If you've ever walked past a patch of nettles and kept your distance, this episode might just change your mind.
In this conversation, we dig deep into one of herbalism's most beloved plants, one that is deeply woven into Eclectic Herb's history and into the traditions of herbalists across centuries and cultures. You'll come away with a completely new relationship to that prickly green growing along your fence line.
Why Nettles Is a Big Deal
Nettles (Urtica dioica) is one of the most nutrient-dense plants on the planet. We walk through its remarkable nutritional profile together: vitamins A, C, K, and the full B complex, plus magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, iron, and silica. This is not a vitamin supplement in a green wrapper. This is whole plant nutrition that has been feeding and healing people for thousands of years.
For women especially, nettles tend to show up as a consistent ally. It is traditionally used to support heavy menses, iron deficiency, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and perimenopause. The silica content also makes it a lovely choice for hair, skin, nails, and connective tissue health as we age.
Ed Alstat's Discovery and Why Freeze-Drying Matters
Tune into the episode and catch a video of our founder, Ed, sharing the story of how he accidentally discovered that nettles could support seasonal allergy relief, a discovery that was later backed up by science. It's a moment worth hearing in his own words, and it speaks to the heart of everything Eclectic Herb is built on.
Fresh nettles turned out to be the key. Not dried, not extracted months after harvest, but fresh. Since fresh nettles aren't available year-round, freeze-drying became the answer, retaining up to 97% of the plant's active constituents, far more than air-drying, which exposes the plant to oxidation over time.
We recommend starting freeze-dried nettles about two months before allergy season to get ahead of things before they start.
A 17th Century Perspective: Nicholas Culpeper From Our Library
One of the most delightful moments in this episode is a live reading from a 17th-century Nicholas Culpeper herbal sitting in our personal collection. Culpeper was a physician, astrologer, herbalist, and rebel who believed medical knowledge belonged to everyone, not just Latin-speaking doctors. He assigned nettles to the planet Mars, calling it energetically hot and dry.
His uses for nettles include respiratory phlegm, gout, rheumatism, wound healing, kidney and urinary support, and even as a remedy against poisons. While some of those applications read as colorfully historical now, the underlying herbal logic holds up beautifully when compared to how herbalists use nettles today.
The Eclectic Physicians and Pattern-Based Healing
We also spend time with the King's American Dispensatory, a foundational text from the Eclectic Physicians, the 19th and early 20th century doctors who practiced herbal medicine in the United States and left behind a rich body of clinical documentation. Their approach was not to match a plant to a disease name, but to match it to a pattern in the body.
For nettles, they noted it was specific to conditions presenting with excess mucus and watery discharges, inflammatory bowel states, and diarrhea with mucus. In today's language, that overlaps with histamine-related gut irritation and inflammatory patterns, which aligns well with how we understand nettles' anti-inflammatory and astringent actions.
Ed's Origin Story: The Pharmacist Who Started Asking Questions
You'll also hear the story of how Ed Alstat went from a pharmacist in 1969 San Francisco, working in a wig to keep his long hair, to becoming a naturopathic physician and eventually founding Eclectic Herb. Watching people return again and again for the same medications without actually getting well led him to ask whether there was another way. That question changed everything.
We even touch on how many pharmaceutical companies began as herb companies, and that our library includes crude drug kits from Eli Lilly, a nod to how deeply plants are woven into the history of medicine.
Nettles Around the World
Chris leads us on a little journey through a Nettles World Tour. In New Zealand, the Onga Onga grows 10 feet tall and was historically planted around Maori villages to keep enemies out. In Japan, the Ainu people of the north island used nettles as a spring food and wove the fibrous stems into fishing nets and ceremonial clothing. In Russia, it finds its way into spring green soups as a tonic for cleansing and nourishment. And across Europe, the practice of urtication, deliberately stinging the skin with fresh nettles, has been documented for centuries as a pain relief technique for gout and rheumatism.
Ways to Use Nettles
We share a range of practical ways to bring nettles into your life: nettle tea, apple cider vinegar infusion with optional additions of horsetail and rosemary, nettle pesto, smoothies, soups, and of course, the fresh freeze-dried capsules from Eclectic Herb. One favorite from Chris's Japanese heritage is nettles gomaae, where cooked greens are simply tossed with sesame. And yes, a nettles latte made from our nettles powder makes a lovely caffeine-free alternative to matcha.
There is also a tip in here for eating a fresh nettle leaf directly from the plant by folding it so the stinging hairs are tucked safely inside. The flavor is something else entirely. Green, alive, and deeply nourishing in a way that is hard to put into words.
If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a fellow plant lover and find us @eclecticherb on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
*This is for educational purposes. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. All products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent diseases.
