Teas and internal remedies

The parent page is unusually honest for this subject: it carries evidence levels, it flags the toxic lookalikes, and it says plainly where self-treating is dangerous. This page is about the three things a household still has to decide, which are how much, for whom, and whether it is worth the cupboard space.

What the evidence levels are telling you

The parent page marks each entry with an evidence level, which is more than most writing on this subject does. Read them as decisions rather than as scores.

Notice how few 3s there are. Ginger for nausea, peppermint for gut cramps, chamomile, honey, aloe, rosehips for vitamin C. That is close to the whole list, and it is a genuinely useful shortlist rather than a disappointing one.

A level 1 entry is not a criticism of the plant. It means nobody has properly tested it, which is mostly a fact about research funding. It does mean you should not build a plan around it, and should not pay money for it.

Children are not small adults

The parent page says halve for the elderly and quarter-strength for children, and that is the weakest line in the module.

Fractional adult dosing is not how paediatric dosing works. Children differ from adults in how they absorb, process and clear substances, not merely in size, and for herbal preparations the dosing evidence in children barely exists. Quarter strength is a guess wearing the clothes of a measurement.

For older people, halving is a reasonable instinct for a different reason: reduced clearance, more prescribed medicines, and therefore more interactions. The dose is the smaller problem. The interaction is the bigger one.

The interactions that actually matter

If anybody in the house takes a prescribed medicine, herbal remedies stop being a free action.

St John's wort deserves its own line, because the failure is invisible. It does not make anybody feel ill. It makes their contraceptive or their anticoagulant quietly stop working properly, and the consequence arrives weeks later looking like something else. The parent page's external-only rule for the infused oil is the right call.

The practical rule: anybody on a regular prescription asks a pharmacist before taking any herb internally. That is a free conversation, they are good at exactly this question, and it takes five minutes in normal times. Do it now, in Phase 0, for whatever you plan to stock, rather than in the middle of something.

How much of a hot drink is the herb

This is the section that raises rather than lowers the value of the parent page.

For most of what a household actually meets, the tea is warmth, fluid, rest and a ritual, and the herb is a modest contributor. Nothing on that page shortens a cold. A hot drink genuinely eases a sore throat, thins secretions, and gets fluid into somebody who is not drinking. Sitting down with it makes a frightened household calmer.

That is worth having, and it is worth being clear about, because a remedy oversold is a remedy that gets blamed when somebody deteriorates, and because the honest version tells you what to do when it does not work: escalate, rather than brew a stronger cup.

Where the herbs do earn their place specifically:

• Ginger, for nausea. The best-evidenced entry in the module.
• Peppermint, for gut cramps and wind.
• Rosehip and pine, for vitamin C, which is a real deficiency with a real timeline in a long shortage.
• Thyme and sage gargles, which genuinely soothe a throat.
• Steam inhalation, which costs nothing and works for congestion.
• Chamomile, lemon balm, lavender at night, for the thing that is actually wrong in week two of a crisis, which is that nobody is sleeping.

Do not underrate that last one. The parent page says not to and it is right. Sleep is what everything else depends on, and a household sleeping badly makes worse decisions about water, fire, heat and each other.

The six worth actually stocking

If the cupboard has room for a handful rather than a shelf, and the money is better spent elsewhere:

1. Ginger, dried. Nausea, and it keeps for years.
2. Peppermint. Gut, and it grows like a weed so plant it as well.
3. Chamomile. Stomach, sleep, and an eye or skin wash cooled.
4. Thyme. Gargle, cough, and it is a kitchen herb anyway.
5. Rosehips or a vitamin C source. The deficiency with a genuine timeline.
6. Honey, by the kilogram. Wounds, burns, cough, morale and calories, and the only entry here that is also food.

Everything else on the parent page is worth growing, foraging and learning, and is not worth buying. That is the honest split, and it is also the cheapest one.