Hate To Break It To You, But Herbal Medicine Is Still Medicine

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So I hate to tell some of you this, but herbal medicine is still medicine. By that I mean much of it is still based off of an allopathic model of health and disease, even though it's not utilizing pharmaceutical drugs. In general, there are basically two ways to approach health and disease. The first is what we are accustomed to, especially in the United States, and it is the allopathic model.


In the allopathic model, doctors look at a patient's symptoms, look at certain tests, and then place the patient into a category based off of what disease they have been label with. Then, the patient is usually prescribed some procedure or medication that is aimed to eliminate the symptom. Now, I completely understand that there is a difference between crisis care and chronic disease care. What I am talking about now, is chronic disease care. Health problems like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, musculo-skeletal pain, and fibromyaglia, to name a few. In an allopathic model, statins are given to lower cholesterol, pain medications are given to alleviate low back pain, and gallbladders are removed because of dysfunction. So basically, more effort goes into covering symptoms than determining and correcting the cause. After seeing thousands of patients, I have yet to meet someone who has low back pain caused by an Aleve deficiency.

Suppression is really what I am getting at. There are only two ways something can affect you (well I guess three if you count having no effect). Something can either help you to express health or it will suppress health. Where I see people falling into the trap of herbal medicine is they look at a health problem like acne, and instead of going to the dermatologist to get a medical ointment, they Google some "natural remedy" for it and use that instead. Now, truth be told, I would rather someone do that, especially if it is effective, than to take a bunch of pills and use harsh ointment. But what is causing the acne? In my experience, skin problems like acne are usually "downstream" issues. What I mean by that is something like acne is actually caused by gut issues, some form of excess stress on the body, or a breakdown of the brain-body connection causing imbalances. So no matter where the ointment or cream came from, it is still only treating the symptom and not the cause.

The second model is the cause model. I really wish the word etiology was more well known because the term "etiologic model" would fit perfectly. Basically the word etiology, when used in conjunction with disease, means the cause or causes of a disease or condition. Now, I know there are terms like vitalism or holistic, but there definitely seems to be some preconceived ideas attached to these words. Unfortunately when many people hear these terms they think of using crystals, magic potions, dream catchers, or middle eastern spiritualism, and that is not really what I am talking about. All dysfunction has a cause. I often talk about the only cause of disease is too much or too little of something or a combination of both. We need to be cause-focused, not effect-focused.

So if all disease is caused by too much or too little of something, or a combination of both, we need to look as upstream as possible in all disease. Health is all about expression. Are you giving your body everything it needs in order to function the way it was designed? Is your body in an environment that is too stressful or toxic? Are there more toxins entering your body than your body can eliminate? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then your health is being suppressed even if you are not experiencing symptoms yet.

Okay, so I am a realist. I know that nothing is ever perfect. No one eats perfect, everyone has some sort of stress, and there are toxins everywhere, but you would be amazed at how far it goes to at least try. One of those "aim for the moon, even if you miss you will land among the stars" things.

I do not want to come off as bashing natural products because I use many on a daily basis. I'm more aiming to highlight the importance of how we look at health, treatment, and disease. I know that it can be very difficult and take time to isolate a cause, and in the meantime if an herbal remedy helps you cope that's great, especially since they often have less side effects or chance of a reaction.

To put it all together, let's say you go to your doctor and find out that you have high cholesterol. He wants to put you on a statin drug to help lower your cholesterol and since you are smart, you know that statins can have some harmful side effects. So, since you don't like to take medications, you decide to take garlic instead without making any lifestyle changes. Well the thing is, elevated levels of cholesterol are not the problem, but rather an effect of damage to the blood vessels from stuff like inflammation, free radical damage, or chronic dehydration. Will your cholesterol numbers be lower? Yeah probably, and hopefully it may even help your body to repair some of the damage, but should your goal be just to lower numbers on a test or should your goal be to eliminate the root cause of the problem?

Natural products and herbal remedies can be great, especially if they work by boosting the body's ability to rid itself of a toxicity or help to restore deficiencies, but next time you are struggling with a health problem remember to look upstream and seek out the cause instead of trying to mask symptoms, regardless if you use a medication or an herbal remedy.