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Article by Paul Bergner. One of our finest American Herbalists.
Paul Bergner is the editor of Medical Herbalism newsletter, author of The Healing Power of Garlic (Prima 1995), The Healing Power of Ginseng (Prima 1996), and is on the faculty of the Rocky Mountain Center for Botanical Studies in Boulder, CO. Correspondence address: P.O. Box 20512, Boulder, CO 80308.
Paul is one of the finest teachers and is in the group of my mentor Candis Cantin Packard. I appreciate all her teachings and support through out the years. Candis can be reached at 530-626-9288. She does now have a corrospondence course available for those of you who want to learn Ayruveda and traditional herbalism. You can go to her site at evrgreen@innercite.com
Now for the article.
"The New American Patient"
The last decades have seen socialogical changes in the U.S. that have lent to profound health changes, even since the 1070s, from a holistic point of view. These changes will have to be taken into account by herblaists in their practice, if their treatments are to be successful. Our efforts may even promote the evolution of a new synthesis of American herbalism. Consider these changes;
Americans sleep less now. A hundred years ago, we slept about nine hours a night. That half-hour loss alone is enough to explain the plague of chronic fatigue in the land, and increasing stress-related conditions, anxiety, and depression. Also, the sleep we do get does not always reach the deep healing stage needed to rejuvenate the body.
We consume more stimulants. The sleep loss above may explain the proliferation of the "coffee culture" in the last ten years. Both coffee and caffeinated soft drink consumption has skyrocketed in the U.S. over the last twenty years. Stimulants follow the law of what-goes-up-must-go-down, and many Americans are now suffering from wasting and defieciecy subsequent to chronic stimulant abuse.
We are under more stress. The declining economy 7 from a worker,s point of view, has put tremendous stress into life. Job security is down, wages are down, family wage jobs--enough that a single job can support a family-- are disappearing, and the average work week for a full time worker has risen. Even high paying jobs are more stressful. Marriages are breaking down, and single parenting has risen astronomically in just twenty years. This creates a situation of unremitting stress from which many people simply cannot escape. Circumstances force them to adjust or break down. (Also, the continous noise which permeates our environment creates stress.)
Our diet is worse. I remember as a child seeing a new McDonald's in Louisville, Kentucky--the first I'd seen--with the sign, "More than 100,000 sold." The first one I noticed was over four billion, a number too big to even think about. Fast food has become part of our culture and economy, and many people eat nothing but fast food, junk food, sugered foods, feedlot beef, highrise warehouse chicken, genetically engineered (fatter and bigger breasted) turkey, pork laced with hormones and antibiotics genetically engineered (empty) vegetables like the Red Rock tomatoe (bred to be hard so it can be machine picked) and iceberg lettuce, the devitalized frozen and canned vegetables. Statistics show that, although fat-consuming is declining, obesity is up. (Since the foods lack nutrition, the body craves).
We take more drugs. Prescription and over-the-counter drug use has also exploded since the seventies. A law of healing is that chronic suppression of acute symptoms leads to chronic disease. This massive and chemically violent suppression of the vital force has left a population that is weakened, with out enough vitality to respond to many traditional natural therapies (or drug therapies either).
We are rapidly aging as a population. The combination of the post World War 11 baby boom, and the subsequent almost universal availability of birth control and abortion, has created a skewed population with a rapidly-aging middle class. The center of gravity of the patient population will shift from young people with acute diseases to older people with chronic diseases.
These changes are creating a patient population that has not existed on this planet before--one that cannot be treated by rote methods of either Western or Oriental traditions. In my opinion, this will force an evolution of the new synthesis of natural healing methods in North America.
The "New American Patient" already before our eyes is unlike either the well-fed robust European peasant stock that nature cure methods are heroic Thompsonian-style herbalism were appropriate for, or Americans of a hundred years ago that Eclectic medicine honed its body of knowledge on, or the often malnourished and weather-exposed population's of China and India which let to such refined systems of tonic therapy. Consider that the diet of 100-200 years ago generally contained a lot of meat, but that meat was of much higher quality than Americans eat today. It was leaner and without chemical additives. Like wise, vegetables were plentiful, organically grown, recently picked, and locally harvested. People in those times had regular exercise, either on farms or in manual labor jobs in the cities. Even people with sedentary jobs got more exercise, simply by walking most places and climbing stairs rather than riding in cars and taking elevators. The population tended to have acute febrile diseases, condition of excess, and of overexposure to cold in winter. Thomsonian herbalism, with lots of cayenne and lobeilia made sense. As the population began to shift to cities diseases became more common, specific medication became more important. This important stage in the evolution of American herbalism (which also spread across the Atlantic to Britain) was mainly developed for patients with a strong reactive vital force. Low doses of well-prescribed medicines were effective. The more heroic of the Thompsonian, Physio-Medicalist, and Electic treatments are not so relevant to the patient of today, but in my opinion, the study and reapplication (to today's conditions) of "specific medication" is an essential next step in the evolution of Amercian herbalism.
In recent decades, Chinese and Indian herbal systems have grown in influence in the U.S.. These systems can treat the full range of human conditions, but they excel in the treatment of deficiency diseases. China and India have been overpopulated for centuries, and food shortages are common, even today. Practitioners of these systems have honed their skills and developed their tonic therapies on a largely underfed population. It is my opinion that the tonic therapies available in those systems--and all but forgotten in Western herbalism-- are what have made them popular here today. Likewise, these systems excel in treating conditions brought on by exposure to extremes of weather. (In much of China even today, the idea of a heated building in winter is one which warms enough that the pipes don't freeze.) These paradigms, however, cannot simply be applied by rote to the Americans of the 1990s. Americans are under-nourished but overfed with inferior food. They live in climate-controlled houses and cars. They generally don't do manual labor. They are heavily drugged. They are a different racial stock. They are simply not the same patients that the Eastern paradigms evolved with, and the application of those paradigms will require modification and evolution of practice.
The "New American Patient" is deficient, toxic, with a suppressed vital force, and in a situation of unremitting stress. Conventional medicine has nothing to offer this patient. Tonic therapy and liver detoxification are simply not available through conventional medicine, its methods systematically supress rather than enhance the vital force, and lifestyle modification is not part of its repertoire. Natural medicine is about the only thing that can maintain, restore, or enhance health in this patient, other than basic surgical repair (or removal) of progressed physical lesions.
I have no pat answers to how American herbalism will have to evolve. But I do have some ideas:
American medical herblaists will have to master tonic therapy, learning what is valuable from eclectic medicine, Traditional chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, and Unani Tibb (Arabic) medicine.
We will have to stubbornly keep looking at the patient as a whole and stop fragmenting them (and pigeonholing our materia medica) into organ systems. This does not mean giving then visualizations and Vitamin C (the conventional model of holism) but understanding both their constitutional patterns and their biological induviduality.
We may have to master areas not traditionally considered "herbal" Homeopathy, flower essenses, aroma therapy, hydrotherapy, chiropractic, physiotherapy, even conventional diagnosis or surgery may at any point by used in healing for the modern patient. We need to learn what we can and learn to make appropriate referrals. The concept of the herbalist as one who simply prescribes herbs is already a thing of the past, Judging from cases I receive.
We will need to learn more about geriatric medicine. Today, that means treating a patient who may be on five or more prescription drugs at the same time. Herb-for-drug substitutions (when it is even legal to do so) require a good knowledge of both the drugs and the herbs to be used. Constitutional tonic therapy and specific medication, in low doses, is of inestimable value for the elderly patient.
We need to remember the nature in nature cure. Naturopathy is usually associated with fasting, vegetarianism, and heroic reducing therapies, but our nature-cure antecedents in Europe, a three-week stay in a spa is considered routine treatment for some conditions. A hundred years ago, physicians might have prescribed a trip to the mountains or to the sea coast for recuperation. Sometimes our best prescription will be anything we can do for the deficient patient that reconnects them with earth, forest, and wilderness. There's a lot more tonic simply breathing for an afternoon in the forest or sunny desert than there is in a tincture bottle of anything.
We have to reclaim our materia medica. I've saved this point for the last because I think it is the most important, A hundred years ago, the American herbalist knew hundreds of remedies in great detail. Today most of us know dozens, if that. A hundred years ago, the herbalist knew many applications for most herbs, understood their essential energetic qualities, how to use them constitutionally as well as by organ systems. Today we know a few key uses and the organ systems affected.
Today our materia medica has been tremendously skewed by scientific and commerical interests. Consider the saw palmetto berries (actually refined extracts of them) are now considered a scientifically proven treatment for an enlarged prostate and are marketed aggressively to the herbal community. It's now pigeon-holed as a "prostate herb". In the last century, however, saw palmetto came to the attention of physicians because veterinarians observed that animals that ate it gained weight. It was soon found to be an effective tonic, and useful for cold, congested pelvic conditions (whether in men or women), including enlargement of the prostate. Science hasn't much to offer for the paradigm of vitalist herbal medicine, unless we get into cutting edge science like field theory. Yes, science has something to contribute, but the best it can do, in my opinion, is to refine emperical knowledge. Let science measure out-comes of therapies. Let them find some way to mearure vital force. Let it shed some light on how (not weather) our time-honered remedies work. but in my opinion, it is presently adversely affecting our materia medica by shifting emphasis: (a) to those herbs which can get funding for research; (b) to those uses of herbs for which a biochemical mechanism can be found, in the model of reductionist, organ-system medicine; and (c) away from those herbs which have not been researched, effectively devaluing them. Germany, which has very progressive herbal regulatory laws, recently dropped about a third of its officals herbs because there was no research to back them up.
Scientists or marketers aren't always the culprites either. The half-century decline of clinical herbalism in the U.S., the lack of availability of good medical herbal texts, the separation of herbalism from homeopathy (they overlapped greatly at the turn of the century) have all contributed to rote pigeon-holing of herbs by system. I recently reviewed a clinical case where the patient was thin, cold, depressed, nervous, and had prostate problems and sexual neurasthenia. He was, on his own, drinking an occasional cup of diamiana tea. Today damiana is most popularly cosidered a "womans herb," if it's used at all. The praactitioner began looking for how to address the atient's problems one system at a time--something for the prostate, something for the nerves, something for the digestion. The patient already had his remedy at hand, however. Damiana was classified by the Eclectics as a nerve tonic, a warming digestive stimulant, and a specific treatment for sexual neurasthenia. A clinical strategy might have been to up his consumption from a cup or two a week to a cup or two a day, along with a dropperful of saw palmetto tincture which the patient had already made on his own. Dozens of other common pigeon-holed Western herbs have constitutional properties--goldenseal, myrrh, cayenne, licorice, elecampane, devil's club, balck cohosh, blue cohosh, nettles, garlic, wild yam, rosemary, and lemon balm, to name a few.
In conclusion, I want to remember Dr. John Bastyr, the master physician that Bastyr University in Seattle was named after. This man was once asked what his most effective therapy we. He responded. "Be sure to touch your patient.". He, also, as a habit at night before going to sleep, read one homeopathic remedy in detail. He did this for more than fifty years. To effectively treat the New American Patient, we will need to revive the art of specific medication. This will require constant study of materia medica, if not nightly, then weekly. If not weekly, then monthly. If not monthly, then master an herb a year. By the time we're little old wise women and men, we might be of great use to our aging neighbors.
:From Suzanne
I found this one article so profound when first introduced. A huge light went off in my head that said, this answers so many of my questions. I felt at one time and voiced it to my mentor that even Chinese Meridian's need to be re-written as when organs are removed the path is now shut down. We all need to change with the times. I read every night if I can. I have hundreds of books and I choose carefully the authors intent. Is this book written to sell a product? Is the author of commercial interests? How long has this person not only worked in Herbalism but who are their mentors? Are they known and respected by their peirs? Then I will read and re-read their therapies. This is the only way to truely learn herbalism.
Paul Bergner is the editor of Medical Herbalism newsletter, author of The Healing Power of Garlic (Prima 1995), The Healing Power of Ginseng (Prima 1996), and is on the faculty of the Rocky Mountain Center for Botanical Studies in Boulder, CO. Correspondence address: P.O. Box 20512, Boulder, CO 80308.
Paul is one of the finest teachers and is in the group of my mentor Candis Cantin Packard. I appreciate all her teachings and support through out the years. Candis can be reached at 530-626-9288. She does now have a corrospondence course available for those of you who want to learn Ayruveda and traditional herbalism. You can go to her site at evrgreen@innercite.com
Now for the article.
"The New American Patient"
The last decades have seen socialogical changes in the U.S. that have lent to profound health changes, even since the 1070s, from a holistic point of view. These changes will have to be taken into account by herblaists in their practice, if their treatments are to be successful. Our efforts may even promote the evolution of a new synthesis of American herbalism. Consider these changes;
Americans sleep less now. A hundred years ago, we slept about nine hours a night. That half-hour loss alone is enough to explain the plague of chronic fatigue in the land, and increasing stress-related conditions, anxiety, and depression. Also, the sleep we do get does not always reach the deep healing stage needed to rejuvenate the body.
We consume more stimulants. The sleep loss above may explain the proliferation of the "coffee culture" in the last ten years. Both coffee and caffeinated soft drink consumption has skyrocketed in the U.S. over the last twenty years. Stimulants follow the law of what-goes-up-must-go-down, and many Americans are now suffering from wasting and defieciecy subsequent to chronic stimulant abuse.
We are under more stress. The declining economy 7 from a worker,s point of view, has put tremendous stress into life. Job security is down, wages are down, family wage jobs--enough that a single job can support a family-- are disappearing, and the average work week for a full time worker has risen. Even high paying jobs are more stressful. Marriages are breaking down, and single parenting has risen astronomically in just twenty years. This creates a situation of unremitting stress from which many people simply cannot escape. Circumstances force them to adjust or break down. (Also, the continous noise which permeates our environment creates stress.)
Our diet is worse. I remember as a child seeing a new McDonald's in Louisville, Kentucky--the first I'd seen--with the sign, "More than 100,000 sold." The first one I noticed was over four billion, a number too big to even think about. Fast food has become part of our culture and economy, and many people eat nothing but fast food, junk food, sugered foods, feedlot beef, highrise warehouse chicken, genetically engineered (fatter and bigger breasted) turkey, pork laced with hormones and antibiotics genetically engineered (empty) vegetables like the Red Rock tomatoe (bred to be hard so it can be machine picked) and iceberg lettuce, the devitalized frozen and canned vegetables. Statistics show that, although fat-consuming is declining, obesity is up. (Since the foods lack nutrition, the body craves).
We take more drugs. Prescription and over-the-counter drug use has also exploded since the seventies. A law of healing is that chronic suppression of acute symptoms leads to chronic disease. This massive and chemically violent suppression of the vital force has left a population that is weakened, with out enough vitality to respond to many traditional natural therapies (or drug therapies either).
We are rapidly aging as a population. The combination of the post World War 11 baby boom, and the subsequent almost universal availability of birth control and abortion, has created a skewed population with a rapidly-aging middle class. The center of gravity of the patient population will shift from young people with acute diseases to older people with chronic diseases.
These changes are creating a patient population that has not existed on this planet before--one that cannot be treated by rote methods of either Western or Oriental traditions. In my opinion, this will force an evolution of the new synthesis of natural healing methods in North America.
The "New American Patient" already before our eyes is unlike either the well-fed robust European peasant stock that nature cure methods are heroic Thompsonian-style herbalism were appropriate for, or Americans of a hundred years ago that Eclectic medicine honed its body of knowledge on, or the often malnourished and weather-exposed population's of China and India which let to such refined systems of tonic therapy. Consider that the diet of 100-200 years ago generally contained a lot of meat, but that meat was of much higher quality than Americans eat today. It was leaner and without chemical additives. Like wise, vegetables were plentiful, organically grown, recently picked, and locally harvested. People in those times had regular exercise, either on farms or in manual labor jobs in the cities. Even people with sedentary jobs got more exercise, simply by walking most places and climbing stairs rather than riding in cars and taking elevators. The population tended to have acute febrile diseases, condition of excess, and of overexposure to cold in winter. Thomsonian herbalism, with lots of cayenne and lobeilia made sense. As the population began to shift to cities diseases became more common, specific medication became more important. This important stage in the evolution of American herbalism (which also spread across the Atlantic to Britain) was mainly developed for patients with a strong reactive vital force. Low doses of well-prescribed medicines were effective. The more heroic of the Thompsonian, Physio-Medicalist, and Electic treatments are not so relevant to the patient of today, but in my opinion, the study and reapplication (to today's conditions) of "specific medication" is an essential next step in the evolution of Amercian herbalism.
In recent decades, Chinese and Indian herbal systems have grown in influence in the U.S.. These systems can treat the full range of human conditions, but they excel in the treatment of deficiency diseases. China and India have been overpopulated for centuries, and food shortages are common, even today. Practitioners of these systems have honed their skills and developed their tonic therapies on a largely underfed population. It is my opinion that the tonic therapies available in those systems--and all but forgotten in Western herbalism-- are what have made them popular here today. Likewise, these systems excel in treating conditions brought on by exposure to extremes of weather. (In much of China even today, the idea of a heated building in winter is one which warms enough that the pipes don't freeze.) These paradigms, however, cannot simply be applied by rote to the Americans of the 1990s. Americans are under-nourished but overfed with inferior food. They live in climate-controlled houses and cars. They generally don't do manual labor. They are heavily drugged. They are a different racial stock. They are simply not the same patients that the Eastern paradigms evolved with, and the application of those paradigms will require modification and evolution of practice.
The "New American Patient" is deficient, toxic, with a suppressed vital force, and in a situation of unremitting stress. Conventional medicine has nothing to offer this patient. Tonic therapy and liver detoxification are simply not available through conventional medicine, its methods systematically supress rather than enhance the vital force, and lifestyle modification is not part of its repertoire. Natural medicine is about the only thing that can maintain, restore, or enhance health in this patient, other than basic surgical repair (or removal) of progressed physical lesions.
I have no pat answers to how American herbalism will have to evolve. But I do have some ideas:
American medical herblaists will have to master tonic therapy, learning what is valuable from eclectic medicine, Traditional chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, and Unani Tibb (Arabic) medicine.
We will have to stubbornly keep looking at the patient as a whole and stop fragmenting them (and pigeonholing our materia medica) into organ systems. This does not mean giving then visualizations and Vitamin C (the conventional model of holism) but understanding both their constitutional patterns and their biological induviduality.
We may have to master areas not traditionally considered "herbal" Homeopathy, flower essenses, aroma therapy, hydrotherapy, chiropractic, physiotherapy, even conventional diagnosis or surgery may at any point by used in healing for the modern patient. We need to learn what we can and learn to make appropriate referrals. The concept of the herbalist as one who simply prescribes herbs is already a thing of the past, Judging from cases I receive.
We will need to learn more about geriatric medicine. Today, that means treating a patient who may be on five or more prescription drugs at the same time. Herb-for-drug substitutions (when it is even legal to do so) require a good knowledge of both the drugs and the herbs to be used. Constitutional tonic therapy and specific medication, in low doses, is of inestimable value for the elderly patient.
We need to remember the nature in nature cure. Naturopathy is usually associated with fasting, vegetarianism, and heroic reducing therapies, but our nature-cure antecedents in Europe, a three-week stay in a spa is considered routine treatment for some conditions. A hundred years ago, physicians might have prescribed a trip to the mountains or to the sea coast for recuperation. Sometimes our best prescription will be anything we can do for the deficient patient that reconnects them with earth, forest, and wilderness. There's a lot more tonic simply breathing for an afternoon in the forest or sunny desert than there is in a tincture bottle of anything.
We have to reclaim our materia medica. I've saved this point for the last because I think it is the most important, A hundred years ago, the American herbalist knew hundreds of remedies in great detail. Today most of us know dozens, if that. A hundred years ago, the herbalist knew many applications for most herbs, understood their essential energetic qualities, how to use them constitutionally as well as by organ systems. Today we know a few key uses and the organ systems affected.
Today our materia medica has been tremendously skewed by scientific and commerical interests. Consider the saw palmetto berries (actually refined extracts of them) are now considered a scientifically proven treatment for an enlarged prostate and are marketed aggressively to the herbal community. It's now pigeon-holed as a "prostate herb". In the last century, however, saw palmetto came to the attention of physicians because veterinarians observed that animals that ate it gained weight. It was soon found to be an effective tonic, and useful for cold, congested pelvic conditions (whether in men or women), including enlargement of the prostate. Science hasn't much to offer for the paradigm of vitalist herbal medicine, unless we get into cutting edge science like field theory. Yes, science has something to contribute, but the best it can do, in my opinion, is to refine emperical knowledge. Let science measure out-comes of therapies. Let them find some way to mearure vital force. Let it shed some light on how (not weather) our time-honered remedies work. but in my opinion, it is presently adversely affecting our materia medica by shifting emphasis: (a) to those herbs which can get funding for research; (b) to those uses of herbs for which a biochemical mechanism can be found, in the model of reductionist, organ-system medicine; and (c) away from those herbs which have not been researched, effectively devaluing them. Germany, which has very progressive herbal regulatory laws, recently dropped about a third of its officals herbs because there was no research to back them up.
Scientists or marketers aren't always the culprites either. The half-century decline of clinical herbalism in the U.S., the lack of availability of good medical herbal texts, the separation of herbalism from homeopathy (they overlapped greatly at the turn of the century) have all contributed to rote pigeon-holing of herbs by system. I recently reviewed a clinical case where the patient was thin, cold, depressed, nervous, and had prostate problems and sexual neurasthenia. He was, on his own, drinking an occasional cup of diamiana tea. Today damiana is most popularly cosidered a "womans herb," if it's used at all. The praactitioner began looking for how to address the atient's problems one system at a time--something for the prostate, something for the nerves, something for the digestion. The patient already had his remedy at hand, however. Damiana was classified by the Eclectics as a nerve tonic, a warming digestive stimulant, and a specific treatment for sexual neurasthenia. A clinical strategy might have been to up his consumption from a cup or two a week to a cup or two a day, along with a dropperful of saw palmetto tincture which the patient had already made on his own. Dozens of other common pigeon-holed Western herbs have constitutional properties--goldenseal, myrrh, cayenne, licorice, elecampane, devil's club, balck cohosh, blue cohosh, nettles, garlic, wild yam, rosemary, and lemon balm, to name a few.
In conclusion, I want to remember Dr. John Bastyr, the master physician that Bastyr University in Seattle was named after. This man was once asked what his most effective therapy we. He responded. "Be sure to touch your patient.". He, also, as a habit at night before going to sleep, read one homeopathic remedy in detail. He did this for more than fifty years. To effectively treat the New American Patient, we will need to revive the art of specific medication. This will require constant study of materia medica, if not nightly, then weekly. If not weekly, then monthly. If not monthly, then master an herb a year. By the time we're little old wise women and men, we might be of great use to our aging neighbors.
:From Suzanne
I found this one article so profound when first introduced. A huge light went off in my head that said, this answers so many of my questions. I felt at one time and voiced it to my mentor that even Chinese Meridian's need to be re-written as when organs are removed the path is now shut down. We all need to change with the times. I read every night if I can. I have hundreds of books and I choose carefully the authors intent. Is this book written to sell a product? Is the author of commercial interests? How long has this person not only worked in Herbalism but who are their mentors? Are they known and respected by their peirs? Then I will read and re-read their therapies. This is the only way to truely learn herbalism.
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