Sage- one of my favorite herbs because there is so much more too it than just the awesome smell. I cook with it, make extracts with it, use it in my winter tea blend, use it topically, and burn it. No homemade dressing is complete without it. Plant it once and you never have to plant it again and it blooms beautiful purple flowerets on a stem, late spring and early summer. It's hardy; mine never died last winter and came in gangbusters this spring.

I have a nice supply in my herb bed, just so you know, when Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners roll around and you forgot to pick some up.

The cuttings pictured are about to be made into smudge sticks, braided and dried, to burn in the house this winter kind of like you would incense. While many people write burning sage off as a wives tale, the hooby jooby to rid your home of bad things, there really is some science behind it. A 2007 study published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology found that burning sage and other "medicinal wood" can reduce airborne bacteria by up to 94% within an hour, with the purifying effect lasting up to 24 hours. Cinnamon works the same.

I got the following from a couple of medical journals and homeopathic websites if you are interested.

*Sage may help protect the body’s cells from damage caused by free radicals due to its antioxidant capacity.

*A 2016 research Source suggested that species of sage could positively affect cognitive skills and protect against neurological disorders.

*A 2003 study found that taking common sage for 4 months helped improve cognitive outcomes for people with Alzheimer’s disease compared with a placebo. More research is necessary to better understand this potential.

*Lowering blood glucose and cholesterol

*Controlling inflammation- One 2020 study found that water- and alcohol-based sage extracts could help reduce inflammation.

It has:

-2.2 calories

-3 mg of magnesium

-0.637 mg of phosphorus

-7.49 mg of potassium

-1.92 micrograms (mcg) of folate

-24.4 mcg of beta carotene

-41.3 international units (IU) of vitamin A

-12 mcg of vitamin K

-Sage also contains numerous anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds that might be beneficial to health. A 2017 study of sage essential oil compounds noted that they included:

-1,8-cineole

-camphor

-borneol

-bornyl acetate

-camphene