So a cold extraction can yield from medicinal plants but what about one that is left in the fridge?
You should also know all the functional medicines present in that particular herb before you can answer that question.
A second point is: do you extract all the active substances or do you extract them for 100 %?? That can also make quite a difference!!
To my opinion it is quite unlikely that you will extract them all for 100 %. Also quite a number of the active substances (if not all) will be more or less fat soluble and thus not dissolve well in cold water.
No, you can't extract all "natural products" from medicinal plants using cold water or in fridge, because of their chemical properties, you can find hydrophilic (dissolve in water) and hydrophobic (dissolve in fats, oils or organic solvents) substances.
Thanks for all your answers and interest. I had a sore throat so I picked some Thyme (thymus vulgaris), popped it into a cup of water and then because it is so hot at the moment I put it in the fridge and over the next couple of days I just topped it up with water as needed. It started me wondering because I know you can do a cold extraction of some herbaceous herbs for functional ingredients but I wondered if the cold would halt/stop the process, as in fermentation. Thanks again
So the functional activity I was looking for was anti-bacterial
Dear Susan
No, It's not always that way
for example, usually the essential oil or alkaloids are extracted by hot method.
But surely, the Lamiaceae family is possible only by water extraction.
Dear Shahin, I believe there is also an optimal "hot' temperature too for delivery of essential oils/alkaloids?
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