Back in the good old days, which means from when I was a kid to when my grandparents were kids, everyone had to take a mix called Spring Tonic at this time of the year. When the days started to lengthen and nature started to sprout new growth, my mother would bring out the tablespoon and the bottle and wed all groan and complain. After the tablespoon of vile-tasting stuff was down wed get a candy to cover the taste but it sure took a while. This went on for a week or until the bottle was empty.

The reasoning behind the tonic was that our blood was sluggish from the long winter and the tonic would clean out our blood and make the sap rise as if we were young trees. The ingredients could be found out in the woods and the meadows before it was distilled into the bottled elixir that my family bought. You could go out and collect dandelion greens, violet leaves, sorrel, chickweed, nettles; pretty much anything that was new and green and bitter and tasted bad. There was definately a widely held opinion that medicine had to taste bad to be any good for you.

The herbal mixtures were all rich in enzymes, minerals, trace elements, and protein components, plus they all had chlorophyll from the green plants. In places that had gone the whole winter on stored root vegetables, people didnt even have to be persuaded to take the tonic. They would head out to the woods as soon as the snow cleared.

Now we know that wheatgrass juice is a blood cleanser, it has more chlorophyll than almost anything else, it has enzymes and minerals and everything the tonics had. So, although we can get it all year now by growing it in our own homes, wheatgrass juice still makes a magnificent spring tonic. If you havent tried wheatgrass before, then this is a great time to give it a shot. In fact, if you go to a juice bar or health food store, that is what they will call it, a wheatgrass shot. It is served in a one-ounce portion that you drink all at once or sip, according to your personality, and then chase with lemon or carrot juice.

It has been well-researched that fresh wheatgrass juice has the ability to clean out your system and improve your blood. I just got a call from a man who has taken it for a month now and his T-cell count went up amazingly.

It is the chlorophyll in the wheatgrass that is credited with being the blood tonic because it is more like human blood that any other known substance. Chlorophyll can actually be used to increase blood production in the body. Dr Bircher of the famous Bircher-Benner clinic said that chlorophyll increases health in the heart, the vascular system, the intestines and the lungs and is a tonic that cannot be improved upon.

So, here in the US in 2006, we probably need a Spring Tonic more than the oldies did because weve been stuffing ourselves with junk all winter to keep the blues away. When you see how much better you feel after a few doses of wheatgrass juice, you can look into growing wheatgrass at home.