The Cure is You: Dealing with Chronic Illness Part 6

Alternative Remedies

“active” agent.  This one comment, seemingly innocuous, makes the reader think herbalism would be ok if it was approached in the same way as traditional, Western medicine.  The whole point of herbalism, for me, is that it is a different approach– and I don’t mean different just to be contrary.  Herbalism is an alternative that encompasses the whole thing, the whole body, the whole plant.  Epilepsy is a neurological disease.  However, there are so many other factors that are at play that the one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t work for everyone.  And yet, when herbalism is mentioned– alongside other alternative therapies– there is always some chagrin, some distaste, some reminder that herbalism is not safe because it hasn’t been analyzed in a lab.  Well, I’ve been on allopathic medicines that were eventually deemed unsafe, even after they went through testing in a lab.  I’m sure you have too. And we all know how Big Pharma can influence certain drugs being released on the market without complete testing or with poor test results.  Western Medicine is big business and allopathic doctors are hooked into that, and they want you to be as well.

In his “Divergent Streams of Herbalism: Alternative Healing and the Mainstream,” herbalist Jesse Wolf Hardin addresses how mainstream medicine, and those supporting the allopathic or conventional approach to medicine, illness, and treatment, address or disregard herbal approaches to wellness:

A number of mainstream scientists speak as if alternative medicine (including herbalism) meant “ineffective or unproven” or “without any scientific basis or verifiable results.” Alternative practices “do have scientific value,” quipped one of the commentators on Randi.org, but only “to psychologists studying delusional behavior!”  A standing joke among MDs, is that “alternative medicine” means an “alternative to medicine.”  This includes plant medicine in the eyes of the great majority of them, considered of little more use than colloidal silver and magnet therapy.  One online rant goes as follows: “Herbal Medicine?  Give me a break!  If herbs pass the test, they’re just medicine.  And if they don’t, they’re just soup and potpourri.”  This prevailing attitude on doctor’s forums and in many scientific circles….[fails to mention] that most research is conducted by an industry with a vested interest in profitable synthetics, is usually done on isolated compounds rather than whole plants, and fails to take into account individual constitutional factors.

Because Western medicine is centered on the one-size-fits-all approach which isolates the “good stuff” and synthesizes the “medicine,” it is also centered on profit-mindedness.  Even the rise of modern medicine came out of the European guild tradition, which required membership fees and so forth.  Simply put, you cannot make money off herbs.  There are no patents that can be placed on wild things– although many in Big Pharma would like to change that. (See Nestle’s own admission about what they want to patent and even a tenth of the stuff out there about Monsanto or Syngenta)
Also, allopathic medicine– the medicine that seeks to suppress symptoms instead of treat the whole disease or whole body– and the approach of Western medical practitioners (and researchers) doesn’t recognize, doesn’t understand, and doesn’t want to entertain the idea that with an herb– all of it is necessary. You cannot isolate out a single compound and expect results.  Many of the so-called tests, even ones that show positive results regarding herbs used in neurological conditions, often isolate out chemical compounds or “active agents” to then inject into lab animals. While those tests give hope, to some dependent and focused only on the allopathic approach– that’s now how you’d use the herb at home.  

Please don’t misunderstand me when I say the whole herb. I don’t mean that you need to use all the plant, but you do need to use all of the piece of the plant that the herbalist instructs you to use.  You’d be using the whole leaf, the whole flower, the whole root, and in some cases, the entire plant.  When used in this fashion, herbalism is reliable and helpful.  As Hardin notes (again from the above article):
…herbal effects are indeed testable – in some convincing way or another – if:

• Using whole plants, not constituents.
• Paying close attention to dosage, when to use dry or fresh plant material, and means of preparation 
• Looking for more than an isolated action or effect. 
• Taking into account the constitutions and health histories of those in the study.  
• Measuring health as more than the alleviation of symptoms.

The reasons Western Medicine looks down on herbalism run deep. To encapsulate the why, I’d like to again turn to the wisdom of herbalist Jesse Wolf Hardin:

Rose encapsulates the difficulties with herbalism– difficulties for allopathic practitioners and researchers trying to quantify how herbs heal: 

Occasionally I have to remind myself that my work with clients isn’t as a doctor, dictator or a magician, but simply as a matchmaker between person and plants. It’s that simple, and that difficult.

As I’ve said, and will keep saying: herbs aren’t a one-size-fits-all approach. What may work for someone, may not work for someone else. Fine-tuning takes time.  But, while doing my own research on epilepsy and herbal approaches, and augmenting that research with research for this series specifically, I’ve come to see that most if not all the articles I’ve read that even suggest alternative approaches to managing epilepsy make suggestions with slight derision, slight condescension, or pronouncements of gloom and doom– that HERBS CAN CAUSE SEIZURES.  I hope to change that with this series of articles.
 
A great resource for epilepsy in terms of general information has a fair article on alternative treatments for epilepsy entitled, “Alternative Therapies.”  It was the first article that really gave me some hope that no, I didn’t need to take the meds the doctor prescribed. I mean its NYU Langone medical center; they must know what they’re talking about, right?  They have great stuff about alternative therapy that isn’t limited to herbs. This article lists Acupuncture, Chiropractic therapy, and self-control of seizures. Although, it might be less condescending, less derisive to call this last therapy Biofeedback.  By saying that seizures are somehow within your total control and you can just– as the article suggests–  “block a seizure from progressing” implies in some way that the seizures are created by and controlled by the conscious mind.  That bugs me.  I can’t just think a seizure away.  

What the folks at Langone are describing is Biofeedback, itself beset with claims of quackery.  The kind of biofeedback described here reminds me too much of this:

 
But, like herbalism, biofeedback has been used in one form or another for a very long time, hundreds if not thousands of  years.  Biofeedback is a new term describing the use of techniques to control autonomous functions of the body– heart rate, neurological responses, and so forth. Biofeedback has also been called “electronic Yoga” because the results are the same, relaxation and body control, but biofeedback uses electronic devices to achieve the result of careful, consistent yoga practice.  The original biofeedback, not this galvanic stuff, could include  breath-work, meditation, relaxation therapies, and yoga. Eastern Medicine has been using this kind of biofeedback for ages.  I suppose you can categorize what I outlined earlier regarding finding my triggers and cataloging my seizures as the groundwork to biofeedback. Biofeedback has had positive results for a whole host of conditions.  It is quicker than devoting the next 30-40 years to constant yoga practice to become a master yogi capable of controlling body systems– and biofeedback is available to those who have physical limitations that make yogic practice impossible.