I’m not gonna lie…before I went to herbal medicine school I had little to no faith that most herbal medicine worked.  I thought it would help with the “not serious” everyday colds, mainly because of my own shocking realization that it did work in these situations.  One of the main reasons I went herbal medicine school was to learn the nutrition side of herbs.  I had no clue that over the next few years I was about to see how real the healing properties of plants were and later see one possibly save my life.  A story for another time.

So here I am to maybe open some eyes and ears to what I think is a major hidden gem of information to many living today.  To those of you who have never tried herbal medicine I would love to challenge you to do so.  For those of you who have tried with no results, I would ask you to look at how you used it and where you sourced the herbs from.  As one of my teachers, Rich Mandelbaum, says…”you probably didn’t use it correctly or get it from the right place.”

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Herbal Medicine has been around since close to the beginning.  Think about it…plants… they’ve been here a while.  I believe humans used to be more connected to nature and knew how to use them way more naturally than most of today’s people.  If you look into traditional medicine, cultures have been using herbs to cure and maintain health for ages.  Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic Medicine are a few examples that go back thousands of years and are successfully still used.  Learning these two different styles (I say that very loosely considering I have only been practicing for 5 years and others have way more years of knowledge and family lineage to tap into than myself.) has been one of the most fascinating “live outs” of my life.  MIND BLOWN.

Did you know that many pharmaceuticals are derived from medicinal plants?  Aspirin was one of the first and it was derived from the Willow tree.  In fact the top 20 prescription drugs sold today come from plants.  Yes…you heard me right…my question is why not just use the whole plant which negates MANY if not ALL of the unwanted side effects?  Well, because you can’t patent a plant but you can patent something that has a part of the plant…think about that and the money trail.

You may say…well there isn’t enough research.  I hear this so many times when people ask their doctor if they can use certain herbs.  First off…if you want to only look at westernized style research you may have a point.  Why would a company put their dollars into researching a plant that they cannot patent?  And a lot of the research, again, is on a constituent of the plant instead of the entire medicinal plant part.  Not to mention some are just down right bad science on purpose to boost up a pharmaceutical drug that can make money.  Do you see a pattern? That’s not to say there is NO research.  Look at turmeric and some medicinal mushrooms.  They have been getting some major points on the research radar lately.

Now if we want to talk about the other perspective of research…there are thousands of years worth of cultures using medicinal herbs that have their own way of recording research.  That says a lot and after you realize the treasure in that kind of history you will never say the herbs haven’t been researched.  Just sayin…

Now you ask, how do you get and take herbal medicine?  Glad you asked!  I’ll tell you in my next write up…but till then…next time you walk outside look around you.  They are there and you don’t even know it.  Seriously.  It took me a while to believe the plants I was walking around in Central Park were medicine.  Even after our teacher brought us out to show us I was skeptical that something I walked on most of my life could help my liver and digestion (dandelion) or help when you get a bug bite or need to draw out that splinter (plantain) and these are two basic, simple everyday herbs that are in a lot of your LAWNS!  Just wait till you hear about the ones that move out blood clots bigger than your fist with TWO DROPS of tincture.  I know, I know…what the * is a tincture?  Again…stay tuned.  Till next time…cheers!