Dear Kristie, I read your BLOG posting about herbal remedies for colds, flu, etc and I was hoping you would answer a few questions for me. Can you make the fenugreek and thyme teas into syrups as well? Do you need to ask the pharmacist for vegetable glycerin or is it on the shelf? Do you use the same amount of herb in the thyme tea as in the fenugreek? Do you use fresh or dried herbs for the thyme and fenugreek teas (I’ve never seen fenugreek before but I’ve been looking for it b/c I have a great curry recipe that calls for it, so thanks for the source.) How often can you administer these teas/syrups? I’ve frequently heard not to use honey in children under 1. Should I stick to that advice? On another note, I use herb tinctures from my L.ac. for my children. However, they taste horrible and it’s a battle to administer them. Any suggestions on a procedure to make them taste better? I know they already contain glycerin but I think they still taste horrible. Thanks! – JG

Dear JG,
Thank you for your question! I will do the best to answer below….

1. You can make any herbal tea into a syrup – even those Celestial Seasonings teas or other tea bag teas.

2. I usually buy vegetable glycerine online but you can get it at most health food stores nowadays. If not, you can go to any pharmacy and ask the pharmacist where it is. You don’t need a prescription but they would know where it is or they may have bottles for sale behind the counter.

3. I use dried herbs.

4. For adults I recommend 3 cups of tea a day. For a 12 year old it would be 1 1/2 cups a day, for a 6 year old it would be 3/4 cups a day, etc…when you get to the really young child it is not a very big amount. This is great because that means you only have to get them either to swallow a spoon or two of it or you can add it to some juice and they won’t notice much.

5. You should not use raw honey for kids under one, but store-purchased, machine cleaned, and sanitized honey is fine.

Adding syrups to juices helps make them taste better, serving them up cold helps, because it reduces the taste, serving them up with a spoon of honey…I am not sure what would work. I just usually experiment with different herbs until I find ones that my kids like so I’m not very good at getting them to take things they don’t like but those are the things I tried before that seemed to work.

Dilution is also always a good solution. You can add herbs to any foods you are already serving such as salad dressing, soups and even oatmeal.

Do you have questions? Post them below and we will choose some to write blog posts about…