I hear many times in my daily practice usually from other medical providers that “those herbs just don’t work”. I’m always perplexed by that. Since I wasn’t trained in Western meds, I never say that “western drugs don’t work”. I wouldn’t know. I have my opinions. I have seen most drugs fail. I have seen most drugs only make things worse because of all the side effects they cause, but I never say, “Those meds just don’t work”. Yet other medical providers who have never been trained in “non western medicine” seem to think they know everything about every material organic or inorganic that was ever made.
I recently had a conversation with an MD at a dinner party. He went about telling me how “no herb has worked, would ever work, could ever work”, and that, “those herbs are a dangerous”.
Really????? I thought. Maybe he’s right. I thought about his comment. Watching him down his drink followed by his anti depressant that no doublty caused him erectile dysfunction. Yet glared at me while I thought. I thought about his blood pressure that was controlled (not fixed, but controlled) by his beta blocker, yet that would cause him edema and fatigue. So he would then have to take his “water pill” to drain the excess water from his poor functioning heart and drink his 5 shot latte in the morning to give him energy. But that caffeine buzz would raiser his cortisol and lowers his DHEA production, which would further complicate his body to heal and promote his well being.
But what do I know?
I thought further about his comments.
Lets see; Herbs? Drugs?
Well, for starters Aspirin the all time drug of western medicine comes from the bark of the Willow tree. Digitalis a new super heart medication comes from foxglove. Star arnise? The famed component of Tamiflu that stops the Bird flu? Well, that’s an herb too. The top selling drug in America, “statins” for cholesterol? Well that comes from Red Yeast rice. How about the pain killers? The Darvecets, Percocet’s, ocycotins, this pain pill that pain pill? The base of these pills is opium! Last time I checked opium comes from the poppy flower. Or the best ever, the strongest, toughest anti cancer drug….TAXIL! Oh wait, that comes from the Pacific Yew tree. An older drug that has saved millions of people from around the world; quinine. Quinine is not only used to treat malaria but also for pain. Quinine comes from the cinchona tree. Those darn plants.
Gosh, I sure do love dinner parties.
“The humblest bacterium can synthesize, in the course of its brief existence more organic compounds than can all the world’s chemists combined. — R. DeRopp, Drugs and the mind, 1957.