Introduction to Tinctures

Disclaimer.  I am not a licensed health practitioner.  This is just another post on an item you might wish to have available if needed so that a physician can treat you and your family as best as possible.  No medication, including those available over the counter, should be taken without consulting a physician.  Information shared here is for educational and entertainment purposes only.  It is not medical advice nor a substitute for licensed medical care.  A qualified, licensed physician or other medical provider should be consulted before beginning any herbal or conventional treatment.


Hippocrates said something along the lines of "let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food."  A healthy, well-balanced diet goes a long ways toward maintaining a healthy body.

Unfortunately, modern American life with all its demands and stresses can go a long ways towards making us sick, even if we do have a healthy diet.  Since the beginning of time, people have used plant medicine to treat illnesses.  We even do it today.  Most people know that aspirin comes from willows, or it used to.  Big Pharma isolated the active constituents--mainly salicylic acid--and began manufacturing aspirin tablets.  Drug companies are always researching plants, hoping to identify the next wonder drug.  They identify a plant that has a compound with some promising medicinal use, and then they manufacture a synthetic, because plants can't be patented.  Those synthetics often come with serious side effects.  Plants usually do not.

In an ideal world, we could get all the medicine we need by eating properly, using herbs in cooking, and drinking teas as needed.  At least, those of us who are a little lacking in confidence in Big Pharma would be able to do this.

Unfortunately, we are not in a perfect world.  We can't always get everything we need from food or from a simple tea.  Sometimes the big guns are needed. Sometimes it's the middle of winter and the plant we need is dormant or covered with snow.  Sometimes it's the middle of the night and tromping outside to find whatever herb is needed doesn't sound like a good idea.  That's where tinctures come in.


A tincture is a concentrated liquid herbal extract prepared using drinking alcohol.  (Rubbing alcohol is used to prepare liniments.)  A tincture is usually used internally, but may be used externally as well.  A liniment is for external use only and should never be ingested.  Tinctures are generally prepared by macerating, or soaking, the herb for several weeks in alcohol (vodka and Everclear are the most common choices) to extract the active constituents of the plant.  When the maceration process is complete, in six to eight weeks in most cases, the mixture is strained through a fine mesh sieve or coffee filter to remove the plant material.  The resulting liquid is your tincture.

People often wonder whether water or something else non-alcoholic may be used instead.  In general, if a tincture recipe calls for alcohol, it is because alcohol is the best choice.  And there are a couple of reasons for this:

• Drinking alcohol is used because it is the best food-grade solvent for extracting the phytochemicals, the active constituents that are not very soluble in water.  It's a chemistry thing, if you can remember back that far to high school chemistry.
• Alcohol is also a fabulous preservative for maintaining potency of your tincture as well as providing a shelf life that could never be hoped for with water, or even glycerin or vinegar.  

At the same time, however, sometimes there are other solvents used as well.  Vinegar, glycerin, oil, or water are sometimes also used to extract other active constituents that are not extracted by alcohol. Any part of the plant may be used to make tinctures--fresh or dried berries, leaves, flowers, roots, or bark, or any combination.  Herbs from two or more plants may also be combined.  Different parts of the plant contain different active constituents and they are not necessarily interchangeable.  Most often they are not interchangeable at all.

Tinctures are not just makeshift pseudo-medical options to substitute when your regular antibiotics or other pharmaceuticals run out.  Some tinctures will work just as well as the pharmaceuticals they replace.  Many will work better.  Bacteria can't develop resistance to plant medicine, at least not yet.  When you have a tincture, you have your medicine ready to use.  You don't have to make a special run to a pharmacy.  Some tinctures can also be employed to potentiate your supply of "real" antibiotics, so that the "real" ones are more effective and you can use less of them.  You use the pharmaceutical to knock out the bacteria, and the tincture to make sure it stays good and dead and gone.  Like the first whack with the flyswatter probably killed the spider, but just to be sure (and teach all the other spiders in the house a lesson), you whack it ten more times.

When you buy a bottle of aspirin, you know each pill is going to contain exactly 325 mg of aspirin.  However, the same is not true for tinctures.  It's not even close.  There are too many variables.

• How potent is the herb?  
• What were the growing conditions?
• How well were the active constituents extracted? 
• How long did the herbs macerate?
• How big are the drops you are taking?
• Who are you physically?  Male or female?  100 lbs or 300 lbs?  Adult or child?  In good health or poor?

Some experimentation with frequency and dosages is likely to be needed. And unfortunately, one batch may differ greatly from the next batch, so the experimentation will have to begin again.

Tinctures in general are milder in their action.  When treating bacterial infections with pharmaceutical antibiotics, the relief is often going to be faster than with herbs and tinctures.  But not always.  Be patient.

Because tinctures are concentrated plant extracts, dosages are generally quite small, like just a few drops, and can be added to juices or teas to mask the taste.  If added to a hot drink, the alcohol will evaporate, so there are no concerns about consuming alcohol for those morally opposed to the idea, and the tincture is still just as effective without the alcohol.  The alcohol is not the medicine.  The alcohol was the means of extracting the medicine.  The medicine remains in the cup.

As you look at various tincture recipes, you'll see that most will call for vodka or grain alcohol (Everclear).  Or they might just say 80-100 proof alcohol, or pure grain alcohol or 190 proof.  The alcohol called for often depends on whether the herb you are using is fresh or dried.  Fresh herbs have a much higher water content, and grain alcohol is more often going to be the desired alcohol.  Dried herbs, of course, lack water and usually vodka is all that is needed to prepare the tincture.  Keep in mind that Everclear is sold in other strengths.  Get the strongest that you can.  Unfortunately, Everclear is prohibited for sale in the following states: California, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oregon.  Other states may have age restrictions or license requirements.  If you cannot get Everclear, use alcohol with the highest proof that you can obtain.

While many herbalists really get into making their own medicine, a lot don't offer any real help in the way of explicit directions for producing a tincture, or recommended dosages for treating specific conditions.  (Which, it seems to me, is kinda the point for the whole exercise.)  Fortunately, not all are like this. 

The best books by far for making tinctures, including recipes and all the details, are those by Stephen Harrod Buhner.  In his Herbal Antibiotics and Herbal Antivirals he provides not only the exact recipe and procedures for producing your own tincture, but recommendations for buying the herbs online, as well as how to find or grow them on your own.  In addition, he lists the exact conditions each tincture is suited for, the dosages, and contraindications for use.  And he provides extensive references to research journals.  With a lot of herbalists, you have to wonder whether they're just making some of this stuff up.  Not so with Buhner.  His source lists are massive.

To sum up, making your own tinctures is not any more difficult than making coffee or sun tea.  It requires very little hands on time; the weeks necessary for macerating and extracting the active constituents don't involve more than a few seconds of shaking every day on your part.  For most tinctures, the fresh or dried material is finely chopped or powdered, placed in a jar, covered with alcohol, lid replaced on jar, and the jar sits on a shelf for six weeks.  Shake it daily.  At the end of six weeks, strain out the plant matter, put the tincture in an amber dropper bottle, and label and date.  Don't think you will remember what is in there or when you made it.  You won't.  Most tinctures have a shelf life of several years. 

Links to related posts:
Herbal Antibiotics  
Herbal Antivirals  
Usnea  
Juniper  
Japanese Barberry  

For further reading: 
https://readynutrition.com/resources/what-you-need-to-know-about-ready-nutrition-herbal-tinctures_24042019/

 14 october 2019