Black Horehound: Herbal Remedy for Cystitis / Bladder Irritation, Motion Sickness, Ear Infection, Natural Oscillopsia Treatment, and More...

Ballota nigra: Herbal Motion Sickness Treatment, Oscillopsia Treatment, Ear Infection Treatment, and Nausea / Vomiting Treatment for Children and Adults

Lydi and I usually have cycles of clients that contact us at the same time for roughly the same health issue. It’s not usually an exact one-to-one, but rather, the relationships among our various clients becomes apparent to us over the course of time as we work with these people and unpack what’s really going on. Often, the relationship among various clients has to do with the need for a common treatment or the fact that the originating issue is something that they all share.

My husband has suggested that perhaps these patterns in our client-base and the fact that we often have clients that end up needing similar treatments at any given time have to do with marketing, but it’s not that simple and I don’t believe in coincidences.

Right before we left for Spain last spring, we had a series of clients, with ear-related issues, dizziness, and bladder problems. These things might seem unrelated. In some systems of medicine, they are unrelated, but the relationship among these various health issues is apparent in herbalism and in Traditional Chinese Medicine. We didn’t actually know that we would leave for Spain in the spring; our trip had actually been planned to happen in late summer. But once we came to terms with the fact that we needed to get going on some business and immigration matters in Spain, we booked our flight and then…I could see how all of these health issues in our clients actually also pertained to us. 

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For all of the clients we were working with at that time, one herb had risen to the surface: Ballota nigra, also known as black horehound. I had studied this herb for years, but in Mexico, I was never able to get ahold of enough of it at a cost where I would feel comfortable experimenting with it. But now, as we packed up and got ready to go to Europe, I wished that I had some because both Naing Naing (Lydi’s husband) and Maya (her daughter) suffer from severe motion sickness.

Ballota nigra is one of the few herbs that I knew about that specifically was mentioned as something that could treat motion sickness naturally. It had other medicinal effects that had gotten my attention too like:

• Nausea and vomiting treatment, especially nausea and vomiting that’s worsened by anxiety or nervousness
• Lowers fever
• Dizziness treatment, especially when dizziness is caused by ear-related issues such as infection.
• Migraine treatment
• Treatment for digestive upsets, especially a feeling of fullness after a meal
• Digestion stimulation
• Mild anxiety treatment
• Muscle tension treatment
• Insomnia treatment
• Used to treat mild sleep disorders
• Treatment for nervousness (situational or general)
• Expectorant that clears congestion
• Treatment for a nagging cough
• Regularizes an irregular menstrual cycle
• Reduce menstrual cramps
• Used to treat skin infections, ulcers, animal bites, hemorrhoids, rashes, or wounds as a poultice
• Used to treat toothaches
• Treatment for gas / flatulence
• Treatment for upset stomach
• Antiseptic
• Anti-inflammatory
• Antiparasitic
• Stops bleeding / hemostatic
• Diuretic
• Used to treat tuberculosis
• Promotes appetite
• Treatment for chronic hoarseness
• Used to treat bronchitis
• Kidney stones and gallbladder stones treatment
• Stimulates bile flow
• Protects the liver
• Used in cases of malaria to treat an inflamed liver and spleen
• Natural splenomegaly treatment
• Natural hepatitis treatment
• Natural asthma treatment
• Combines with motherwort / Leonurus cardiaca to treat uterine contractions during labor
• Fresh leaves can be “beaten with salt” or mixed with honey and then applied to severe wounds including animal bites
• Leaves can be burned to repel biting insects
• Antibacterial
• Antiprotozoal
• Antifungal
• Anticancer

Click here to buy Ballota nigra / Black Horehound, dried herb.

Ballota nigra is a really interesting herb that works on the autonomic nervous system. It can be used for nausea and vomiting that’s caused by nervousness or anxiety, but this herb doesn’t make you feel weird when you take it. Some people describe a feeling like “lightning” in the stomach initially followed by a sense of general relaxation and well-being. Others say that it can cause an initial feeling of “tightening” in the head and scalp after the initial dose, again followed by relaxation and a feeling of well-being. It has this profoundly balancing impact on the autonomic nervous system when administered at the right dose. So it just makes you feel “okay” (neither overly awake or overly sedated). Ballota nigra seems to have an impact on the bladder meridian which passes through the head to occasionally produce headaches and other head-related symptoms. It is an excellent herbal remedy for bladder irritation and cystitis perhaps through the calming impact that this herb has on the autonomic nervous system. It is also a powerful cough and allergy remedy. It can be a real ally when a child (or an adult, for that matter) becomes sick with colds, flu, COVID, or other respiratory illnesses.

When I give it to Maya and Naing Naing, I feel good about the fact that they’re also being treated for parasites (like malaria), should they harbor any. I can expect that they’ll be in a decent mood while traveling because Ballota nigra has this mood-balancing effect through its interaction with the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system.

Indeed, I was shopping for a good allergy remedy for Naing Naing and Maya because histamines are the thing that conventional medicine tries to manipulate for both allergies and motion sickness. Histamines in this context, interact in an “abnormal” way with acetylcholine when a person is in motion. Acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter that helps us orient to gravity and space. But when you fiddle with histamine, you’re pulling on the thread in the tapestry of our endocrine hormones, that holds the whole fabric together, including the ubiquitous acetylcholine. Tugging at histamine with prescription or over-the-counter anti-histamines is like pulling on a thread that makes a wrinkle that goes through the whole fabric, end-to-end. Ironing out the fabric after working with anti-histamines can be challenging because histamine can and does sometimes unweave itself and try to exist independently of the complex tapestry of endocrine hormone patterns. When this happens, it takes time to work the histamine back into the weave.  

This is why Lydi and I weren’t thrilled about giving Naing Naing and Maya an antihistamine like Dramamine multiple times over the course of several months. It can cause actual damage, so we both felt pressured to come up with a more suitable solution to the motion sickness problem.

If you’re reading this because you have a child with oscillopsia or chronic ear infections, or if you suffer yourself from severe allergies or even Mast Cell Activation Syndrome / MCAS that seems untreatable, just be aware that all of these problems pertain, in some way, to histamine and acetylcholine. 

Histamine that becomes unwoven from the fabric of endocrine hormones can cause Post Traumastic Stress Disorder / PTSD symptoms (this is a chicken-or-the-egg situation in which PTSD may also cause histamine to become untethered). Unwoven histamine can cause Mast Cell Activation Syndrome / MCAS, or severe allergies that seem uncontrollable. Histamine that’s untethered like this can cause a variety of health problems that have to do with imbalances in the autonomic nervous system. These imbalances might be triggered (to borrow a PTSD term) by any number of things in the environment that causes the body, specifically the autonomic nervous system and histamine in the endocrine system, to over-react. 

Ballota nigra is an herb that balances the autonomic nervous system and the effects of histamine. So it works on a multitude of different health issues and it has an elegant mechanism of action that isn’t too abrupt or imbalancing. For example, while Dramamine may be able to reduce motion sickness symptoms, it also makes people sleepy and sometimes depressed. So you’ll be traveling the world, but you won’t see anything passing by your window and though you might be excited about the trip when you leave, you’ll likely feel quite depressed when you arrive.

Naing Naing suffers, at times from severe allergies that tend to hit him from out of nowhere. Naing Naing was, in the past, a PTSD sufferer. He had severe trauma that he worked to integrate / release using psilocybin mushrooms, Ayahuasca, and Iboga. But as his PTSD symptoms have waned, he developed these allergy symptoms in which he would sneeze 20 times in a row and have an ongoing, annoying persistent runny nose that would last for hours. I view these allergies as a sign that his histamine is being “rewoven” back into the fabric of his other endocrine hormones, but it’s uncomfortable for him nonetheless. I might celebrate his allergy symptoms as progress, but as long as he has to stuff wads of tissue up his nostrils to prevent the persistent runny nose from making his life unbearable, he couldn’t care less about the theory that he’s actually healing. 

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Now this is weird, but these allergy symptoms that Naing Naing has as a stationary human being in the world are caused by the same histamine-related issues as his motion sickness. His motion sickness is a manifestation of the histamine-release abnormalities that occur in response to his body being in motion. This was a theory that I developed years ago when I started noticing herbs like Euphorbia hirta and Ballota nigra that seem to be able to get rid of allergy symptoms and also treat dizziness, nausea and vomiting. I’ve expanded on the theory considerably over time to a point where I understand now that I’m looking at the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system effects that these herbs are providing.

Let me clarify something here. The autonomic nervous system exists in continuum, as a holistic part of the endocrine system in some systems of medicine such as Endobiogeny. Endobiogeny is technically a type of conventional medicine, but it’s on the fringes and it has, for the most part been rejected by the Group Think of scientists and elitists who prefer to stick to treatments that make a profit rather than embracing treatments that can actually heal things. Endobiogeny textbooks are a bit misogynistic, so you have to ignore this aspect of things and forge ahead nonetheless, but the theories in this model of medicine are otherwise compelling. Histamine belongs to the endocrine system. It is a neurohormone and it literally acts like a conductor for an orchestra of other endocrine hormones. Yes, I know this is a new metaphor that I’m introducing on top of the one about fabric and threads. I apologize for that. But the metaphor about endocrine hormones as a symphony is important because many hormones have an impact on the body through the rhythm and sustain of their release rather than through the quantity of their release. 

Bioidentical hormone therapy and synthetic hormones like birth control pills don’t in any way acknowledge this aspect of hormones in the body. Rather, conventional medicine doctors who peddle hormone treatments attempt to treat reproductive issues using hormones with the dexterity and gentleness of a chainsaw murderer. Meanwhile there are herbs like Garcinia kola that work to balance reproductive hormones by pushing buttons in the liver and gallbladder that don’t imbalance reproductive organs. And an herb like Ballota nigra can be combined with the wise and wonderful Leonurus cardiaca / Motherwort that heals the root chakra and our sense of not-belonging as well as the excruciating heart-break or loss or rejection that often co-exist together (loss and being lost) at one time or another in every person’s life.

Cortisol, an endocrine hormone that regulates our ability to be sync with nature, for example, might be likened to a drum beat that wakes us in the morning with a very specific set of rhythms. And it keeps us awake and manages our states of wakefulness and relaxation throughout the day via the rhythm as opposed to the quantity of its release. If you inject a quantity of cortisol into the body, you threaten to disrupt the entire rhythm of the organism. Inject a lot of it on a regular basis and you almost certainly will produce a major illness.  

Cortisol release that is out of sync rhythmically with the actual lightness and darkness of the day or night, the seasons, the tilt of the earth, and all of the stimuli that we use to orient ourselves to time, makes us feel ugly feelings. Just ask anyone who’s experienced jet lag. Cortisol that is out of sync with the outside work can create a soup of awful feelings that last for 3 to 5 days after you settle in a stationary position on the globe again. They come in waves throughout the day and the night until the body can adjust to its new position on the planet. But if you have a condition that causes cortisol to be out-of-sync for a longer period of time, this can make you feel like someone with PTSD, depression, severe anxiety, panic, or dysphoria. On top of that, you would likely also have symptoms of some sort of physical disease caused by being out-of-sync with your natural surroundings.   

Our Real-Life Experience with Ballota nigra for Motion Sickness

While we were in Spain, Lydi and I purchased health-related things that we can’t get as easily in Mexico like black horehound / Ballota nigra, an herb that costs $100 USD in Mexico for 8 ounces, but that grows wild in Spain and its cost there reflects this fact. As I mentioned before, both Naing Naing and Maya suffer from severe motion sickness which leaves Lydian in a precarious situation on necessary trips to far-off places. She’s left holding the passports and managing all of the bags by herself along with a puking baby while Naing Naing goes off somewhere private to puke and be dizzy. It’s an ugly situation. Very messy and off-putting to others with whom we are forced to sit next to for long hours.

No one wants to be close to Lydi, Naing Naing, and Maya on an airplane…

…and yes, I know they could take Dramamine. Indeed, Lydi gave both Maya and Naing Naing Dramamine on the way from Mexico to Spain because we had too little Ballota nigra in our stash to even attempt to use it for motion sickness. But Lydi and I don’t like Dramamine. I mean, I am grateful that such things exist. But it can cause depression. It can make people sleepy, which doesn’t help Lydi in terms of managing bags, passports, etc. en route to someplace on the other side of the world. Maya was potty training at the time when we left Mexico for Spain and the Dramamine irritated her tiny little bladder which was no small thing to contend with on a 10 hour flight with little Maya who is normally a sparkler in her normal state. Give her an irritated bladder and she is a fire-tornado. So I was excited to give Ballota nigra a real effort when we arrived in Spain to see if it would really work to treat motion sickness for Naing Naing and Maya. 

I ordered 3 kilograms of this stuff and set aside 2 square feet in my bags to make sure that I’d have plenty of it to get through a period of time in Mexico when I wouldn’t be able to order more of it. You see, for an adult, a proper dose of Ballota nigra is about 4 grams. I wasn’t sure if the treatment would work at all and if it did work, I wasn’t sure if it would last as a motion sickness treatment. There is no information about dosing for motion sickness, but I figured that I’d need to give a fairly large dose in order for it to work. I started Naing Naing with a very normal tea made with 4 grams at the beginning of long trips that we took within Spain. Maya wasn’t so easy to dose though. The bitterness and moldy, fetid taste was something she resisted with a vigorous, dramatic display. 

I first made a honey syrup with the Ballota nigra for Maya. She liked this well enough if Lydi used a Tylenol or ibuprofen-style administration dropper. I made up 3 days worth of Ballota nigra which, for a child, would be about 9-12 grams (at a maximum dose of 3-4 grams total for one day depending on the size and age of the child). I put the 12 grams of Ballota nigra in a pot and then added just enough filtered water to cover the herbs so that the mixture was just slightly “squishy”. I wanted there to be enough water to cover the entire surface area of the herbs, but not so much water as to make the syrup dose too high after I added honey to the mix. Maya’s a finicky little lion, so I wanted to increase the odds that she’d take the right dose by keeping the amount of honey-syrup to a minimum.

Ballota nigra can be administered in a variety of ways. It can be given as:

• An infusion, or in other words, as a regular tea that’s steeped for 15 minutes in water that was recently boiled.
• As a decoction where the herb is actively boiled in water for 10 to 15 minutes.
• As a liquid extract
• As a solid extrat
• As powder
• As pills
• As a tincture
• As fresh juice from fresh leaves
• Dried plant material chewed in the mouth
• Fresh plant material chewed in the mouth.
• Oil infusion - at the time of this writing, I have made an oil infusion of Ballota nigra to put on Maya topically, rather than making her take the herb orally, but I haven’t tried it yet so I can’t say whether it works to the same degree or even with the same medicinal results as giving her an oral form of Ballota nigra.

While Naing Naing was willing to take almost anything to reduce his motion sickness, Maya was not so easy to treat. She has opinions. So I did some experimentation with different ways to package Ballota nigra for her before a big trip.

Here’s my Ballot nigra syrup recipe for motion sickness / dizziness / nausea in children and adults:

• Use a gram scale to measure the Ballota nigra in grams into the pot. For adults, 1 dose is 4 grams which can be given up to 3 times per day. For children under age 5, the dose is 1 to 1.3 grams which can be given up to 3 times per day.) 

• Make enough for the syrup to last the entire duration of your upcoming trip if you’re treating motion sickness or make enough to get through a family illness if you’re making the syrup to treat nausea and vomiting during an illness.

• Add filtered water to the pot such that the water covers all of the herb. Stir it gently to make sure all of the herb is immersed in the water. The water should be covering all of the herb so that the medicinal agents for all of the herbal material will end up in the “tea”. 

• Bring the tea to a boil. 

• Turn off the heat as soon as it boils.

• Let the tea steep for 15 to 20 minutes.

• Strain the herbal material out of the tea and put the water in another pot. Put the water and herbs into a colander and let the water drip out. Push on the herbs against the colander to really squeeze the tea out of the herbal material and get as much of it out as you can.

• Add a quantity of raw honey to the tea that is roughly twice as much as the tea in the pot. So if you have about 1 cup of “tea” in your pot, put about 2 cups of raw honey in the pot. 

• Heat the honey-tea mixture to boiling and then turn the heat down, but allow the mixture to continue to boil lightly while stirring continuously as the honey thickens. Depending on your altitude, you may need to continue stirring and boiling this mixture for 10 to 20 minutes to thicken it to a syrupy consistency. The honey may darken slightly as it begins to thicken.

• After you finish heating and stirring this mixture, allow it to cool slightly and then pour it into a glass container that can tolerate high-heat. 

• Store the syrup in the refrigerator for later use. On the lid, take note of the number of grams of Ballota nigra contained in the whole batch of syrup. Then draw tick marks on the outside of the jar to designate “doses” (there are many ways to do this part). 

For example, because the syrup that I made was for both Maya and Naing Naing, I wanted to simply provide an obvious and easy way for Lydian to use it without having to do math or think too much about it. If I made 24 grams of Ballota nigra honey syrup, I would mark out the final quantity on the side of the jar with 24 tick marks that were approximately equidistant from each other. Each tick mark designated approximately 1 gram of Ballota nigra. 

We knew that we would have to travel a lot in Spain and then, at some point, we’d return to Mexico, so I made additional formats of Ballot nigra to try because honey syrup is something that could get thrown away at airport security (something that could be tragic under the wrong circumstances for us and those seated next to us). Next, I tried making “gummies”. 

Gummies are pretty easy to make with agar agar, something that was easy for me to get and easy for me to use in my crappy little AirBnB kitchen in Spain. Gummies were appealing to me because they aren’t liquid, per se, so airport security wouldn’t steal them from me. I just needed to make sure that I had an idea of how much Ballota nigra was in each gummy after I’d finished making them.

Once again, I’d put my herbs in a pot and covered them with as little water as possible to make a “tea” (steps 1 through 6 above). After straining the “tea” out of the water-herb mixture, I then added honey to double the volume of the mixture (a 1:1 mix of the tea: honey). Then, I did the following:

• I laid out some parchment paper on a cookie sheet so that I would be able to pour my mixture out and put it in the refrigerator to firm up.

• I brought the tea-honey mixture to a boil. 

• I put 4 teaspoons of agar agar in a small amount of cold, filtered water and stirred it thoroughly.

• For about 2 cups of liquid, I waited until the mixture came to a boil and then I added the 4 teaspoons of agar agar in cold water to the boiling mixture while stirring the mixture vigorously. Be aware that you can always go back and re-melt the gummies later if you wish to add more agar agar or more honey to improve the consistency of the gummies.

• Remove the pot from the heat. 

• Pour the liquid onto your parchment paper. Put the cookie sheet in the refrigerator and let it firm up. 

• Once it is sufficiently firm, remove your gummy material from the refrigerator and use something to cut gummies out of it. I used a circular lid for a tiny jar that I had in my possession in Spain because I didn’t have other materials available for this part. I then stacked the gummies in layers in a tupperware container with parchment paper between each layer for future car, plane, boat, or train travel.

My gummies were each about 0.3 grams of Ballota nigra after I’d finished making them which meant that Maya would need to take about 3 of them for a full dose. Naing Naing would need 9 of them. Your gummies will probably be a different dose depending. Do some math. You’ll need to know how much Ballota nigra (approximately) each gummy contains.

In practice, I worried that the anti-motion sickness effects of this herb might wear off within about 90 minutes of taking a dose based on the idea that the half-life of verbascoside is about 90  minutes, but this didn’t happen. I would say, based on a number of travel experiences with both Naing Naing and Maya using Ballota nigra, that the anti-motion sickness effects lasted closer to 3-4 hours per full dose. I insisted that both Naing Naing and Maya take small doses (0.15 to 0.3 grams) every 2 hours or so when we were on our 10 hour flight to avoid having a time when the medicine wore off such that they became ill. I was simultaneously vigilant that the dose didn’t ever exceed 12 grams in one day (24 hours). 

Naing Naing only took about 6 grams total on our day of 12 hours on a plane plus two hours afterwards on the way home up winding mountain roads in a van. Maya took only about 2.5 grams total on that day. 

In reality, it is possible that a higher dose of Ballota nigra would be okay, but 12 grams per day was the established dose in the scientific literature that was not toxic. Maya is about 20 to 25% of the size of a small adult, so we gave her about 20-25% of a dose. Sometimes she spit it out so I didn’t feel concerned about giving her 1 gram at the beginning of the day with small amounts in her sippy-cup as tea inside some juice whenever that was possible. 

The Ballota nigra worked so well that Naing Naing, an almost 30-year old man, wasn’t sure what to do with himself on this long journey that would’ve usually involved sleepiness, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and disorientation. He was awake and alert throughout the entire journey, but still able to sleep like a normal person who does not have motion sickness. He could look out the window like the rest of us and watch the world go by, something he’d never been able to do before. He was functional on layovers versus just having to prop himself up for a moratorium-nap. He was able to arrive at the zoo or at the planetarium after a short drive and not feel dizzy or nauseated. He agreed that this made him unsure about how to integrate himself into the experiences with the rest of the group. He’d never been able to be included. Now he could even snack in the car. It was amazing.

Ballota nigra was an absolute miracle as an herbal remedy for motion sickness, but getting the dosing right was really important! If you take too low of a dose, the remedy simply won’t work. Also, this is a bitter herb so it isn’t fun to sip at the tea. It’s a “down the hatch” kind of scenario (hold your nose as it goes down). The gummies can be choked down if they contain enough honey or ginger to mask the taste. The syrup is something that Maya dealt with but usually with a few tears and fit-throwing first. The name “Ballota” is actually Greek for “to reject” so it makes sense that baby Maya would say “no thanks” to this herb. Yet she also could tell that it was working, mouldy-damp taste and all, and that made her more willing to take it after that first dose.

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Black Horehound: Final Thoughts

This herb was named nigra, for the black color of its leaves and its gross, mouldy taste (Ballota which means “to battle against” or “reject”). Some herbalists say that the colloquial name “black horehound” comes from the herb’s status as the “seeds of Horus”. Some people might not be able to appreciate this tidbit about its history, but I find it helpful in remembering what Ballota nigra is all about.

Horus is an Egyptian god who presided over kingship, protection, healing, the sun, and the sky. He is depicted as a falcon (either a lanner falcon or a peregrine falcon), or a man with a falcon head. If black horehound is under the dominion of the Egyptian Horus, we might think about this herb in terms of its ability to re-orient people to the rhythms of the sun (seasons, day and night cycles, etc.) and sky (such as the position of the earth in relation to the planets and the stars) for the purposes of healing. Histamine is the neurohormone that’s in danger of becoming untethered in certain situations such that it no longer keeps other endocrine hormones woven together. Ballota nigra is not, itself an antihistamine. In other words, it doesn’t stop histamine from doing what it normally does, but rather, it likely works downstream from histamine on something like the Transient Receptor Potential Vanillinoid-1 / TRPV-1 receptors to change the way that the body reacts to histamine. Histamine, after all, demands our respect or it will tend to fight back. Herbs like Mitragyna speciosa (which should never be used WITH Ballota nigra at the same time), that reduce allergy symptoms without an antihistaminic mechanism of action can still have powerful effects, but without the side effects caused by antihistamines.

Endocrine hormones that are properly woven together via histamine as a guiding thread are able to keep the body reasonably healthy most of the time. But if histamine “goes off the rails” and it stops acting as the conductor of the symphony of reproductive hormones, thyroid hormones, neurohormones, etc., the rhythm of other organ systems can become terribly disrupted. We call this dis-ease and in order to restore health and balance, histamine must be rewoven into the tapestry or re-integrated into the symphony of endocrine hormones.

Ballota nigra / black horehound is an herb that can help restore synchronicity and balance to the endocrine system which, in turn, has a balancing effect also on the autonomic nervous system (which is deeply integrated with the endocrine system such that these two things are not actually “separate). It is a good herb to start with if you’re working with a health issue that seems hopeless, a severe infection involving a cough or nausea and vomiting, or any multi-system disease that involves severe fatigue at times or mood-related issues that seem to be tethered to physical health problems. Diseases that involve imbalances in the autonomic nervous system may benefit from working with this herb daily at doses that we’ve discussed here.

Note however, that you should not combine Ballota nigra with other antihistamines ever. Do not combine Ballota nigra with Mitragyna speciosa / kratom, or Euphorbia hirta. In fact, if you aren’t sure about whether a drug or herb combination is safe, just don’t do it. Ballota nigra is gentle in that it generally just makes people feel “okay” again after a period of being “not okay”, but it is powerful in that it can, in theory, produce seizures if administered in the wrong combination with other things. To be safe, work with Ballota nigra by itself for a period of time if you wish to rebalance the endocrine system and autonomic nervous system. Don’t combine it willy-nilly with other herbs or drugs that have not been thoroughly researched to find whether they’re okay when combined with Ballota nigra.

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The following herbs combine safely with Ballota nigra to improve its taste and functionality:

• Fennel / Foeniculum vulgare

• Ginger / Zingiber officinalis

• Chamomile / Matricaria chamomila

• Passionflower / Passiflora incarnata

• Limeflower / Tilia spp.

• Lemon Balm / Melissa officinalis

• Motherwort / Leonurus cardiaca

• Valerian Root / Valeriana capensis

• Smooth Hedge Nettle / Stachys hispida

Related Herbs

If you are located in Africa, Ballota africana may be more available to you than Ballota nigra. Ballota africana is not exactly the same as Ballota nigra, but these two herbs both belong to the mint family, so they’re related.

Ballota africana is used as an ancient Khoi or San remedy for measles and fever. It is often combined with Salvia species which is thought-provoking in terms of Ballota nigra and the potential for using Ballota nigra with Salvia species too. It can also be combined with valerian root or Stachys hispida. 

Ballota africana can be used to treat insomnia and sleep disorders as well as for influenza or respiratory diseases that involve a cough. 

Ballota africana is administered orally or it is applied externally. When applied externally, Ballota africana leaves are steamed and then administered topically to the chest. 

Marrubium vulgare (white horehound) is another related herb that has similar medicinal effects as Ballota nigra and Ballota africana. In Mexico, Ballota nigra is not easy to get at a good price, but Marrubium vulgare is more widely available. Marrubium vulgare is an expectorant that also acts to treat upset stomach and digestive disorders. In other words, like Ballota nigra and many other herbs, it might be classified as a “nauseating expectorant” herb that regulates the autonomic nervous system and endocrine system in a manner that adjusts the body’s natural digestion-respiration balance. Like Ballota nigra and Euphorbia hirta, Marrubium vulgare can be used to treat a nagging cough naturally or to overcome asthma without drugs and inhalers.

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