Herbal Therapies: Do Your Homework!

Everyday, more of us are turning to holistic healing therapies like Herbalism to treat ourselves when traditional medicine lets us down. We just need to remember that herbs are basically botanical medicine and we need to do our own research on what herbs to take for our symptoms or disease before we start taking a bunch of pills without knowing what we're putting into our bodies.

Let's look at a few common interactions between herbs and prescription medications.

St. John's Wort is a herb that is very effective for depression, but it will make you photosensitive. Stay out of the sun if you want to try this remedy.

If you are currently taking a chemical anti-depressant like Prozac, you need to get off of it before starting the St. John's Wort. These two are very similar in chemical composition and will interact with each other.

Stop the anti-depressant and wait at least a week to ten days before you start an herbal remedy.

Another example is a heart medication called Lanoxin and hawthorn berry which lowers your blood cholesterol level. If you take these two together, they can cause heart failure.

A popular adaptogen herb is ginseng. It will boost your body in just about whatever way it needs to be stimulated. It will raise blood pressure and raise red blood cell count and raise energy level.

But give it to someone who has been on blood thinners for a while and poof!, they can blow a vein and bleed out.

Oh, and ginseng can overstimulate you if you're a coffee-drinker and you'll have trouble sleeping. Watch your caffeine intake if you start taking ginseng.

By the way, if you are on blood thinners, you might want to watch how much garlic you eat. Garlic has anti-clotting properties just like blood thinners (like Coumadin). You might be getting too much of a good thing.

And Coumadin disrupts the blood coagulating mechanism of Vitamin K. That's one of the reasons an overdose of Coumadin will cause you to bleed out. Your blood will not clot properly.

But garlic doesn't interfere with Vitamin K's clotting mechanism. Because it is a natural source, it works along with the body. Why not try garlic before you need a blood thinner?

Several chemical drugs are derived from botanicals: aspirin from white willow bark, digitalis from foxglove, tamoxifin from yew. In fact the drug companies are working with over 100 plants, extracting the natural compounds, researching them, trying to see if they can come up with another knockoff from Nature's Pharmacy that they can make a profit from.

If aspirin was discovered today you would need a prescription to get it at the drug store. It would be considered a controlled substance.

The herbal remedies available to us today are remarkably effective and we need to take advantage of them. But we also have to take responsibility for our good health.

Talk with your doctor if you are taking prescription medication.

Get an opinion on any supplement you are considering taking.

Research it on your own.

Check to see if there is an Herbalist in your area you can consult with.

This is your life, your health, your responsibility.

It's up to you to take care of it.

Liz