Romm Aviva - Botanical medicine for women's health


Author : Romm Aviva
Title : Botanical medicine for women's health
Year : 2010

Link download : Romm_Aviva_-_Botanical_medicine_for_women_s_health.zip

Foreword. Botanical Medicine for Women’s Health is being published at an interesting time and speaks simultaneously to a number of converging constituencies. It is a time of growing stress on both the medical system and the patient. Medical care is in crisis with large numbers of underinsured or uninsured patients needing care. Costs are rising from the practice of increasingly technical medicine while patients complain of the decreasing time and attention they are receiving from their medical providers. Further, the burden of chronic disease is growing in an aging population. In one response to these stressors, patient interest is forcing inclusion of alternative medicines and philosophies into mainstream practice. However, in the case of herbal medicine, incorporation into conventional medicine would represent the return to (pardon the pun) the deepest roots of our own medical tradition. The lineage of herbal medicine is long, distinguished, and of great importance to Western medical tradition. Herbal medicine has been a significant component of a wide array of healing systems beginning early with those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Islam while continuing through the development of medical practice in Medieval and modern Europe. Traditional medical practices from Asia and India as well as Aboriginal traditions on every continent have also used extensive herbal pharmacopeias. Many of our modern pharmaceutical drugs owe their origins to herbal medicine with more than one hundred of the most commonly used drugs derived directly or indirectly from plants. It is particularly appropriate that this book focuses on the herbal treatment of women’s conditions. Historically, women, when given the opportunity to train in medical professions or to operate as lay practitioners, often focused their care on women and their children—either by choice or necessity. Often, the transmission of this tradition was suppressed or marginalized and women had to use the products of the natural world around them rather than the often more toxic products favored by their conventional counterparts. Thus, women’s medicine, overseen by female goddesses like Isis or practiced by female practitioners such as Hildegard of Bingen, was largely based on herbal therapies. In fact, rarely were the contributions of these female herbalists recognized by conventional medical history. So, for example, the ‘‘discovery’’ of foxglove as a treatment for cardiac conditions is attributed to Sir William Withering and his source, the old lady of Shropshire, is largely forgotten. Thus, I am particularly satisfied that this important herbal textbook is giving serious and scholarly consideration to this traditional practice. But herbal medicine is not a dead or esoteric art. The World Health Organization estimates that 80% of people in developing countries depend on herbal medicine and traditional practitioners for their primary care. As people migrate from their countries of origin to more industrialized areas, they often bring their traditional practices with them. In modern industrial countries, at least 20% to 30% of people regularly use herbal medicines. For certain conditions, such as HIV, cancer, or other chronic diseases, the numbers have reportedly been much higher. Under-insured patients often substitute herbs or dietary supplements for drugs because of poor access to care or cost of therapy. These statistics and examples reflect the trend of incorporating traditional healing systems into modern life, moving from self-treatment of self-limiting illness to the care of chronic and more serious medical conditions. Despite the fact that these users are also active consumers of conventional medical services, they often do not disclose their use of herbal medications to their medical practitioners. This withholding arises from a number of causes. Often cited by patients is the belief that most physicians will react negatively to the use of natural products, or worse, that physicians are not knowledgeable about the natural products patients are interested in. Ironically, despite the fact that herbalists have been advising patients on the use of phytomedicines for millennia and patients are increasing their use of herbal products, herbal practitioners in North America have not generally been incorporated into conventional medical practice. These practitioners and their practices have been largely invisible to the conventional system for a variety of reasons. Patients may self-prescribe from an exploding array of natural health products without the benefit of consultation with an herbalist. In traditional medical systems, other components may be more recognized than the herbal therapy. For example, for Traditional Chinese Medicine as practiced in the West, acupuncture is better known and more broadly used than Chinese herbal medicine. Most importantly, in the United States, the practice of herbal medicine is variable, eclectic, and without standardization or licensure. Whether or not the development of standard herbal practice would represent a desirable outcome, it is a fact that much of the public and most conventional medical practitioners are largely uninformed about what constitutes appropriate training for herbalists and what their appropriate scope of practice should be. Thus, the clash of cultures and lack of understanding inherent in the crisis of our current medical system offer our greatest opportunity. We will need our traditional knowledge to care for our aging population. Our traditional practitioners will have the opportunity to become more closely integrated into the conventional medical model, and thus reach a broader array of patients. Better communication between paradigms and practitioners is crucial if we are going to meet the needs of our patients and address the growing problems in our medical system. This book, and hopefully others like it, will aid this process by contributing to our mutual understanding. The careful explication of the practice of traditional herbal medicine will be valuable to conventional practitioners attempting to fill their knowledge gaps and advise their patients appropriately. On the other hand, the inclusion of information from the Western conventional paradigm, especially involving physiology or conventional treatment, will help orient the traditional practitioner to more conventional medical concerns. It is my hope that in the crisis of modern medicine, we all take the opportunity this book offers to learn from other systems and perhaps reclaim some of the values that have always been at the heart of the practice of the art of medicine. Mary L Hardy, MD Simms/Mann-UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology University of California Los Angeles, California June 2008. ...

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