All plants, including fruit and veggies, have tens of thousands of naturally occurring chemicals that have beneficial effects on our body. One example are Bioflavonoids found in fruits. As antioxidants, they are good for the cardiovascular system, and cleaning up free radical damage.
Herbal effects
When herbs are used to treat disease, we first look at the actions or effects of the herbs. The actions are often self-explanatory - anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antifungal - but sometimes they come from olden times, when herbs were used as commonplace to treat illness.
A herb with a demulcent action is soothing to mucus membranes, and thus useful for treating gastrointestinal or respiratory diseases. Carminative herbs treat digestive issues such as indigestion, flatulence or burping, or even colic in babies.
Usually, a few actions are required to treat disease effectively. Some herbs have actions that are specific to body systems, like lung herbs or reproductive system herbs. Others have a wide variety of effects, which is how come one herb can be used to treat many diseases.
Although lots of herbs share similar actions - anti-inflammatory and antioxidant are quite common in a few herbs - one will have additional effects that another does not have. This means that there’s usually more than one herb to choose from to treat a disease, but there will always be another that would be more effective for certain diseases. Below are some examples to illustrate these points:
Herb: Actions/Effects of herb: Used for:
St Mary’s Thistle Antioxidant, protective effect on liver cells Liver disease (Milk Thistle) Increases production of bile Improve digestion of fats
Schisandra Protective effect on liver cells Liver disease
Antidepressant, tones and calms nervous Depression, anxiety
system
Helps improve physical performance and Stress (physical, emotional or
resistance to stress mental), endurance Reduces amount or severity of coughing Chronic coughs, asthma
Rosemary Antioxidant, antimicrobial Infections
Carminative, anti-spasmodic (relieves Flatulence, indigestion
muscular spasm) abdominal cramps
Circulatory stimulant Poor circulation
Protective effect on liver cells Liver disease
Lavender Carminative, anti-spasmodic (relieves Flatulence, indigestion,
muscular spasm) abdominal cramps
Antidepressant, anxiolytic (reduces anxiety) Depression, insomnia, anxiety
Considering the herbs above, Schisandra would be a perfect herb to use for someone with liver damage from alcohol or drugs who was trying to stop these, as they would need support for depression and anxiety when withdrawing.
St Mary’s Thistle and Rosemary would also benefit someone coming off alcohol or drugs in respect of repairing the liver, but it would not have the same effect on lifting their spirits. Lavender and Rosemary can both be used for gastrointestinal issues, but Lavender can also be used for depression and anxiety, whereas Rosemary can be used for the cardiovascular system.
As an aside, the Russians gave Schisandra to their WW2 soldiers to keep their stamina and endurance up. If you are struggling with energy or are stressed out, this would be an excellent herb for you, amongst others.
Herbs vs Pharmaceuticals
Many pharmaceutical drugs are based on herbs - pharmaceutical companies have tested and isolated just a handful of the herb’s tens of thousands of naturally occurring chemicals to find any ‘actives’. The ‘actives’ are the plant chemicals that have a therapeutic effect on the body when treating disease.
Unfortunately, once the pharmaceutical companies find a particular single plant chemical that has an effect, they then synthetically produce the single one active molecule in a lab to produce pills, but in doing so, they miss out on the thousands of other chemicals which are also thought to have a beneficial synergistic effect.
The beauty of herbs is that there are no side effects. Some herbs can even enhance the effects of pharmaceutical drugs, like Ginger, which increases the absorption of pharmaceuticals. Some herbs negate the negative side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, an example being gentle laxative herbs taken when taking pharmaceutical drugs containing codeine to counteract the side effect of constipation from these drugs.
If you are taking beta-blockers or other blood pressure lowering medication, taking Hawthorn berry liquid extract might mean you can slowly reduce the pharmaceutical drugs – under supervision of your practitioner, of course! This is because Hawthorn enhances the effect of the pharmaceutical drug’s blood pressure lowering effect.
Some herbs can interact with certain medications - St John’s Wort is one of the worst offenders of this, and can cause the oral contraceptive pill and also antibiotics not to work. Some immune suppressant herbs are not advisable to take for some cancer patients, or it may actually improve outcome of treatment, depending on the type of cancer and which immune herb.
Whether your level is too high or too low, herbs will balance things out rather than raise or lower,
working with your unique biochemical synergy to restore balance,
with no nasty unwanted side effects.
Unlike pharmaceutical drugs, herbs don’t raise or lower levels of things. Rather, herbs restore balance according to what is necessary in your body. Meadowsweet is a herb used as an antacid to balance excess stomach acid, heartburn or reflux. In this case, pharmaceutical drugs would reduce the amount of stomach acid produced, and often do it so well that it's too much. One of the knock-on effects in this case is proteins not being properly digested by the stomach acid, and undigested proteins cause further problems in the gut.
Herbal preparations
The herbal preparation I use in my clinical practice depends on what needs treating. The potency of any herbal preparation depends on the quality of the herb, how it was grown, what kind of soil it was grown in, etc. For this reason, I only source my liquid extracts and dried herbs from very reputable suppliers of such things.
Herbal tea
Bladder problems are great to treat with herbal tea, as the liquid is urinated out and in doing so, passes through the bladder. A lot of people think herbal tea is weak – yes, herbal teas are gentle but they are also very effective, and perfect for children. Get your child used to them from an early age so that you can use herbs on them as they grow up. Elder flower is sweet-smelling and sweet-tasting, Chamomile and Licorice are also nice ones to start with, and you can also get nice tasting blends in the supermarket.
Alcoholic preparations
Alcohol was, and still is, used as the solvent to extract the herbal constituents in two ways, tinctures and liquid extracts. Tinctures are made by combining the herb with a certain ratio of water to 40% alcohol in a container and left to 'brew' like this for at least 2 weeks. It is then drained, the liquid is the tincture, and the herb is discarded. Tinctures only contain plant chemicals that can be extracted at 40%, and once the alcohol has been used to extract the constituent, it cannot extract any more, even if it is left for months on end to 'brew'.
The second method is percolation with alcohol passing through or over the herb, much like how coffee is brewed in a percolating machine. The alcohol content must be the specific amount to extract particular plant chemicals that have the therapeutic effect - some liquid extracts are only 25%, others can go up to 70% or 90%. Each time the alcohol is run through the herb, more of the plant's constituents are removed that the previous pass of alcohol didn't extract. The alcohol content required depends on whether the bark, seed, leaf or flower is used to make the liquid extract - if the incorrect alcoholic content is used, not all the right plant chemicals will be extracted.
This is how the liquid extracts that I use in my clinical practice are made, and the reason I only use these instead of tinctures is simply because they are so much more effective and I know I can trust them to have all the right therapeutic plant chemicals so that effects are noticeable and the herb will do the job it is supposed to do.
It should be noted that with alcoholic extracts, the amount of alcohol consumed is negligible and far outweighed by the amazingly therapeutic effects of the herbs. Non-alcoholic extracts are available, but may not work as well. This is because alcohol not only extracts the required constituents for the herb to work best, but it bypasses digestion as it goes straight to the liver for processing.
Herbal tablets are a great way of getting all the herbal goodness into you, however, they need to pass through the digestive tract to be absorbed, so some of it is lost. This means it takes a little longer for the herb to work than liquid extracts, although they still work reasonably quickly and very effectively.
An advantage of herbal tablets is that herbs are powdered and put into capsules or pressed into pills, meaning that all the chemicals are in the tablets, compared to liquid herbal extracts which contain only the chemicals that can be extracted by alcohol.
I hope this was an interesting read and that you will reach for herbs in the first instance, and the pharmaceuticals when really needed, especially antibiotics! They are a huge medical problem, and avoidable when there are so many highly antibiotic herbs, so strong that the pharmaceutical companies are currently testing them out! If you would like more info, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
