People often ask me what I recommend in building better immunity, especially during a typical cold and flu season. With 7 of us in our house, it’s rough if we start passing something around. After a couple rough illness stretches, I’ve gone on a search to find the best ways to boost our immune systems, other than the basics: healthy eating, sleeping well, and taking vitamins. In this series, I’m going to touch on some additional things we have found helpful. Today’s article is all about boosting immunity with elderberry syrup. This is the first thing we did where I noticed that we didn’t get the same colds during the winter that we used to get.

For more information on my recommendations for basic nutrition, please see my previous article What Vitamins to Take When Starting New Health Goals. It discusses the basic fundamentals that I recommend as a foundation.

Disclaimer: I am a Certified Natural Health Professional, but I am not your health professional. I am educating and raising awareness. Please discuss anything I mention in this article with the health professional working with you before you implement anything in this article. I am not intending to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. I am not liable or responsible for any damages you incur by use of this information.

In this article, I will address the following:

What is Elderberry?
The Science: Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo Controlled Clinical Trials
- Source to various studies
Where to Buy Elderberry Syrup
How to Make Your Own Elderberry Syrup
- Recipe for Making your own
Raw Elderberries Can Be Poisonous
Dosage for Elderberries

What is Elderberry?

If you haven’t heard of it, Elderberry (also known as Sambucus) is a terrific immunity building plant. Benefits of elderberries include aiding in cold and flu relief, sinus and allergy relief, lowering blood sugar, being a natural diuretic and laxative, among other things. I use it mainly to prevent colds, flu, and other sinus challenges.

Many historians can trace its use back to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. Hippocrates, the “father of medicine” even praised it as the “medicine chest” of all herbs because of the versatility of all the uses of the plant.

There are numerous sources of elderberry. People use it in syrups, jams, teas, and many other products. Our family uses elderberry syrup mostly. My youngest asks for “black juice” daily and throws a fit that she can’t have more.

The Science: Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo Controlled Clinical Trials

There are many studies out there on the use of Elderberry in building better immunity. In one randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled study during the 1999-2000 flu season, patients who received 15ml (1Tbsp) 4 times a day for 5 days, ended symptoms 4 days earlier than the patients receiving the placebo. Also, patients receiving Elderberry used significantly less rescue medication. Another study in 2006, stated that elderberry is effective in the treatment of influenza infections, especially in the later stages. An additional randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled study showed that international air travelers who took elderberry prior to traveling and continued for 4 days after had a reduction in illness and significant reduction in upper respiratory infection symptoms if they experienced any.

Many functional medicine doctors also state that the evidence for Elderberry use in our current pandemic shows strong evidence for being a viable intervention with minimal consequences.

One study I was reading did begin to question the benefits for people with autoimmune disorders, so if you have any type of autoimmune disorder, please discuss this further with your health care professional.

Source to various studies regarding building better immunity against respiratory infections with elderberry:

Where to buy Elderberry Syrup

You can buy elderberry just about anywhere. I find the syrups to be more powerful than the gummies or pills I found at traditional stores. I have found some elderberry syrup at health food stores, but in my experience, they have been more expensive than ones I’ve seen online from small elderberry businesses.

The first time I heard of elderberry syrup, a friend was picking up some from Elderberry Queen. I didn’t know much about it at the time. My friend just told me that it was a must have for protecting our family’s health, so I tried that one. We all liked the recipe. It was sweet and tasted good. I bought it at a local chiropractor’s office because it cost less than ordering online. This was a handful of years ago. It looks like they may have updated their recipe since the last time we’ve bought it, so I don’t know if the flavor has also changed since then.

Over time, I found a friend who made it. Since hers was more affordable, we started buying it from her. My kids didn’t love her first batch, but she started perfecting her recipe and they liked it better over time. After we moved a few states away, it became too difficult to continue buying from her because hers needed to stay refrigerated.

Recently Found a Local Business

I’ve recently found a local business KozyKorners Farm who sells elderberry syrup and tea. Our family all liked her recipe. There is a bit of a kick in the back of your throat after it goes down, but it wasn’t too strong. The kids are usually pretty sensitive to that sort of thing, so I was pleasantly surprised that they didn’t complain about it.

KozyKorners Farm was the first time I’ve had elderberry tea. I’m not normally a big tea fan. I try to like tea, but I just like the comfort of a nice cup of coffee. Surprisingly enough, I actually enjoyed KozyKorners Farm’s elderberry tea, though. I made mine really strong, but it was perfect. It was a nice beginning to my day, especially since I had a little sore throat that morning. If you order from KozyKornersFarm, use coupon code “Loves7Grace” for free shipping.

Making My Own Elderberry Syrup

After we moved a few states away from my friend, before I found KozyKorners, I decided to start making my own elderberry syrup. It turns out that it wasn’t too hard to do. I purchased dried elderberries from Frontier Co-op on Amazon, and the other ingredients from my local grocery store. I put everything except the honey in the InstantPot and set it to high pressure for 9 minutes. After it was done, I did a quick release, and strained it into a jar to let it cool. After it cooled to room temperature, I added the honey, shook it up, and put it in the refrigerator.

My recipe was inspired by Wellness Mama and Awe Filled Homemaker (I can’t find link to the recipe I saved anymore). In my first batch, I used ground cinnamon, ground ginger, and ground cloves. I had the hardest time getting them to strain out of the syrup enough for the syrup to not be gritty. It also had a lot of a spice kick to it. The next time I used whole cloves, a cinnamon stick, and chopped fresh ginger. Everyone liked it much better. I prefer having larger sized pieces of ingredients so they filtered out easily with the berries. This made the syrup smoother and taste better.

See below for my InstantPot elderberry syrup recipe.

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Raw Elderberries Can Be Poisonous

I’ve considered growing my own elderberry tree, however, the berries, leaves and bark are poisonous when consumed raw. Historically, they were used to induce vomiting and diarrhea. However, there have been situations where people were flown to the hospital with severe poisoning from drinking elderberry juice that was not cooked. This had me really nervous about making my own elderberry syrup…

With the number of children in my family, and how much they like berries, I decided that it is not worth the risk for our family to have any elderberry trees in our yard. I’m hoping that one day when they are older, I will be able to plant some.

Dosage for Building Better Immunity with Elderberry Syrup

My family each takes 1-2 tsp/day, when we remember. Most sources say you can take 1Tbsp/day if you are over 3, or 1-2tsp if you are 1-2 years old. They recommend a version without honey for children under 1. If we are fighting off respiratory symptoms of any kind, we increase our dosage. Some recommend 2-4 Tbsp for people over 3 years old and 2-4tsp for children 1-2.

I hope you learned a lot about building better immunity with elderberry in this article. If you did, please be sure to share it with a friend who might also benefit from it. Comment below and let me know if you are familiar with elderberry, what you learned, or what you like best about elderberries.

Elderberry Syrup

Michelle Landrum

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Equipment

Pressure cooker (or medium pot for the stove)
Strainer
Jar for storing

Ingredients

2/3 cups dried elderberries or 1 1/3 cups fresh or frozen
3 1/2 cups water
1 Cinnamon stick
1 Tbsp finely chopped ginger or grated
1 Tbsp whole cloves
1 tsp lemon zest optional
1 tsp orange zest optional
1 cup raw honey

Instructions

Put all ingredients except honey in the InstantPot
Set manually to high pressure for 9 minutes.
Turn off InstantPot, Vent pressure, and remove lid.
Strain into a jar
When cooled to room temperature, stir in honey.
Store in refrigerator up to 3 months.

Notes

If you don’t have an InstantPot:
Put all ingredients in a pot except the Honey.
Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 45-60 minutes.
Then continue with step 4 above.

Since creating this recipe, I have heard that it is more nutrient dense when using the stove method. So if you have the time, I prefer to use the stove, but the InstantPot is better than nothing, and oh, so convenient.

Keyword Elderberry, Immunity