Herbs

is an ancient, worldwide system of medicine using plants to prevent and cure diseases. The use of plants as medicine is older than man himself as animals ate plants of certain kinds when they fell ill and indeed they still do.

Man has always been dependent on the plant world for his nutritional survival and especially so, as three of the fatty acids essential for life linoleic, linolenic and arachidonic acids are found almost exclusively in the plant world.

As far as we can tell, the major way in which plants help cure and prevent dis-eases can be explained on a biochemical basis. Plants are dynamic, are influenced by the environment that they grow in and are modified by the presence of a host or other natural substances in the plant. This is one of the reasons it is difficult to research them. The classical drug research that looks for single active substance and either extracts them as they are or creates them in the test tube can lead to a fool’s paradise. The using of active ingredients on their own is not a wholly effective way of using plants. Modern research is showing that plants contain a secondary enhancing and/or side-effect-eliminating substances. Hence herbologists are now extracting from the whole plant instead of one singular part of the plant e.g leaves, roots or stem.