HERBS: Nature’s pharmacy

At first glance, herbs might not seem appropriate for a book on nutrient therapy. However many of them are, in fact, foods, such as mushrooms, cranberries, garlic, ginger and cayenne pepper. In reviewing my treatment plans for various illnesses, I couldn’t ignore the fact that herbs are an inseparable part of nutritional medicine.

If the distinction between herbs and nutrients seems blurry, take a moment to consider the distinction between herbs and drugs. About one-third of our prescription medications – digitalis, antispasmodics, painkillers and certain chemotherapeutic agents, to cite a few examples – are derived from plants. Thus it’s ironic that mainstream medicine generally tends to look down upon herbal treatments. This attitude didn’t always exist. Until the 1920s or so, medical schools taught students to recognize the therapeutic value of plants through the study of pharmacognosy, and pharmacies stocked their shelves with herbs that doctors prescribed regularly. But somewhere along the way, the emphasis shifted to pharmaceuticals, and the profession was denied access to this wonderful knowledge.

Although pharmaceutical companies never lost sight of the medicinal potential of herbs, they’ve always sought more buck than the natural bang could provide. Because plant extracts and natural substances cannot be patented, the surest path to bigger profits is lost. Drug researchers, therefore, began to look fot individual active ingredients within each therapeutic herb, chemically dissecting the herbs in search of something they could duplicate artificially and patent. In so doing, they concentrated on plant chemicals that possessed significant adverse effects ignoring the considerable health-bestowing power of naturally balanced whole herbs and whole extracts.

Today’s rediscovery of a more natural plant pharmacology occurred largely through the work of researchers in Europe, where herbal medications are a routine part of mainstream medicine, manufactured to the same exacting standards as pharmaceuticals. Some of the world’s most esteemed laboratories make and promote herbal medicines. For example, in Germany doctors write millions of prescriptions every year for a phamaceutical-grade herbal extract of Ginkgo biloba. Here in America, even though we have access to ginkgo of the same quality, mainstream medicine still refuses to recognize its medicinal roles.

In this chapter I’ve divided the most commonly used herbs into several categories, according to how I most frequently use them. These classifications may seem arbitrary, but that’s because of the very nature of our medicinal herbs. Most of them defy classification because they work simultaneously on different levels. The same herb that I give to one patient as a cold cure, for instance, can also help another patient recover from cancer. In many cases even the herbs with specific purposes can advance our health in other ways, and fortunately most of these natural extracts are available over-the-counter.