Eden Apothecary · Herb Profile
Perilla frutescens (L.) Britton
Pronounced Perilla: puh-RIL-uh. Zi Su Ye: dzuh soo yeh. Perilla frutescens: puh-RIL-uh froo-TESS-enz.
Warm and drying, acrid and aromatic: a gentle, dispersing leaf that opens the wind-cold surface with a light sweat while moving stuck qi in the chest and stomach to settle nausea and free an oppressed, cold-bound middle.
Culinary amounts of perilla leaf are a food-level exposure and are widely eaten in pregnancy, and the Chinese tradition uses Zi Su Ye specifically to settle pregnancy nausea (morning sickness) and to calm the fetus, so the leaf carries a long traditional record of use in pregnancy at food and mild-tea levels. Modern human safety data for concentrated or high-dose medicinal preparations are lacking, however: WebMD states plainly that it is not known if or how perilla could affect pregnancy or harm a fetus. The prudent, consumer-safe course is to treat culinary and mild-infusion use of the leaf as low concern while reserving concentrated extracts, the essential oil, and high therapeutic doses for the guidance of a qualified practitioner. Avoid internal use of perilla essential oil in pregnancy. (Modern-sourced: WebMD Perilla; Drugs.com natural-products monograph; AHPA class to confirm at merge.)
Culinary use of perilla leaf during breastfeeding is a food-level exposure of low concern and is common in the cuisines where it is a staple green. Reliable human data on concentrated medicinal doses during lactation are lacking: WebMD notes that it is not known if perilla passes into breast milk. The sensible course is to allow ordinary culinary and mild-tea use while avoiding concentrated extracts, high doses, and the essential oil during nursing without professional guidance. (Modern-sourced: WebMD Perilla; Drugs.com natural-products monograph.)
As a culinary green, perilla leaf is eaten by children in the cultures where it is a food, and food-level and mild-tea use is generally regarded as gentle. There is no established pediatric dosing for concentrated medicinal preparations and no modern pediatric safety studies; WebMD simply advises keeping perilla products out of reach of children. Use food and mild-infusion amounts for children, reserve concentrated extracts and therapeutic doses for qualified practitioner oversight, and keep perilla essential oil away from infants and young children entirely, given its lung-toxic ketone and the general hazard of aromatic essential oils in the young. (Modern-sourced: WebMD Perilla.)
Perilla leaf is a food-grade culinary herb, eaten in quantity as shiso and sesame-leaf perilla, with a long record of safe use and low toxicity in ordinary amounts. A few real cautions apply. Some chemotypes, and the essential oil, are high in perilla ketone (and related egomaketone), a potent lung toxin in grazing livestock that causes acute pulmonary edema and emphysema (perilla mint or purple mint poisoning in cattle); this is a concern for concentrated essential oil and high-ketone material, not for the culinary leaf, but it is reason to avoid strong internal doses of perilla essential oil. As an aromatic mint-family plant it can cause allergic reactions, including occupational allergic contact dermatitis and asthma among perilla farm and processing workers, and it should be avoided by anyone allergic to perilla or to mint-family plants. Because perilla, most of all the alpha-linolenic-acid-rich seed oil, can carry a mild blood-thinning, antiplatelet tendency, take extra care with bleeding disorders and around surgery. As a warm, sweat-promoting diaphoretic it should be used sparingly, if at all, in heat-type fevers, in marked yin or fluid deficiency, and in those who already sweat easily from a weak surface.
Known allergy or hypersensitivity to perilla or to other mint-family (Lamiaceae) plants. Wind-heat and internal-heat patterns, heat-type fevers, and marked yin-deficient dryness, which a warm, acrid, diaphoretic leaf aggravates. Concentrated perilla essential oil taken internally, given the lung-toxic perilla ketone in high-ketone material. Caution with bleeding disorders, anticoagulant or antiplatelet therapy, and the perioperative period, given a mild antiplatelet tendency (chiefly from the alpha-linolenic-acid-rich oil). Therapeutic (concentrated, medicinal-dose) use in pregnancy and lactation without professional guidance, though culinary amounts of the leaf are a food-level exposure and are traditionally used for morning sickness.
Perilla frutescens is a widely cultivated annual food and oil crop, in no way at risk and not listed by United Plant Savers; it grows easily from seed in a single season and is so vigorous that in the southeastern United States it has naturalized as the weedy beefsteak plant, even becoming an agricultural nuisance and a livestock poison. There is thus no conservation concern; source cultivated leaf, ideally organically grown of a known culinary/medicinal (perillaldehyde) chemotype rather than a high-ketone one, and there is every reason to favor home-grown and cultivated material.
Not found in the canonical biblical texts nor in the classical Greco-Roman herbals of Dioscorides and Pliny; perilla is a plant of East Asian, not ancient Mediterranean, tradition. Its medicinal use is recorded in the Chinese materia medica from the Ming Yi Bie Lu (c. 500 CE) and detailed by Li Shizhen in the Ben Cao Gang Mu (1596), and it is a staple of Japanese Kampo medicine and of Japanese and Korean cuisine. Cited honestly as a herb of Chinese and wider East Asian tradition rather than of Scripture.
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