May support bone health: Vitamin K,

which sage offers in large amounts, plays a role in bone health. A deficiency in this vitamin
is linked to bone thinning and fractures (2, 43Trusted Source).

2. Easy to Add to Your Diet

Sage comes in several forms and can be used in a variety of ways.

Fresh sage leaves have a strong aromatic flavor and are best used sparingly in dishes.

Here are some ways you can add fresh sage to your diet:

 Sprinkle as a garnish on soups.

 Mix into a stuffing in roast
dishes.
 Combine chopped leaves with butter to make sage butter.
 Add chopped leaves to tomato
sauce.
 Serve
it with eggs in an omelet.

Dried sage is often preferred by cooks and comes ground, rubbed or in whole leaves.

Here are some ways you can use dried sage:

 As a rub for meats.

 As a seasoning for roasted vegetables.
 Combined
with mashed potatoes or squash for a more earthy flavor.

You can also purchase sage products, such as sage tea and sage extract supplements.

Summary Sage is
incredibly versatile and easy to add to soups, stews and baked dishes. It’s
available fresh, dried or ground.

Does It Have Side Effects?

Sage is considered safe with no reported side effects (46Trusted Source).

However, some people are concerned about thujone, a compound found in common sage.
Animal research has found that high doses of thujone may be toxic to the brain (47Trusted
Source).

That said, there is no good evidence that thujone is toxic to humans (48Trusted Source).
What’s more, it’s nearly impossible to consume toxic amounts of thujone through foods.
However, drinking too much sage tea or ingesting sage essential oils — which should be avoided
in any case — may have toxic effects.

To be on the safe side, limit sage tea consumption to 3–6 cups a day (47Trusted Source).

Otherwise, if you are concerned about thujone in common sage, then you can simply consume
Spanish sage instead, as it does not contain thujone (46Trusted Source).

3. It can be a spiritual tool

Burning sage has long been used to connect to the spiritual realm or enhance intuition.

For healers and laypeople in traditional cultures, burning sage is used to achieve a healing state
— or to solve or reflect upon spiritual dilemmas.

This may have some scientific basis, too. Certain types of sage, including salvia sages and white
prairie sage, contain thujone.

Research shows that thujone is mildly psychoactive. It’s actually found in many plants used in
cultural spiritual rituals to enhance intuition.

4. It may help dispel negative energy

Burning sage may also be used as a ritual tool to rid yourself — or your space — of negativity.
This includes past traumas, bad experiences, or negative energies from others.

This may help you establish a positive environment for meditation or another ritual. Choosing to
sit and let go of negative thoughts in a ritual like this sets your intention and dedication to self-
improvement. Choosing to engage in ritual can be the beginning of your change in mindset.

6. It may help improve your mood

Tradition suggests that burning sage can literally lift one’s spirits to banish negativity. Some
research supports this.

A 2014 study documented white prairie sage (also known as estafiate) as an important traditional
remedy for treating anxiety, depression, and mood disorders in certain cultures.

7. It may help soothe stress

If burning sage can lift one’s mood, it could also be a great ally against stress.
A 2016 research project for the University of Mississippi established that white sage (Salvia
apiana) is rich in compounds that activate certain receptors in the brain. These receptors are
responsible for elevating mood levels, reducing stress, and even alleviating pain.

8. It may improve the quality of your sleep

Burning sage has been traditionally used to safeguard against negativity that could interfere with
sleep.

Some research suggests that sage contains compounds that could help ease insomnia.

Classic garden sage (Salvia officinalis) is sometimes burned like white sage. It’s also been used
to improve sleep and soothe anxiety.

9. It may help boost cognition

In addition to dissipating negative energy, improving mood, and strengthening intuition, burning
sage might improve your memory and focus.

A 2016 review of studiesTrusted Source noted that evidence for Salvia’s cognitive-enhancing
benefits are promising — perhaps to affect dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Still, more
research is needed.

10. It can create an uplifting fragrance

For some, this may be the best of all benefits: Sage is a lovely incense with a divine aroma, pure
and simple.

It also works great as a chemical-free air freshener or odor controller.

What you need

The practice of burning sage is fairly simple, with few necessary tools.

Basic tools include:

 a sage bundle
 some recommend a seashell or bowl of ceramic, clay, or glass to hold burning sage or
capture ash
 some recommend matches over a manufactured lighter
 optional feather or fan for fanning smoke

There are many types of sage usable for cleansing. Traditional examples include:
  white sage (Salvia apiana)
 other Salvia species
 white prairie sage or estafiate (Artemisia ludoviciana)
 other Artemisia species

To support and respect the cultures that developed the practice, purchase sage from native
gatherers, crafters, and artists.

How to prepare for a cleanse

Before burning sage, some recommend setting intentions if cleansing for spiritual, energetic, and
negativity clearing purposes. Remove animals or people from the room.

It’s also important to leave a window open before, during, and after cleansing. This allows
smoke to escape.

Some believe smoke also takes impurities and negative energy with it — so don’t skip this step.

How to cleanse your living space, an object, and more

These steps apply whether you’re cleansing yourself, your home, or an object. You can cleanse
any of these as often as you’d like.

1. Light the end of a sage bundle with a match. Blow out quickly if it catches on fire.
2. The tips of the leaves should smolder slowly, releasing thick smoke. Direct this smoke
around your body and space with one hand while holding the bundle in the other.
3. Allow the incense to linger on the areas of your body or surroundings you’d like to focus
on. Using a fan or feather can also help direct the smoke, though this is optional.
4. Allow the ash to collect in a ceramic bowl or shell.

Cleanse your home or living space

In this instance, direct sage smoke over all surfaces and spaces in your home or living area. Be
thorough.

Some recommend working in a clockwise direction around your home, ending back where you
started, especially for spiritual purposes. Others recommend counterclockwise.

Do what feels best for your situation and follow your intuition.

Cleanse an object

Direct smoke around and over the object of your choice.

This can be done to a new item, such as jewelry, furniture, or clothing, to protect or dispel it of
negative energy. Items related to negative experiences or memories may also be cleansed.

Some people burn sage over special objects, to acknowledge the object with sacred meaning.

Aromatherapy

You can also light and burn sage to improve odor, fragrance, and mood.

Simply waft sage smoke in and around your home. You can place the bundle in a fireproof bowl
or burner and allow it to smoke for a while.

What to do after a cleanse

Make sure your sage bundle is completely extinguished. You can do this by dabbing the lit end
into a small bowl of ash or sand. Avoid using water, since it may be difficult to reignite sage if it
is extinguished by water.

Check the end closely to make sure there are no more embers burning. Once it’s completely put
out, store it in a safe, dry place out of the sun.

Are there any side effects or risks?

When done correctly and respectfully, burning sage is completely safe and the effects last after
the smoke clears.

Be careful with sage when it’s lit. If you aren’t careful, burns and even fire is possible. Have
water nearby.

Never leave burning sage unattended. Make sure to put your sage bundle out completely after
every use.

Setting off smoke alarms is common. Consider this if burning sage in a public building.

People with asthma and other respiratory conditions may be more sensitive to the smoke and
have adverse reactions.

Always leave a window open while burning sage. Inhaling smoke can be hazardous to your
health.

The bottom line

Burning sage has many benefits as a spiritual practice. Some research supports certain health
benefits of sage, such as antimicrobial properties and enhanced alertness, but more research is
needed.
There is very little research on burning sage as a practice beyond the cultural practice of the
ritual.

Keep in mind: Burning sage is a sacred religious practice in some Native American cultures. Treat the
ritual with respect. Also, keep in mind that white prairie sage is endangered, so be sure to only buy
yours from an ethical source.

As for the clary sage: scent wise and in room diffusion this does have really good effect especially around
PMS times and the female reaction to the scent is more favorable at that time. I found positive results all
around and no negatives with me.

Thujone extraction from Sage?

I apologize if this is not appropriate for this sub, but I would be very grateful if someone could
help me or point me in the right direction.

Okay, so a bit of backstory... My wife has been diagnosed with Idiopathic Hypersomnia (IH), or
Type 2 Narcolepsy. Which if you're not familiar, is a neurological disorder of unknown cause
with no FDA approved treatments that causes chronic excessive daytime sleepiness among other
symptoms. It has been a long, hard trip to arrive at that diagnosis. Her symptoms have worsened
significantly over the last six months, at one point even leading to a trip to the emergency room
and hospitalization. She has gone from diagnoses of depression, to sleep apnea, to
hypothyroidism, and finally a pituitary tumor, with each being ruled out in turn before she was
finally referred to a neurological clinic with the diagnosis of IH.

As mentioned above, there are no FDA approved drugs to treat IH. There are some drugs being
used off-label to treat IH, but nothing that an insurance company would cover. There are also a
number of clinical trials taking place, mostly using Pentetrazol (PTZ) or other convulsants that
function as competitive GABA-a receptor antagonists. Thujone, infamous for its appearance in
Absinthe (of old), is also a competitive GABA-a receptor antagonist. There has been a fair
amount of research done on Thujone, most likely due to its use in Absinthe, and as a result we
know a good deal about its toxicity and method of action. I think you can see where I'm going
with this.

My wife has taken some herbal supplements, and noticed mild improvement. However, the
quantity required to see an effect isn't tenable long-term. So I'd like to extract Thujone from
Garden Sage as it is easy to obtain and could be grown in quantity. Wikipedia lists sage oil as
having concentrations of up to 50% Thujone, but that isn't properly cited so I have no idea how
accurate it is. Eastern Red Cedar and Wormwood could also be used if they would provide better
starting material. The idea is to arrive at a more concentrated product and test for improvement.
If she starts feeling better, I'll look into paying a lab or chemist to do a professional isolation or
synthesis for me.

Now, I'm definitely not a trained chemist, and my equipment is fairly low tech. So I'm not
aiming to end up with an isolate, but would like to have something as concentrated as possible.
I'm thinking of two ways I may be able to do this, please let me know which would be best or if
either would even work at all.

First:

 Grind dry starting material (sage) to a powder

 Add ground sage to Ethanol and agitate (30minutes)
 Filter through paper to remove undissolved sage
 Boil off some ethanol to increase concentration (not sure if this would be necessary)
 Add distilled water until Thujone and other terpenes fall out of solution
 Filter through paper and rinse with water
 Allow to dry, then weigh and redissolve into ethanol at desired concentration

My main concern here is that I don't know if the Thujone concentration will be high enough to
precipitate out with the addition of water, or if the precipitate will be large enough to seperate
with a filter.

Second:

 Grind dry starting material (sage) to a powder

 Add ground sage to Ethanol and agitate (30minutes)
 Filter through paper to remove undissolved sage
 Boil off all ethanol
 Fraction remaining liquid catching distillate at ~394f
 Weigh distillate and add ethanol to reach desired concentration

My main concern here is that I don't have a vacuum distillation rig so I would have to fraction at
standard pressure and I'm not sure if the high temps would damage my product.
Sage (Salvia officialis) is a staple herb in various cuisines. It pairs with veal in an Italian
Saltimbocca or pork in the British sage and onions stuffing and is eaten even on its own, e.g.
battered and fried. So yes, it’s clearly edible. However, personally I would not serve it as a salad
leaf, it’s probably too pungent to be truly enjoyable, but taste is of course personal preference.
There are recipes that use sage in vinaigrette, though.

As the flavor is quite intense and a little goes a long way, most consumers will never nibble on
enough to get in the range where the thujone content matters (similar to the amygdalin in apple
pips). But let’s do a rough estimation to get a ballpark number. The amount of oil that can be
extracted from S. officinalis leaves is between 0.5 and 1 %. That oil can contain up to 50%
thujone, so we can just use the 0.5% as thujone content of fresh leaves. Considering that the
LD50(mice) of thujone is 45mg/kg and that 30mg/kg gives a 0% mortality, a healthy 75kg “average
person” could probably eat 2g of thujone or 400g sage leaves and be fine - but it wouldn’t be a
good idea nevertheless, taste-wise. Excessive, especially habitual/long term use is sometimes
discouraged.

The EU has limited the amount of thujone from sage a food product may contain to 25mg/kg.
That would equal 50g sage leaves in 1 kg prepared food.

14

If you were a human-sized rat, it seems that in the worst case, 2 kg of leaves might be enough.
That's a rather handwavy amount, of course.

To go into more depth: the presence of papers like "Toxicity of Salvia officinalis in a newborn
and a child: an alarming report" means that dying from eating sage isn't common - apparently,
two very young children having seizures after ingesting sage essential oil is news enough to get
published as a cautionary case report. So it is unlikely that anybody has ever measured the exact
amount needed for an adult human to die from sage poisoning.

What people have measured is the composition of the essential oil extracted from sage. A good
example is "Composition of the essential oil of Salvia officinalis L. from various European
countries", which makes a good comparison of samples - because of course, there is huge
variation between plants of the same species.

If we make several assumptions, we can make a back-of-the-envelope calculation:

 the only toxic compound we are interested in is thujone

 the conversion ratio for fresh to dry sage is 3:1 by weight
 the sage you eat produces as much essential oil as the highest-yield sage in the paper (the
range was 2.2 to 24.8 ml per kg dried leaves)
 the sage you eat has as much thujone as the highest-thujone sage in the sample (50%
alpha and 13% beta thujone)
 both alpha and beta thujone count equally
 the LD50 dose for rats (192 mg/kg) is relevant for humans
 your weight is 70 kg
then my calculation is that you would have to consume 13.44 g of thujone to reach the LD50,
while a kilogram of fresh sage will have a bit over 6 grams of thujone.

This is of course a very inaccurate calculation, please do not rely on the exact numbers. But if
should give you an idea of the rough range of dangerous amounts.

AKA Sage.
Contains more thujone that wormwood! And less bitter, also containing piny and mentha oils and
many other unique characteristics.
Here's my question, why not just use fresh sage to make a delicious drink, even distill it
yourself? Shouldn't one get a potent thujone drink?
Of course practice would have to be made to use the right about of sage. So what might this be?
Does ANYONE have sage wine or extract links/experience that they would like to share?
I've searched all over the web and I am going to do a multi mint and sage fused into some home
brew wine that I have in the works.

Very interesting folks. I don't want to get "Intoxicated" on thujone for say, just take it in the right
amounts, in the safest way possible. Absinthee, once commercialized because weak, watered down, and
possibly contained very little thujone at all.
I do think that if used correctly, thujone could be enjoyed responsibly from time to time, and I've heard
of plenty of reports with positive overall verdicts.
I will just have to trial and error with this one I guess, really carefully.

Actually Absinthe is hallucinogenic

But as always there is a catch.

Absinthe is hallucinogenic in severe alcoholics only because severe alcoholics are prone to Delirium
Tremens, and DT is worsened by GABA antagonists (Thujone) just like it is decreased by GABA agonists
(benzodiazepines).

Thujone is a kind of stimulant, but an unpleasant one. Combined with alcohol it gives enhanced mental
clarity to the intoxication, making it a bit more psychoactive than stupefying.

My own absinthe gets distilled so that the oils of 25-50gr wormwood herb end up in a liter of absinthe
(just like in ancient recipies) and it does have an extra sparkle to it. However, hallucinogenic it is not,
because I'm not on the verge of DT.