Herbal Medicine
“Let food be your Medicine and Medicine your Food”
Hippocrates
Herbal Medicine is the use of botanical extracts and plants in the treatment and prevention of disease. It is the oldest form of medicine known.
The use of herbal remedies may help restore the body’s balance, thus enabling it to mobilise its own healing powers. Specific herbs can tone, nourish and detoxify specific organs, organ systems and improve circulation, thus allowing waste products to be eliminated more effectively and increase the amount of healing into needed areas.
How do herbs differ from Chemical Drugs?
Pharmaceutical drugs are made of active, often synthetic compounds which are extracted and dispensed in concentrated doses and are believed to work more specifically on symptoms. Unfortunately these potent extracts and their synthetic counterparts often travel to unaffected parts of the body causing side effects from the uncomfortable, to the alarming.
It is here that the Herbalists use of the whole plant rather that a single concentrated chemical constituent come into its own.
- The whole plant offers the active chemicals in balanced proportion and effective quantities
- Safe assimilation by the body of the herbs is enhanced
- Whole plant medicines may help to stimulate the body’s own powers of healing
- People suffering from chronic conditions need not fear the build up of powerful chemicals in the body which often occurs with prolonged treatment.
- Herbal Medicine “Treats the Whole person as an Individual”, not a collection of symptoms.
