Herbal Medicine – Alternatives for allopathic Medicine?

In today's blog I would like to address an issue that I come across quite frequently.

'Sure, herbs aren't as good as modern medicines?' and 'I've been told to take this herb for that health issue – but it's not working!' and many more similar quotes and questions.

So, can you really compare herbal medicine with modern medicine? The answer is No. Absolutely not. Both modalities work on very different principles ...

Herbs – a 'this for this and that for that'?

Have you ever been to a Chinese Herbal Practitioner and asked them if they have a herb against headaches? Or have you ever been to an Ayurvedic Herbal Practitioner and asked them for a herb against menopausal symptoms? Well, if you have, then you know what's coming. If not, let me explain …

In today's modern world we have a tendency to look at a symptom and then seek the medicine to rectify this symptom. Preferably as quickly as possible as we all have busy lives and we need to 'function' – whether that be at work, at home or at an event/competition or a social gathering. So, if we have a headache, we'll take a paracetamol. If we have indigestion we'll take omeprazole. If we are stressed and anxious we'll take anti-depressants. Worst case scenario, it doesn't get better and we have to go to the doctors, where we usually get different and often stronger medicines for whatever ails us.

Well, herbal medicine does not work like this.

Qualified herbal, or other complementary, practitioners will always look at the underlying causes of a complaint and take the whole person into account. We ask questions – why is there a headache, what is really causing it? Why is there a digestive problem and what happened or what changed in the person's live? Why are you stressed and how can this be reduced on a physical or mental level? And this is not an 'in and out in 15 minutes' job. You have to remember that, by the time your body expresses a symptom, the underlying cause of the problem has often been happily gnawing away at your health for a long time, sometimes even for years. This won't be fixed in a few minutes, days and sometimes even months.

The body has this amazing ability to heal itself. If this wasn't the case, we, as a species, wouldn't be here. In fact, there would be no live on earth other than plants. Every body seeks out to be in a state of balance which is your optimum health and where everything functions to the best of its abilities. It is only when things happen in our lives, that this balance gets out of whag – this is when we become ill or unwell. Any illness, any health complaint, any dis-ease, is your body's way of telling you that something is not quite right and it is then up to us as individuals to find out what this is in order to rectify it and bring ourselves back into balance. This, of course, is not easy – we are often so entangled in our complaint that it is difficult to see what is really going on and why.

This is where a qualified practitioner can help you to unravel the knots.

Of course, sometimes we just have to function and that quickly – there is this important meeting and we have to be 'fully there and with it', or we have to be in work or we have to get the kids to school. Emergencies are another example where you don't really want to think about herbal support and natural painkillers – you wouldn't want your ER doctor to give you willow bark instead of a fast acting painkiller when you've just been involved in a car crash!

But herbal medicine really comes into play with long standing health complaints such as autoimmune diseases, general health complaints, stress and anxiety and many others. Even better, herbal medicine, used correctly, can act as a preventative measure and stop you from getting ill in the first place. Of course, herbs can't help you from getting a heart attack if you continue to have a stressful live, food on the go and 5 litres of strong coffee per day!

The different types of approaches

There are different ways, different schools of thought if you will, to look at the help and support that herbs can provide.

There is the 'allopathic' way of looking at herbs, where a herb is taken apart and its many phytochemical constituents (there are often thousands of them in just one plant!) are investigated by isolating each and then testing these isolated compounds in more or less honest and complicated studies. These tests are mainly done on animals, where highly concentrated phytochemicals are usually injected into the animal after it has been subjected to a disease causing agent, in order to then objectively evaluate the body's response to the phytochemical. The results will be the evaluation of efficiency and effectiveness of one or more isolated chemical compounds upon a certain disease, followed by a recommendation, if appropriate. Is this compound then found to be safe, it can go on the market (well, it's a bit more complicated than that but I'll leave this for another blog maybe) as a drug. Either as a pharmaceutical drug (where it is cheaper to create an artificial copy of this natural chemical compound so it can be patented, manufactured and sold) or as a standardised herbal extract (ugh, that's going to be another blog!).

And then there is the traditional way working with herbs. This way takes advantage of thousands of years of observations and experience, often passed from generation to generation or written down in books. Now bear in mind that, until a couple of hundred years ago, we had no labs to analyse the chemical constituents a herb, so herbalists had to rely on other methods to figure out which herb is the best to deal with what. Over thousands of years those traditional herbalists have learned to listen to the plants (yes, plants do communicate), observe them in their habitats (where do they grow) and watch carefully how they work in the body. Often this was done by watching animals in the wild selecting plants when there was an obvious health problem with the animal.

In summary, the traditional approach takes into account the actions of the herb (is it anti-inflammatory, analgesic, diaphoretic, cholagogue, choleretic, stomachic, nervine, etc), its energetics (is it hot, cold, moist or dry or is it a relaxant or a stimulant) of a plant as well as the its affinities to an organ system (is it good for the respiratory, nervous, gastrointestinal, or cardiovascular tract, for the bones, tissues etc).

To make matters a bit more complicated, you can have a herb that is a relaxing and drying nervine (eg california poppy) or you can have a herb that is a stimulating, slightly warming and nourishing nervine (eg St John's Wort). Both are nervines but each has VERY different ways of working!

And to make matters even more complicated, guess what – EVERY BODY, be it human or animal, has its own energetics and its very own way of functioning! Remember that no two human fingerprints have EVER been the same since human history and no two noses of ANY animal on this planet have ever had the same patterns; this is how individual and unique every single living being on this planet is.

So, do you still think that a curcumin extract is good very everyone with inflammation? Do you still think that peppermint is good for everyone with a tummy problem?

What will you do when there is a problem - open your herb books (or Dr Google or Dr Facebook group) to look up what is good for, say, gastritis? Well, this is what Dr Google will suggest:

Good luck giving a potent extract of garlic to anyone with ulcerative colitis, stomach ulcers, IBS or leaky gut! Whilst garlic has fantastic anti-microbial properties, it would not be right approach for anyone with open wounds, sores, ulcers, or someone who is by their very nature a 'hot' person. A qualified herbalist will know that garlic is a hot remedy and that can also be very agitating to tissues.

Another example is turmeric. The root of this herb is very well known for its painkilling and anti-inflammatory properties and is recommended everywhere for anyone with arthritis. But what Dr Google doesn't tell you is that turmeric is classed as a bitter and 'warming' herb. A qualified herbalist will not recommend turmeric to a 'hot' person as it will make them even more hot, or to someone who has digestive issues (such as severe liver/gallbladder, general gut and stomach problems) as the bitter components of turmeric increase the production and release of gastric juices. Now add black pepper, another 'warming' herb, to the mix and you could be in for a disaster.

Or you take willow bark or meadowsweet for your reoccurring headaches. Both herbs have painkilling properties and are very drying in nature (astringent). But if your headache is a result of you not taking in enough fluids throughout the day then you are set up to fail big time. In fact, it will make your headache worse!

Or you take marshmallow or slippery elm for stomach ulcers – whilst both are moistening and soothing to the epithelial lining of the stomach and gastrointestinal tract, if your ulcers stem from stress and anxiety AND you are suffering from cold feet and hands or swollen limbs with accumulation of fluids, then neither of the above are any good for your problem. They might provide a temporary relief, but they won't solve the problem.

But most people do not know this – and how could they? Sadly, this is where herbs are set up to fail because 'they don't work' or 'they made it worse'.

I don't want herbs to fail. I don't want to hear 'It doesn't work'. Herbs have, for thousands of years been our very personal protection against diseases and ailments of all sorts. Whilst they can not rectify a problem when the cause for the problem is not eliminated, they can offer support to the body to enable it to heal itself.

But for this, we really need to get away from 'I take this for this because xyz is taking it and it works' because we, as well as our animals, are all unique and wonderful in the way we are, we live, what we do, what we like and who we are.

We need to look at every living being as an individual and this means getting away from general supplements or remedies that will just put a small band aid on a broken leg.

Best wishes

Michaela