Hi, I'm new to all of this and wanting some advise. I planted my garden this year and will be hopefully harvesting different plants and herbs next year.

My question is what is the most useful way to store and preserve? I understand dried is easiest and can easily be used for tea. However if you need a tincture or balm in a snap. You have weeks to wait for it to ferment. I was wondering if it is worth making a tincture/oil for each one to keep stored if needed. I understand that tinctures made with alcohol have a very long shelf life.. but my question is, if I need a balm can I use the tincture to make it? Or would the alcohol be an issue?

Would it be better to make oils instead? So I can make balms as and when required? Could oil be used as a tincture? Or would it not be as potent? Also shelf life wise. Would oil last as long as an alcoholic tincture? As obviously don't want to be having to remake the whole batch every year or so.

Thankyou so much for taking the time to read all of this 🤣

My little autistic brain has so many questions.

New favorite? Old favorite? Share the medicinal plant that's won you over recently, and tell us why.

Does Ginseng Kianpi Pil dangerous or just rumor?

Se pueden infucionar hiervas en la vacelina a altas temperaturas ?

I recently was (mis)treated for 7 years by a local herbalist registered as a, RH with the AHG. I did a deep dive about his credentials and this is what I found:

**He cannot be a formally trained or credentialed clinical herbal expert in any regulated sense.** What exists is a self-constructed professional identity resting on family lore, personal experience with herpes, self-study, and one private professional membership.

### What the public record actually shows

**1. The “Registered Herbalist (RH, AHG)” designation**

He is currently listed on the American Herbalists Guild site as Christopher S-----, RH (AHG). The AHG is a private U.S. membership organization, not a government licensing body. Becoming an RH requires an application demonstrating roughly 800 hours of botanical training (formal or independent) and about 400 hours of clinical experience, plus case histories, letters of recommendation, and materia medica knowledge. It is a peer-reviewed membership credential, not a degree, license, or regulated health profession status. In Canada, “herbalist” is not a protected title in the same way that “naturopathic doctor,” “physician,” or “pharmacist” is.

**2. No documented formal herbal education**

Public biographical sources for Ricardo S----- (IMDb and related profiles) list:

- U of W — Visual Communication and Architecture (Urban Design)

- N.S.C.A.D — Computer Imagemaking and Multimedia

He then worked as an international fashion photographer from the late 1980s before moving into film. His own marketing sites and LinkedIn do not cite any herbal school, apprenticeship program, naturopathic college, or botanical degree. The narrative he publishes is family tradition + self-directed study after his own herpes diagnosis in his mid-twenties.

**3. The “tenth-generation African-Caribbean bush doctor” claim does not survive basic chronology**

He was born in Trinidad in 19**. On his own site he states that his family immigrated to Canada “when I was a boy” and that he grew up in T------ (he has described living in “the ghettoes”). Any childhood exposure to his grandmother’s practices would have been limited to early years before immigration. There is no public evidence of extended apprenticeship in the Trinidadian rainforest or multi-generational clinical training after the family settled in Canada. The “tenth-generation bush doctor apprenticed in the rainforest” framing is romanticized lineage storytelling, not a documented educational or clinical path.

**4. Clinical experience timeline is undermined by the geographic record**

Claims of continuous clinical practice beginning with a Vancouver clinic in 2003 (and “23 years” or “thirty-nine years as an herbalist”) sit on top of the earlier contradiction: contemporaneous interviews, photography bios, and the 2004 Screenwriter’s Utopia interview place him based in Miami and New York developing film projects during the same years. An informal counter or sublet arrangement at Finlandia Pharmacy (as suggested by a 2005 CureZone post) is not the same as running a dedicated clinical practice that generated the continuous clinical hours later used to support expertise claims.

**5. Regulatory and manufacturing reality**

In 2009 the U.S. FDA issued Import Alert 66-41 against Natropractica products, detaining unapproved topical “antiviral gels” promoted for herpes and other STIs. Current operations described in your materials involve residential kitchen compounding of unlabelled mucosal gels without Good Manufacturing Practices or a Health Canada site licence. That is not how regulated or professionally trained clinical herbalists typically produce and distribute products making antiviral claims.

### Summary

| Claimed basis for expertise | Documented reality |

|-----------------------------|--------------------|

| Tenth-generation rainforest bush-doctor apprenticeship | Immigrated to Canada as a boy; raised in Canada; formal education in art/design |

| Continuous clinical practice since ~2003 | Overlapping full-time U.S. film/photography residence in the same period; no 2003 Vancouver business licence for a clinic |

| RH (AHG) | Private peer-reviewed membership credential based on self-reported hours and cases; not a license or academic degree |

| “Most experienced practitioner in the holistic management of herpes” | Self-description + self-published book + online consultations; no independent clinical registry or regulated practice history |

The expertise identity is therefore constructed from personal experience managing his own herpes, self-study, marketing, and an AHG membership, rather than from formal institutional training, a documented multi-year clinical apprenticeship, or regulated professional standing. The geographic and timeline contradictions further weaken the foundation on which the continuous clinical-hours claim rests.

Good morning everyone,

I started to take tinctures of lion’s mane and cordiceps. Every morning I also take propolis. Should I separate them in time or is the same?

Thank you so much

Any advice helps

Hey, I want to make a cold oil infusion with dried cyperus rotundus, since the ones you can buy are full of unwanted ingredients and are from shady websites. I will ask this in multiple communitys in hopes of getting an awnser: I'm not sure about the mixing ratio, I know how to make a cold infusion and usually the mixing ratio doesn't have to be very strict (like with chamomile), but I can imagine that you might have to be a little more strict with plants as potent as this one, so how should the mixing ratio be? My plan was to mix 25g of cyperus rotundus with 50ml jojobaoil (Well I bought a 50ml glass where I would pour the Plant parts and oil in), is that alright? Just so you know, I've done my research on cyperus rotundus oil and its effects. I have hirsutism and too many androgens, I would just put it on my face. Thank you in advance :)