Your Brain on Elderberry

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My kids always ask me for elderberry capsules when they start getting sick. I think it's great that they choose this over any other cold or flu medicine <3 !  Elderberry is a folk remedy with a crazy list of benefits.  It's a powerful antioxidant, helps lower cholesterol, improves vision, and helps your body fight bacterial and viral infections. Elderberry juice has been used to treat influenza, and was very effective!

But, of course, I'm interested in what elderberry does for your brain:

"Elderberries are wild shrubs, growing eight to ten feet tall, and are found along streambeds and waste areas across most of North America. They are exceptionally high in aconthocyanins, a potent antioxidant that helps protect brain cells and mitochondria from damage." -Dr. Terry Wahls

"Elderberries are packed with quercetin, a flavonoid that’s critical to your brain’s health. Like blueberries and strawberries, the flavonoids found in elderberries help reduce harmful inflammation at a cellular level. Additionally, quercetin increases the activity of your cells’ mitochondria, which you can think of as the “powerhouses” within each of your cells. By boosting your mitochondrial activity, you’ll boost your overall energy level, too." - Dr. Majid Fotuhi, author of The Memory Cure

I was talking to a guy last year about  the benefits of elderberry. He said, "Oh, I have those in my back yard. We never do anything with them." He invited me to come over when his berries got ripe this year. I was so excited! I decided I was going to make my own elderberry syrup. I was going to be that mom!

He called to tell me the berries were ready last Friday. I started researching recipes and found out that  some elderberries are poisonous. And even the ones that aren't poisonous need to be cooked to remove toxins from them. The stems need to be removed because they're poisonous. There's nothing like the internet to make a person paranoid. I wasn't even sure if I should do it. But elderberries are one of my favorite natural remedies, so I decided to try.

Yesterday, I brought my daughter and her friend over to pick them. The berries were too high to reach, so the elderberry guy pruned some of the branches from the high part of the bush and we started picking them off.

The berries were unbelievably tiny! It took a super long time, but the elderberry guy was really funny and entertaining, so the time flew by. Later, he gave us a tour of his AMAZING 100 year old house. The girls got to pick some blueberries, too, until my daughter got freaked out by the spiders.  It was an adventure.

Tonight I cooked up 1/2 the berries using at this recipe. It turned out fabulous!

I'm still alive :). My brain feels better already.