Basic Principle of Herbal Medicines

Hi folks!

The basic principle behind herbal medicine is that your herbalist will assess you as a person and not a disease.

This simple statement has much more depth to it than it appears on the surface, because a patient has a disease, but is not that disease. That means the patient has developed a system wide imbalance that is reflected physically and/or mentally in the display of certain symptoms and attitudes.

The philosophical approach by the physician is to look at the patient as a person and consider the health issue in context of that individual.

For example, a patient may present with chronic headaches. Now the orthodox approach would be to do a series of tests to rule out any major pathologies and if there are no major diseases at work, such as tumours for example, the prescription will simply be one of pain relief – Aspirin, or a similar type of pharmaceutical drug.

An herbalist will assess a patient very differently. Yes, they will rule out any major or life threatening diseases also, but once these have been ruled out, the approach differs enormously.

Their approach will include a complete physical assessment of the body; it’s alignment, posture, musculo-skeletal functionality and inspect any old physical injuries, etc. They will assess an individual’s stress levels, work and family pressures and so on. A herbalist will also look at their patient’s diet, life style and levels of exercise. In addition they will ask questions about seemingly unrelated issues such as niggling signs and symptoms that at first do not seem relevant.

This type of consultation will provide the physician with an over-all picture of the person in front of them – not the disease, but the person. The individual.

Enjoy reading.