ELECAMPANE: IN HELEN’S HONOR

ELECAMPANE
(Inula helenium Asterales)
Family:  Asteraceae, formerly Compositae
IN HELEN’S HONOR
​by Linda Hall
​

 
Once upon the land of myth lived Helen, queen of the city-state of Sparta in ancient Greece and divinely beautiful daughter of the union between a mortal woman and the all-powerful god Zeus.  Under the weight of her political stature, as well as being a woman of pleasing physical attributes in a male-driven warrior society, Helen was often troubled and when so, would seek out campagnas, open rural expanses filled with flowers many times wild and glorious.  Walking through a campagna’s petalled patchwork, the beauty of the flowers would refresh her senses and lift her heart.  Yet their beauty could not compare to her own for she was known as the most beautiful woman in all the land, a quality that had not only brought her deserved praise but many trials, as well, for she was greatly desired by men, and many wanted to possess her.
Upon one visit to a campagna, Helen was especially sorrowfully afflicted as she was remembering having been kidnapped from the home of her childhood and accosted by the man who abducted her.  Although lost in her remembrance, she became suddenly alert to a plant standing nobly in her path, one whose flowers, particularly bright and vivid as the sun, brought forth in her feelings of warmth and gladness.  As tall as the plant stood, she was able to gently clasp one flower to her breast, but in so doing, she was abruptly encircled by the arms of Paris, a prince of Troy, a man who, under the daunting influence of Aphrodite, goddess of Beauty and Sexual Love, seized Helen, and in a delirium of lust, assailed her, stealing her from the land of her home.
The flower, having been so appreciated by Helen, grieved over her fate, willing itself to grow in each and every place her tears had fallen upon the campagna, for Helen had wept, her heart breaking to find herself once again brutally shorn from the place she called home.  Growing along her trail of tears, the flowering plant immortalized itself as symbol of Helen’s loss, that of unexpected and undesired departure from the home she loved, and forever after, the plant was oft used in the making of remedial cordials for the grieving heart.

                                                                                                       ***
Inula helenium remembers Helen, queen of Sparta.
Tall and statuesque (the plant can reach heights of eight to nine feet), Inula helenium proudly raises its multiple flowering sun discs into the heavens, their long, slender, bright-yellow floral rays seeking the arc of the sun and revealing a radiance almost equal to Helen’s divine beauty.
Motivated by a competitive urgency to advance across great swaths of open expanses (Inula helenium is considered an invasive plant), it replays Helen’s crisscrossing of mythical campagnas, forever renewing itself in the many brooding footsteps made by an uneasy queen.
The knowing of a woman’s loss and grief, and the succor that is the remedy for it, lies buried deep in the roots of Inula helenium.  The plant has naturalized in North America and spreads easily by aggressively creating new growth from its thick, fleshy roots, making available its wisdom to the many who, grief-stricken, walk the campagnas of life seeking solace, the kind of solace first found in the sunny beam of an elegant flower.
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                                                                                                            ***
Inula is a Latin classical word, its origin lost in the mists of time but thought to derive from a Greek word meaning to clean medicinally, to purify.  Additionally, inula is believed to be a corruption of the Greek word helenion, which in Latin becomes helenium, and helenium references the fabled Helen.
By the eighteenth century, the Swedish botanist and physician, Carl Linnaeus, grants this flowering plant its official name, the Latin binomial Inula helenium, in obvious reference to the plant’s role in the myth of Helen.
On a less scientific basis, by the beginning of the 5th century, the plant is referred to in Latin as inula campana.  In Medieval Latin, the name is enula campana; in Medieval English it becomes elena campana; and by the mid 1500’s, we arrive at elecampane, the plant’s common name and reference not only to the open rural plains, flat stretches of countryside, and spacious campagnas where this beautiful flowering herb can grow, but also to the connection of the word elena to the word helen.  Elena means “bright, shining light” and derives from helen, a word which sources from the Greek word helene meaning torch.  So, now we have a flower of the open fields associated with beauty and light; purity and radiance; fire and torches; all things shining that remind us of the bright, cleansing beauty of the sun.  Indeed, the Asteraceae family in which elecampane resides is often referred to as the sunflower family, denoting the disc-shaped brilliance of some of its members, most notably the sunflower itself (Helianthus annuus).
The etymologies of both the binomial and the common name of this herb wind far back into history with obvious association to Helen and campagnas.  The centuries-old roots underpinning the names given to this flowering herb are mired in a mythical mystery of poetic beauty and tragic loss, but whether mythological or real, the woman walking a campagna whose tears became the menstruum of this herb’s essence is the true key to the powers this plant possesses.                        
                                                                                                ***

                                                                 Flowers Many Times Wild and Glorious
The Asteraceae family hosts myriad diverse vascular flowering plants as well as some shrubs, trees, and vines, and is estimated to consist of approximately 35,000 currently existing species.  Of the roughly 391,000 species of vascular plants on planet earth, about 95% of them are flowering, and the Asteraceae family comprises about 10% of these.  Originating 83 million years ago in South America, over millennia it has reached the status of one of the largest plant families on earth and is found in all earth’s natural habitats. Creative and competent, it spreads far and wide the entertaining and varied countenances of composites such as arnica, artichoke, aster, black-eyed susan, boneset, burdock, calendula, chamomile, chicory, chrysanthemum, cosmos, the daisy, dandelion, echinacea, feverfew, goldenrod, lettuce, marigold, milk thistle, sage, the sunflower, tansy, tarragon, wormwood, yarrow,  zinnia . . . and elecampane. 
Unique to the Asteraceae family is the composite structure of its flowers:  a disc floret with ray florets, having the appearance of just one flower.  The yellow “petals” of the sunflower, for example, are actually each a flower (ray floret), and the brown structures in the center of the yellow ray florets are a mass of tiny individual flowers (disc florets).  Some of the family’s flowers have only ray florets (the dandelion); some only disc florets (burdock).
Embracing the globe, with so much territory to conquer, the composites have learned to spread by more than one means.  Those that produce nectar encourage pollination, primarily by bees and butterflies.  Methods of seed dispersal include buoyancy upon the wind, engaging passersby with barbs or hooks, falling into the mud to be carried off on the feet of waterfowl, floating away upon water, or being toted around by ants.  Some of the plants reproduce through rhizomes, root-born stems that grow horizontally on the surface of the soil bearing nodes that develop roots and shoots perpendicular to the ground.
The prodigious number of species in the Asteraceae family, and their accomplished heterogeneity, speak to the highly evolved adaptability of these plants that, equipped with various reproductive tools, are capable of surviving in contrasting habitats under varying climes.  Whether native or naturalized, their success has created a world of astonishingly broad plant variety, for they can take shape as eye-appealing ornamentals in the garden; wild blooms thrusting forth in the fields; as plants of medicinal quality such as chamomile, dandelion, and echinacea; and as cultivated food providers yielding such staples as Jerusalem artichokes, who give up their hearts to marinade, chicory as a coffee substitute, lettuce for our salads and sandwiches, cooking oils from safflower and sunflower plants, and the popular sweetening agent derived from Stevia rebaudiana, yet another member of the Asteraceae family.
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Most of the members of the Asteraceae family share a like chemical composition able to confer a host of benefits upon human health.  Where edible, we find significant sources of inulin, a polysaccharide with prebiotic properties; as well as a pharmacopeia representative of a range of phytochemical compounds, for Asteraceae plants provide antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, cardiotonic, hepatoprotective, diuretic, anti-hemorrhoidal, and wound healing gains.  Nutritionally, we find fiber, protein, vitamins, and minerals. 
Whether we beautify our garden with daisies and zinnias, crowning our table with a vase of their friendly flowers; or we walk admiringly through a field of golden aster, blue mistflower, orange hawkweed, and rosy pussytoes.​

 Whether we make medicinal tinctures of earthy burdock or bitter wormwood; or satisfy our appetite with a refreshing salad of crisp lettuce, bitter dandelion greens, artichoke hearts, and a sprinkle of sunflower seeds, we give the Asteraceae plants more than a nod – for our senses have been satisfied on more than one level, and we have come to know our debt to the high order of their intelligence in the greening of our planet. 
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                                                                                 “There’s no Place like Home”
It’s not difficult to imagine the grief Helen experienced being suddenly and ruthlessly removed from the home she loved in Sparta.  When we lose a home we love (by means of a business or military transfer, an act of eminent domain, an all-consuming flood or fire, or by the defeat of foreclosure), it’s likely we experience grief.
However, we’re “at home” in a variety of ways and therefore suffer loss in many differing home-like spaces.  We might, then, consider loosening the definition of home to expand beyond a fixed and loved domicile, allowing the definition to become inclusive of relationships we have with anyone or anything that bring us comfort, security, and the opportunity for love to grow – relationships that forbid thoughts of their ending. So, grief can embrace us when:
parents, who created within us our first sense of home, pass on, connection to our lineage existing now in memory only.
divorce or death separates us from a spouse; illness takes a child; a pet succumbs to age; hope and expectation both overruled.
grown children move away; stayed by the hand of time, we remain in a home of empty rooms.
a hard-won job that gained us career tenure is done away with.
any long-held ideas, opinions, judgments, and beliefs are challenged and overturned.
The sanctity of national values, cooperative foreign relations, and the sovereignty of the natural world are jeopardized; the outer world we have depended upon undergoes radical change.
we move farther and farther from the home of youth, advancing into the strange habitat of old age.
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                                                                                                   Grief
                                                                                 and the Death of a Loved One
Alice Walker, Turning Madness into Flowers:
“It is our grief heavy, relentless, trudging us, however resistant, to the decaying and rotten bottom of things:  our grief bringing us home.”
Grieving is unavoidable, and as such, a necessary state of being, one which deepens our humanness, refining our understanding of how to be in a world where others suffer loss, too.  As a response to emotional stress, grief is by nature never ending and, if not learned from, non-adaptive.
Whether or not we see a loss of deep consequence coming, nothing prepares us for losing someone we loved greatly and upon whom we substantially depended; the pain of the loss may be cut with such treachery that we are unraveled.  The shock of it can carry us beyond the borders of the real world, certainly the world we once knew, for we can no longer see the broad stroke of a familiar horizon, the loss a cataract on our eye, dimming vision of any future; the heart, bunched painfully inside the fist of despair, synchronizing now only with the long, slow drumbeat of our mourning; our lungs, squeezed by sorrow, are an airless vacuum, the lack of oxygen dizzying; searching for words that don’t exist, we become mute.
We have landed on the start square of a path with no end, a path we’ll be walking the rest of our lives, one that stretches across a forbidding landscape; yet it is at this point that grief has quickly and summarily maneuvered us off road to a place where the enormity of our tragedy cannot reach us. In shock, we are born down deep into the winter of denial:  where our appetite for life is stilled, our emotions numbed, our mind sleepily unburdened of the hard facts, and where the psyche is blanketed against the soul-shattering reality and spiritual angst the cold cruelty of bottomless loss brings.

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking:
“Dolphins . . . had been observed refusing to eat after the death of a mate.”
Taking shape first as shock and denial, intense grieving plugs us into a world of gauze:  senses muffled, needs softened, tasks lifted away, and all expectations superfluous.  With our survival in mind, grief has embraced us just when the ground beneath dropped too deep and too wide.  Blessedly, we’ve been recused from having to advance any farther than the start square . . . until further notice.
Refusing the call to leave the gauzy refuge of shock and denial is definitively non-adaptive. This defense has a time limit; the plug will ultimately be pulled.  Designed for short-term use, the adaptive mechanisms offered by shock and denial can be stretched only so far. On a short timescale, they offer stability, helping to move the spinning compass of our lives back toward north; on a long timescale, they backfire, imperiling our health on all levels, for the first stage of grief represents a major sacrifice of our health-supporting systems. If our body’s emergency survival stores are depleted, we can find ourselves landlocked with no easily navigable route back to a state of balance.  Now, the immune system can’t quite muster the strength to spare us illness and cancer; the heart can literally break; eating not enough impairs our ability to digest the facts of our life; anxiety, panic, and depression can swamp the nervous system; perpetual release of the stress hormone cortisol underscores the very real possibility of system-wide sabotage; and last, but not least, the soul can’t partake of the lessons offered by life’s vicissitudes, and the wings of spirit become too heavy to lift us up.  
Step onto square two of the paths.  Never look for the path’s end; never look for signs telling you where you’re going. There is no map to guide you other than what’s inscribed on the heart of your personal loss and longing. Over the mountains of your grief, you’ll climb only to fall; breach rises to slide back down into the hollows; go round obstacles only to come face to face with them again.  Yet, choosing not to walk grief’s path, you will have yielded the power and beauty of your one life to a memory. 
Reconciliation becomes incumbent upon us . . . reconciliation to the undeniable nature of our loss . . .  and our inability to ever reverse it.
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed:
“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”
Consider using elecampane in flower essence form.  In this way, elecampane “is  a powerful ally for coming back to one’s home frequency after trauma or dislocation, helping you feel safe in your sensitivity” and can “bring more sunlight energy into [your] electrical systems.”
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                                                                                    The Role of the Lungs
                                                                                           in a Time of Grief
                                                                                                          or
                                                                              “Our Tissues Hold our Issues.”
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, grief is associated with the lungs.  In the West, we may wonder how that medical linkage was ever determined but understanding grief as the intended process of taking in as well as letting go, we can then stretch that concept to reveal the reason for the existence of our lungs:  to take in the oxygen we need; to let go the carbon dioxide we don’t.
“Lungs are the organ of space.”  In them, a pulmonary alveolus nestles among millions of others of its kind along the banks of our bloodstream.  Referred to as an air sac or air space, its hollowness accommodates flow of oxygen into the blood and flow of carbon dioxide out of it; inhalation and exhalation; the rise and fall of the chest; our existence on the peaks and in the valleys of life.  The action of the alveolus represents oscillation, a repeating, and necessary, movement between two extremes of quality; and thus, it is, to return to balance after a loss, we learn to take in a deep breath of our grief, accepting it; and learn to breathe out fully the resistance to its lessons.  Accept the undeniable nature of our loss and our inability to ever reverse it; reject the resistance to moving, through grief, into a life renewed of understanding and empathy.
When we first collapse under a devastating loss, our grief is felt as a physical compression upon the chest, and under the ponderous weight of our despair, our lungs are pressed into contraction where breath grows shallow.  Against grief’s suffocating squeeze, the body attempts to open the lungs through great, heaving sobs or an insistent cough, neither of which is effective when we stubbornly remain at the beginning of our grieving.
Be like the wind, inhale and exhale long; let grief oscillate in the hollowness of your loss; in with acceptance, out with resistance.  Flexing the muscle of the lungs, deep breathing is like bellows upon the flame, expanding our energy and drive; deep breathing pumps out old, unsanitary mucus, clearing away the unclean matter that feeds into ill health and wrong thinking.  Stagnating in the initial stage of grief, we burden our lungs with a lethargy that obstructs their fullest functioning, muddies airways with congestion, and inevitably lures infection.  Further, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, the meridian vital energy channel of the lungs travels over the breasts.  When our lungs are under functioning, they, along with the breasts, lymph, and even the heart may be impacted.
Rumi:
“God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.”
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                                                                                    “Let the Sunshine in”
Elecampane is “a cheery, warming, goodly [herb]; [an herb] that’ll race through your veins with little torches;” a flower of the open fields associated not only with beauty but with light; purity and radiance; fire and torches; all things shining that remind us of the bright, cleansing beauty of the sun.
A vigorous and commandeering plant, elecampane thrives best in damp, poorly draining soil under full sunlight; thus, we see its signature – that of a warming, draining, restoring, and uplifting herb.
With an organ affinity for the lungs, elecampane is drawn to them when they grow weak under frequent or long-standing respiratory conditions, when they are damp and cold, when mucus in them becomes excessive and stuck.  A stimulant expectorant herb, its warming, spicy pungency (due to the richness of the root and rhizome’s volatile oils) tickles the lung mucosa into producing urgent, deep coughing, the force of which helps break up old, gluey, infected mucus.  Although the root’s pungency is its overriding taste, a hint of bitterness indicates a draining and drying effect, and a hint of acridity suggests its ability to promote relaxation of tension, tightness, and spasm in airways.  Some respiratory conditions that may respond to elecampane include asthma, bronchiectasis, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, croup, emphysema, pleurisy, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and whooping cough.  Brief respiratory infections may be resolved; advanced, chronic lung conditions with old coughs, hardened mucus, and airway damage may benefit from the deeper, more productive coughing and the lessening of tension, tightness, and spasm, if not from complete resolution.
Warming, thinning, draining, drying, clearing, and ultimately cleansing, elecampane’s pungency and bitterness are not only helpful in ridding the lungs of conditions of damp cold with stagnant mucus, but in so doing, enable the lungs to grow a fresh layer of antiseptic mucosa, rich with immune factors, that can hold fort against infection.  Its acridity relaxes and opens airways.  Now in an environment of tranquility, a place of introspection, remembrance, and reworking; relieved of infectious burden and released from constriction, the lungs can open to their purpose renewed. Considered a trophorestorative herb, elecampane’s action in the lungs reminds us of photosynthesis, albeit in reverse:  in green plants, a respiratory exchange of carbon dioxide in and oxygen out occurs, yielding fuel for the plants’ continued functioning.  In our lungs, under the sun-like, healing influence of elecampane, efficient respiratory exchange of oxygen in and carbon dioxide out provides the energy necessary to increase lung capacity to its fullest.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the lungs are linked to the large intestine:  lungs take in the pure; the large intestine rids us of the impure.  In with the good, out with the bad.  Even Western medicine describes a relationship between lungs and large intestine “from various perspectives, such as embryonic development, lymph circulation, mucosal immunity, micro ecology, and inflammatory harass.”  Thus, elecampane has an organ affinity for the digestive system for once again, the root’s pungent volatile oils are stimulating against damp cold conditions and mucus build up, warming and cleansing the gastrointestinal tract and encouraging better blood flow to it for improved digestion and elimination (the taking in of good nourishment; the removal of waste). A nutritive and stomachic herb, elecampane’s bitterness tones the stomach, promoting a healthy appetite and enhancing nutrient absorption; its inulin content (19% to 44%) provides prebiotic soluble fiber helping to restore gut microbial balance, tone the pancreas, and normalize blood sugar levels.  Fat metabolism is enhanced; the formation of adipose tissue may be inhibited. Stimulating mucosal circulation, elecampane helps relieve liver congestion, gallstones, and mucoid digestion that leads to nausea.  Also considered anthelmintic, elecampane can help remove parasitic worms.  Digestive and eliminative pathways cleared and cleansed, a now toned and energized gastrointestinal system returns to full function.
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As a stimulant diaphoretic herb, elecampane can help break the type of fever that brings chills and shivers to the body.  Stimulating and thinning the blood to move it closer to the surface of the skin, opening the capillary beds, the warmth of the herb produces a sweat that moves fever out of the body. 
Its ability to clear and cleanse the body as well as its anti-inflammatory nature allow elecampane to assist in improvement of the skin.  Eruptive, scabby, and itchy conditions that may respond to its use are acne, eczema, psoriasis, herpes, scabies, and pruritus.  Elecampane, in tea or diluted liquid extract form, can also be used topically.
Elecampane cleanses and tones the kidneys, promotes urination, helps relieve edema; as a uterine stimulant, it encourages expulsion of the afterbirth as well as menstruation.
Gains for the immune system derive from elecampane’s anti-bacterial nature.  Disrupting the biofilms of bacterial infection, thinning and draining away old mucus, as well as assisting in the movement of lymph, elecampane supports our immune defenses in their ability to clear infection. 
Due to its cleansing, anti-inflammatory, and antispasmodic potential, elecampane helps relieve the pain of arthritis, gout, and sciatica.
Even the heart and vascular system are benefitted by elecampane.  Not necessarily an herb with an organ affinity for the heart, it is a tonic to it, encouraging proper flow of blood that brings vitality and functionality to all organ systems.
Elecampane is movement forward.  Fluids are warmed, thinned, and stimulated to flow: lymph, sweat, circulation, urination, menstruation, gastric juices, and bile rise to appropriate levels, and on the crests of their waves, we are cleansed: bodily functions improved, vitality returned, and our health advanced.  (Elecampane, we are reminded, is a member of a family of vascular plants, highly evolved plants containing specialized tissues for the movement of fluids through them).  Our body is laced with channels of energy supplying nourishment, function, animation, and survival to our support systems, opening all levels of our being to the breath of life.  As a mover of congestion, elecampane’s restorative strength has the potential to open spaces obstructed by infectious matter or that of disturbed thought and emotion, removing their toxicity.  Such is the power of the sun as it radiates through this herb’s healing mechanisms.
When our lungs are weighted all the way down to “the decaying and rotten bottom of things,” when they are sick with damp and cold and mired in sorrow, elecampane removes cold, wet excess. Not only does infection yield to the extraordinary force of this herb’s warming, stimulating, and cleansing action, but so too our grief.  Stagnant infection and the stale, lingering pathology of heart and mind are lifted from us, and once again we can move forward, our grief having brought us to “a new home in the sun”.
Cunning Apothecary:
“The herb will help one [find a] home again after a long and arduous journey away from oneself.”
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                                                                                         A Clinical Aside
Sesquiterpene lactones make up most of the volatile oil content in the root and rhizome of elecampane. One mixture of these lactones, helenin, consists of alantolactone and isoalantolactone, with most texts attributing the herb’s medicinal powers to alantolactone.
Clinical studies have found:
Anti-inflammatory benefit – one test tube study noted that the compound alantolactone, as an isolate, suppressed airway inflammation resulting from cigarette smoke exposure; the compound has been suggested as potential therapy in COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease); research on cells and animals has shown that alantolactone can stop the development of tuberculosis.
Antioxidant benefit – over 120 studies have suggested antioxidant activity, principally attributed to alantolactone.
Anti-cancer benefit (promotion of cancer cell death; action against cancer spread) - the herb has demonstrated test tube anti-cancer effects against brain cancer.  One test tube study noted anti-cancer effects of the compound isoalantolactone, as an isolate, against pancreatic cancer; another test tube study noted the effects of isolated eudesmane sesquiterpenoid against leukemia; and yet another test tube study observed the effects of isolated alantolactone against breast cancer.  Additionally, studies have demonstrated good effects upon cervical, colorectal, liver, lung, and stomach cancer.
Anti-microbial benefit – test tube studies have indicated compounds active against Staphylococcus; other research has noted effects against Candida albicans, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherischia coli, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa; alantolactone and isoalantolactone are effective in ridding the body of roundworms, pinworms, hookworms, whipworms, and threadworms.
When a plant’s medicinal compounds are studied in isolation, how narrow the window becomes into a compound’s reason for existence.  How much more might a compound be capable of when left in the matrix of its whole plant?  Or how differently does it behave in isolation?  As a whole plant, an herb’s recorded history of use is invaluable; however, can new uses be discovered through the study of its individual parts? What are the side effects of isolates? Studies and tests performed on isolates beg the question of how they are to be used outside of clinical trials.
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                                                                           Dosing with Elecampane  
​                                                                                            For Grief
Even if your grief has not progressed to the point of lung infection, elecampane may still be used as a restorative herb.
As our grief travels the flowing, life-sustaining channels that crisscross our body, mind, soul, and spirit, its dark weight can settle in them, building a blockage and creating a stasis whereby there is no movement.  We are stuck in our sorrow, mired in our misery.  Elecampane’s sunny stimulation, as it moves through the channels with “little torches,” breaks through the sadness that chokes them, opens them to proper flow, and we are moved forward.
Although grieving is a personal process, variable in its degree, I would, as I progressed through the more difficult stages of grief, dose with elecampane as a cup of infusion once or twice a day:  a teaspoon of dried root, along with honey or maple syrup to taste, in your cup under the influence of 8 ounces of boiling hot water.  After approximately 10 -12 minutes, strain the infusion and sip slowly and mindfully.
Never hesitate to add herbs to increase elecampane’s grief-healing benefit:  
blue vervain, hawthorn berry, lavender, lemon balm, linden, motherwort, rose, skullcap, or Tulsi (holy basil).
Elecampane is somewhat sedating so add these heart-soothing, nervous system-relaxing herbs to your cup when you have the time to be still.
Martine Prechtel:
“Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”
Pliny:
“Let no day pass without eating some roots of elecampane to . . . expel melancholy and cause mirth.”
Latin: “Enula campana reddit praecordia sana:”  Elecampane will the spirits sustain.
Drink a cup of elecampane and sit with Helen for a while.
***
Dosing Suggestions for Adults:
Liquid Extract – 2 to 3 ml (1/2 tsp) 2 to 3 times a day.  Best to dilute its taste in water or take with honey.
Decoction – Bring 8 ounces of water to a boil, add 1 teaspoon of dried root and quickly reduce heat to a simmer.  Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.  Strain.  Drink 1 cup 2 times a day.  Add honey or maple syrup to taste.
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Infusion - Pour 8 ounces cold water over 1 tsp dried root.  Let stand for 8 to 10 hours.  Strain.  Heat and drink very hot 1 cup 2 times a day.  Add honey or maple syrup to taste.  Or pour 8 ounces boiling hot water over 1 tsp dried root.  Steep 10 – 12 minutes.  Strain.  Drink 1 cup 2 times a day.  Add honey or maple syrup to taste.  (See the following recipes).
For lung infections, elecampane may be combined with other herbs to enhance its effectiveness.  Consider cinnamon bark, ginger root, horehound, licorice root, mullein leaf, sage, and Tulsi. Also, add hawthorn berry when there is weakness in both the lungs and heart.
As an anthelmintic, combine elecampane with mugwort or wormwood.
Elecampane is best used for conditions of damp cold where there is stagnation and excess; it is contraindicated in hot, dry conditions.
Slow in action; use elecampane in small amounts over a length of time.
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Recipes:
A Tea Adapted from Rosemary Gladstar –
Combine 2 parts licorice root, 1 part cinnamon bark, 1-part echinacea (angustifolia) root, 1 part marshmallow root, 1 part elecampane root, and 1/4 part ginger root.  Mix the dried herbs and keep in a glass jar away from light, heat, and damp.  Make an infusion by pouring 8 ounces boiling hot water over 1 tsp of the dried herbs.  Steep 15 minutes.  Strain.  Add honey or maple syrup to taste.
A Tea Adapted from Rebecca’s Herbal Apothecary –
Combine 1 part elecampane root, 2 parts red clover blossom, ½ part marshmallow leaf, 1 part hyssop, ½ part licorice root.  Mix the dried herbs and keep in a glass jar away from light, heat, and damp.  Make an infusion by pouring 8 ounces boiling hot water over 1 tsp of the dried herbs.  Steep 15 minutes.  Strain.  Add honey or maple syrup to taste.
 
 
An Elixir Per Teacup Alchemy –
Combine 1 tsp elecampane root, 2 tsp hawthorn berries, 2 tbsp tulsi (holy basil), ½ of a vanilla bean, and 8 oz of brandy in a canning jar.  Fasten the lid on the jar and shake the jar to combine everything thoroughly.  Allow the herbs and the vanilla bean to soak in the brandy for 2 weeks.  Shake the jar daily.  Add a little extra brandy if needed to make sure the herbs stay covered.  At the end of 2 weeks, strain the brandy into a clean bowl through a colander lined with an unbleached coffee filter.  Add either 1 ounce glycerin or 1 ounce honey to the bowl.  Whisk to combine the brandy and the sweetener.  Pour the now finished elixir into a clean amber glass bottle.  Label and date.  The elixir should be shelf stable for at least a year.  Serving size:  1 tsp up to 3 times per day.
A Honeyed Syrup adapted from Fruition Seeds –
Bring a gallon of water to a boil, add ½ ounce marshmallow root, 1 ounce elecampane root, 2.5 ounces fresh ginger and quickly reduce heat to a simmer.  Simmer at least 20 minutes with lid off, allowing the water to evaporate to half its volume.  Strain the decoction, pour into a jar to cool, and measure the volume, adding an equal volume of raw honey.  Stir and store in the fridge up to one month.
Candied Elecampane Per WishGarden Herbs –
Wash, peel, and slice the fresh root to approximately ¼” pieces.  Place a single layer of the roots into a small frying pan.  Add 3 tbsp honey, adding more if needed to evenly cover all the pieces.  Bring to a low simmer for a few minutes, until the honey starts to look frothy around the roots.  Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.  Return to a low simmer and repeat this heating and cooling process until the pieces of root are completely infused with honey.  (Adapted from Making Plant Medicine by Richo Cech). 
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Safety Considerations:
May be safely used when appropriately consumed.
“Generally, a safe and well-tolerated herb so long as it is used in moderation, especially for the young or elderly.  Excess doses will likely cause significant gastric upset quickly so it would be difficult to overdose on this herb.  Elecampane is not recommended to take during breastfeeding (the sesquiterpene lactones will pass into the milk and upset the baby’s stomach) and it is unlikely to be of any direct danger, but it is still recommended to avoid it during pregnancy.”  (There is history of elecampane’s use as an emmenagogue and abortifacient).
Large doses of elecampane may lead to nausea, vomiting, cramping, and diarrhea.  Such aggressive intake can be emetic, cathartic, or even paralytic.
Avoid use if allergic to members of the Asteraceae family (chamomile, for one).
Avoid use if allergic to inulin.
Avoid use with sedatives (examples:  Klonopin, Ativan, Donnatal, Ambien, etc.)
Monitor use carefully if you suffer from low or high blood pressure.
Monitor use carefully if diabetic.
Avoid use with severe kidney and/or liver disease.
Appropriately, if under medical supervision and using any prescription medicine, please discuss the possibility of the use of elecampane, as well as any other herbs you wish to use in tandem with it, with your physician(s). 
Sources available upon request.
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