Homemade Aspirin Beats Commercially Made Aspirin

Aspirin, like the kind you can find at the pharmacy, has been known to be a valid pain reliever, at least in the past, that is until Tylenol, Advil and Aleve came along.

   The problem with aspirin, is that it is very hard on the stomach. But to add to that, the kind you see at the drug store is no longer a pure product. It has to go through a process to make it into a tablet and you might want to evaluate whether it is worth taking it or not. On the other hand, Aleve and Advil are not good at all to take. Tylenol is hard on the liver. All of these things, including aspirin sold in the bottle, have been processed and have things added to them. Just as we would want to have pure food, it would be nice if we could have pure medicine. But how can we have pure medicine?

   I have good news on pure medicine. It helps to know a little history involved with aspirin making. I am going to paste a clip here from an article on making homemade aspirin. Here is the url, and you can read the whole article for yourself. http://www.bluestem.ca/willow-article1.htm

  This article, written by Ilene Sternberg is called, Willow Magic. "In the fifth century B.C., the Greek physician, Hippocrates, wrote that chewing bark of a willow tree could relieve pain and fever. (No wonder squirrels don’t get headaches.) In 1829, the effective ingredient, salicin, was successfully isolated from willow bark.  Toward the end of the 19th century, The Bayer Company in Germany trademarked a stable form of acetylsalicylic acid, calling it “aspirin,” the “a” from acetyl, “spir” from Spiraea (the salicin they used came from meadowsweet, Spiraea ulmaria, subsequently renamed Filpendula ulmaria), and “in,” a common ending in drug nomenclature."

     In the olden days, people would use the bark from the willow tree and make it into a tea and drink it. That is how aspirin originated. According to this article, people also chewed on willow bark. So, aspirin comes from willow bark, so I guess if you have a willow tree in your back yard, you are in luck, so to speak.

   But there is even an easier way for us, who are used to a lifestyle of convenience. You can buy this willow bark from amazon.com and make your own aspirin. The directions say to take 2 teaspoons of willow bark and let it steep in a cup of hot/boiling water for a couple of minutes. I have used it whenever I get a headache, which is rare now, for some reason.

   I have found that it works for me. I am glad I don't have to depend upon the drug store to get the kind of medicine I need. All I have to do is go to amazon.com and order the items I need.

   Click on the picture on the left, and see how easy it is. Of course, you can spend a lot of time doing Google searches on the best prices for willow bark.

  Also, although this is not necessary to make willow tea with, it is really cool to make it in a glass teapot with a section that will keep the bark separated from the tea. I have one that is similar to this one. You can pull the section in the middle out and it will strain the bark from the tea itself.

   I also have a little glass teapot that looks like this, and I love it. The only problem is, you have to take a strainer and pour the tea through a strainer because there is no strainer in the pot.


   I originally looked into this when I found out how aspirin can actually help my plants. But those who recommended the aspirin were in the U.K. and it was hard to convert the measurements to figure out how much water to how much aspirin to make the recipe. Whatever the measurements are, you don't need very much aspirin to help the plants have the effects of the aspirin. Here is another clip from the article concerning plants:

  "Another discovery: In the January, 2004 issue of The Avant Gardener, a monthly newsletter to which you can subscribe for $24/year at Horticultural Data Processors, Box 489, New York, N.Y. 10028, editor Thomas Powell notes that gardeners reported all sorts of plants growing remarkably better when given regular doses of tiny amounts of aspirin (1 part to 10,000 parts water; larger doses actually proved toxic),” and that The Agricultural Research Service is investigating the reasons behind aspirin’s beneficial effect."

  Thanks to this article, I now know the dosage of the aspirin to water. Now, to make aspirin for my plants!