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Herbs have been used for healing throughout recorded history. Many conventional drugs are derived from plants. The leaves of the foxglove plant are the source of the heart drug digitalis. Taxol, a powerful new cancer drug, is made from the Pacific Yew tree. Capoten, a blood pressure lowering medicine, comes from snake venom. Even aspirin was orginally derived from willow bark. Pharmaceutical companies start with the herb and extract the "active ingredients," but alternative practitioners maintain that the whole herb is more therapeutic than its isolated ingredients and is less likely to result in side effects. Aromatherapy , a form of herbal medicine, involves distillations of the essential oils of the whole plant, carrying all the plant's important information (sometimes referred to as the "blood" or "life force" of the plant).
Statistics from the American Association of Poison Control Centers confirm that while drug poisonings kill hundreds of people annually, deaths from herbal medicine are virtually unheard of. A few medicinal plants can cause bodily harm when taken in excess. (Comfrey, for example, has been linked to liver damage -- although only in enormous overdoses.) Dosings are also harder to gauge accurately for herbs than for drugs, and herbs can cause allergic reactions in the susceptible. They should be used only with professional advice by pregnant women and people with chronic medical conditions. For children, professional advice is also recommended, and doses should be diluted. But even with these provisos, herbs are far less risky than their pharmaceutical counterparts. For healthy, non-pregnant people, they are considered quite safe in recommended doses.
If you think you are having an unwanted reaction to an herbal or any other oral product, you should stop taking it, drink copious amounts of water, take a hot bath to alleviate the symptoms, wait for a period of time, then consider starting it again to see if it was really the cause of the problem. What is sometimes thought to be a bad reaction may not be an allergic one or a reason not to take the remedy. The dose may simply be too high (even if it's the recommended dose), or the effect may be a "healing crisis" or cleansing reaction prompted by the remedy.
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