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[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

Plants Before Pills - The Ecologist
http://www.theecologist.org/magazine/features/2910636/plants_before_pills.html
Plants Before Pills
Sebastian Pole
16 June 2015

Ayurvedic practitioner Sebastian Pole of Pukka Herbs looks at the role of
plants in the history of medicine and why reconnecting with natural food is
essential to our health. With the explosion of system-wide health
disorders, its time to take a more holistic approach to wellbeing.

Traditional heath systems teach us to open our senses and read the language
of Nature.

We live in a time where the dominant mechanistic worldview of the last few
centuries is becoming increasingly exposed as an inadequate interpretation
of the interdependent nature of life. But because this ideology has
dominated our ideas of how we should grow our food, rear our animals, raise
our children, heal our society and look after our planet, we have largely
forgotten quite how important the web of life is. Plants take a lead role
in this mysterious play of life, providing, in one way or another, most of
our clothes, our shelter, our food and our medicine. It’s worth reflecting
on this mutually beneficial plant-human bond, and on how re-engaging with
the web of life may improve all our futures.

The story of life is really one of sharing and reciprocity. Ever since the
earliest blue-green cyanobacteria such as spirulina ‘learned’ 2 billion
years ago to harness the sun’s energy, green plants have been generating
the energy of life. We have been interacting, communicating and growing
with our environment since time began, with plants and animals developing
into the life forms they express today because of this incessant sharing.
As we evolved together with the plant kingdom, we both learned how to use
each other for mutual advantage. It’s testimony to the success of this
evolutionary relationship that our bodies are able to recognise and benefit
from the natural phytochemicals developed within plants: a relationship so
successful that the health of our cardiovascular, digestive, immune,
respiratory, nervous, endocrine and psychological systems is largely
dependent on plants.

*Plants have developed strategies for protection and in turn protect us*

Plants have developed strategies that attract insects, animals and the wind
to carry their procreative pollen far and wide. A spectrum of colours,
tempting aromas and the reward of some sweet nectar lie in exchange for
this fertile foray. However, in more defensive modes, plants have developed
protective compounds that help guard them against damage from a plethora of
microbes. Peppermint, for example, has developed powerful essential oils to
ward off fungal invasions. In response, these little microbes have over
time evolved new challenges to threaten the plant’s defences. And so the
dance continues, the plant developing novel and useful compounds to respond
to the microbes’ ever-evolving reproductive intentions.

Our use of these botanical species over millennia suggests that bacteria,
fungi and viruses have less ability to develop resistance to a
broad-spectrum botanical pharmacy than to a narrow pharmaceutical one as
used in our modern health system. Plants long used by cultures all over the
world, such as andrographis, neem and elderberry, all display a potent
ability to ward off infections and avoid creating antibiotic resistance.

Plants have developed a plethora of these phytochemical compounds,
empowering them with broad-spectrum protection: for example, essential
oils, polyphenols or steroids that help to protect and strengthen the
plant. Many species have 1,000-plus compounds at very low levels of
concentration. Animals and humans have discovered how to use these plants
for a wide range of health benefits, and over the years we have learnt how
to use 50,000 of the more than 250,000 species of flowering plants in the
world.

The history of medicine is in great part the history of herbal medicine,
with the great cultures of medicine from the Americas, Europe and Asia
collated by such giants as Hippocrates, Galen, Culpeper, Charaka, Sushruta,
Huang Di and Li Shi Zhen, harnessing these insights into codified and
systematic scientific medical traditions. As we learned to tap into
Nature’s innate healing vitality we also learned that plants help our
bodies and minds heal; they help us fulfil our potential.

Mutually beneficial reciprocity, sharing and learning are found at the
heart of most symbiotic relationships. It’s the idea of being selfishly
wise and wisely selfish: you look after yourself so you are well enough to
look after others, and look after others so they are well enough to look
after you, be you bee, butterfly, blueberry or human being. Of course, some
species are certainly dangerous to us, but if we can heighten our already
remarkable knowledge of how certain plants can benefit our health, they
will flourish and so will we.

*Nutritional diversity is the key to health and happiness*

Until about 100 years ago we used to keep healthy by eating over 100 plant
species, but for most people today that figure is down to around 10–20.
That means we are exposed to much less of Nature’s phytochemical benefits
every day. Because the variety of plants and herbs in our diet has
radically diminished, we are no longer bathing our cells in as broad a
spectrum of plant protection as we did through all of our earlier
evolution, and this is one of the reasons our society’s health is suffering
today.

A study carried out a couple of years ago by David Blanchflower and
colleagues at the University of Warwick and published in 2012 showed how
our happiness is directly connected with the amount of fruit and vegetables
we eat. The work of Paul Clayton and Judith Rowbotham describing how our
diets have declined in nutritional diversity since the Victorian 1870s when
chronic disease rates were 90% lower than today underscores the value of
diversity. One way of broadening our nutritional horizons is to include
more of the less well-known plants in our diet, such as those used in the
herbal tradition – for example liquorice, lemon balm and lime flower.

The ability that plants have learnt to protect themselves from invading
microbes and extreme climates is remarkable. That these same evolutionarily
familiar qualities can help our lives flourish is surely common sense. Just
as the spicy compounds, aromatic terpenes and colourful flavonoids that you
can find in ginger, tulsi and turmeric help the plant flourish, they also
interact with our whole mental-emotional-immune network to optimise our
response to just about everything. They can help stop a virus replicating,
they can kick-start our nervous system to ameliorate pain, they can boost
our fertility, and they can lift our mood when we feel threatened. As they
interact with our genes, cells, tissues, organs and spirit, plants
literally help us to influence our destiny.

This is no simple thing. We have an extraordinary and complex physiology,
and yet minute levels of plant compounds can profoundly influence our
health. Our human genome has evolved by selecting a vast array of low-level
plant compounds to benefit its progress. Over the last 10 million or so
years our human genetic experiment has been the story of how we utilise
infinitesimally small amounts of phytochemicals to help us thrive.
Conversely, the last 100 years or so has been a health experiment in how we
use high-dose single chemicals, resulting in some, albeit isolated,
remarkable success stories as well as some notorious tragedies.

*The dangers inherent in modern pharmacology*

As we face an explosion of system-wide disorders, such as diabetes, cancer
and emotional imbalances, illnesses that do not hugely benefit from the
single chemical approach, it’s not a big leap to conclude that we need a
more developed system-wide approach to healing. Billions have been spent to
tell us the obvious: that the basis of good health is good diet, exercise
and lifestyle. Billions more have been spent trying to prove that
single-molecule medicine works. But the dangers of the ‘magic’ bullets of
modern pharmacology are becoming clearer. It’s time for the magic ‘web’ to
take back centre stage; the plants and the tradition of herbal medicine are
all around to help.

On a softer note, and beyond just their compounds, plants have a character
unique to themselves expressing a knowable personality. We don’t just need
to know what’s ‘in it’: we need to know ‘who’ it is. Quantum physics lauds
the value of observation as the keystone to understanding reality;
Einstein, Bohm and Goethe, in contrast to Descartes and Dawkins, all
champion the value of the phenomena above the theory, and this makes each
of us the most important scientist in the world.

Experiment for yourself and see: some plants are lively (chew some ginger)
and some are much more mellow (sip some chamomile). Some awaken our hearts
(just look at a rose) and others simply make us happy (too many to mention,
but lemon balm and tulsi sing from the treetops). Whatever they do, plants
share life with us, and we have developed complex physiological systems to
understand them. We just need to open our hearts and minds as we see,
smell, taste, touch and listen.


*Understanding traditional medicine connects us with Nature *
Traditional health systems, such as Ayurveda, teach us to open our senses
and read the language of Nature; their insights offer an amazing way to
tell the story of plants and how we can benefit from them. How one plant,
like ginseng, surviving through the harshest winters, can bring us warming
strength, or another, like aloe vera, thriving in the hot desert, can
soothe our burns. Or we can appreciate for a moment that just as cinnamon
thrives in the humid jungle, its drying heat can help protect us from
drizzle and damp, or how sweet elderberry fruits help soothe us through the
winter. Understanding more about how plants cope with extreme conditions
can tell us a lot about their beneficial health properties. Observing
Nature, as opposed to just measuring her, teaches us that our perception is
more important than anything else; our life is literally ours to perceive.

As we experience the power of Nature, and we come to terms with the awe of
her magnificence, we end up in a place of mystery and wonder. How we live
together as a community, how we perceive our environment, as we engage on a
global level with all the plants, people and planet, is the story of life…
One of sharing and reciprocity as part of the wholeness of the universe.
------------------------------


*This article was first published in the May/June 2015 issue of Resurgence
& Ecologist magazine <http://www.resurgence.org/>. *

*Sebastian Pole is an Ayurvedic practitioner and is co-founder and herbal
director of Pukka Herbs. www.pukkaherbs.com <http://www.pukkaherbs.com>*