Layman’s Guide to Natural Medicine

WILDCRAFTED HERBAL PRODUCTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH KURRAJONG NATURAL MEDICINE CENTRE

PRESENT

THE LAYMAN’S GUIDE TO NATURAL MEDICINE

Commences: Wednesday 17th February 6:30 to 7:45pm
Venue: Kurrajong Natural Medicine Centre
Shop 7/1147 Grose Vale Road, Kurrajong Village, NSW, Australia

This 6-week course is designed to answer questions you may have about Natural Therapies. It unravels the often confusing and misleading alternative health care information commonly available and aims to increase understanding and insight into the health benefits Natural Medicine has to offer.

The topics to be covered week by week will be focused on the core forms of natural medicine practiced in Australia today and an overview of the secondary modalities will be given.

Course participants will have an opportunity to ask questions during a ten-minute Question and Answer time at the end of each weekly session.

There is No Charge for attendance BUT BOOKINGS ARE ESSENTIAL PLEASE!

Week 1:

Introduction to Natural Therapies – Just Placebo or Real Medicine?

The differences and similarities between Natural Medicine, Natural Therapies, Complementary Medicine and Alternative Therapies are examined; Training, Qualifications and Regulation of practitioners.

Weeks 2 & 3:

Traditional Chinese Medicine:

The philosophy behind this ancient system of medicine is outlined, including Acupuncture, Chinese Herbal Medicine and Moxibustion. The theoretical aspect of how these fit into contemporary health care is explored.

Weeks 4 & 5:

Western Herbal Medicine & Naturopathy:

The Western Herbal Medicine tradition is highly eclectic and has quite a different application to that of Chinese Herbal Medicine. The ways that herbs have been traditionally used are examined and their contemporary use discussed. Herbal Medicine is often used by some Naturopaths but can be considered to be too interventionist by others. The basic principles underlying the philosophy of ‘nature cure’ are explored are discussed in the context of modern lifestyles.

Week 6:

Body Work & ‘Natural Exercise’:

It is well-known that structure and function in the body are inter-linked and it is on this basis that ‘natural’ or ‘alternative’ forms of body work and exercise are based. This week we look at the roles of Remedial Therapies, Massage, Chiropractics and Osteopathy in health care and explore why exercise forms such as Tai Chi and Yoga are better for you.

To Book or Enquire Phone: (02) 4573 0784

Skin care: It’s a cover up

For many years now we have seen a move away from skin care products that contain chemicals which are potentially harmful to the skin. Consumers have begun to demand natural skin care products. That is, they demand products, that instead of containing potentially harmful, synthetic and/or artificial ingredients contain natural ones. This is a step in the right direction, but it is not the whole story.

Natural skin care is by definition the use of natural ingredients such as herbs, essential oils and various extracts and nutrients from fruits and/or vegetables that treat the skin. Skin care after all is not about plumping up of the skin or temporarily removing fine lines and wrinkles, skin care is far more than that.

Real skin care is about maintaining or regaining healthy skin by use of natural ingredients that facilitate and promote the normal functions of the skin. If the skin needs particular attention, because one of its functions is compromised, herbal extracts and other natural substances can be used to specifically target that issue. Herbs are healing substances that have been used for thousands of years to re-establish health and many of these herbs have specific therapeutic functions on the skin.

The Skin is an organ and just like any other organ in our body, and it too requires regular attention and maintenance. After all, we drink water to help our Kidneys function properly, we eat bran and other fibre containing foods to help maintain healthy bowl function and so on. However, when it comes to our skin we often use products that simply mask dis-function rather than addressing the underlying problem.

Natural skin care products, or if you prefer, herbal skin care products, that contain therapeutic doses of herbs, essential oils and other nutrients, are like eating bran and grains to maintain our digestive system, but they are formulated to work on maintaining the normal functions of the skin.

Unfortunately, this is not the attitude of the cosmetics industry. The fact that products are being made with one or two natural ingredients (together with all the other synthetic and artificial ones) and then are advertised to contain natural ingredients is merely a marketing ploy by these companies. They are not interested in healing the skin, far from it; they want you to continue using their products to cover up the symptoms of a stressed skin that is in need of actual treatment.

Think about it. What is more profitable, treating the underlying cause of a problem and thus fixing it, or treating the symptoms by continually applying products to cover the problem… I’m sure shareholders of large cosmetic companies don’t want to see problems solved… But then again, I could be wrong…

Therapeutic herbal skin care is about one: addressing weaknesses or problems of the skin and addressing these in specific ways through the use of specific herbs and/or essential oils; and two: once normal skin function has been established, herbal skin care products can then be used to maintain optimal functioning of the skin. The aim of therapeutically formulated herbal skin care products is not to mask symptoms of skin problems, but to fix them.

For example, Lavender is well known for its wound healing, antiseptic and toning properties. It has the ability to remove redness and heat from the skin, making it an ideal choice for soothing and repairing an irritated or hypersensitive skin. Although it is not really an anti-inflammatory as such, Lavender is often useful where there is inflammation, hence its use in burns, dermatitis, eczema, psoriasis, boils, rheumatism, wounds, ulcers, and so on.

From a natural medicine point of view, treatment of any health problem needs to be viewed from the first principle, that is the cause of the problem, not the effect. Thus, therapeutic herbal skin care products are formulated to target the cause of the skin problem not the result of it. This approach may take longer for the person to see the effects, but these will be more permanent and ultimately easier to maintain.

When products merely aim to mask symptoms, they actually never address the underlying cause and therefore the problem gradually gets worse. At some point, the problem will be irreversible and the masking of the symptoms no longer possible. This is when the whole deck of cards falls in a heap and serious skin problems become apparent and almost impossible to treat.

Danny Siegenthaler is a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and together with his wife Susan, a medical herbalist and Aromatherapist, they have created Natural Skin Care Products by Wildcrafted Herbal Products to share their 40 years of combined expertise with you.
They practice Herbal and Chinese medicine at their Wildcrafted Cottage Clinic. (c) Wildcrafted Herbal Products 2010

An interesting point of view of the ‘Health Reform’ debate in the US

Cancer Treatment and Health Care Reform

by Barbara O’Brien

One argument you may hear against health care reform concerns cancer survival rates. The United States has higher cancer survivor rates than countries with national health care systems, we’re told. Doesn’t this mean we should keep what we’ve got and not change it?

Certainly cancer survival rates are a critical issue for people suffering from the deadly lung mesothelioma cancer.  So let’s look at this claim and see if there is any substance to it.

First, it’s important to understand that “cancer survival rate” doesn’t mean the rate of people who are cured of a cancer. The cancer survival rate is the percentage of people who survive a certain type of cancer for a specific amount of time, usually five years after diagnosis.

For example, according to the Mayo Clinic, the survivor rate of prostate cancer in the United States is 98 percent. This means that 98 percent of men diagnosed with prostate cancer are still alive five years later. However, this statistic does not tell us whether the men who have survived for five years still have cancer or what number of them may die from it eventually.

Misunderstanding of the term “survivor rate” sometimes is exploited to make misleading claims. For example, in 2007 a pharmaceutical company promoting a drug used to treat colon cancer released statistics showing superior survival rates for its drug over other treatments. Some journalists who used this data in their reporting assumed it meant that the people who survived were cured of cancer, and they wrote that the drug “saved lives.” The drug did extend the lives of patients, on average by a few months. However, the mortality rate for people who used this drug — meaning the rate of patients who died of the disease — was not improved.

But bloggers and editorial writers who oppose health care reform seized these stories about “saving lives,” noting that this wondrous drug was available in the United States for at least a year before it was in use in Great Britain. Further, Britain has lower cancer survival rates than the U.S. This proved, they said, the superiority of U.S. health care over “socialist” countries.

This is one way propagandists use data to argue that health care in the United States is superior to countries with government-funded health care systems. They selectively compare the most favorable data from the United States with data from the nations least successful at treating cancer. A favorite “comparison” country is Great Britain, whose underfunded National Health Service is struggling.

It is true that the United States compares very well in the area of cancer survival rates, but other countries with national health care systems have similar results.

For example, in 2008 the British medical journal Lancet Oncology published a widely hailed study comparing cancer survival rates in 31 countries. Called the CONCORD study, the researchers found that United States has the highest survival rates for breast and prostate cancer. However, Japan has the highest survival for colon and rectal cancers in men, and France has the highest survival for colon and rectal cancers in women. Canada and Australia also ranked relatively high for most cancers. The differences in the survival data for these “best” countries is very small, and is possibly caused by discrepancies in reporting of data and not the treatment result itself.

And it should be noted that Japan, France, Canada and Australia all have government-funded national health care systems. So, there is no reason to assume that changing the way health care is funded in the U.S. would reduce the quality of cancer care.

— Barbara O’Brien

Are Herbs Weeds or Treasures?

My dictionary defines the word Weed as: “a plant considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially one growing where it is not wanted, as in a garden.” Herbs or medicinal plants are often considered weeds – usually because they grow in undesirable places.Many herbs have been introduced into Australia and because they are not native plants, they have often few competitors for resources such as water, soil nutrients and light and have few predators. Subsequently, these plants can grow and spread unchecked, endangering native vegetation and even various animal species such as birds and insects.

Weeds certainly can be a real threat to native flora, fauna, rain forests and even aquatic ecosystems. Recalcitrant herbs are targeted by the authorities for eradication or sprayed on an ongoing basis, in an attempt to control their spread and protect sensitive ecosystems.

You don’t need to go to exotic places like the rain forests to find medicinal plants, they usually grow right at your feed; on footpaths, roadsides, garbage dumps, even in your garden.

Given that most medicinal plants are weeds and because weeds grow as prolifically as they do, they are often easy to cultivate – you will actually have more of a problem keeping them in a designated area, rather than a problem growing them.

Wildcrafted herbs are herbs gathered from the wild. The advantage of wildcrafted herbs is that these generally are very healthy and full of the desired medicinal properties. Wildcrafted herbs are usually native to an area and thus are not weeds. They often occur in clusters and grow in ‘ideal’ conditions under which they can attain their full medicinal potential.

A problem with wildcrafting medicinal plants occurs where there is little or no control over the amount that can be harvested at any one time or by any one person, at least this is the case in Australia. This can decimate a local population of wild medicinal plants. Taking of any vegetation is illegal without authorisation in Australian National Parks and protected areas for this reason. Some medicinal plants are actually becoming rare and endangered and the harvesting of these species should at the very least be regulated. Better still, organic farming of such herbs should be encouraged and promoted. This would provide struggling farmers with alternative cash crops during times when their primary sources of income are not performing well.

Weeds or Treasures – it really does not matter what you call them, the fact remains they are often very powerful medicinal plants that have the potential to address many of today’s major health problems and they have done so for thousands of years…

In the grave of Neanderthal man, in a cave in Iraq, grains of flower pollens were found thickly scattered in the soil surrounding his bones. The family and friends of the dead man, had surrounded his body with clusters of flowers and branches at this summer-time funeral. Analysed some 600′000 years after the death of this unknown caveman, the pollens were identified as coming from eight different genera of flowering plants, all of which flourish in the surrounding woods and fields at Shanidar to this day.

Seven of the eight species are still used for medicine in dozens of different ways by the local people. For example, the mucilaginous roots of the marsh mallow yield a soothing and healing remedy for irritated throats and disordered intestinal tracts. Ephedra is a potent remedy for asthma and a cardiac stimulant – a usage confirmed by modern science when the nerve-stimulant ephedrine was extracted from it.

Herbal medicine is the oldest form of therapy practiced by mankind. It’s use spans cultural and geographic boundaries, yet how are we to account for the fact that to an astonishing degree, the same plant is employed for the same purpose in cultures so widely separated in place or time with no communication between them? It seems, that ancient man’s knowledge of herbs and their medicinal uses was based on a highly-developed “dowsing” instinct, which led the healer of he tribe to the right plant and taught him or her its use. To a modern mind the idea may seem bizarre, but wild animals certainly possess such an instinct, seeking out plants which will supply the nutrients they need and unerringly avoiding those which will poison them.

These dowsing powers would explain the astonishing continuity of medicinal plant usage in the days before there were written records, or in tribes who have never known them, since the chain of oral tradition must have been broken over and over again by death, or by the scattering or obliteration of the tribe.

Many cultures have also believed in what has come to be known as The Doctrine of Signatures – the notion that plants have been signed by their Creator with visible clues to their usefulness: yellow plants would be effective against jaundice, plants with fruit shaped like genital organs might be effective in regulating or promoting fertility, a plant with fleshy lung-shaped leaves might be useful in respiratory ailments, etc.

By what ever means these ancient tribes selected their medicinal plants and identified their functions in the treatment of disease, the result is that over thousands of years herbal medicine evolved into an effective and efficient medical system to treat disease.

© Copyright: 2004 – 2010, Wildcrafted Herbal Products Pty Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide

Kurrajong Natural Medicine Centre to Run Courses on Natural Therapies

Starting in November 2009, Kurrajong Natural Medicine Centre will begin running a series of courses covering a range of Natural Therapies.

Courses include ‘the layman’s guide to natural therapies’, which has been a popular course for people who are interested in alternative medicine and it’s range of disciplines, but because they lack information, have not yet sought such treatments.

This course will look at the major natural medicine modalities and discuss:

• What they are
• How they work
• How natural medicine and orthodox medicine can complement each other
• How natural medicine can help maintain and regain good health
• Find out which therapy is best for your particular health issue
• How to find a qualified natural therapist
• What natural therapies can and cannot do
• And much more.

Not only has this course been of interest to the lay person, but many health professionals have also attended this course with a few to find out more and increase their level of understanding about natural medicine and it’s disciplines.

“We first conceived this course over 10 years ago, because we found that people from all walks of life were increasingly interested in what natural medicine could do for them”, said Susan.

“The aim was not to sell alternative medicine, but rather to provide information that is factual and provides a more complete picture of how an individual could use natural medicine to improve their health. What surprised us initially was the high level of interest expressed by orthodox medical practitioners and nurses”, said Susan Siegenthaler, who as formulated and taught this course now for many years.

Susan is a medical herbalist and Aromatherapist with over 25 years of experience in private practice and teaching. Together with her husband and business partner Danny, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, they’ve started their new clinic, Kurrajong Natural Medicine Centre and are now offering this course free to anyone that wishes to find out more about natural medicine.

The course will be held over 4 weeks at: Kurrajong Natural Medicine Centre. For more details please call (02) 5673 0784 or drop in at:

Kurrajong Natural Medicine Centre
Shop 7/1147 Grose Vale Rd.,
Kurrajong Village, NSW 2758

Wildcrafted Cottage – Kurrajong Now Open

Wildcrafted Herbal Products Pty Ltd. has opened its first retail store, in Kurrajong Village, NSW, where its full range of natural skin care products is now available and on display.

Wildcrafted Cottage – Kurrajong, is the brand new retail outlet for Wildcrafted’s full range of skin, body and personal care products. “We wanted to make all our products available in one place so customers could come into our shop, sample the products, and ask questions directly from the people who make them,” said Danny Siegenthaler.

“So far our brand, Wildcrafted Herbal Products, has been primarily available via our website and to patients that come to our Clinic, but there was no specialised outlet where people could go to experience, smell, touch and try the products. Now with the opening of Wildcrafted Cottage, not only can people come and test our natural skin care products, but they can also sample our full range of personal care, hair care, Aromatherapy spa-blends and Therapeutic creams,” said Susan Siegenthaler.

The formulations of all the products throughout the entire range of Wildcrafted Herbal Products are based on the principles of herbal medicine. Susan, a renowned medical herbalist, formulated each of the products to maximise their safety and effectiveness.

Wildcrafted’s range of natural skin care products, as well as all the other products, only contain 100% natural and certified organic ingredients to ensure the highest quality, effectiveness and purity of every product.

“Over the last 25 years we’ve fine-tuned our formulations to be as safe and effective as possible”, said Susan. “My aim has always been not to just make another range of natural skin care products, but a range of products that are of therapeutic potency and effectiveness”, she said.

Wildcrafted Cottage opened its doors in October 2009 and is located in Kurrajong Village, northwest of Sydney in the lower Blue Mountains. Kurrajong is surrounded by natural bush land and is a picturesque, small Village, making it an ideal choice for the first of Wildcrafted’s retail stores.

The whole range including the latest line of anti-ageing products are now on display at Wildcrafted Cottage – Kurrajong.

Birth of Kurrajong Natural Medicine Centre

Well, it’s finally happening. Wildcrafted Herbal Products has started the process of setting up a unique Natural Medicine Centre in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, Australia.

Our Kurrajong Natural Medicine Centre blog will allow anyone who is interested to follow the construction and setting up of our first retail outlet.

But, Kurrajong Natural Medicine Centre is so much more than just another retail outlet for our range of natural skin care products. It will also contain a fully staffed Natural Medicine Clinic that provides a full range of Alternative medicine and natural therapies ranging from Acupuncture, Herbal Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine to Remedial massage, Aromatherapy and so much more.

Kurranjong Natural Medicine Centre will also be hosting free information seminars, workshops and classes including Tai Chi classes and many more to come.

The intention of the blog is for you to see each stage of the process from the empty shell of the current premises to the completed shop & clinic – which will hopefully be in mid- to late September 2009.

We hope you’ll find following the process interesting and I’m sure there will be some hilarious mishaps and misadventures before this project is complete…say tuned and have a giggle.

Natural Skin Care Products for Men: Why You should Make the Switch

Generally, men do not take especially good care of their skin. Mostly they shave their stubbles off in the morning, apply some aftershave and that’s just about it.

Some take it a step further and apply a moisturiser or toning gel after completing their shaving routine, but very few realise that taking good care of their skin is much more important than that.

You see, the integrity of the skin is vitally important to prevent harmful substances and micro-organisms from penetrating through the natural barrier of the skin. Few men realise that the integrity of the skin is compromised by shaving. Shaving removes the natural barrier function of the skin and allows potentially harmful ingredients and micro-organisms to pass through the skin, while nicks and cuts open the pathway into the blood stream.

Even when using an electric shaver, the skin is inflicted with microscopic nicks and cuts (they don’t have to bleed), which compromises the integrity of the skin. The process of shaving removes not only the protective acid mantel of the skin, but in addition, shaving removes several of the most superficial skin layers including some living skin cell layers and this renders the skin vulnerable.

This vulnerability is not just limited to attack from micro-organisms either. Once the natural barrier of the skin has been compromised, molecules that would otherwise have been excluded are now able to penetrate the skin and enter into the deeper layers of the skin and potentially the bloodstream.

Natural skin care products for men that only contain safe, effective and 100% natural ingredients such as essential oils and herbal extracts will reduce this risk. Essential oils are known to have very powerful antiseptic effects, which help to keep micro-organisms from penetrating through the compromised skin and thus prevent infection and inflammation of the skin. Together with herbal extracts, these types of ingredients soothe, nourish and protect the skin and prevent bacteria and other micro-organisms, etc., from entering the deeper layers of the skin.

In addition, using only safe and natural ingredients insures that potentially toxic ingredients, commonly found in men’s skin care products, are not a threat – simply because they’re contained in the products.

One also has to be mindful of the fact that no matter what type of razor is used, a range of bacteria and other micro-organisms will always be present on the blade, even a brand new blade. It is therefore very easy to introduce these organisms into the bloodstream. In most cases, the body’s immune system will handle this quickly and effectively, but by adding dangerous chemicals, contained in most commercially available skincare and shaving products, into the equation the skin can be adversely affected.

We are seeing an increase in skin sensitivities being reported by men that on closer examination frequently turn out to be allergic reactions to ingredients in the skin care products they are using. We have seen that once they start using 100% natural skin care products and follow a systematic skin care approach, these sensitivities tend to become less and their skin generally becomes healthier.

Specifically formulated natural skin care products for men are not jet commonly available, however, it is worth the effort to identify such products in order to avoid causing unnecessary skin problems and potentially dangerous skin infections.

Danny Siegenthaler is a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and together with his wife Susan, a medical herbalist and Aromatherapist, they have created Natural Skin Care Products by Wildcrafted Herbal Products to share their 40 years of combined expertise with you.

Take a look at their 100% natural skin care products for men.

© Wildcrafted Herbal Products 2009

Herbal medicine has been used for thousands of years to successfully treat disease – why are we still doubting its worth?

Herbs or medicinal plants have a very long history in treating disease and health disorders. In traditional Chinese medicine, for example, the written history of herbal medicine goes back over 2000 years and herbalists in the West have used medicinal plants equally long to treat that which ails us.

We are all familiar with the virtues of Garlic, Chamomile, Peppermint, Lavender, and other common herbs. Culturally, herbs have also been used in religious ceremonies and festivals for specific purposes. Take the burning of incense for example, it has been and is still used by many religions and cultures to ’set the mood’ so to speak.

Despite this modern medicine is still not acknowledging herbal medicine as a viable alternative – mind you it’s only been about 200 years ago that ‘modern medicine’ was in fact using nothing other than herbs to treat disease…

Why are pharmaceutical companies interested in medicinal plants?

Interest in medicinal herbs is on the rise again and the interest is primarily from the pharmaceutical industry, which is always looking for ‘new drugs’ and more effective substances to treat diseases, for which currently there may be no or very few drugs available.

Considering the very long traditional use of herbal medicines and the large body of evidence of their effectiveness, why is it that we are not generally encouraged to use traditional herbal medicine, instead of synthetic, incomplete copies of herbs, called drugs, considering the millions of dollars being spent looking for these seemingly elusive substances?

Herbs are considered treasures when it comes to ancient cultures and herbalists, and many so-called weeds are worth their weight in gold. Dandelion, Comfrey, Digitalis (Foxglove), the Poppy, Milk Thistle, Stinging nettle, and many others, have well-researched and established medicinal properties that have few if any rivals in the pharmaceutical industry. Many of them in fact, form the bases of pharmaceutical drugs used today.

Research into the medicinal properties of such herbs as the humble Dandelion is currently being undertaken by scientists at the Royal Botanical Gardens, in Kew, west London, believe it could be the source of a life-saving drug for cancer patients.

Early tests suggest that it could hold the key to warding off cancer, which kills tens of thousands of people every year.

Their work on the cancer-beating properties of the dandelion, which also has a history of being used to treat warts, is part of a much larger project to examine the natural medicinal properties of scores of British plants and flowers.

Professor Monique Simmonds, head of the Sustainable Uses of Plants Group at Kew, said: “We aren’t randomly screening plants for their potential medicinal properties, we are looking at plants which we know have a long history of being used to treat certain medical problems.”

“We will be examining them to find out what active compounds they contain which can treat the illness.”

Unfortunately, as is so often the case, this group of scientists appears to be looking for active ingredients, which can later be synthesized and then made into pharmaceutical drugs. This is not the way herbs are used traditionally and their functions inevitably change when the active ingredients are used in isolation. That’s like saying that the only important part of a car is the engine – nothing else needs to be included…

So, why is there this need for isolating the ‘active ingredients’?

As a scientist, I can understand the need for the scientific process of establishing the fact that a particular herb works on a particular disease, pathogen or what ever, and the need to know why and how it does so. But, and this is a BIG but, as a doctor of Chinese medicine I also understand the process of choosing and prescribing COMBINATIONS of herbs, which have a synergistic effect (they compliment each other) to treat not just the disease, but any underlying condition as well as the person with the disease – That’s a big difference and not one that is easily tested using standard scientific methodologies.

Using anecdotal evidence, which after all has a history of thousands of years, seems to escape my esteemed colleagues all together. Rather than trying to isolate the active ingredient(s), why not test these herbs, utilizing the knowledge of professional herbalists, on patients in vivo, using the myriad of technology available to researchers and medical diagnosticians to see how and why these herbs work in living, breathing patients, rather than in a test tube or on laboratory rats and mice (which, by the way, are not humans and have a different, although some what similar, physiology to us…).

I suspect, that among the reasons for not following the above procedure is that the pharmaceutical companies are not really interested in the effects of the medicinal plants as a whole, but rather in whether they can isolate a therapeutic substance which can then be manufactured cheaply and marketed as a new drug – and of course that’s where the money is…

The problem with this approach is however, that medicinal plants like Comfrey, Dandelion and other herbs usually contain hundreds if not thousands of chemical compounds that interact, yet many of which are not yet understood and cannot be manufactured. This is why the manufactured drugs, based on so-called active ingredients, often do not work or produce side effects.

Aspirin is a classic case in point. Salicylic acid is the active ingredient in Aspirin tablets, and was first isolated from the bark of the White Willow tree. It is a relatively simple compound to make synthetically, however, Aspirin is known for its ability to cause stomach irritation and in some cases ulceration of the stomach wall.

On the other hand, the herbal extract from the bark of the White Willow tree generally does not cause stomach irritation due to other, so called ‘non-active ingredients’ contained in the bark, which function to protect the lining of the stomach thereby preventing ulceration of the stomach wall.

Ask yourself, which would I choose – Side effects, or no site effects? – It’s a very simple answer. Isn’t it?

So why then are herbal medicines not used more commonly and why do we have pharmaceutical impostors stuffed down our throats? The answer is, that there’s little or no money in herbs for the pharmaceutical companies. They, the herbs, have already been invented, they grow easily, they multiply readily and for the most part, they’re freely available.

Further more, correctly prescribed and formulated herbal compounds generally resolve the health problem of the patient over a period of time, leaving no requirement to keep taking the preparation – that means no repeat sales… no ongoing prescriptions… no ongoing problem.

Pharmaceuticals on the other hand primarily aim to relieve symptoms – that means: ongoing consultations, ongoing sales, ongoing health problems – which do you think is a more profitable proposition…?

Don’t get me wrong, this is not to say that all drugs are impostors or that none of the pharmaceutical drugs cure diseases or maladies – they do and some are life-preserving preparations and are without doubt invaluable. However, herbal extracts can be similarly effective, but are not promoted and are highly under-utilized.

The daily news are full of ‘discoveries’ of herbs found to be a possible cure of this or that, as in the example of Dandelion and its possible anti-cancer properties. The point is, that these herbs need to be investigated in the correct way. They are not just ‘an active ingredient’. They mostly have hundreds of complex chemical ingredients and taking one or two in isolation is not what makes medicinal plants work. In addition, rarely are herbal extracts prescribed by herbalists as singles (a preparation which utilizes only one herbal extract or powder). Usually herbalists mix a variety of medicinal plants to make a mixture, which addresses more than just the major symptoms.

In Chinese medicine for example there is a strict order of hierarchy in any herbal prescription, which requires considerable depth of knowledge and experience on the physicians part. The fact that the primary or principle herb has active ingredients, which has a specific physiological effect, does not mean the other herbs are not necessary in the preparation. This is a fact seemingly ignored by the pharmaceutical industry in its need to manufacture new drugs that can control disease.

Knowing that medicinal plants are so effective, that these plants potentially hold the key to many diseases, are inexpensive and have proven their worth time and time again, over millennia, why is it that herbal medicine is still not in the forefront of medical treatments? Why is it, that only 200 years ago, medical practitioners were using herbs to treat disease, but now claim ‘they do nothing’ or ‘they are dangerous’?

If indeed these medicinal herbs ‘do nothing’, they how can they be dangerous? Alternatively, if they are ‘dangerous’, they must do something…

You see, about 200 years ago, what we refer to today as pharmaceutical companies evolved. This caused a split in the medical fraternity. Some went along with the development of pharmacy, others stayed with the traditional forms (herbal medicine) of treating disease. Unfortunately, the pharmacy approach won and that is why today pharmaceutical companies have such a strong hold on the prescription of medicines.

Barbara Griggs in her book Green Pharmacy, has detailed the historical development in great depth and with much understanding of the development and processes which lead to today’s medical system in the West and I can highly recommend reading it. – It’s great food for thought, if nothing else.

© Wildcrafted Herbal Products 2009

Can Science Really Validate Alternative Medicine

This is a really good and valid question. The short answer, in my opinion, is no. Scientists cannot test the effectiveness of alternative medicine adequately. Why? Because western science works within a strict paradigm that is at best difficult to apply to a range of aspects in alternative medicine.

Let’s start with what should easily be verifiable by western science. The effect of a specific herb should be readily testable and should provide consistent results. Problem is, the tests often get very different results and do not agree about a specific herbs’ effectiveness. Why? This is where it gets a bit more complicated.

Firstly, in order to test a particular herb for it’s medicinal properties and effectiveness, the scientists must use the correct species of herbs. This is simple to achieve, however, there are major differences in the same species, depending on how and where it is grown, the time of day and year it is harvested and the condition of the soil the herb was grown in, not to mention the different processing methods that can be used.

Let’s look at an example that is very typical. Echinacea is a herb that most people have heard of and where science provides at best confusing information and results.

Now, Echinacea has 2 major species that are commonly used by medical herbalists. The first is Echinacea purpurea, the second is E. angustifolia. Now, these two species of Echinacea have different actions, and depending on the parts of the plant that are included in the herbal extract, these functions will vary again.

Let’s just stick to Echinacea purpurea and look at the many different extracts that are used in the market place.

The single best quality of this herbal extract comes from Switzerland and is made by a company called Bioforce AG. No, I’m not in anyway affiliated with this company, nor are they paying me for including their product or company name in this article or elsewhere.

As a herbalist, I’ve used many different preparations of Echinacea purpurea from different companies and have found that the best results come from the herbal extract of Echinacea purpurea produced by this company.

But why is that, what makes their Echinacea extract so much more effective? The first reason is the way they grow the herb. Firstly, they grow it in organically prepared fields, which are surrounded by buffer zones that keep any leaching into the primary fields from occurring.

Secondly, their crops are grown in rich mountain soil above 1800 meters. This appears to have a major influence on the properties and their concentrations in this herb. Thirdly, once the herb is ready to be harvested, the herbs are processed in their fresh, living state within 24 hours of being harvested. That means the plants are still alive and viable, with all their active and non-active constituents still intact.

The product is a green plant extract full of the goodies that make up this herb.

Alternatively, you can purchase Echinacea purpurea that has not been grown in organically prepared soil, that has not been grown above 1800 meters and is grown on much poorer, non-organically prepared soil. The plant is not processed within 24 hours of harvesting but instead is processed as a dried herb. Despite these major differences, they are of course still the same species and therefore treated as if they were the same. While preparations from such plants are generally standardised to meet minimum therapeutic quantities of the active ingredients as set by the British Pharmacopoeia, these preparations widely vary in other, so called non-active ingredients.

Even blind Freddy can tell you that the extract resulting from the two differently grown plants is going to be different and will have difference in their therapeutic effectiveness.

Herein lies the first problem for scientists. They are not really testing the same herb and therefore will get confusing results. They may be testing the same species, Echinacea purpurea, but not the same quality of the herbal extract. Unfortunately, they are probably not even aware of the fact that there are differences in plant constituents depending on where the plants have been grown and the methods used to make the extract.

This, just by the way, is also a problem for the herbalists that use Echinacea purpurea to treat their patients. While it’s easy to establish whether an extract is a green plant extract or not, it is often difficult to find out where the plants used to make the extract have been grown, etc. In our clinic we have often found one brand to work much better than another, despite the standardised active ingredients.

Now, if the scientists are looking for the chemicals that make up the extract (plant) to identify which of the chemicals are responsible for the range of therapeutic applications, they will find widely different concentrations and different ratios of ingredients depending on the origin of the plant/s. If they are not aware that this is (a) possible, and (b) provides different therapeutic results, then of course their results will not agree with other studies that have used plants from a different region.

The second problem scientists face (possibly unknowingly) is that the strict paradigm of science is not designed to accommodate the paradigms of alternative medicine. For example, what western medical science refers to as the Liver is totally different to that of traditional Chinese medicine. For example you would be very hard pressed to find an orthodox medical doctor that would consider the Eyes to be part of the Liver, however, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine will very much consider the Eyes as part of the Liver.

These two differing paradigms are not easily merged. Let me give you an example. An individual that presents with consistently red eyes, a reddish face and short temper is highly likely to be diagnosed in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as having heat in the Liver (no, not the eyes, the liver). Now an orthodox medical practitioner may diagnose this as an allergy or a range of other problems, but is unlikely to diagnose a Liver disease.

I’m not saying either of the two approaches is right or wrong, what I’m trying to point out here is that the two paradigms are vastly different and are therefore difficult to unite under a single, testable paradigm that easily accommodates both philosophies.

This then makes it very difficult for western scientists to adequately validate alternative medicine and its therapeutic methods, if the paradigm under which they operate is vastly different.

In conclusion, unless we are testing the same thing in the same way, there is a very strong chance of obtaining different, non-conclusive, results. This is one of the major reasons that orthodox medical science is more often than not critical of alternative medicine, herbs, and other aspects.

Unless we can unite the paradigms so that every time a particular plant species is tested for its therapeutic actions and effects and the extracts are identical in all aspects, there will never be any agreement over the effectiveness of herbs.

Similarly, if we can’t find a suitable common denominator that can adequately unite differing paradigms, then any resulting tests are unlikely to be conclusive or shed insight into the effectiveness of alternative medicine.

Danny Siegenthaler is a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and together with his wife Susan, a medical herbalist and Aromatherapist, they have created Natural Skin Care Products by Wildcrafted Herbal Products to share their 40 years of combined expertise with you.

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