Since time immemorial the curative properties of herbs in the Bulgarian lands have been known far and wide. The Thracians knew about them, as did the Slavs and the proto-Bulgarians. There are legends, tales and songs of herbs picked at dawn by young girls on Enyovden, 24 June, a day dedicated to the sun and to medicinal herbs. In our dayр Bulgarians turn to herbs and look for granny’s forgotten concoctions in the hope of alleviating pain or at least relieving symptoms that have been plaguing their lives.

Bulgaria is a veritable treasure trove of different herbs – more than 3,600 in number, 650 of which are in use because of their medicinal properties. More than 300 species are gathered to be used by pharmaceutical companies in Bulgaria and abroad. The weather and the soil have saturated them with biologically active substances. They contain a diversity of chemical compounds like vitamins, enzymes, essential oils, tanning substances, organic acids, plant hormones, inorganic substances. And they all affect the processes taking place inside the human body, some with a more potent effect than chemically synthesized medicines. Herbs are frequently used in the making of plant-based medicines, like Nivalin for example, a drug made out of snowdrops. Once people treated their high pressure with wild geranium, a plant that grew in the garden of every Bulgarian home.

The herbs that are most beneficial to our health are the herbs that come from the region we live in, says Dr. Georgi Velev who has been making products out of medicinal plants for years:

“This is an idea that many share. Many herbalists before me like Dimkov, many experts and phytotherapists have subscribed to it. We, humans adapt to the air, the humidity, the climate, to the flora and fauna of the place we live in. That is why it is much less likely that medicinal plants from different climes will have as beneficial an effect on us, as the plants in our own parts. Bulgaria is a country where a great many medicinal plants thrive. Many of them are used for prevention as well as for therapy. In my own practice I make use mostly of plants of the geranium family, as their leaves, stalks and especially roots contain a host of valuable substances. There is an abundancy of this plant species on the territory of Bulgaria, especially the bloody geranium which some mix up with the garden variety geranium. The bloody geranium grows high up in the mountain, at an altitude of over 1,200 metres and it is very rich in polyphenol compounds which are essential to the human body. In Bulgaria the geranium family includes 39 species and each one of them has been studied.”

Dr. Georgi Velev says that the roots of the medicinal plants contain the greatest amounts of biologically active substances. When in the autumn the plants come to the end of their life cycle, these substances are absorbed into the roots to await springtime when vegetation will begin. The so-called bloody geranium is called that precisely because of its roots, Dr. Velev explains. He rediscovered its properties some 20 years ago and he says this plant is a powerful immunostimulant. Its roots contain compounds which attack and block the effect and the spread of viruses. The antioxidants on the other hand interact with the free radicals so the body may discard them.

“We established that extracts from the roots of the bloody geranium have a powerful effect on the growth of lymphocytes,” Dr. Velev says. “Lymphocytes protect the body from all kinds of viruses, bacteria, even cancer cells.”