Medicine chest - combining herbal medicines

The most sensible approach to combining herbal medicines?

Don't.

Unless ..



and until you know what each medicinal plant does for you as an individual - not just what the label or the book or the website (including this one!) says it will do, but what it does for you -  it's just kinda foolhardy to go adding in others.

That means if you find an herb that works for you but you want to add another, stop taking the first one, try the second, assess, and then try combining them. And assess again. Want to try a third? Stop taking the first two, try the new one, assess. Add in one of the other two, assess. Add in the third, assess again.

I'm not kidding. Ideally, there would be a 3 day break between herbs, too, because effects linger.

Herbal doesn't always equal safe.

More is not better.

And most of all, herbal actions can definitely push your body too far one way or another if the herbs you are taking aren't carefully selected to be in some kind of balance with each other and suited to your particular constitution and the situation at hand.

Case in point - not everyone does well on dandelion, or they do well on it under certain circumstances but not others. People - like me - who have a somewhat dry constitution to begin with can find dandelion too drying. Nettles are somewhat drying, too. If I took dandelion and nettles together for any length of time, I'd be in trouble.

Yet a googling of "dandelion and nettles" yields this hit of the two combined as a (supposed) remedy for anemia. Nowhere does it mention that both dandelion leaves and nettle are diuretic, so how would you know unless you had already tried dandelion, then nettle, to see how your own constitution could handle them combined? (Never mind that the instructions on how to prepare the nettles are just plain wrong .. raggin' fraggin' mutter mutter.)

There are scads of pre-made herbal combinations on the market - avoid them like the plague they are.

Why?

Oh so many reasons. There's the one above, but say you've worked with each of the herbs before and you know how you react to them? Can't you just save yourself some bother and buy them already combined?

Well, no.

Call me picky - and lots of people do, so go ahead, I won't be offended - but I have yet to see a label telling me the percentage of each herb in the combination. And that matters. When you make your own combinations, you're quite liable to use more of one, less of another and just a titch of a third. Your ideal combination will be different than mine because your constitution and situation differ from mine.

Now - Here's a good example of what I would consider a pretty darned iffy formula, a "liver cleanse" (shudder) formula from a reputable company,

Ingredients: Organic milk thistle, organic burdock root, barberry bark, organic fennel, organic ginger, organic goldenseal root, organic bupleurum root, water & organic alcohol (30%).

and the instructions for use say:

Directions: Add 10 to 20 drops (approx. 1/16 tsp) to water or juice several times each day, as needed.

How much of each herb are you getting in every dose? No way to know. What do they mean by "as needed?"

Believe me, in this particular formula the answers to those questions are going to matter. Let's consider the goldenseal root. That's one herb that no one should be taking for any length of time. If you need goldenseal, it's great, but as soon as the need is taken care of, it can mess you up but good if you continue to take it. How? It will give you the same symptoms you were trying to relieve in the first place - extreme hypoglycemia, or ulceration of the mucosa, anyone? Not knowing this, you could end up thinking you need more of it, when in fact what you need is to stop taking it entirely. Tricky stuff, goldenseal root. It is one of the least safe herbs out there and more is never better.

There are potentially problematic issues with the barberry, too, like pretty serious gastrointestinal issues that can crop up and again, it lowers the blood glucose levels - yet there it is combined with goldenseal ... hmm. As far as I know, bulpeurum is used mostly for cases where there's an excess of estrogen that needs to be cleared out of the liver - if that's not your issue, do you need to be taking it? It has neurological effects, too; it used to be used for epilepsy. So that's a heck of a combination of herbs that simply won't suit everyone. At least the burdock and milk thistle are fairly benign .. but ..

It looks to me that the above combination was put together on the basis of "all these supposedly work on the liver so let's just throw them all together with some ginger and fennel to mitigate the cramps that the others might cause" with no real consideration to what each of them actually does.

The liver specific herbs act in different ways. Some stimulate it, some sedate it when overactive. There are "hot" livers and "cold" livers, overworked livers and lazy livers. If you don't know - for sure - what's ailing your liver, you can't just go throwing every "liver herb" you can name at it and expect it to be happy.

Laying off the coffee and/or booze would help, and I have another suggestion for people with unhappy livers (etc) that many of you will, I'm afraid, shake your heads at ..

Sometimes - nay, often - the best course of action to take when there's something weird going on with our bodies is to do nothing. Sometimes - nay, often - that means laying off the supplements and herbs. All of them.

It's not just goldenseal that can mess you up if you take it when you don't really need it. All the supposedly safe and good for you medicinal plants have their limits of use and beyond that can cause imbalances. There IS such a thing as taking too much nettle or too much burdock, just like there is such a thing as eating too much butter or too much cabbage.

Less is very often more.

So if you're endlessly searching for the magic bullet to fix your hormones or skin or gall bladder or sleep troubles or whatever, here's something else you might try:

Bring out every vitamin, supplement, green drink mix, fish oil, tincture, capsule, probiotic, prebiotic and essential oil that you have used over the last 30 days - including the ones in your cosmetics and toiletries and "green" cleaning products, because they certainly count! - and lay them out in front of you.

Load them into a shoe box (do they fit?).

Now put them all away for 30 days. Or even just a week. But longer is better.

In the meantime, get morning sun every day, preferably as you take a walk. Turn off the blue screens of phone, tv or laptop a couple of hours before bed time. Eat with pleasure, not guilt, not fear. Make love more often. Sing. And every time your attention wanders to something that feels "wrong" about your health, redirect your thoughts to something that feels right.

When time's up, assess how you feel. Then bring out your box and have a fresh look at it. How many of those products do you actually need? And as you begin to use them again, (one by one, if possible) again, assess how you feel.

I love the medicine plants; I've been studying them, growing them and working with them for a big chunk of my adult life. But I've learned that most everyone is using them incorrectly. We're not getting the most out of them because we're blurring them all together, unaware that what they can do individually, in small doses, over short periods of time is actually superior to what they do in ill-thought out combinations, large doses and long term use.

Herbal medicine differs from pharmaceutical medicine in one very important way - it can affect actual cures. We're trained to think in terms of "controlling" chronic conditions the way MD's do with pharmaceuticals (how often do MD's cure any more?) so we "take herbs" in the same way.

But with careful use, herbs correct imbalances and shift processes in our bodies back to where they should be. They actually cure. When they do, we can and should stop taking them. If they don't cure within a fairly short period of time, we have the wrong herb. Taking more of it or adding something on top simply won't help and will quite probably cause harm.

Yes, there are 'tonic' herbs that can be used long term. But even they needn't be used more than a few weeks or months at a time. Most of the tonics have seasons, just as our food supply used to have seasons. Dandelion greens in spring, berries in summer. Having lost the understanding of eating food in season, we've lost the understanding of using herbs that way too.

Something to think about, right?

Further reading - Understanding your personal constitution can go a long way towards helping you choose the right herb(s) for your needs. If you're interested in the idea, have a look at this article.