The healing power of herbs

Garlic, Ginkgo, Ginseng, St. John’s Wort and Echinacea are names of herbs that may have sounded peculiar thirty years ago but today are names on many of our lips as we join millions of others in our quest for better health. There is currently an enormous revival of interest in herbal medicine for the prevention and treatment of illness in people of all ages. Despite being our main form of medicine for thousands of years, herbal medicine fell from favour in the West while the public put their faith in the wonder-drugs such as penicillin and cortisone. However the use of herbs for both chronic and acute problems is now becoming commonplace again and herbs are increasingly taking their deserved and respected place alongside allopathic drugs in modern medical care.

People all over the world have been using herbs for healing since the dawn of civilization. Chinese, Ayurvedic and Tibetan traditions all have medical systems that incorporate the use of herbs and foods and have survived almost intact for thousands of years, while others - particularly in the West - have been largely broken and replaced by modern drugs and allopathy.

With the enormous interchange of cultural ideas possible today, these ancient medical systems and herbs, particularly Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, are beginning to become more integrated into modern healing methods. The idea of the "Global Village" that we live in today certainly extends to herbal medicine with much esteemed Eastern herbs such as Ginkgo, Ginseng and Turmeric all becoming part of the Western herbal tradition and readily available on the shelves of most health food stores.

This renewed popularity of herbal medicine is all part of a movement towards taking greater responsibility for our health. We are becoming more informed about the value of good diet and a healthy lifestyle to give us a better quality of life and are increasingly questioning what we put into our bodies. We are also looking for medical treatment that is safe, gentle yet effective and addresses the underlying causes of ill health rather than simply addressing the symptoms and the need for uncontaminated food and medicine has seen the organic movement grow apace. Perhaps the general public are ready to put their trust in herbs again because today’s practice of herbal medicine benefits from the marriage of ancient wisdom and modern science - which has served to prove through pharmacological analysis of herbs, a scientific explanation of their ability to heal.

From a ‘scientific’ point of view, many herbal medicines are considered to be experimental and it is easy to forget that herbs have stood the test of time and were relied upon for thousands of years before the use of modern sophisticated drugs, read more