WHAT IS HERBAL MEDICINE
Some of DP Herbals tinctures.
WHAT IS HERBAL MEDICINE
Herbal medicine is also known as ‘plant medicine’ or ‘phyto-medicine’ is the therapeutic use of plant preparations to prevent disease, enhance health and alleviate suffering.
Traditionally different societies developed various useful healing methods to combat a variety of health- and life-threatening diseases. In fact, 70-95% of people still rely on traditional medicine as their primary form of health care (World Health Organisation).
Since ancient times herbal medicine has been and continues to be researched by clinical trials. Human trial and error around the use of various herbs would have undoubtedly seen some good results but also some less than favourable outcomes. Thankfully, over the centuries much knowledge was gained with respect to methods of preparation, selection of herbs, identification of medicinal materials, as well as safety. (Abdullahi A.A, 2011)
Paracelsus, a renowned physician and healer in the late 15th century, stated “The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy”
What science has discovered is that nature provides a wide range of diverse multi-dimensional chemical structures that continue to be successfully employed in the discovery of new drugs. This combination of “active ingredients” that lies deep within a plants structure is understood to be the very thing that causes a herb to be therapeutic. This is very hard to mimic in a laboratory but it is understood that when taken in its whole form, and not isolated from each other, have a stabilising effects on the body system it targets encouraging the body to heal. This is called ‘synergy’ and it is what we as herbalist have always understood.
In the meantime, the “one-disease, one-target, one-drug” mode cannot treat some complex diseases effectively, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes so herbs are now being looked at critically, as they always have been, for the next discovery.