tail, millet, oats). We used a sea salt during the vegan experiment, but the sea salts are for magnesium. What the thyroid needs is iodine. That's in kelp, but here, we can buy iodine enriched kitchen salt in the supermarket, and the bread contains it too.
Eve M suggested alfalfa as a substitute for the beremeal in her program. Beremeal contains folates. You have enough folic acid in you vitamin B complex/aminoacid blend: vitamin B9. I'm not really sure, but I thought alfalfa is also a phyto-estrogen. Buy the seed and google a tutorial. You keep them humid in a jar that sits at a 45 degree angle with the opening down. The seeds sprout, and two weeks later you have fresh alfalfa vegetable, like fresh water cress. It's a bit of a hassle the first time, but not if you do it routinely.
I have barley grass as powder. It is an anti-androgen, so I never used it: I get enough anti-androgen from the hops.
I have powdered FG seeds and powdered fennel seeds. I just put a heaped teaspoon of FG in 1/2 glass of cold water, stir and drink it. Then flush it with another 1/2 glass, because it mixes poorly. I put the powdered FN seed in a coffee filter in an old coffee maker: that's the fast way to make tea.
The goat's rue I use is chopped dried leaves. They are toxic, but the tea I draw from it is safe. I have a 200 ml chinese porcelain tea mug with a lid and a porcelain tea strainer that sits in the mug under the lid. I put 1,300 mg GR in the strainer, and pour hot water over it so the GR is under the water level. Then let it steep for 20 minutes. The lid keeps it warm. Then I put the lid upside down, let the strainer drip out and put it on the lid. I then drink the tea directly from the mug.
I have dried hops flowers. Powdered dried hops flowers are just a bit cheaper, and work just as well. I sometimes use the coffee maker to make hops tea for before a meal. The hops contains 10 times more xanthohumol than 8-prenylnaringenin then. Xanthohumol is the anti-androgen in hops. Large doses (4,000+ mg) decrease IGF-1, so keep the dose of hops tea low.
More often, I put two tablespoons (2,500 mg) of dried hops flowers in milk with raisins, honey, breakfast cereals and 2 tablespoons (30,000 mg) of broken brown flax seed. In this way, the hops is digested instead of ingested, and much of the xanthohumol digests to 8-prenylnaringenin, which is the phyto-estrogen in hops. After the flax seed experiment, I plan to replace the breakfast cereals by oat flakes for two weeks. Oats contain vitamin B6, and decrease SHBG.
I have red maca root flour. I stir it in 1/2 glass of cold water in the morning.
I use turmeric powder only as a kitchen herb. I color the rice yellow with it. It's in curry sauce for chicken too.
You need a tea pot and a tea strainer. Metal strainers ruin the taste of some teas, because the phenols react chemically with iron. Therefore, I use the tea mug with the porcelain strainer. I had a glass tea pot with a glass strainer, but it broke. Put tea leaves in the strainer, pour enough hot water over them so they are submerged. Let the tea steep for 10 or 20 minutes (10 for leaves, 20 for more woody herbs or powdered seeds). Lift the strainer out and let it drip out.
Some powdered seeds are too fine for the strainer. Then I use the coffee maker. You can make tea from barley grass, goat's rue leaves, hops flowers (powdered or just dried), and powdered FG or FN seeds. Tea from whole seeds doesn't work: the hot water cannot get through the peels of the seeds fast enough to extract the active ingredients in 20 minutes.
Barley grass is always powdered, because it's too long to put in a jar. Alfalfa is fresh sprouts, like water cress.
Some people use a coffee grinder to make powder from whole FN or FG seeds. For whole hops flowers, the kitchen blender will do.
You can make massage lotions from tea, but the more obvious way to make a batter is to steep the powder or the leaves in olive oil or massage oil for two weeks and then strain. Use a coffee filter for powders that are too fine for the strain's mesh size. Tea may work better if you already have a massage cream or milk that mixes well with water.
Good luck, you'll be an experienced kitchen herbalist after all this
I tried the kelp wrap..haha no go, hard to chew better to but them in soup or other foods with liquid. Hey Isabelle I am going to order some herbs but not sure what to order or powder/seeds/cut up..I def. want FG, FN, Tumeric now I am thinking of order hops and GR I am not sure with hops cause every time I drank beer I would break out next day, maybe cause it was fermented..k FYI..Dr. Andrew Weil is going to be on Dr.Oz I think Monday..ok..need to do something else now so be back later..
