Herbal medicines can be used to treat a wide variety of common ailments, and are an extremely useful adjunct to many treatment programs. I mainly use herbs in tincture form, these are made by taking the fresh plant material and allowing it to infuse in alcohol for a number of weeks. Then the plant material is strained to produce the resulting tincture. This contains many naturally occurring plant chemicals which give the tincture its properties. Some pharmaceutical companies isolate what they believe to be the ‘active’ chemicals in the herb so that they can reproduce them in the laboratory. There are many examples of this being done to produce drugs such as aspirin (‘active’ chemical salicylic acid form  willow or poplar bark),  or digoxin (‘active’ chemical cardiac glycosides from the foxglove), or vallium  (isovaleric acid in valeriana root).

Herbalists maintain that whilst these ‘active’ principles undoubtedly have a pronounced effect that the other constituents present in the plant, but not in the synthesised drug, are of equal importance. The function of these other ingredients appears to be to enhance, modify and/or quench some of the effects of the ‘active’ principles, making herbs generally much safer and likely to produce less side-effects.

Herbs are ever more popular, most people having used them at some point. People will purchase Echinacea, St. Johns Wort or Ginseng from the health food store for a limited period of time for a specific problem. When people consult a herbalist they do so for more complex conditions or for ones they are not able to resolve themselves.