Or I might just be a cup-half-empty person…
Somebody told me recently that 80% of herbal medicine students were GPs. I don’t know how this can be so, I don’t know if it is true, and I don’t know how this works.
I presume this is a short top-up to what they have already learned so that they can understand what’s involved with herbal medicine, because more and more patients are interested in alternative therapies like herbal medicine. Herbal medicine is the one the orthodox medicine has the most problems with because of the potential interactions with their medication. It has been said that GPs tend to issue a blanket ban on patients taking herbal medicine with their orthodox medicine because they’re worried about how the constituents and actions of the herbs will affect the absorption, assimilation, and action of their drugs. Possibly in order to combat this GPs are embarking on some sort of herbal medicine course to come to grips with the problems that their patients produce for them.
So why should I worry about it?
You might think it was a good idea for GPs to assimilate information on herbs so that they can best advise their patients. And in many cases this would be true. However I still think that the best people to advise patients on the interactions between medicinal herbs and orthodox medicine are medical herbalists. The reason is that when we are trained we are taught about the actions of orthodox medicine, we are taught about contradictions, and we are taught about safety issues concerning mixing orthodox and herbal medicines.
This is what medical herbalists do.
It is possible to be herbalist and use herbs to treat patients without studying some of the orthodox medical subjects. If people teach themselves about herbal actions and remedies [often to a very high standard] but are not officially examined in orthodox medical subjects, then they cannot be referred to as medical herbalists – there are two kinds on offer and the patient can choose which suits them.
But. In medical herbalist training you will study anatomy and physiology, immunology, microbiology, clinical medicine, pathology, clinical examination and case history taking. You will be well aware of not only the disease process within the body, but also what orthodox medicine is routinely prescribed for those disease processes, and whether or not it is safe to prescribe herbs, and which ones it is safe to do so.
Of course one big problem here is there isn’t enough medical herbalists to go round.
We are doing our best at the School of Herbal Medicine [www.schoolofherbalmedicine.co.uk] to plug these gaps, and there are other educational establishments which are also in the process of safely and effectively producing medical herbalists. Medical herbalists will be members of a professional body like the National Institute of Medical Herbalists, or the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy. It is true that there are number of poorly self-educated herbalists who do the profession no favours by willy-nilly advising people to take herbs inappropriately. It may be in response to this that GPs are beginning to take some herbal medicine courses.
So why should I worry?
I worry because I see a future in which it is said that because general practitioners have a knowledge of herbal medicine [however superficially it may be] that medical herbalists are not necessary anymore. I can see a future in which we are restricted so much so that our freedom to practise will disappear.
This is definitely a glass-half-empty prognosis. And I know it is built on an unsubstantiated second hand piece of information.
But, I think I will one day say like Eeyore;
“The sky has finally fallen. Always knew it would.”
