Herbal Medicine is a wonderful thing. It can make the difference between vibrant and ill health. The Traditional Chinese Medical system incorporates herbs as an essential pillar to healing. Herbal formulas are custom-tailored to your specific condition, the reason(s) your condition exists, and are prescribed in a dose for you alone. Herbs are never prescribed singly, but are combined to maximize a synergistic effect. This diagnostic system was developed over thousands of years, and has the strength to beautifully connect seemingly disparate symptoms from a vast variety of your body’s systems.
Your Western Medical doctor might know nothing at all about herbal or dietary supplements, yet still forbid you to take them. They might know of specific problems from a study or one of their own case files. There may be many mitigating factors, such as the specific condition of the patient(s), and additional medications or supplements they were on at the time a side effect was experienced. They might have heard of these problems through as a vague a source as any of us. The ban of the sale of the Traditional Chinese herb Ephedra is this country stemmed from it’s misuse through a sensationalist website touting it for use as a weight loss tool. People died: a total of 3 people, with heart conditions, over years. In Chinese Medicine, Ephedra (Ma Huang) was an essential herb to aid severe asthma attacks. It is used to dilate the bronchial tubes; it also dilates blood vessels, and would NEVER be prescribed for weight loss, nor to anyone with an injured heart.
If such information disturbs you, please consider researching the deaths caused by heart drug side effects in this country, even daily.
A trained herbalist must know when there are potential side-effects, and maintain a lookout for more. They should also offer you the option of stopping the supplement, and a phone number you can use to reach them with any questions. That being said, of course you aught to discontinue any supplement if you feel what you think might be a negative side effect, then phone your herbalist.
We are lucky to live in a modern Information Age, where we can gather any number of ideas through a simple Internet search. Of course, accuracy on the Internet is always questionable. So, check your sources, but don’t rely too heavily on one or two random studies, as key items like dosage often skews the toward useless.
National Institute of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) herbal database:
https://nccih.nih.gov/health/herbsataglance.htm
National Institute of Health’s Office of Dietary Supplements
