Herbal Medicine

Why drink weird potions?

I prescribe herbs as tea in powdered granule form or pill form for convenience. We’ve been evolving with plants for millennia. Plants have evolved to defend themselves against illness and attack through their chemical constituents. These chemicals determine a plant’s “energetics”, basically how it affects our bodies, whether it increases or decreases our body temperature, causes our pores to open or close, increase or decrease metabolism, bile and stomach acid production, excretion of waste, building and repairing of tissue, calming the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, decreasing inflammation, etc. Plant constituents are complex, so while there may be a chemical with a strong action, it is often mitigated by other protective chemicals. Put them together into a formula, and there’s even more balancing effect.

I work with selected herbal pharmacies that have the highest standard in stocking herbs that have been tested for heavy metals and other impurities.

History and Process

Humans have been using plants for healing since before we evolved as a separate species. The first known book of medicinal herbs was written in East Asia in the Divine Farmer’s Materia Medica (Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing) and later combined into formulas in the Discussion of Cold Damage (Shang Han Lun). Herbs are used in formulas to increase effectiveness and counteract any overly strong effects, so that the result is a safe and gentle form of medicine when matched correctly to a person’s constitution and shifting patterns. Taking herbs is different from taking drugs, where often a prescription is written and the patient is sent off indefinitely. With herbs there is a process of fine-tuning, as layers of the onion get peeled off, the condition changes over time and with the seasons, and the formula needs to be adjusted to account for these shifts. We address not just the “branch” of the presenting symptoms, but also the “root’, or the soil/conditions from which these symptoms arose.