Medicinal herbalism to some extent overlaps with conventional medicine and the more relaxed home-based herbal remedies, such as dandelion leaves' use as a diuretic and laxative, fennel and dill for indigestion, and witch hazel for bruises. It differs from both in that it is committed to the use of whole unextracted herbs, due to the belief that the active principles in plants are safer if they are not taken in isolation from other naturally occurring organic substances, and also that many of the herbs are to be prescribed to individuals to unseat deep nutritional or biochemical deficiencies, and this process can take some time.
For these reasons, it is difficult to test and evaluate medical herbs in the same way as scientific drugs. Already, certain governments, aware of the increase in public use of herbal medicines, are beginning to impose stricter conditions on the igrediants of commmercially available remedies, and on how their usefulness is described and justified. Most herb companies are prohibited from thorough testing programs due to their difficulty and expense. Allopathic physicians argue that extracts of the active ingrediants make dosing more precise and allow side-effects to be eliminated. Medical herbalists, contrarily, believe that a whole new range of side-effects may appear if active chemicals are given in a concentrated, isolated way.
Scientists have underestimated the fact that humans and plants have evolved side my side. Consequently our systems have had many thousands of years to come to terms with the biochemistry of plants, in contrast to powerful modern drugs. Some seemingly less important components in plants display a so-called synergistic effect. For example, they can make the desired ingrediant more readily available in the human body in combination with other elements in the same plant. This is true, for instance, with many vitamin C-rich plants such as parsley, watercress, nettles, and rosehips that also contain significant amounts of iron which is much more efficiently absorbed by the body in the presence of vitamin C. Together with this, these plants also contain the yellow-colored bioflavonoids like rutin and hesperidin which increase the bioavailability of the vitamin C. These natural balances the herbalist makes full use of.
Herbal medicine is an holistic approach in its perception of disease as an imbalance or disharmony of the whole. Disease is not seen as an entity to be confronted, attacked, or eradicated. Instead, herbalists seek to resolve underlying imbalances, thereby resolving the disease itself. Chinese medicine sees disease as a disharmony between the two universal forces of yin and yang. Chinese herbs are described in terms of their yin or yang nature or the corresponding categories of hot and cold. In this system, ginger is hot, while rhubarb root is cold. Chinese herbalists still follow the advice given in The Yellow Emperor's Textbook (Nei Jing). Compiled about the first century BC, it says "hot diseases must be cooled, while cold diseases must be warmed".
Ayurvedic medicine similarly categorizes herbs according to their temperature. It is like the Chinese system also in that it teaches that the taste of an herb (bitter, salty, sweet, sour, acrid, or pungent and astringent) is not incidental but is indicative of its properties. In addition, this is a variation on the theme of the Doctrine of Signatures which played an important role in western herbal mdicine. Ayurvedic medicine teaches that herbs can strike a balance between the three primary humours, vata (air or wind), pitta (fire or bile), and kapha (water or phlegm). The due proportion of each constitutes health. These same principles characterize the western herbal tradition which likewise defined its herbs according to temperature and humoral criteria. Modern herbalists similarly seek to restore balance and harmony within the body. Some follow the ideas developed in the US in the last century by physiomedical herbal practitioners, who saw the need to correct in disease over-relaxed or over-contracted tissues or organs, using herbs which are astringent, relaxing, or stimulating as needed.
All herbalists believe that the concept of the innate wisdom of body, mind, and spirit is of primary importance. Natural healing is founded on the principle that the human organism possesses the inherent ability to protect, regulate, adjust, and heal itself. This innate wisdom is often termed the vital force. The ability to maintain a steady internal state, despite the onslaught of powerful external influences which threaten to upset our equilibrium, is known as homeostasis.
During an herbal consultation the herbalist seeks to identify in which repect the vital force has been breached or undermined. Such as assessment, which makes use of diagnostic techniques, equipment, and clinical tests common to allopathic doctors, plus careful questioning about the patient's past medical history, diet, and lifestyle, may lead the herbalist to the conclusion in one particular case that it is the nervous system which requires support while in another that it is the circulatory or immune system that needs support.
Only by taking a full case history, which includes a careful observation and assessment of all aspects of the person, can the picture become clear. The herbalist interprets the symptoms as a manifestation of the efforts of the vital force to return the body to health and so seeks to aid rather than suppress these attempts by the vital force to heal the body. The gentle, harmonizing effect of herbal medicines, which provide necessary trace elements, vitamins, and medicinal substances, are a direct means to this end.
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