Many of us have heard of lemon balm and many have even worked with this herb before. But how much do you really know about this extraordinary plant? In this lemon balm monograph, we’re going to go over the ways in which this plant can be an important ally to us. Let’s dive in!
Disclaimer
This article is for educational purposes only and shouldn’t be used as a replacement for medical attention or diagnosis. It’s recommended to talk to a doctor before beginning any herbal regimen, especially if you are taking pharmaceutical medication. Because every body is different, the following information may or may not apply directly to you.
Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis)
I first really began working with lemon balm when I began working with Luis Mojica, a somatic experiencing practitioner, to work through some trauma. Paired with tulsi and milky oats, the tea I made every morning helped me move through a lot of tough sensations that were too difficult to handle alone. Lemon balm became my very good friend.
Lemon balm is in the mint family and, without being able to smell the plants, it can be hard to tell apart from garden mint. The Latin word “melissa” means “honey” or “honeybee.” This is suggestive of the plant’s relationship with pollinators. When lemon balm blooms, bees love it! Lemon balm is a dear friend to humans as well as it provides us with lots of medicinal benefits. Let’s get into it!
Lemon Balm Monograph
In this lemon balm monograph, we are going to go over all of the wonderful medicinal properties of the herb. We will go over the pant’s energetics, tastes, medicinal plant parts, herbal actions, body affinities, constituents, herbal pairings, and some ways we work with lemon balm in practice. We’ll also discuss where to source lemon balm and the best preparations to work with the herb.
Energetics & Tastes
As the name suggests, lemon balm has a sweet, aromatic, and lemony flavor. Lemon balm is relaxing, sedating, and has both warming and cooling properties. This herb is initially cooling as it tastes so. Once it enters the GI tract, it becomes centrally warming. This centrally-warming action helps move heat from the center of the body to the periphery, ultimately helping cool the body down.
Medicinal Plant Parts
We use the aerial parts of this plant–specifically the leaves and flowers.
Herbal Actions
Relaxant
When taken internally, lemon balm has a relaxing effect on its body affinities. It can help relax tension in the GI tract, circulatory system, and nervous system. This, in turn, helps relax tension throughout the entire body, including in the muscles.
Sedative
Lemon balm’s sedative effect is gentle and doesn’t pose any threat to you while you’re driving. These sedative effects can help down-regulate activated nervous systems and therefore can soothe anxiety and ADHD symptoms.
Nervine
Lemon balm soothes the nervous system and helps to relax tense nervous system conditions like fidgeting. It’s also helpful to soothe nerve pain and constriction-related headaches.
Diaphoretic
When lemon balm enters the stomach and intestines it has a relaxing diaphoretic effect, releasing trapped heat and moving it to the periphery to be expelled.
Antiviral
Lemon balm has awesome anti-viral actions, particularly against the herpes family viruses and HPV. More specifically, lemon balm protects the body against viruses that attack the nerves, not by killing them off, but by making the body an unfavorable host.
Anodyne
Because lemon balm helps to relax global tension in the body, it can help to relieve tension-related headaches.
Exhilarant
Lemon balm is a sunny mood booster, uplifting low, stuck emotions, including those related to depression and seasonal affective disorder.
Body Affinities
When taken internally, lemon balm has affinities for a few systems in the body:
Digestive System
Especially when there are anxiety symptoms manifesting in the GI tract, lemon balm can have wonderful effects on this system. Butterflies, anxiety diarrhea, and GI spasms can all benefit from lemon balm. Plus, it has a relaxing diaphoretic effect that affects this system.
Circulatory System
Lemon balm’s diaphoretic effect helps stimulate blood flow in the circulatory system. This blood flow moves heat from the core of the body to the periphery via the circulatory system.
Nervous System
Most people know this herb to be one who works on the nervous system and for a good reason. As a relaxing, sedative nervine, this herb has big effects on the nervous system. This effect helps down-regulate the nervous system while boosting the mood to make you feel happier and more relaxed.
Notable Constituents
- volatiles (citronellol, citral, limonene, geraniol, linalool)
- acids (rosmarinic, ursolic, caffeic, chlorogenic)
- catechins
Cautions When Working With Lemon Balm
Good news–there are none! Lemon balm is safe and effective for everyone to work with. Children can really benefit from working with lemon balm, as can dogs and cats. Lemon balm is also safe for those taking a variety of medications (but it’s always good to check with your doc).
Sourcing Lemon Balm
The best way to go is to grow your own! Lemon balm is super easy to grow and is the most beneficial when eaten/made into tea/tinctured right after it’s been harvested. Lemon balm loses a lot of aromatic constituents right after being harvested and begins to wilt quickly. Therefore, for the best quality, I recommend growing it yourself.
The second best option is finding a local herb farm to buy your lemon balm from. Herb farms are becoming more and more popular, so it’s likely you’ll be able to find one nearby that grows lemon balm. You can also check your local apothecaries.
If you can’t find it locally, you can buy dried lemon balm from Mountain Rose Herbs. This company has the highest-quality herbs you’ll be able to find online and they source their herbs ethically.
Lemon Balm Herbal Pairings
Lemon balm pairs nicely with a lot of other herbs. These pairs don’t just taste good together, but most complement or emphasize the medicinal properties of one another. Here’s a short list of some of lemon balm’s notable friends:
- Linden
- Calendula
- Blueberry
- St. John’s wort
- Tulsi
- Lemon
- Elderflower
- Catnip
- Lemongrass
Lemon Balm in Practice
How do we work with lemon balm in a herbal practice? What kind of conditions and symptoms do we turn to lemon balm for help with? Let’s talk about it.
Neurodivergence like ADHD & OCD
Because of lemon balm’s nervine and sedative actions, it helps soothe tense nervous system conditions. Therefore, can help us when we consistently deal with anxious or hyperactive nervous systems like those of neurodivergent folks. When we are working with lemon balm to help soothe anxious symptoms of neurodivergence, we want to work with a lot of it every day. If you’re making tea, I suggest adding three tablespoons of lemon balm to a quart of hot water and drinking a quart every day.
Depression, Anxiety, PTSD, etc.
Likewise, lemon balm can help aid those working through depressive and anxious mental health conditions. Lemon balm can be an especially helpful ally when working to heal deep, dark, and heavy emotions, like those that accompany trauma. All by itself, lemon balm doesn’t aid in the actual processing of those feelings, but does make those feelings lighter and easier to work through. It’s a great friend to pair with therapy.
As mentioned under neurodivergence, I recommend working with a lot of lemon balm every day to get the most benefit from that relationship.
Managing Herpes, HPV & Other Viruses
Lemon balm is an excellent anti-viral. The kinds of viruses this herb fights are those that attack the nervous system, including the herpes family of viruses, HPV, and chicken pox. In order for lemon balm to really fight these viruses, it needs to be applied directly to the outbreak area. For example, if you get a cold sore (or can see you’re beginning to get one) you’ll need to apply lemon balm directly to the sore in a compress or something similar.
Alleviating Fevers & Heat Stroke
When we’re sick with an infection like the flu, we need to mount a fever in order to fight that infection. However, if we’ve been fevering for a long time, or if the fever is causing issues like dehydration, we need a break from it. Lemon balm’s diaphoretic actions can help temporarily ease fever symptoms and allow for some rest.
Similarly, lemon balm’s diaphoretic actions help cool us down when we’re too hot or even dealing with heat stroke symptoms. Of course, seek medical attention in the event of an emergency. But if the heat stroke symptoms haven’t crossed that threshold, lemon balm can help quickly alleviate dangerous heat stroke symptoms.
How to Work with Lemon Balm
Here are some of the best ways to prepare lemon balm to work with it medicinally:
Lemon Balm Tincture
With most herbs I work with, I prefer working with them in tea. However, I actually prefer working with lemon balm in tincture form. Tincture made from fresh lemon balm is the best way to preserve all of its yummy medicinal constituents (except for maybe honey infusions). As mentioned, once picked, lemon balm loses a lot of its aromatic constituents. And after it’s dried, almost all of those aromatics are gone (you can tell by the smell). Therefore, if lemon balm is tinctured right after being picked, most of those constituents are preserved in the alcohol.
Lemon Balm Tea
Tea is a great way to work with lemon balm consistently. If you’re working with lemon balm tea, I recommend trying to make it with fresh lemon balm (for the reasons stated above). Making tea from dry lemon balm will still provide you with most of the plant’s medicinal actions, you just won’t get as much of those aromatics. Either way, be sure to cover the tea with a lid while it steeps! That will preserve what’s left of the aromatics in the tea.
Lemon Balm in Food
I love just eating lemon balm. Where I am in Portland, Oregon, I find the herb growing all over the city. When I’m out for a walk with my dog, I’ll pick leaves of plants and snack as I walk. Lemon balm is a great addition to summer salads, smoothies, or as a replacement for mint in your favorite mint recipes.
Eating lemon balm in your food is a great way to get more of the herb into you. Sometimes, working with tea or tincture alone can get boring and repetitive. Finding fun ways to get more of this herb in is important and, well, fun!
Lemon Balm-Infused Honey & Wine
Herbalism only works when you actually take the herbs. And what better way to get you excited about working with an herb than making it taste great? Lemon balm-infused honey is an amazing way to preserve its sunniness, especially for long winter days ahead. Honey preserves all of those aromatics that are so easily lost when dried–and it’s so freaking good. Remember to infuse honey with fresh lemon balm, not dried.
Lemon balm-infused wine is also a perfectly chilling way to work with this plant. I recommend infusing dried lemon balm into your favorite white wine. This is a perfect way to make a cheap bottle of wine fancy or chill out a potentially tense family reunion.
More Lemon Balm Products
More Herbal Monographs
Want to learn about more herbs? In my online Materia Medica, you will find all of the herbs I have written about. Here, you can click on any herb you want to learn about and you’ll get a thorough herbal monograph that’s always being updated, just like this one. Plus, you can download the free monograph for every herb! Learn more here.
Download the Free Lemon Balm Monograph
The Best Herbalism Books
There are hundreds of herbalism books available on the market. A quick Google search can be really overwhelming! Especially when the top search results from Amazon and Goodreads seem to be unreliable.
In this article, I’ve gathered all of my favorite herbalism titles in one place to share with you. If you don’t know where to start, that’s ok! The books are organized by type and I’ve written descriptions to let you know which I suggest in which situations. Plus, all of the books here are trustworthy, so you can follow your curiosity and pick which books stand out to you!
Summary: Lemon Balm Monograph
Lemon balm is a favorite herb for many herbalists and for good reason. It’s sunny and soothing, like sunbathing on the lawn on a summer’s day. And now, you have a much deeper knowledge of this awesome herb.
In this lemon balm monograph, we talked about a lot of ways to work with this uplifting plant. We went over the energetics, tastes, herbal actions, body affinities, constituents, cautions, herbal pairings, and where to source lemon balm. We also talked about how we work with lemon balm in practice as well as ways to prepare it. And finally, you have access to a downloadable lemon balm monograph you can take with you anywhere.
What are your favorite ways to work with lemon balm? Have any recipes you want to share? Put your thoughts down in the comments, I would love to hear from you!
Thanks for stopping by!
Sunshine and taproots
This article may contain affiliate / compensated links. For more information, please read our affiliate disclaimer.
