Introduction to the Green Pharmacy

Introduction

Since the first edition of The Green Pharmacy, I have received numerous letters and e-mails from readers. Many have written not only to thank me for the book and to ask advice but also to tell me how they've used herbal remedies. Their stories add to the "anecdotal evidence"--plant medicine really does help people in hundreds of ways.

Now that The Green Pharmacy has also been translated into a number of different languages, I hope that the good news will be carried even further. In time, perhaps this information will be as readily used by doctors and pharmacists as it is by readers. I have absolutely no doubt that we can all benefit from a greater understanding of "green pharmaceuticals."

Of course, there are many reasons behind the current wave of interest in herbal medicines. Fear of synthetic pharmaceuticals is just one factor. We all know that synthetic medicines--the hardcore pharmaceuticals--often have dramatic activities. But we also know that they can have even more dramatic side effects as well. In one decade, over half the drugs approved as safe and efficacious by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had to be recalled and relabeled because of unanticipated side effects.

But there's another reason for the surge of interest in green pharmaceuticals. All living herbs contain thousands of chemicals, and when you select herbal medicine, you are getting the benefit of the combinations of those chemicals. When you take a single, monochemical, synthetic compound, on the other hand, it will probably help if it has been well-proven and if your diagnosis is correct. But only rarely can it address related, minor problems--of which there can be dozens.

An herbal remedy is far more likely to help if you have been misdiagnosed or if you have related problems. Thousands of "buffered reactions" are going on in each of our cells as those cells try to keep us in a state of optimal health. With herbal medicine, you help your cells maintain that state of optimal equilibrium.

Plant food and herbal medicine help in another way as well: by providing nutrients that are essential to life. Research has now shown that many of us are deficient in several nutrients essential to optimal health, if not essential to life itself. Many of these important, natural ingredients are found in herbs, but not in synthetic pharmaceuticals.

When synthetic drugs are made from plants, we tend to isolate one or another chemical and throw away the rest of the plant and its medicinal potential. The fava bean, for instance, contains ingredients that could be extracted and used as "magic-bullet" pharmaceuticals--such as L-dopa, which is used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

But why throw away the rest of the bean to make a proprietary monochemical medicine that can be patented by a pharmaceutical company? We should, instead, be studying the synergistic energies of all those phytochemicals and discovering how they work so well together. Those are the studies that will lead us to a true understanding of the many healing qualities of medicinal plants.

Among the readers' letters, there have been a number of queries about the medicines that I recommend for myself and my family. Naturally, my own first choice will always be green pharmaceuticals. Peering into my "medicine chest," I see that more than 95 percent of the medicines I take regularly come from the green pharmacy, and I take most of them for preventive reasons. In fact, over the course of one year, I took fewer than a dozen pharmaceuticals--all anti-inflammatories for a painful knee. The rest were herbals.

Every day, I take celery or celery seed concentrate for the prevention of gout. It contains nearly two dozen anti-inflammatory compounds.

I also take garlic. Since some history of colon cancer runs in my family, I use the garlic to help prevent cancer. It also helps prevent colds and flu. For the same reasons, I boost my immune system with echinacea.

Among my other "chosen" herbs are saw palmetto to prevent or slow deterioration of the prostate, bilberry to guard against vision loss, and milk thistle, a measure against deterioration of the liver. Ginkgo also occupies an important place in my medicine chest. It helps prevent memory loss, and it might even slow the advance of Alzheimer's. (No signs of that yet, but I'll be careful all the same.)

I also include kava kava, on occasion, to help relax during stressful times and St.-John's-wort to help my mood when the winter blues begin to set in. Among their other benefits, these herbs have a preventive side since stress and mild depression take their toll on the immune system.

Finally, there's evening primrose, with its gamma-linolenic acid. Combined with hawthorn and ginkgo, this herb can help prevent heart problems or prostatitis. And I have licorice in my medicine chest to help prevent ulcers.

All those herbs--and scores more--are described in detail in this book. In the pages ahead, you'll learn how these herbs can prevent or heal an enormous variety of health conditions, ranging from allergies and altitude sickness to warts, worms, wrinkles and yeast infections. You probably won't need all of them. But perhaps you'll decide, as have so many other readers, which of these many herbs you'd like to add to your personal medicine chest.

As I noted in the first edition of The Green Pharmacy, this book is the culmination of many decades of work with medicinal plants throughout the world and many years of plant-hunting, from China to Costa Rica, from Peru to Pennsylvania, from the hills of Virginia to the upper reaches of the Amazon.

For most of my 35-year career, I worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a botanist specializing in medicinal plants. Technically, I'm what is known as an ethnobotanist, which simply means that I've studied how plants are used as food and medicine in many different cultures. During my career, I've personally seen medicinal herbs successfully treat conditions that high-tech pharmaceuticals could scarcely touch.

In Part One of this book, "Your Guide to the Green Pharmacy," you'll find my advice about finding, preparing and even growing herbs. You'll also find my advice and safety cautions about using them. These are based on personal experiences as well as an extensive database of scientific information about the various chemicals and compounds found in plants.

In Part Two, "Choosing the Herbs that Heal," I have applied a rating system of sorts to highlight the herbs and herbal remedies that I believe to be the most effective for each of the diseases and health problems. The most highly recommended herbs have a three-leaf rating. For alternate remedies, however, be sure to pay attention to herbs with two-leaf and one-leaf ratings. (I could have used stars, of course, but leaves seem a lot more appropriate in a book called The Green Pharmacy.)

You'll also find throughout this book that I give many subjective opinions as well as some personal anecdotes about my experiences with medicinal plants and natural healing. Since these experiences really come from a lifetime of interest, I hope you'll also read the personal postscript on page 465.

But first, welcome to this edition of The Green Pharmacy.