Early spring slippery elm branch covered with fruit
Since I was a child slippery elm has been in my life. If one of us kids got a sliver that we couldn't get out, mom would make up a poultice of wet slippery elm bark to draw it out. It was often mixed with herbs like plantain or comfrey and slapped onto wounds. If the wound was festering, thyme would be ground up and put into the poultice. If one of the guys "indulged" during the weekend on too much rich food and good booze, they would finish off the weekend eating slippery elm gruel with a bit of catnip added. If someone would have gas in the house mom would just put a glass of watery slippery elm bark gruel on the counter and walk away. The person with gas would discretely go into the kitchen, drink the gruel and no one would say another thing (no teasing allowed in earshot of mom). Healing from stomach distress or if we had diarrhea was done with gentle slippery elm bark soup. When grampa was in the hospital for his heart, granma would take him slippery elm bark powder because the hospital food upset his digestive tract so badly.
I would help my aunt heal with slippery elm bark in her practice for several years. She fed slippery elm bark gruel, mixed with the appropriate herbs to many people with digestive problems. From simple upset stomach to bleed ulcers, slippery elm bark mixed with warm or cool water has a gentle, coating action that can deliver medicine to the digestive tract and keep it there like an internal bandage. Adding powdered goldenseal or barberry root to the gruel puts an antibiotic right at the source of the infection and holds it there. Small amounts of comfrey mixed in can coat the esophagus and help heal acid reflux disease. Any eating disorder seems to be helped from slippery elm bark and catnip gruel, from appetite fatigue due to stress to anorexia due to emotional problems. Even a weakened body can get the nutrients it needs from slippery elm bark gruel. Often a bit of duck weed or chickweed will be added for an extra nutrient boost if the patient can handle that. Mixed with marijuana it can help a cancer patient to regain their appetite. Aunt Carol use to make enemas of a cup of water, 1 teaspoon of slippery elm (it expands a great deal so you don't need much), a tablespoon of dried chamomile, and a tablespoon of white elm bark to use for anal infections or internal hemorrhoids.
Today I use it for all those things, plus now I sprinkle a pinch of powdered slippery elm bark over one of my dog's food. She was a rescue and had come to me with irritable bowel syndrome. If you love your dog, don't feed them manufactured dog food. Really, who thinks dried kibble (what's in that crap?) from a bag is what ANY being that you love should eat? Would you eat it day in and day out? I switched my Siere to an all natural diet from my farm, started giving her yogurt and a sprinkle of slippery elm bark and marshmallow root and within 2 months her intestines had healed from the chemical laden diet she had been fed for the first year and a half of her life.
In a survival situation people think they will just eat whatever they have available. This has actually been proven not to be the case however. When a body gets stressed a syndrome called appetite fatigue happens where a person will literally stop eating anything that they are not use to. This is why we crave "comfort foods" during stressful times. We crave what we are use to eating. People who were caught in wars sometime would starve to death because their bodies refuse to add the stress of a new diet to an already stressful situation. A gruel made of slippery elm bark can ease us into a different diet than what we are use to eating, taking the stress out of digesting new things. Slippery elm bark gruel is a way to get nutrition to those who's bodies simply refuse to eat.
This winter a friend was diagnosed with an ulcer and we healed her with no chemical medicines with a gruel made of catnip, comfrey, and slippery elm powder. The use of comfrey internally is controversial so research it before you use the following recipe:
1/4 oz of dried catnip
1/4 oz of dried comfrey leaves (1/8 oz of dried comfrey root if the ulcer is bad-but use at own risk)
1/4 oz slippery elm bark powder
2 cups of good water (not fluoride or chlorinated water)
Boil the water, turn off heat, infuse the water with the catnip and comfrey leaves. If using comfrey root at your own risk, boil the root in the water for 10 minutes before turning off heat and putting in the catnip leaves. This should sit for at least 30 minutes covered with a cloth. Healing teas are stronger than you everyday drinking tea. Strain out plant material and add powdered slippery elm bark. Allow this to swell for a couple minutes. Take sips of this several times a day--no less than 7 times each day.
Mixed the same amount of these herbs with 4 to 6 oz of water and you have a healing paste that can be used on most skin ulcers as well.
Fruiting slippery elm branch
To find slippery elm you need to look at edge areas because that is where they grow most numerously. If you happen to find one in the middle of a field it will be large, growing up to 100 feet tall, but the majority of slippery elms grow along the edges of fields or disturbed lands and only grow to be about 40 feet tall. It's bark is quite rough, but the top of the ridges on the bark are flat. The leaves are like an pointed oval and are quite rough. It flowers very early in the spring and this is often the best time to look for it for not many other trees are even leafing out yet. The flowers aren't showy, but they are unique, looking kind of like someone put a whole lot of bunches of thin red wire onto a tree along the branches. By this time here in Wisconsin the flowering is over. Usually it happens in March, the further south you go, of course, the earlier the tree blooms. Now the "fruit" or seed pods have take over from the flowers. They tend to be flat circles that have a visible seed in the middle.
Slippery elm fruits
This is when I harvest, before the leaves come out, when the sap is rising up through the inner bark. It is the inner bark that we harvest and this can damage a tree. While not quite as much as the American elm, which is almost extinct, the slippery elm is susceptible to Dutch Elm Disease, a parasite that gets under the bark and slowly kills the tree. Once there, there is no stopping these little beetles and the tree will die, so it is best to put a mud plaster or bleach spray over the wound you will cause to the tree.
Bark of slippery elm
Cut a vertical rectangle into the bark, making sure that you do NOT cut all the way around the tree. This is called girdling and it will kill the tree. Many commercial sources of slippery elm do this, so if you are buying slippery elm bark, make certain you are getting it from a reputable source. I can not image that a tree will give as powerful of healing if it is dying while giving up the healing source. Try to stress the tree as little as possible. It is shown that plants and animals who live less stress filled lives give better tasting, and higher in nutrients flesh than those that are stressed. Even if you have no caring for the life you are taking know that you will not have as strong of medicine in something you allow to be stressed (and I can't think of something more stressful than dying).
Peal away the rectangle you have made and spray the area with 1 to 4 ratio of bleach and water or put on a mud plaster to protect the wound until the tree heals itself. Then peal off the outer bark. If the tree is healthy this happens quite easily. The bark "slips" because of how mucilaginous it is. This is why it heals so well. Dry the inner bark for at least two weeks. I like to store all my herbs as whole as possible so I don't grind or grate my elm bark until I am ready to use it. I feel this preserves the nutrients in the bark, but the mucilage will be there even if the nutrients have faded, so if you mix it with other nutrient rich herbs you don't need to worry about preserving the slippery elm's.
People are often amazed at how well this herb works. Some people who have never trusted herbal medicine will get very excited at how well slippery elm bark powder heals all sorts of ailment. Many hospitals used it in great quantities until Dutch Elm Disease made buying it a bit more expensive than the pharmaceutical companies could make their drugs. For those of us that can gather it or don't have the access to a doctor's prescription pad though, slippery elm bark is often a cheaper, safer, and more effective cure than many drugs created in a lab. This is one of the first herbs that people new to herbal healing should learn, especially if you live in an area that it grows. It is a healing ally in uncertain times that as a herbalist I can not do without.
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