Plants and their European monographs
- Willow — Salix spp., bark
European Medicines Agency monograph (EMA/HMPC/80630/2016): well-established use for short-term treatment of low back pain; traditional use for minor joint pain, fever in the common cold and headache.
From “Before You Begin”
The book’s safety page, quoted as it stands. Read the whole page — it is free.
- Six recipes are for the cold season and for feeling unwell. They are drunk for a few days and then stopped.
- Willow bark, Chapters 41 and 42, must not be combined with aspirin, ibuprofen or other NSAIDs, or with anticoagulants — someone taking a painkiller and then brewing willow bark tea for the same headache is doubling a dose they do not know they are taking.
- Several have a short time frame: if a cough has not cleared within a week, licorice is stopped and a doctor seen, and with willow a doctor is seen if a headache lasts more than a day or a fever more than three.
- Pregnancy. Twenty-six of the twenty-eight recipes here are restricted in pregnancy — most because safety has not been established rather than because harm has been shown, but the answer is the same either way. The two that carry no restriction are the rosehip brew of Chapter 26 and the sea buckthorn of Chapter 28, both of them fruits eaten as food across Europe.
The recipe is in the book
Chapter 41 gives the rest:
- the amounts and the steps
- what each plant does in the cup, and on what basis
- who should not drink it, from what age
- how much, and for how long