MEDICINAL USES

Monday, March 28, 2011

Herbs are humanity’s most ancient healing aid with a history of several thousand years of continuous use. Even in orthodox medicine today, plants are an important source of therapeutic material. But with the tendency of medical scientists to isolate the active ingredients of herbs in order to create a more powerful medicine the side effects have also become stronger and more serious. Another change in western medicine has been the move to specialization which means a focusing of the media’s attention on a particular area of the human body. Such work is against of the original and fundamental ideas of healing, that of rebalancing to basic influences on our body to remove the cause of the illness. Whether these basics are labeled the four humors, the five elements or lifestyle (diet, exercise and stress levels), the principal is the same. For this reason many people are turning to complementary medicines and herbs make a contribution to several of these systems.