Plants Have Been Adapting And Evolving On This World For Several Billion Years

They’ve figured out how to live on sunlight and to use its energy to synthesize the primary compounds necessary for their metabolic functioning. You’d think they would have their act together by now.

Yet our scientists tell us that plants also synthesize and store compounds that don’t have anything to do with their biochemical processes. Nothing whatsoever.

They call these secondary compounds and frankly admit they don’t have a clue why plants make them. Whatever the reason, we are the benefactors, as many of these compounds turn out to be the medicinal principles of our healing plants.

People Around The World Have Been Using Herbs For Their Therapeutic Properties For Thousands Of Years

Studies of other animals have shown that they use herbs for their therapeutic benefits as well.

Herbal therapies are general ways in which the body responds to the active medicinal principles in plants. They stimulate secretions of glands, relax muscles, cause elimination of toxins, calm nerves, nourish and tone tissues, and balance energy of body systems.

Most pharmaceuticals in use today are based on these principles originally isolated from plants. Many are now synthesized in the laboratory and are produced as isolated concentrates. Their effects are quick and powerful.

Unfortunately, various undesirable side-effects are encountered when these isolated concentrates are introduced into the body without the benefit of natural buffers found within the balanced biochemical matrix of medicinal plants.

These concentrated principles are generally prescribed to suppress symptoms (the basis of modern allopathic medicine).

So you go to a doctor because you are experiencing pain.

He reaches for his prescription pad.

Whereas Nature provides many plants to relieve pain such as Meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria, which has been used safely for thousands of years.

But when Bayer Corporation isolated the pain reliever, acetylsalicylic acid to make aspirin they warned us that taking it may cause side effects including:

• ringing in the ears,
• confusion,
• hallucinations,
• rapid breathing,
• seizure (convulsions),
• severe nausea,
• vomiting,
• stomach pain,
• bloody or tarry stools,
• coughing up blood,
• vomit that looks like coffee grounds,
• fever lasting over 3 days, and
• swelling or pain lasting over 10 days
• and of course death

Furthermore, by removing the warning signs of an imbalance, we fail to accept responsibility for having created it, and for making corrections.

In doing this,we drive the imbalance deeper.

When symptoms of a more serious nature result, we force our allopathic practitioners to use ever more powerful forms of treatment including radiation, toxic chemicals, and surgery.

The Basis Of Herbal Therapeutics In Holistic Medicine Is Recognition Of The Natural Process Of Healing

Symptoms are the body’s way of communicating the need to make some corrections in our daily habits. These include changes in diet, exercise, mental attitude, emotional attitude, and our methods for managing stresses in our lives.

Therefore, herbal therapeutics are effective in conjunction with other natural healing modalities such as emotional and dietary counseling, flower remedies, exercise programs, meditation, play, and other stress reducing practices.

Where practiced, improved sanitation and proper diet have done more for health than any form of medicine that has ever been practiced. In the absence of these corrections, no form of therapy will enable the body to heal itself.

Symptoms can also point to the organs or systems needing some attention. In this effort, herbs are gentle and gradually allow the body to repair itself.

Ideally, the factors that led to the imbalance are brought to light and the necessary changes made to prevent recurrence.

We become smarter and the body becomes stronger.