Pokeberry Health Benefits

This here's ol' cracker redneck mofo lives where many a' poke berry grows. Yes, you can eat the berries, just don't chew the seeds. Some folk likes to just swallow the berries whole (with the seed in it) and you will have shat out the seed just like GOD's lovely feathered creatures do. DO NOT CHEW OR EAT THE SEEDS but swallow them whole. Or, if you are a chicken, throw a mess of the berries in a Mason/Ball jar and cover with your fave imbibement (some type of white liguor, such as gin or vodka). Let them purdy ol' berries get all soaked up and then pour out in a bowl in a week or so and mashe the bedickens out them thar' berries and put back in the Mason/Ball jar for a couple weeks. Drain off and save the liquid and start consuming up to a shot a day and see what that'll do for ya before you increase or decrease dosage. BEWARE, you may need to stay close to the shitter till you figure out how your bowels react to the delight of this healing drug. I'd rather shit my brains out and have clear bowels every day than to put up with gout or any kind of joint pain.

P.S. Lots of gout is caused by eating dirty food. Get pork and all shell fish and cat fish outta ya diet NOW. Most people that have gout, eat dirty food. Read Leviticus Chap 11 (yes, read the whole thing, not just what you want hear and then stop. Read and study it all. It tells you what you can eat that comes from the behomoth (land animals) and what you can eat from the leviathin (from the waters). And, don't let anyone misinterpret anything in the New Testament that says you can eat whatever you want. NOT TRUE. Keep eatin' dirty (and against GOD's dietary laws and you will continue to be sick). Shut up. Stop whining and git' er' done! .

That's bs! Poke salad, that's what we here in the south call it. We ate so much of this as a child, never had one single thing happen to all 11 of us. We'd boil it 3 xs every time we'd pour out the boil water add new and repeat. We live in a time where omg everything's bad for u. And I bet y'all would come up with some stupid reason why kids shouldn't ever drink out of a water hose? Oh we surely will get sick from latex poison. Bs. I thank God for poke salad BC we didn't have too much to eat outside of whatever we'd grow. We'd pick black berries and sloes and poke salad u name it and we all survived and we eat it to this very day. I'm preparing some right now.

We'd call poke salad a spring tonic we never ever got sick from any thing - stomach bugs flues fevers. so if poke's so toxic why are we all so healthy after eating it for yrs? How's your health?

Response to Sandra

"To Joyce from Joelton,Tn. Gout: What is the method used with Pokeweed for Gout? Do you make a paste and wrap the foot, or do you ingest them? Please advise? What are the exact measurements for this herb?"

I started doing this by putting berries in l gallon jug and using enough Vodka to just cover the berries. Put tight lid on and let set a week or two, moving jug around a little every two to three days. After that, just strain off the liquid and store in brown or green bottles. Beer bottles work fine for storage. (You can also use your potato masher (or whatever you have) to kind of sqush those pokeberries before straining the liquid off.

For those of you who are interested in doing your own herbs, when using fresh herbs your ratio is l:l. If using dehydrated herbs the ratio is l part herb to 2 parts diluent.

I can't remember where I read it, but I do recall reading that you shouldn't treat children under l2 with poke, because it hastened the setting of the long bones (arms & legs). There might be something to this because my family ate a lot of poke sallet and many of us have normal size bodies but short arms and legs. I might also add that most references recommend parboiling through 3 waters before ingesting, but my family (and others that I know who ate their share of it) only parboiled through one water (water discarded) before proceeding to finish cooking it and eating it.