Herbal First Aid Kit Essentials: Natural Remedies for Cuts, Stings, Burns & More

It only takes one accident to regret not being prepared.

So let's talk herbal first aid and the essential plants to keep in your kit. From cuts and scrapes to burns, bites, and unexpected whoopsy daisies, these herbs can help you be ready before you need them, using simple, natural remedies that have been doing this work for a long time.

These are the plants that can keep you calm, prepared, and out of the ER more often than you might think.

What's in this episode:

• The most important herbs to include in your herbal first aid kit
• How to use plantain for bites, stings, and drawing out toxins
• Yarrow for stopping bleeding quickly and effectively
• Comfrey for sprains, strains, and tissue repair
• Echinacea for infection support and wound care
• Chamomile, ginger, and peppermint for digestive upset and stress
• Why lavender essential oil belongs in every first aid kit
• Simple ways to stay calm and think clearly when things get a little wild out there

For full show notes, resources, and links visit: theherbalistspath.com/blog/herbal-first-aid-kit-essentials

Wanna go deeper? Use code FIRST-AID-PODCAST for 50% off the Herbal First Aid Skills workshop, plus loads of recipes I've used for years. Or click here for the discount.

Wondering how you can use your herbal skills to help people when times are tough?

Grab Medicine For The People - An Herbalist's Guide To Showing Up For Your Community In Times of Need

It's loaded with ideas and resources to help you help others!💚 Click here to ge

Transcript

Welcome To The Herbalist Path

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Welcome to the Herbalist Path. If you love learning about the power of plant medicine and how to use it in your life, this show is for you. I'm Mel Mutterspot, clinical herbalist, herbal educator, and your host. In each episode, you're going to hear me sharing herbal insights and knowledge from my 25 plus years of working with and learning from the plants. Plus, I'm going to share interviews with some of the most amazing herbalists, educators, farmers, and healers out there, all bringing their herbal wisdom here for you. Really, this show is all about continuing this movement to put an herbalist in every home and a healer in every community. Again. Thank you so much for listening and welcome to the herbalist path. Enjoy the show. Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode here on the Herbalist Path. I'm really, really excited about today's episode because I think it's so important for people to be prepared, people to understand what herbs they need on hand for the tiny little emergencies, the little bitty whoopsie daisies that we all tend to face. So we're going to be talking about herbal first aid, and I'm going to be sharing some of the essential things that I think are necessary to have in a first aid kit. And this topic is super near and dear to me. It's actually how I got my entry into the world of herbalism. I was once a backpacking guide and a wilderness therapist, and I had done all of the wilderness first responder trainings and all of these different things. And as I was having people pay me to hike them to these incredibly beautiful places that were so dear and sacred to me, I found that they were all carrying toxic, nasty crap in their first aid kits and their backpacks. And it really broke my heart. One, because I knew it was not as good for them, right? Like that's a bummer. We want to care for ourselves, right? But the really big one for me was that it was polluting our planet and harming this precious earth and the very sacred places that I was hiking these people to. So that just like it got me. That's like totally my entrance into herbal medicine and still like the why and the root of why I do this and why I love talking about herbal medicine with so many people and teaching and educating, because I truly feel that the more people have this connection to the plants around us and understand that they are food and they are medicine, maybe we get this deeper connection to nature and a deeper desire to do what we can, each person individually, to take better care of this planet. So that's why I am doing this right here. And so at that point in time, I had this big dream that, oh, I'm gonna get this herbal first aid kit and I'm gonna get it in the backpacks and camping gear of outdoor adventure seekers all over the world, right? And well, I didn't quite get all over the world. I did actually get my herbal first aid products and my teas into REI. And if you live in the United States and you like hiking and camping and things like that, then you know REI. It's like our biggest outdoorsy folk outfitter. And so that was like this incredible 18-year manifestation. Like that seed was planted in somewhere in the like late 1900s, early 2000s. And somewhere around 2016, 2017, I actually finally got my products into REI, which was pretty epic at the time. It was a big, big thing that I learned a lot about later. Anyways, so that's why I love talking about herbal first aid, among many, many other things. Like right now, as I'm recording this, we're almost to May Day, which is Bell Tane, which is halfway in between spring and summer. And it means so many people are gonna go out and play. The kids are gonna be out of school, all the adventures start to happen. And I can't tell you how many times having this knowledge and these skill sets have kept me, my friends, my family out of the ER. Like, hey, that's pretty amazing. And I won't dive too deep into those stories yet. Maybe I'll get into them as I talk about what I would happily consider having in your first aid kit if you're going to go out and play too. Cool? Okay. I hope it's cool for you, because it's definitely cool for me. And let's just start talking about it. So there's obviously a lot of plants, like look behind me if you're watching this on YouTube, my messy little personal apothecary, at least a piece of it. I have a whole other room that's more of an apothecary as well, but um, it's behind me with lots and lots of herbs because there are lots of lots of herbs to use and choose. But there are some that are more essential when it comes to first aid. One that I talk about a lot. It's like it's the first herb I did a deep dive study in when I took my first in-person herb program. And it was a 10-month program. We had to pick one herb to like really focus in on the whole time. And for me, the herb was plantain. It was Plantago Major. I also use Plantago Lanciolada. And this is such an essential herb to have in the first aid kit. A lot of people might think, oh, yeah, I've heard of that one. It's great for bug bites and bee stings and cuts and scrapes. And you're totally right. It is phenomenal for those things, but it's so much more than that. So plantain is really, really cool because it has this incredible ability to be able to draw things out. Like it can draw out venom and infection and uh stingers. I've had it draw out splinters from like tough, rough and tumble mountain men carpenters. I've had it pull out giant blackberry thorns that I decided to let stay lodged in the back of my leg for three weeks. I didn't know it was there. I just felt a little prick and didn't think anything of it until three weeks later when I was like, ooh, that's kind of like painful and nasty. So I used plantain as a tincture and I put it on a little cotton ball and put a little band-aid over it, and it just drew it right out. And within like 10 minutes, that whole giant thorn I didn't know was there suddenly came out, which was super duper cool. Um, plantain, yes, for all the skin kind of itchy, scratchy, ouchy kinds of things. And it's really nice because it's often going to be somewhere in your campground. It's going to be in the parking lot where you parked for a hike. It's going to be at the playground, right when your kiddos need it. And it is absolutely the first herb that I think every child needs to know. It's got a ton of other medicinal properties, but that's one of the primary ones for first aid. It's another one I would absolutely turn to if somebody maybe gets burned. You could find like plantain around you if they get burned on the campfire or cooking dinner or something. You can find some plantain and mash it up. You do want to make sure with all the plants I'm talking about, I don't want to say this over and over, but all the plants I talk about anytime, you want to make sure that they're not being sprayed by herbicides and pesticides or that they're not like the hottest spot on the neighborhood dog walk. You catch what I mean? You know? Um, so if they are in those cases and you still need it because you're out in the wild, and man, this is what I need right now. I just got bit by a snake. Yeah. Use the plantain. Um, but you can mash it up with a rock instead to get those juices all open and flowing and being able to do the work that they can do. Again, this is another herb I would consider for burns. It's great to infuse into an oil. I love to do that while it's fresh. And then you can put it into a sab with some of the other herbs we're going to talk about, depending on what you need it for. Plantain can also be great for bruising and like so many other things. So, so, so many others. But let's focus on that first aid kit. Um, another one that I think is essential when it comes to bruising and things along those lines is Comfrey. Uh, you can use several of the Symphitum species. I love to infuse the leaves in olive oil and make a salve with it. This is another one I'll use as a poultice. And I can't tell you how many times I have helped people when my apothecary was open and they would come to me. Uh, they'd come to me with a sprained ankle or something. I live in like adrenaline junkies paradise in the foothills of Mount Hood in Oregon, and everybody's a hiker, snowboarder, skier, swimmer, rafter, something, right? So they're doing things that they're prone to get hurt in. And it happens all the time. And they also tend to work in the restaurant or service industry. So they need to be mobile. They're moving their bodies a lot for their work. And when they get injured, that can really screw up their paycheck, right? So they'll go to the doctor, doc will be like, hey, you got six to eight weeks off that ankle. Okay, bummer. Womp, womp. What am I gonna do? And then they come to me and I'm like, oh, comfrey. And I'll add a few little fun little tricks at the trade in there as well. And if I have an oil, I'll have them massage it on there. If I've got fresh plant comfrey in my garden, I'll gladly let them use some leaves and mash it up in a poultice and place it on whatever is sprained or strained. And it is amazing. Every single time I do this for somebody, they come back within two weeks and are like, holy crap. Or I'll see them at the restaurant they work at. And they're like, oh my God, you saved me. What did you do? My doctor's mind is blown, and it's so freaking cool to watch happen. Um, this is just a fabulous, fabulous herb. It's also great for broken bones and speeding the healing and repair of them. So great that you do want to make sure that the bones have been set into place before you use the comfrey, or they may set into place in ways that you really don't want them to. And that would be a big, big bummer, right? Um, it's also loaded with this constituent called Allantoin, which is phenomenal for regenerating skin cells and tissue. So that can be really nice if we have a big cut. I will say though, it is also so phenomenal at this that uh Comfrey doesn't have much for antimicrobial or antibacterial properties to it. And when we have an open wound like that, we really need antibacterial, antimicrobial herbs in there to prevent any infection. We would hate to like have that wound heal up with a bunch of bacteria in there going, yay, let's have a party, causing more, you know, redness, swelling, pain, and potentially a lot more than that. So um keep that in mind when using Comfrey. You really, really want something that's a strong antimicrobial. One that I love to have in this instance that most people don't think of for a first aid kit, but I definitely do, would be Echinacea. Um, most of you might think, oh, I know echinacea. It's that beautiful purple flower that everybody loves when they talk about herbalism, which yeah, it definitely is. And part of the reason most people know it is because it's such an immune stimulant, right? It's partially that way because it is antiviral, antibacterial, and anti-my uh fungal. So it can fight off the viruses, bacteria, fungi, all of that kind of stuff. And it's particularly fabulous topically. So if I had a big wound like that or a cut, I might use a little plantain or some comfrey. I would definitely use something like echinacea. So I do keep an echinacea tincture in my first aid kit when I'm going out camping because I know it can fight off so many different infections. If somebody's at my camp and they have some type of open wound or sore or something pussy, I've had it happen before a rhymic. Good thing I have echinacea. We're just gonna dab a little bit of this onto your weeping, oozing, whatever it may be, to fight off any extra ickies, especially when you're outside and there's dirt everywhere and you know, that kind of stuff. So keep that in mind. Another good thing to know is that echinacea also has vulnerary properties. So it's going to do a great job of speeding the healing process of the skin as well. So vulnerary. And herb geek speak means it's a great wound healer. So definitely have that one on hand. Um, another I love to consider for these types of issues is yarrow. Yarrow is an herb that I really want everybody to know by sight before it even has flowers. Its leaves are very, very distinctive. So Yarrow's Latin name is Achille millium. And it is said that Achilles was dipped by his heel in a bath of yarrow tea, and that's why he was such this invincible warrior, right? Super cool. And I feel like Yarrow really owns that. It really stands up to that in so many incredible ways. In this particular instance, the reason, oh yeah, back to the leaves before I before I go anywhere else. So the leaves and the name is Achillea, that's Achilles' story, right? And then Milifolium, and that means thousand leaves. And so if you were to look at the leaves, they're like these long kind of lance shaped, but they have many, many, many leaflets coming off of the side of, you know, the leaf. And so it it feels and looks almost like a long feather. And I will definitely, you know, hopefully you're looking at this on YouTube and you're able to see it, or on a reel and you're able to see it, because it's really a very, very, very important herb to know. And I live in the Pacific Northwest, so it does grow in the wild a lot. Anytime I get to a campground or going to play somewhere, I am always scouring the area for the plants that I know. Yarrow definitely is one of them, as is plantain. And I can think of many times where we have made it so that our camp outs actually got to keep going because somebody might have gotten hurt, or um a particular time my best friend's partner was cutting up broccoli and garlic for our dinner, and he sliced his thumb and everybody's freaking out. And I had already scoped the camp area, and I just kind of calmly walk over with some Yarrow leaves that I mashed up, and I'm like, here, man, put this on your thumb, thumb up in the air, hang out, don't freak out, chill out, right? Um, and you know, he kind of looks at me skeptically, but within 90 seconds, he was no longer bleeding. And that's cool, right? So that's the power of Yarrow. It can stop bleeding in really, really important cases. I've had so many times where I've watched this happen and it's it's so fun, kind of like as an herb nerd, like to watch everyone freak out and then be like, I am calm and checking this out, and sat down. Here's these herbs doing really cool things for you. Especially when someone's like all skeptical on it, right? It's super fun. And then the other thing about Yarrow, there's quite a few things that make it essential in a first aid kit, is that it is also antimicrobial. So it's gonna fight off the bacteria and fight any potential infection from getting into those wounds that might be bleeding, but it stops the bleeding, right? Yes. And it's a wound healer, it's a vulnerary herb. It's so freaking rad. It's amazing. And it's abundant. All of these plants, the echinacea is not abundant. Make sure you're either growing your echinacea or supporting a local organic herb farmer, making sure that it is organic, not wildcrafted, because uh check out United Plant Savers for at-risk species of plants. Echinacea is one of them. Uh, I love to get echinacea from Oshala Herb Farm or my local herbalist Grady. He's a great gardener and a little small herb farmer. I'll grow it myself. I'll also get it from Mountain Rose Herbs. They they definitely stand up to their uh truth in sustainability and their sourcing. So please don't buy wildcrafted echinacea or go wildcraft it yourself. But back to the plantain, the yarrow, the comfrey, those all grow in abundance. They're so easy to obtain. Um cool. So another herb I would keep on hand is chamomile, right? You wouldn't think chamomile, but oftentimes when people are out camping, maybe they're eating things they don't tend to eat, and they might get really bad digestive ups. And chamomile can be super helpful in that case. A simple bag of chamomile tea can work wonders. You could use that also to help calm some inflammation if there were a sting on the skin, like something along those lines, or maybe somebody had some type of allergic reaction to something around them and their eyes get all puffed up and swollen. Like you want to lay those chamomile bags on their eyes once they're wet, right? You want to moisten them and get that chamomile activated. So that could be really nice. It's also going to be really nice if there does become a frightening or stressful situation out in the wild and somebody's like bugging out, right? This happens. Um, you can give them some chemomile tea and just help their anxiety just kind of, you know, take a little chill fill. It's gonna be really, really nice. Uh, I'd also keep ginger on hand and or peppermint for those kinds of cases, activated car charcoal, not for the anxiety cases for the tummy upset. Like, ew, I ate something wrong, my guts are mad, whatever. Um, ginger, peppermint, activated charcoal could all be really, really helpful to hand up have on hand in those cases as well. And the ginger could be nice if like somebody did like bruise themselves badly or dealing with like super sore muscles or something along those lines. You could potentially use ginger topically as well. So lots and lots and lots of great things that we could put in our first aid kits. I do also like to have some bentonite clay on hand at all times for its drawing powers. If I'm using a tincture, I can put that tincture into the bentonite clay and place it on whatever part of the body needs it. Um, and there's just infinite uses of the clay as well. And then one thing that I think is uh underrated in a first aid kit that is essential. And usually I am one to talk about whole herbs, but lavender essential oil, a good quality lavender essential oil, is an absolute go-to. Somebody's bugging out, they've got anxiety, something bad happened, they're in shock, they're freaking out. A drop of lavender essential oil on their clothing can just bring an almost instant sense of calm. Lavender is safe on the skin. It doesn't have to be diluted like many other essential oils would need to be. They'd need a carrier oil. Um, lavender can also act as an antimicrobial, so it can fight off any potential infections if somebody has got a wound happening, right? Little bitty bit of essential oil, like you can get those tiny little bottles, like I've got one here. Arocacia is a fine brand. You can find them on store shelves. They'll do the trick, right? Um, and that's such a tiny thing to carry along as well. Lavender is also amazing for burns. So definitely a go-to in that department. There's a lot that we can do with plant medicine for first aid. And obviously, this is not an exhaustive list. I just want to get you started. These are the essential. And so much about first aid and definitely herbalism is like not just knowing what herbs you have. Well, yes, definitely knowing what herbs you have. Please do get to know them in depth, get to know them and the many ways that you can use them. But actually understanding how to use them, how to apply them, when is the right time. And it comes with practice. It comes with guidance, of course. That's really helpful. Listening to this podcast might give you some good ideas. Um, and then it just comes with doing and experimenting and playing and deciding. You can always get mentors to make that happen faster for you. Understanding how the body works is also really, really important to know what to do when for you to be able to assess a situation and be like, okay, an accident just happened. We're far from a hospital or any medical care. I have these plants here. I see one person freaking out. And oftentimes, like if it's a kid that just had an accident, it's the parents that are freaking out, right? And we need to calm them because we need the kid to also stay calm. We have to assess that whole area, the whole scene. How can we use these herbs to help? Everybody. Because if the parents freaking out, the kid's gonna freak out, the kid's less likely to listen to you and do the things that are necessary. The driver becomes freaked out because if you have to go to medical care, the driver gets freaked out because everyone else is freaking out, and a freaked out driver can cause even more accidents. We're not thinking clearly in those times. So I think one of the top things for sure when it comes to an herbal first aid kit is just making sure that the nervous system, the brain are calm. So you can think clearly. So um yeah, that's just like a quick skinny overview of like these I will not go anywhere without. Ooh, Arnica's another one I really love just for the bumps and sprains and strains. But you can do a lot with Comfrey and plantain as well. Um, yeah. So there's lots and lots and lots more to talk about, but this is definitely gonna get you started. If you have any questions, please reach out to me, drop comments in the podcast or on YouTube, reach out to me at budding herbalist at the herbalistpath.com. And if this is at all helpful for you, I'd be so grateful if you left me a review that helps other people hear these kinds of episodes and learn about herbal medicine as well. That is I like to say, it makes herbalism spread like wildflowers. So um, yeah, again, I hope it's helpful. I hope that you are stocking your first aid kit with these kinds of things. If you want, I do have a whole program that lines it out and gives you all kinds of recipes and what to do in these situations in much greater details. I think uh I just decided in this moment of recording this podcast, you're seeing it happen. I'll send out a discount code with this podcast if you'd like to jump on that herbal first aid skills program. I think it's really, really important to know and to teach your family, your children, your friends. Everybody needs to know this stuff. So um, thank you so much for tuning in. And I hope that your day is phenomenal. Actually, I hope your whole summer is filled with tons of nature, tons of adventure, tons of fun. Take care of yourself so you can take care of each other. Bye. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the Herbalist Path. If you're loving this journey into herbal medicine, please follow and review the show. It helps more people find their own path with the plants. And if you know someone who could use this kind of support, please share this episode with them. So that way we can keep making herbalism spread like wildflowers. Also, a gentle reminder: nothing shared on this podcast is intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease. This is all for educational purposes, and yeah, a little entertainment too. But it is not a substitute for personalized care from a qualified health practitioner. Always do your own research, listen to your body, and when needed, partner with a trusted professional who honors both your intuition and your unique health journey. Until next time, take care, stay curious, and keep walking the herbalist path.