Herbs vs. Conventional drugs

I'm often asked, by those "in the know", to share what I have learned. Actually, oddly enough, in our first Trimester, we did not learn about any specific herbs. We took nature walks, heard Jim Duke talk about various plants in his massive Herb Farmacy, learned about foundational clinical practices and made teas and tinctures.

The interesting thing I found out through the nature walks and Jim Duke's garden tours was the amazing things about plants. I had taken a class on Herbal Medicine in Pharmacy school (they offered it as a whole elective class and mentioned some herbal medicines throughout other classes) and was fascinated that normal, everyday plants like garlic could have healing properties. But what amazed me more was when I learned that common plants that I had thought were weeds, that I had played with as a kid, also had medicinal (and sometimes dangerous) properties.

It's also interesting to note that most pharmaceutical drugs come from plants. Because plants are not patent-able, one active constituent of the plant is extracted and isolated and made into a drug that is then patented and sold on the market. If this is the case, why do drugs have such harsh side effects? And if they have these side effects, wouldn't one expect the same side effect from the original plant? Yes...and no.

Let's say you see a commercial about how lutein, found in tomatoes, is good for the eyes (which some of you may have). First of all, this may or not be true. It could be that they isolated this constituent, put it in a petri dish with damaged eye cells and found improvement, or given it to rats with eye damage and found improvement. So, whether it works in a FULL human body may not be known (I personally don't know). Another factor to consider is that lutein is only one part of a tomato. What makes a tomato beneficial is not just the lutein, and it could be that other constituents in the tomato act synergistically to exert not only benefit to your eyes, but other parts of the body. It also could mean that JUST taking lutein might affect your eyes positively, but may act on other parts of your body negatively. The whole plant may have constituents that are in such a concentration that it benefits your body without exerting harm. You may have to eat a lot of tomatoes to get the same amount of lutein that they may offer in a pill, but the nutritional and health benefits would probably be greater as well (again, I have no knowledge of lutein, I just used it as an example).

So, yes, herbs may take a lot longer to work than conventional drugs. But, their effect is gentler and more enhancing (helping your body do its job) than compensating (doing your body's job for it, or stopping what you're body is already doing). A great example is in the case of fevers. A fever is your body's immune system working since bacteria and viruses can't survive in higher temps. Usually medicines that bring fevers down like Tyelonol or ibuprofe are given in conventional medicine. Herbalists actually give herbs that act as diaphoretics, to help one sweat more, helping the body do what it's already trying to do.

Sometimes, when a drug compensates for the body's natural function, the body may stop that functional pathway. if the drug is taken away, the body must now compensate itself for the missing pathway and may overshoot its function (well, that's the gist of it anyway).

Until next time....