First, herbal medicine has been THE medicine of every single group of people, of every single culture, and in every single country on this entire planet, since the beginning of time. Herbs grow wild on this planet, and have been THE medicines of the people on this planet, forever. Chemical medicines are the new kid on the block, the new fad, and have only been around for a few hundred years. And, most drugs were originally made from plants anyway.
Herbal Medicine has recorded roots dating back over 6,000 years in China, India and the Middle East, just to mention a few places. Even today, the vast majority of the people on this planet still use herbal medicine as their first-choice medicine, and do not trust pharmaceutical drugs, at all. In fact, 50% of all drugs are either made from botanicals or synthesized to duplicate a chemical that was originally found in a plant.
Digitalis, the most famous of all heart drugs, gets its name from the herb Digitalis lanata, the Foxglove plant that it is made from. This plant, like many plants, contains some very powerful chemicals, often referred to as phytochemicals meaning “plant-chemicals”. The most powerful chemicals in this particular plant are called glycosides, specifically cardiac glycosides that affect the heart muscle in many ways. This is just one small example of one herb that has now become one of the most famous drugs used today. I could list over 1,000 additional drugs here that are plant-derived, but I just wanted to make a point.
How Do Herbs Actually Work?
Well, it is actually very simple. All foods and plants (basically anything that grows) contain chemicals. And when you ingest plants, your body breaks the plant material down, using everything from saliva to digestive juices, and then your body assimilates these various chemicals.
One of the reasons that we eat food is so that our body can assimilate the Phyto-chemical nutrients from the plant. Nutrients that sustain life, like vitamins, minerals, enzymes, amino acids, protein, fat, carbohydrates, etc. Without plant nutritional chemicals, we couldn’t survive.
Herbs are also foods, but usually people don’t consume them for food, as they taste stronger. Sometimes we do, like raspberries, artichokes, dandelion, burdock, etc. But, when it comes to the stronger tasting ones (like coffee) most cultures have discovered that these plants have more medicinal uses, instead of nutritional uses. These stronger tasting plants taste stronger because they have stronger chemicals in them. This is one way that nature protects us and tells us the difference between food and medicine–raspberries taste great, digitalis does not.
Anyway, when we ingest these medicinal herbs, the same way as food, we breakdown the plant and assimilate the chemistry in the plant. But, with many herbs it is these stronger medicinal chemicals that we assimilate, instead of nutrients.
So when we consume medicinal herbs by just chewing them or using herbal teas, tablets, capsules or liquid extracts (like tinctures and tonics), instead of nutrition, we assimilate the medicinal plant chemicals or phytochemical medicines. The way in which herbs work is not rocket science and is actually very basic chemistry.