An increasing number of Americans are using herbal medicines as one of their healthcare choices. Herbal medicine is humankind first medicine, there are 750,000 flower/seed plants worldwide. WHO estimate 20,000 medicinal plants, 80% of world population depend on plant medications, 25% pharmaceuticals derived from plants.
Herbal medicine, is the use of herbs for their therapeutic or medicinal value. Herbs had been used by all cultures throughout history. An herb is a plant or plant part valued for its medicinal, aromatic or savory qualities. Herb plants produce and contain a variety of chemical substances that act upon the body.
Many drugs commonly used today are of herbal origin. Indeed, about 25 percent of the prescription drugs dispensed in the United States contain at least one active ingredient derived from plant material.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 4 billion people, 80 percent of the world population, presently use herbal medicine for some aspect of primary health care. WHO notes that of 119 plant-derived pharmaceutical medicines, about 74 percent are used in modern medicine in ways that correlated directly with their traditional uses as plant medicines by native cultures. Major pharmaceutical companies are currently conducting extensive research on plant materials gathered from the rain forests and other places for their potential medicinal value.
Chinese medicine sees a disease condition as the result (or manifestation) of "imbalances" within the body, or between the body and various environmental factors. The aim of Chinese medicine is not to prescribe an herbal agent to treat a particular manifestation, but to help the patient's stressed organ systems operate in a more natural, balanced state.
In Chinese herbal medicine not everyone with the same disease is given the same herbs. This is because each individual's unique constitution and relationship to the environment is evaluated before an herbal prescription is devised. If you suffer from chronic cough, for example, your ailment would be evaluated in the context of your individual pattern of lung qi (the life force the courses through the body along pathways called meridians). The relationship of your lungs to pathologic influences (such as viruses and air pollution) would also be taken into account, as well as the way your lungs are nourished by the body's blood, fluids, and energy metabolism.
A TCM practitioner seldom prescribes single herbs, but instead offers individualized combinations based on time-tested formulas. If you consult with a specially trained herbalist, you will likely receive an individual formula that may be changed or modified as you recover.
