Yesterday I started reading the book ‹Pine Pollen – Ancient Medicine for a New Millennium› by Harrod Buhner again. The foreword was written by Daniel Vitalis, the founder of Surthrival and a pine pollen pioneer from the USA.
The barefoot-walking Vitalis, who drinks from mountain springs, believes that our industrially produced food contains far too few genuine nutrients today. Vitalis is not the first person to notice this. At the moment, we are watching a huge health and fitness trend spill over from the USA into Europe: tracking and hacking one’s own body, as well as returning to a Stone Age diet, also known as ‹Paleo›.
In recent years, certain secondary plant compounds—antioxidants, flavonoids, and polyphenols—have become increasingly popular because they may have many positive effects on humans.
This is not surprising. Our domesticated plants are increasingly losing these compounds, or have already lost them over thousands of years of selective breeding.
A plant that ‹thrives› on the sickbed of industrial agriculture cannot develop vitality. How could it? It no longer has any natural enemies.
Wild plants are different. Wild plants have to hold their own in the daily struggle. The artemisinin in Artemisia annua, for example, is a compound that protects the plant from fungi, viruses, and predators. Secondary plant compounds are what make Artemisia or cistus so bitter. Testosterone from pine pollen is also a secondary plant compound, a phytoandrogen. In this spirit—rewild yourself!
Find out more about Pine Pollen in our comprehensive Pine Pollen guide, and read about my own experience with homemade tincture in My Experience with Pine Pollen Tincture.
Find out more about adaptogens in general in What Are Adaptogens? Origins, Effects, and the Idea of Adaptation. You can find the complete overview of salutogenesis and adaptogens in our comprehensive salutogenesis guide.