Herbs versus Drugs

For thousands of years, human beings relied primarily on herbs for healing. Many people in modern society feel that modern pharmaceutical medicine is a step forward from our reliance on medicinal plants and don’t believe there is any place in society for herbal medicine. Even those who do use herbs are relying more and more on standardized extracts, which concentrate certain chemical constituents, and less on whole herbs.

So, is herbal medicine just a primitive substitute for modern pharmaceutical medicine, or are there benefits herbs offer us that drugs can’t? The answer is yes!

For starters, it has been estimated that at least 50% of modern pharmaceutical drugs are based on compounds originally derived from plants. Isolating these chemicals from plants and modifying them is done for the purpose of patents and profits, and not because the chemical versions have been shown to work better or be safer.

The cost of these pharmaceuticals can be staggering, especially for people on a limited budget, while the cost for plant medicines is far less (and even free if you know how to harvest them yourself). And, many people feel the plants actually work better when it comes to restoring health. 

While drugs provide rapid symptomatic relief, they generally don’t restore a person to health. But more and more people are discovering that complex mixture of nutrients and phytochemicals in herbs (which are living things like us) are better at actually returning the body to a state of health. That’s why the use of herbal medicines is growing rapidly in modern society. Join us at this month’s Sunshine Sharing hour where we’ll explore these and many other benefits herbal medicine offers in our modern world