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Healing & Alternative Health
Herbal Medicines: Healing Allies or Environmental Devastation?
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by Kami McBride |
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Herbs have hit the big time. St. John’s Wort and Echinacea are household names. We have seen St. John’s Wort on 60 minutes, Echinacea on the evening news, and herbal therapies have been featured in Time, Life, and Newsweek magazines.
Teaching herbal medicine fifteen years ago I begged people to use herbs. Now I ask myself, “What is the environmental impact of Americans relying more and more on herbal therapies?” We are witnessing an herbal renaissance in this country and we now have statistics that Americans are spending more money on alternative therapies than on conventional treatments. A large portion of these “alternative health care” dollars are spent on herbal medicines. After the media blitz on St. John’s Wort several years ago, there was a period where sales of St. John’s Wort products saw a 500% increase within two weeks. Since St. John’s Wort is basically an easy to grow invasive weed, this massive increase in sales did not have too grave of an environmental impact. However not all popular medicinal plants are invasive weeds and some are rare and even endangered.
There are many other increasingly popular plants that our consumption is having a very serious impact on. Many of our wild medicinal plants are now being over harvested. Some wild plant populations simply will not withstand the current rate of harvesting and are becoming or have already become endangered. With the increased profits in the herbal industry, has also come an increase in greed in the harvesting and marketing of herbs.
Poaching of valuable plants such as goldenseal and black cohosh have become commonplace. I have a friend that has been farming goldenseal for years on her land in Missouri. She paid careful attention to harvesting what her land could sustain and through careful plantings actually increased the productivity of her wild goldenseal stands. One morning she woke up to all of her goldenseal plants on her forty acres having been ripped out of the ground during the night. She was devastated. She had a personal connection with the plants and loved the task of tending to them and practicing the age old wisdom of wild gardening. Professional poachers dug up her patch in just one night. This has become a common occurrence in her neck of the woods.
What does all of this mean? People are experiencing the powerful benefits of herbs, we want to use them and yet how do we not contribute to the destruction of entire forests for our health care? I believe that now more than ever education and inquiry about our medicine is extremely important. Just as with every other aspect of our lives we have to examine and ask questions about what we are doing. Questions that we can think about asking when we want to buy an herbal medicine are: How did this plant get to me? Is this plant endangered or on a “sensitive” list? Do I trust this company? Is this plant a local plant and can I buy it from a local company? Could I grow it myself? The question is really not about how cheap can I buy it for, but about ethics and the future sustainability of our forests and medicine.
There are companies doing ethical harvesting of wild plants, they are replanting and restoring habitats and cultivating herbs that can no longer sustain wild harvesting. We have to seek these companies out. Call your herbal suppliers; ask about their cultivation and wild harvesting practices of different plants. Let them know that this issue is important to you. Buy your herbal preparations through stores and individuals that have a commitment to working with organically grown and ethically wild crafted herbs. Continually educate yourself and those around you about the importance of having an awareness of where your plants come from.
Just as we have to ask who is growing our food and how is it being grown, we have to ask the same of our herbal medicines. Growing our own herbs is a great way to ensure quality of the remedies we are taking. As consumers our questions and commitment to using ethically grown and harvested plants can influence the future availability and quality of sustainable herbal medicine in this country. |
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Kami McBride,
Teacher of Herbal Medicine
& Women's Health
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Kami McBride has taught herbal medicine and women’s health since 1988. She has studied medicinal plants for almost 20 years and has taught Herbology at the University of California School of Nursing and Stanford Hospital. Her popular course, Cultivating the Herbal Medicine Woman Within is an experiential earth awareness and herbal studies program that is taught at her beautiful school and herb gardens in Vacaville, California.
An intuitive and inspiring teacher, Kami has helped thousands of people learn to use healing plants in their daily lives in ways that are healthy, safe and fun. Her extensive knowledge of herbal medicine along with a focus on teaching herbology as a relationship with the Earth and a way of life, help to fulfill her mission of reviving the cultural art of home herbal care.
Kami is an herbal consultant and an expert in the field of holistic health specializing in women’s issues. Her herbal consultations empower women to discover sacredness and pleasure in their healing process. Her educational courses provide a sanctuary for women to transform their relationship with their body and reclaim their heritage as healers and herbalists.
Kami is the author of 105 Ways to Celebrate Menstruation, available at www.amazon.com.
Visit Kami’s website at:
www.livingawareness.
com
Sign up for her free quarterly herbal e-newsletter.
kami@livingawarness.
com
For Classes, Books & Consultations:
Phone: 707-446-1290
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