Before I start wittering on about all the lovely things happening at the Garden, I wanted to make a serious point about the use of herbs as medicines. I'm sure that many people who view this Blog, and probably many who attend the herbal sessions, think "that will be an amusing and novel thing to do" - not many will think "this is a genuinely useful and practical skill to learn -I won't need to go to the doctor/chemist every time I get a cold/ fever/ cough/ diarrhoea/ whatever". But that is exactly what you CAN learn! - you CAN empower and educate yourself so that you WILL know what to do when you get a swelling or wound; you'll understand when it is safe to treat yourself or a family member and when you should seek professional help. Having the confidence and knowledge to enable you to care for your loved ones through a nasty bug or upset tummy is a wonderful thing. I am constantly frustrated and depressed that we now have a generation of mothers who are too frightened and don't have the knowledge to nurse their children through a childhood fever. I'm not suggesting you do this because herbs are pretty, or smell nice, or because I have some sort of vendetta against pharmaceutical drugs (though many drugs available over-the-counter from chemists for common ailments are far more powerful and potentially damaging than people are aware of); but because, when used correctly, herbs are generally effective, safe, and less toxic to our bodies - they work, they're cheap and they can protect us against the damaging effects of chemicals and powerful pharmaceutical drugs. And my aim at the Garden is to make home preparation of herbal medicines so simple you won't be able to say either "I can't be bothered" or "I don't know what to use"!
Medical Herbalists help to treat people with serious chronic and acute conditions ranging from heart failure to arthritis to cancers. We don't endorse the viewpoint that a condition is just something unconnected or separate from you; something to get rid of. Herbalists look through a wider lens – at the dis-ease in the context of the whole person - your lifestyle, situation, history, genetics, etc. We give you credit and responsibility for your present situation. If that situation is uncomfortable or self-destructive, you need first to recognise and support what is healthy and right and be prepared to make the lifestyle changes to correct the behaviour that allowed your condition to develop. Whole herb preparations can enable and support those changes.
A note on safety: there has not been one death in Britain from herbal medicines prescribed by a trained herbalist since the foundation of the National Institute's training in 1864. In the States to 1998 , a joint USDA/Dept of Health/FDA study into herbal medicine safety reported that there hadn't been one fatality from herbal medicine dispensed by a trained practitioner (over the same period there were 110,000 deaths directly connected to "Adverse Drug reactions" (ADR's) in hospital patients; an estimated 150,000 ADRs among hospital outpatients; and an estimated 50,000 deaths from 'over the counter' pharmaceutical drugs - per year).
Herbs are the most widely used medincines for most people in World. In Germany, France, India and many other countries doctors are trained in the use of herbs and you are more likely to be given St John's Wort for depression in Germany than a pharmaceutical anti-depressant. China has embraced their Centuries of knowledge rather than ignoring it and has developed an integrated healthcare system using pharmaceutical drugs and herbs together - recognising that herbs can often allow them to use lower doses of powerful chemical drugs, reduce side-effects and increase the effectiveness of those drugs or treatments. The majority of stories you read in the press about lack of evidence and danger of using herbs are misquoted, inaccurate, taken out of context or simply NOT TRUE! Thousands of modern clinical trials are conducted - but the results are ignored because these trials are conducted in a language other than English!
Enough! - back to the wonderful business of the Garden's herbs.
Some of you visiting the Garden's website will have noticed a new link to 'The Herbarium'. Do check this out - it is a wonderful site full of information about growing and preparing medicinal herbs set up by a group of talented and experienced western medical herbalists who believe, like me, that this knowledge mustn't be lost and that every person should have the knowledge and ability to look after themselves and their families and that access to this knowledge should be free. The information on this website is free to anyone who cares to use it. Some of the Herbarium founders came to the Garden last week to see what we were up to and we all tucked into a freshly picked 'herbalists salad' - complete with marigold, poppy and borage petals - quite beautiful! They love what we are doing at the Garden and have been very supportive. They recently gave us some new medicinal herbs which I can teach anyone interested how to use.
Hopefully you will all be champing at the bit to attend the herbal sessions we've got planned over the next few months:
On 6th September we've got our annual Hawthorn Syrup Making - harvesting the berries (nature providing of course!) and hopefully getting you lot organised enough so you can take a bottle home with you. There will be a small charge to cover the cost of the bottle. I hope those of you who enjoyed our session last year will come and make yourselves a refill (do bring back and recycle your bottle from last year if you still have it) and that many more of you will come and get sticky! Good messy fun all round and you end up with a bottle of yummy syrup - with added medicinal value! We need to get an idea of numbers who we've got enough bottles - and syrup-making bits - for everyone to have some so contact Gareth in advance to let us know if you're coming.
On 20th September I'm holding a session on 'Mens' Herbal Health' so come on guys - come along and find out how to keep healthy, hunky and fit (I know you never get sick!) with herbs and diet and protect yourself against those (obviously rare) illnesses that affect you!
The two other sessions we've got in the diary so far are:
Herbal Tincture-Making (on 18th October) - a surprisingly easy process and a brilliant way to preserve fresh or dried herbs so you've got everything you need in your medicine chest through the year; and
Cultured Vegetables (1st November) - we are surrounded by wonderful organic vegetables in the Garden - learn how to turn these into preserve vegetables the way we used to do it before we had refrigeration - and provide yourselves with a year-round, ready source of the powerful probiotic food - and chuck out the expensive commerical 'probotic' pots! This food is suitable for anyone, any age and with any health problems - from babies to the elderly and is particularly useful as an easily-assimilated source of nutrients for anyone with poor digestion or digestive disorders.
If we can find a suitable date, I'm also hoping to do a 'how to' session on external herbal preparations - creams, lotions, poultices, etc. for wounds, inflammations and conditions like eczema - very easy and fun - so check the diary.
Hope I'll see loads of you at all the sessions. Do email Gareth or me at the Garden with any questions and/or suggestions for future sessions or subjects you'd like me to cover.
A Final Plea: I do need your help on the day-to-day 'housekeeping' to keep the herbs healthy and with harvesting, particularly in the Spring-Autumn so if you can make it to the Garden reasonably regularly and think you'd like to help with this I would love to hear from you!
keep drinking/eating the herbs!
Deborah Syrett
Resident Herbalist
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
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