Calendula

click image to enlarge

Calendula

Scientific Name: Calendula officinalis

Part Used: Flower

In a word: The mad skin plant

Uses: Skin healing agent used as a general skin cure and specific for diaper rash

What are the first things you see when you walk into a department store? Skin products and lots of them. Different manufacturers offer exotic creams crafted out of everything from somebody’s leftover placenta to the food off some poor bee’s plate. French and Swiss companies purveying little tubes with huge price tags sell us a variety of salves, lotions, creams, ointments, and pomades to pour over our bodies’ delicate covering – our skin. And we buy, buy, and buy, shelling out millions of dollars each year for the privilege of dabbing fine ointments on ourselves.

Unbeknownst to you, the all-time best substance for the skin can be had by planting a single plant in your backyard. A cream made of this plant will make the most expensive skin ointment look like margarine. This epidermal wonder is a plant called calendula, known in herbalist circles as "mother of the skin." The extra-good news is that for one-quarter the price of that tube of fancy skin cream, you can put in an acre of the plant that will make your skin as smooth and clear as a baby’s behind. Of course, you won’t need that much – ten plants should do for a family of four. And unlike many of the expensive creams, calendula cream will actually make a big difference in the way your skin feels and looks.

Calendula is truly the miracle worker of the skin, whether a person has lumps or bumps, scabs that won’t heal, eczema, athlete’s foot, acne, or even herpes sores.

Calendula – the dermatologists’, cosmetic surgeons’, and fancy cosmetic companies’ worst enemy – is a common garden plant that is as attractive as it is easy to grow. Its scientific name, Calendula officinalis, gives us a hint of what ancient physicians felt about its powers to heal and maintain skin in perfect health. Calendula refers to the calendar, as the plant blooms every month of the year. The second word, officinalis, refers to the workshop of an alchemist, a place where lead was said to be converted into gold. Turning lead into gold is no small feat, but the ancients felt that calendula could perform an equally amazing transformation on the skin, hence the name.

If you are twisted enough to spend your days plodding through medieval physicians’ manuals, you will find an interesting phenomenon. Plants with extraordinary powers to cure were frequently said to be magical as well as medicinal. Calendula is no exception. People were so amazed with what it could do for the skin that they thought it might help out with other obstinate conditions. In this case, witches of the day used calendula to add some electricity to love potions and charms, as being single is clearly an obstinate condition!

The fact that old medical herbals tend to contain some magical uses tends to put many people off herbalism. It shouldn’t. Human beings have always sought to explain the inexplicable. In the 1600s, calendula’s power to heal was put down to magic; today we say that chemicals contained in the plant stimulate health in the skin. Whatever the age, it is human nature to seek rationalizations for processes that cannot be seen. You apply calendula cream to crappy skin, and several weeks later it looks and feels better. How you choose to explain this phenomenon doesn’t really matter, as long as you note what calendula can do for the skin.

Calendula is truly the miracle worker of the skin, whether a person has lumps or bumps, scabs that won’t heal, eczema, athlete’s foot, acne, or even herpes sores. Perusing old herbals, the reader quickly discovers that calendula has been used to treat every skin condition ever dreamed up. It is an all-purpose skin-healing agent. Not surprisingly, wherever calendula grows, it is used to treat the skin.

Not only is calendula a product with a universal endorsement, it has stood the test of time. We are talking about a track record of at least 1,000 years. Even more exciting, it is perfectly safe.

Before we travel further into the healing world of calendula, this might be a good time to talk about skin in general. Of course, you are familiar with it – it covers your entire body. If you are like most people, though, you don’t give your skin much thought other than to fret over an occasional pimple. Skin in many regards is a window into your insides, and indicator of your mental and physical health. Have you ever noticed that after a two-week holiday, your skin looks radiant and that obstinate rash seems to have disappeared? Similarly, have you ever taken a look in the mirror when you have had a bout of the flu or been out drinking for a few days? It isn’t a pretty sight, is it?

Like it or not, our skin is a barometer of our overall health. Using calendula or any other cream on skin that is indicating bad health is a complete waste of time. When it comes to skin, you have to get the horse in front of the cart. There are skin troubles, and there are skin troubles, and before you start using calendula cream, you need to determine whether or not your skin troubles are rooted in poor general health or some other underlying condition.

The advertising and medical communities have been selling us quick fixes for some time now. The sales angle sounds like this: you can do whatever you want to your body, you can abuse the hell out of your skin, and with this little product, you can look young and vibrant forever. Well, it just ain’t so.

If you have chronically bad skin, take a look at how you live life emotionally and physically, and if you don’t take care of yourself, start. This sounds like an oversimplification, but it isn’t. If you eat poorly, start eating properly. If you don’t sleep enough, make it your business to get your butt into bed at a reasonable time. If your emotional life is out of kilter, do something to address the issue. Having said this, if your skin is bad because you don’t take care of yourself, using calendula in combination with improving your overall health routine will truly make a difference.

Let me stay up on my soapbox for just a few moments more. My legs aren’t tired yet. There is one last thing to remember: skin is permeable. What you put on your skin can and will make its way into your body. Just think of all the transdermal patches on the market today. The fact that substances move from the skin into the body is a great thing when these substances are good for us. On the other hand, when they are less than salubrious, it can be a scary thing. A prime example of this is steroid cream, a very commonly used preparation universally prescribed for problematic skin. It works wonders. Anyone with long-term skin problems knows how quickly it reduces inflammation and speeds the healing process.

What he or she may not know is that steroids block the immune system, which is something people living in this killer-bacteria and virus-filled world cannot afford. Steroid cream is fat soluble, and every time you apply it, it goes straight into the body and temporarily reduces the functioning of your immune system. Let me remind you that your immune system is the police force in charge of keeping cancer under control, and oh, so much more. People who use steroid creams tend to use them on chronic skin conditions, which means that they use them on an ongoing basis. That’s just what you don’t need, a chronically impaired immune system. Generally, the use of steroid cream falls into the category of symptomatic treatment of skin problems; it merely treats the lumps and bumps without getting at the reason the lumps and bumps keep popping up. If you are a steroid-cream junky, find a health-care practitioner who will help you address the source of your problem. Don’t settle for anything less. Having said this, I will also say that many people have used calendula cream in place of their steroid cream with wonderful success. It doesn’t work as fast, but then again, it doesn’t impair your immune system either.

Calendula is commonly known as pot marigold, garden marigold, or sometimes just plain marigold. Here is where we get into some trouble. There are two marigolds sold at garden centers. One is medicinal, and the other is not. The two plants are entirely different and unrelated. One is Tagetes erecta, and the other is Calendula officinalis. If you have ever wondered why scientific names exist, now you know.

For this reason, particularly when we are talking about medicinal herbs, we must use the scientific name when discussing and, most important, when purchasing our plants. The other plant called marigold in English-speaking countries doesn’t do anything for the skin. The one you want is Calendula officinalis. Of course, you can call it Bert if you want to, just as long as you know that you have the right plant or seeds in your hot little hands. Though I am all in favor of local seed sellers and nurserymen, when it comes to medicinal plants, where making sure that you have the right one is critical, you may be better off sticking to large national concerns that are very unlikely to sell you the wrong item.

Calendula is a member of the daisy family, along with chrysanthemums, sunflowers, Jerusalem artichokes, elecampane, asters, thistles, chamomile, dandelion, burdock, and globe artichokes. A number of members of this family, most notably chamomile, elecampane, dandelion, and burdock, are used to treat skin problems. It would seem that this family contains a set of chemicals that in some fashion speed skin healing, although the exact nature of these chemicals and their interaction remains a mystery. What is no mystery, however, is that around the globe different ethnic groups, from the Arabians to the indigenous people of the Americas, were all using a daisy relative to increase the health of skin long before the age of international communication. I think you will agree that this is more than a mere coincidence.

Unlike some of its relations that bloom once and call it quits for the season, calendula is a blooming fool. Once it starts, you can’t stop the poor little flower factory, and calendula is usually still at it when the stinging frosts come and knock it to the ground. The plant has been in cultivation for so long that no one really knows where it originated. It can be a perennial plant or an annual plant depending on the severity of the winter it must endure. People living in climates with temperatures well below freezing for months on end will have to plant calendula as an annual, but in more moderate climes, calendula will keep on going year after year. This preference for mild winters hints that the plant may have originally sprung up somewhere around the Mediterranean basin where the winters are mild.

As long as physicians have been writing medical books, they have written about calendula. Dioscorides, Plinius, and many more ancient healers described it as being tops for the skin. In the writings of Albertus Magnus, calendula gets a lot of attention. The gentleman felt that it was excellent for healing skin problems, the bites of wild animals, and liver and spleen complaints. That this 17^th century writer mentioned skin problems and liver malfunctions in the same breath is not unusual.

The liver’s function is to remove toxins from the body. When it is under the weather, it can’t do its job, and toxins that would otherwise be flushed from the system just sit around, making the skin look like hell. Do you have an old aunt who is famous for hitting the sauce once the guests have gone home? Ever notice how nasty her skin looks? One of the many downsides of alcoholism is that the battering the liver takes results in a poor complexion, to say the least. We now know that a poorly functioning liver is at the root of many a ruddy complexion. Mr. Magnus’ cure for poor skin may have been an inside as well as an outside treatment, as the daisy family is also famous for containing a number of bitter elements that stimulate the liver. Dandelion, burdock, and globe artichoke have all been used quite successfully in treating liver, and subsequently, skin conditions.

The doubters in our midst will be happy to know that calendula has been picked apart from top to bottom with the aim of discovering that miraculous substance that speeds skin healing. At this phase of the game, it cannot be said that the chemical has been found. In fact, it is unlikely that it will ever be found, because chances are that there is no it, just a series of its that work together to create nice-looking skin. Modern people seem more comfortable when the products they use have at least a mile-long list of ingredients, so to put you at ease, here are some for the label of your soon-to-be calendula cream: volatile oil, bitter substances, carotenoid substances (lycopin, neolycopin, citroxathin, carotin, violaxanthin, flavoxanthin, chrysanthemaxanthin), gums, mucilage, rein, albumine, malic acid, cholesterin esters of laurin, myristin, palmatin acids, vitamin C, arnidol and faradiol (dihdroxy alcohols), calendin, triterpendiols, parafine, cerylalcohol, stimasterin, glycosides, and glucosides.

Remind you of the back of your shampoo bottle? I suspect that this is just a beginning; in time more will be discovered. Please note that the pharmaceutical companies, the very groups insisting that herbal medicine is a farce, are the ones searching plants inside and out for the active ingredients that make them so "ineffective."

In the laboratory, calendula extracts have been proven to be anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antiprotozoal, antiulcerous, immunostimulating, and promoting of epethelization. To put that into plain English, extracts of calendula both take care of several causes of skin problems, such as bacterial and viral infections, and treat a number of the symptoms, such as inflammation and ulceration. This business about increasing epithelialization is a critical element referring to the skin’s ability to knit itself back together. Some chemical in the plant actually stimulates the rejoining of broken skin, which is just what you need when you have some sort of abrasion. So you see, calendula really is the all-around best skin treatment; it addresses the symptoms as well as their causes.

The world is slowly starting to wake up to the fact that the sun is not good for the skin. The increase in skin cancers in recent years is alarming. Matthiolus was an early physician to point out that calendula was of great help in treating cancer. He referred to the plant as Herba cancri, or cancer herb. In his 1626 book, the old doctor couldn’t say enough good things about it. From the Romans forward, calendula has been used to treat carcinoma, and recent evidence indicates that it may in fact contain chemicals that are both antitumor and anticancer. In that the sun will not be going away anytime soon, we need to think about what we can do to undo the daily damage it inflicts on our skin. With the plant’s anticancer and immunostimulating powers, a daily once-over with calendula cream may be the answer. This is particularly true for people who work out of doors or are silly enough to worship the sun.

A not-so-pleasant and yet ever-so-common modern malady is herpes, oral and genital. Once the talk of the town, herpes has been cast aside by even more deadly viral infections, but it is no less a problem, particularly if you suffer from the affliction where the sun shines or where it doesn’t. Calendula has been used to treat herpes sores, skin ulcers, warts, chicken pox, and shingles. All of these have a common denominator: they are skin eruptions or lesions caused by really mean and hateful little viruses. The Romans, who called calendula verrucaria, the wart-curing plant, noticed that skin eruptions of a periodic nature, like herpes and warts, were effectively eradicated by the plant. Russian scientists looked into this eruption-preventing action and have found that the tincture of calendula has a killer action on the APR-8, A2 Frunze flu viruses, as well as – hold on to your seat – an inhibitory influence on the herpes simplex virus. The ancients’ use of calendula to halt skin eruptions caused by viruses was quite astute. Its combination of anti-inflammatory, antiulcerous, and antiviral capacities makes calendula just what the doctor ordered when it comes to treating herpes.

Herpes sufferers can usually sense an outbreak before it happens, and this is critical if they plan to use calendula to avert an actual breakout. Herbalists have found that if herpes sufferers apply calendula cream at the first warning signs, they can avoid a full-blown case of ulcers! Read, believe, and suffer no more. Thousands have had fantastic success with this treatment. Some herbalists feel that it is best to take calendula internally as well as externally, and they recommend a tea of the flowers as well as generous applications of the cream on the areas usually affected.

Calendula is also marvelous for healing any sort of ulcer in the mouth, be it from the herpes virus or another source. In fact, as long ago as the 1940s, German surgical clinics treating mouth and maxillary diseases experimented with Calendula extracts as a healing agent for post-surgical wounds and found that a gargle made with the plant did indeed speed the healing process. If you have gum disease, you may want to start gargling with a light tea made with the flowers of your new calendula plant.

Nothing could be more pathetic than a child with the chicken pox or measles. During the 17^th century, calendula petals were used in the treatment of small pox and measles, as well as animal and insect bites. In the modern day, calendula comes to the rescue whether the patient has been attacked by a marauding band of mosquitoes or has picked up a dose of the pox at the playground. Generous application of the cream will greatly diminish the discomfort. This is probably due to the plant’s ability to reduce inflammation. Itchy skin feels better under a layer of calendula.

Accidents happen, and it’s important to have something in the medicine cabinet that can be used in first-aid situations. Calendula cream is one of the best candidates for skin tragedies, from burns to abrasions. It will help skin heal faster and hurt less. Don’t forget, calendula has antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal actions, which will eliminate infection on the wound site, as well as an anti-inflammatory action, which will reduce pain.

Another common skin complaint today is eczema, and as with many chronic conditions, there aren’t always easy answers to the problem. Many herbalists have discovered that getting patients off dairy products eliminates the condition. Others have found that eczema sufferers are allergic to aluminum, and replacing all aluminum cooking utensils with stainless steel makes a huge difference. Even with these two known causes of the disorder out of the way, some people still suffer from eczema, and for many of them, calendula cream works to keep the condition under control. Part of the syndrome is terrible itching which leads to scratching which leads to scabs which leads to scratching, and so on. Calendula cream both soothes the itching and speeds the healing of the broken tissue, thus ending the itch cycle.

Athlete’s foot fungus is yet another unpleasant condition that can be eradicated with the use of calendula cream. You may remember that ingredients contained in the plant have antifungal powers. Well, that is just what you need when you have athlete’s foot fungus, or, worse yet, when those same fungi have made their home between your legs. Cream containing calendula extract will kill the nasty fungi and release you from your bondage of itching.

You can’t lose having this one on your shelf. However, you need to be aware of one thing. Physicians some time ago used to wonder why calendula cream seemed to work some times and not others. Modern research has answered the question. In the old days, people made calendula cream from either a water extract or an alcohol extract. It has been discovered that calendula has two sorts of ingredients, some that are water-soluble and others that are alcohol soluble. Moreover, it has been discovered that the water-soluble ingredients are the elements that treat viral infections, and the alcohol-soluble ingredients are those that treat bacterial infection. So you can see why sometimes calendula creams worked on herpes sores, and other times it didn’t; if the cream wasn’t made with a water extract, the viral-suppressing chemicals wouldn’t be present.

Formerly just the flowers of calendula were used in skin ointments, but recent discoveries hint that some of the best parts of the plant can be found in the stem!

Practitioners’ Advice

Calendula speeds skin healing, whether applied in tincture or cream form. It can be used whenever the skin needs some healing. A sunburn, nappy rash, an abrasion achieved falling off a bike are all healed with the use of Calendula. It is especially good for those people living active lives and for houses filled with children. Calendula has so many uses it should be a staple in the medicine chest. When disaster strikes, reach for Calendula and you will be a happy customer.

QUICK REVIEW

History: One of the oldest wound healers known

Science: Contains antimicrobial and healing compounds

Practitioners opinion: Great for wounds, nappy rash, herpes

Directions: Tincture (1:5, 25% alcohol): 2.5ml 3 times daily

Spray (1:5, 25% alcohol): Apply to affected area 3 times daily