12/04/2025
Misplaced Fear
I consider myself one of the first,
one of the clearest, and
one of the loudest voices for combining drugs and herbs.
It's one of the reason I put in virtual single herb conferences.
Fifteen or more herbalists
Speak at length about one herb
And put the boot to lies about the dangers of comfrey, for instance.
And confirming my belief that interactions between Hypericum, as an example, and drugs are rare.
www.wisewomanschool.com/p/sjwcon
Herb/drug interactions?
Nope.
I see it at home.
My sweetheart combines herbs and drugs every day.
He drinks a quart of nourishing herbal infusion daily.
Eats cooked leafy greens every day.
Takes a daily dose (2-4 dropperfuls) of motherwort tincture (fresh flowering tops in 100 proof vodka)
Takes 2-4 dropperfuls of hawthorn tincture daily too. (Dried berries in 100 proof vodka, steeped for 12 months)
Any any other herbal tincture he needs.
Plus a handful of drugs prescribed by his cardiologist, including a blood thinner.
His cardiologist is "all in" with the herbs.
He often comments that the herbs are doing as much to help his heart as the drugs.
He can see it in the scans and test results.
I spent two years of intense travel/teaching at many large gatherings.
Asking for stories about herb/drug interactions.
I asked about 12 thousand folk.
Those who had a clinical herbal practice.
And those involved in people's medicine.
No one saw interactions.
That's what I thought.
So I went ahead with my side-by-side pages —
Herbs on the left, drugs on the right —
In Abundantly Well
Showing the choices we actually have.
I love those pages.
This morning my dear friend Astrid Grove gave me a link to aa article that
Made me smile.
The National Institutes of Health agree with me.
OMG
Herb/drug interactions are mostly a hype.
I remember Dr James Duke using the "coffee comparison" when asked if an herb was "safe" to use.
< "There are 11 major drug interactions with coffee, yet doctors don't tell patients not to drink coffee based on possible interactions." >
Here's that article.
Repost from
https://holisticprimarycare.net/
NIH Center to Confront Fears Of Herb-Drug Interactions - Holistic Primary Care
"Misplaced fear" about herb-drug interactions is keeping many practitioners from recommending potentially beneficial botanical medicines, said Josephine Briggs, MD, director of the NIH's National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH).
Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Herbal Products Association, Dr. Briggs said NCCIH is launching a major initiative to re-evaluate herb-drug interactions.
Clinicians' apprehensions are largely unfounded, she said. "Most interactions identified in current resources are hypothetical, inferred from animal studies, cellular assays or other indirect means. Concern is often poorly founded, not based on rigorous studies."
Dr. Briggs, a nephrologist, believes clinical judgment about herbs is clouded by significant, unexamined biases.
"There are 11 major drug interactions with coffee, yet doctors don't tell patients not to drink coffee based on possible interactions! A lot of the fears about herbs are not founded on good meaningful accurate data. The aim of our new center is to help determine which interactions are really significant and require attention and which are not."
Many physicians wring their hands when patients mention that they're taking –or even considering—a botanical in conjunction with drug therapies. Yet, many patients "are on 10 active pharmaceuticals and the potential for drug-drug interactions is so enormous that the minor agents in dietary supplements are unlikely to change that."
Dr. Briggs voiced irony that many in the medical community are quick to vilify herbal medicine, while turning a blind eye to what she sees as two of the most pressing public health issues: prescription opioid addiction and antibiotic overuse.
"Every time I open the paper, I see stories on overuse of psychoactive drugs...for pain, for sleep, for common colds." According to CDC data, recorded death rates from co***ne and he**in have been more or less stable over the last decade, while deaths from prescription opioids have soared, from 4,000 in 1999 to over 16,000 in 2010. Newer data are consistent with this, she said.
"I am ashamed of the medical profession in this regard. The overuse and inappropriate use of opioids is incredibly shocking. In certain communities drug-related deaths are exceeding motor vehicle fatalities."
While oxycontin and other opioids are a big culprit in the overuse epidemic, benzodiazepines and other psychoactive meds are also causing their share of problems.
"There are 50 million prescriptions for Xanax per year. In 2008, 12% of women at age 80 had a benzodiazepine, and for men it's about 6%, even though guidelines call for great caution in using these drugs for elders." Citing major sleep disturbances as a common and dangerous side effect, Dr. Briggs said that the need for safe and effective non-pharmaceutical sleep remedies is clear. "We all have to learn together about alternatives to these drugs."
The antibiotic overuse problem is another one for which the natural medicine world might have good solutions. Currently, there are about 16 million Z-Pak prescriptions per year, mostly for colds and other conditions for which they are inappropriate.
Citing the book, "Missing Microbes: How Overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling Our Modern Plagues," by Martin J. Bl**er, MD, she stressed that overuse carries massive risks not only because it promotes drug resistance and the evolution of superbugs, but also because it decimates the microbial diversity which is essential for good health.
"This is enormously relevant to natural products research," Dr. Briggs said. "It is a reasonable hypothesis that a lot of the variability we see in peoples' responses to various natural products has to do with variations in their microbiomes, and in concurrent use of antibiotics."
Susun wonders if they will focus on dried herbs in capsules.
The one form of herbal medicine that I think can interact with drugs.
It is in beauty.
It is always a giveaway dance with the plants.
Hearts beating a one with the earth's heartbeat.
Surrounded by green blessings
Gratitude
Joy
