I’ll never forget the first time I saw my Dad cry.
We were in a waiting room at John’s Hopkins Hospital. True to his nature, my Dad struck up a conversation with a man sitting nearby. The man was distraught, exhausted. His body looked wrung-out. My Dad nodded solemnly as the man told us the story of his wife who was in the hospital for liver failure. She struggled with chronic pain and had been taking an over-the-counter medicine to manage.
She believed this drug was safe. It was non-addictive and available without a prescription. She was taking this medication daily over the course of months, maybe years until the unthinkable happened. This supposedly harmless medication destroyed her liver. (Doctors are well aware of the toxicity, but the general public isn’t.) She lay dying just a few rooms away from where my Dad and I sat with her husband as he waited on her only hope of survival—an emergency liver transplant. Hours later, she died. We were in the room when the man and the rest of his family returned silent and tear-streaked. And that’s when I saw my Dad cry for the first time.
The seemingly harmless drug that took her life was acetaminophen. (If that name doesn’t sound familiar to you, Google it to discover the common brand name. You’ll recognize it right away.) Her death wasn’t an isolated incident. According to the 2004 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, acetaminophen poisoning is responsible for 56,000 emergency room visits and 458 deaths per year, making it one of the worst offenders when it comes to drug overdose. Given these numbers, why do most Americans think this medication is safe and gentle? If the “safest” over the counter medications have effects this devastating, what does that tell us about prescription drugs?
And a deeper question— why is there such distrust of herbal medicine when for the last two years Poison Control Center data has not shown a single death from the use of herbs and supplements?
Our culture is heavily influenced by the false promise of purity, the idea that isolated chemical substances are safer, more reliable, and better therapeutic agents than complex plants. The scientific method requires isolating variables in order to prove causation, and pharmaceutical companies need to develop chemical drugs in order to profit. The illusion of purity creates a haze of trustworthiness around drugs. Meanwhile, drug companies have a vested interest in keeping us dependent on their products. It’s in their best interest to make us distrust the natural medicine that is our heritage and our birthright.
The same principles that make whole foods better for your health than isolated vitamins are also at work when we talk about the benefits of plant-based medicine. Unlike drugs, plants are dynamic symphonies of biochemical compounds that can buffer each other, amplify a therapeutic effect with the power of nutrients, or work together in order to be more effective. More importantly, we co-evolved with plants over the course of millennia. Our bodies have learned how to digest and use healing plants according to our innate wisdom.
The difference between drugs and herbs is like the difference between a person who’s shouting at you and a person who sits down with you for a conversation. Drugs shout. They have a monologue that they direct at your body, pushing your biochemistry in a single direction. Plant medicines interact with your body, entering into a dialogue with your cells, tissues, and psyche. Plants are living beings with their own intelligence, evolutionary strategies, and psycho-spiritual existence. Whenever possible, I choose to rely upon building a real relationship with another living being over trusting a synthetic chemical created in a lab.
As much as I love plant-based medicine and believe wholeheartedly that it’s the best way to solve our interlocking health-care, ecological and spiritual crises, I am not arguing that all plant medicines are without risk just because they’re natural. Herbs exist on a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum are plant foods, all of which have healing properties. (In fact, everybody who eats a whole foods plant-based diet is practicing a form of herbal medicine as far as I’m concerned.) Next are the remedies that have their beneficial effects through nutrition even though they are not a significant source of calories, like stinging nettle. Further along the spectrum are herbs that are more drug-like. These include the alkaloid-containing plants and plants that have an immediate effect on one or more body systems. All the way at the opposite end of the spectrum are the herbs that can be deadly, including the poisons. Make no mistake; herbs can kill, too, but the vast majority are safe, effective, time-tested, and have low toxicity.
The key to using herbal medicine safely and effectively is to work with a trained clinical herbalist. Wandering around the health food store picking up the latest exotic berry or celebrated mushroom won’t get you the results you’re seeking. Herbs don’t offer one-size-fits-all solutions. There are real problems in the herbal marketplace including over-harvesting of endangered species, environmental destruction, contamination, and outright deception. The way to stop these abuses is to become educated. An herbalist can help you find the plants that are right for you and teach you how to grow & harvest your own medicine if you’re so inclined. As you learn more, you’ll become more and more empowered to care for your health and the health of your family, while experiencing the benefits of plant-based medicine.
“Herbal medicine is people’s medicine”, as herbalist Susun Weed teaches. The more we’re able to educate ourselves and include our herbal roots as a vital component in the practice of modern integrative medicine, the more we’ll heal our bodies, our souls, and our wounded connection with the natural world. The more we’re able to rely on safe, effective, and time-tested relationships with healing plants, the fewer people will end up in the emergency room after experiencing devastating side-effects from drugs that they’d been taught to trust.
