Anyone In Terested In Natural Herbs? Do They Work? Things Like Schisandra Etc

Inaut

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Schisandra. I think this is one of my favourite adaptogens although I don’t currently take it. Great for the liver too. Fo ti is another good one

I think nettle leaf is one of the best all around herbs but doesn’t receive the proper praise. Also not a true adaptpgen
 
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I've got experience that comes to mind with several herbs. For a few months I was riding the Robert Morse train and I was taking some combination of 60+ herbs 3-4x a day for a couple weeks there combined with mostly grape and orange fasting lol. There's definitely a shift of consciousness that takes place. It wasn't exactly comfortable for a while there, but I came out better on the other side after several days.

Nowadays I'm only taking 5g of creatine each day and feeling the most stable I ever have, but for the sake of this thread I'll riff on some herbs that come to mind. My health was in varied states due to other 'experiments' that accompanied intermittent use of these, so take it with several grains of salt:

Ashwagandha - no real perceived effect even when taken consistently for a week

Ginger - aids protein digestion if taken 20 minutes before a meal, seemed to have anti-fungal effect

Oil of oregano - miraculous at first, helped play a part in reversing lifetime cat allergies but then became extremely harsh at some point and consistently caused gut inflammation

Triphala - anti-fungal, great for a mouthwash replacement. Used it as a part of a 7 day liver cleanse from Ben Greenfield to great effect in concert with the rest of the protocol

Stinging Nettle leaf - diuretic; increased urination, no other real perceived effect

Maca root - nothing but problems from this despite several attempts... Probably because it's a cruciferous vegetable (iirc)

Turmeric - anti-fungal, general sense of wellbeing improved as long as it was used in cooking recipes with meat. Seemed to hurt starch digestion

Cumin, coriander - digestive aid, helps reduce bloating

Milk thistle seed - always hurt my gut, hard to see the purported liver benefit everyone talks about

Juniper berry - similar to stinging Nettle, diuretic and slight digestive aid

Cayenne pepper - caused sweating at times. Digestive aid when taken 20 minutes before meals. Seemed to improve effectiveness of other herbs when taken in tandem with them. According to herbology books this is because of the improved circulation effect of cayenne.

Greens powders - nightmare inflammation from the two I tried

Alfalfa leaf - bone strengthener and blood purifyer for sure but easy too take too much. I think it gave me spleen pain for a good couple of weeks from overdoing it lol

Astragalus root - no perceived effect whatsoever. Another mystery to me that is purported everywhere to be some great standalone tonic

Medicinal mushrooms of all types... Blends, Lion's mane, reishi - no perceived effect until negative effect of gut inflammation and brain fog became very pronounced

Atracylodes and poria - seemed to have a synergistic effect as a part of a spleen tonic, but detrimental if overconsumed

Clove - digestive aid, moderate fungal relief, tastes like an ashtray

Black walnut hull - tremendous anti-fungal but can easily irritate the digestive tract if taken in modest amounts continually

Spirulina - no perceived benefit... Until realizing it contributed to fungal problems

Chlorella - when titrated upwards in increasingly larger doses over the course of a week and then used in tandem with cilantro can allow for a pretty gnarly release of "toxins" from the skin in a sauna. I swear I felt plastic come out of my hair in the sauna one time at the end of a protocol and it was either due to chlorella or modified citrus pectin lol

Cascara sagrada - powerful laxative, acrid taste, used it through the top and bottom holes at the same time a few months ago to promptly fix a case of food poisoning

______________

I'll add that if you take herbs... They seem to shift the bacterial population of the gut in pretty remarkable ways... And some bacteria will indeed be nixed and promptly fall out your ****, but on the other end there are some that will retract into a defensive position, probably into what is called a "biofilm," and in doing so, will burrow deeper or otherwise cause more damage to the intestine. These types of fungus and bacteria that react defensively will only leave when they are given a strict and appropriate food source that will allow them to flow out with usual bowel movements. That's the lesson I learned from fruit - and later milk - fasting, anyways.
 
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i wonder if liquid extracts bypass all these problems associated with the herbs

The only thing I've ever heard regarding this was that Robert Morse believes that the physical powders have a greater effect on the intestines and the liquid tinctures are more quickly absorbed/faster acting.

If someone wanted to take large concentration of herbs with less potential for digestive upset, they could put the desired dosage as a liquid tincture in a pot with a small amount of additional water. Warm the water just enough to cause the alcohol to evaporate and then take promptly.

Taking too many liquid tinctures at once without steaming the alcohol off can cause liver problems from the alcohol.
 

yerrag

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I'm reading The Theory of Endobiogeny: Volume 1: Global Systems Thinking and Biological Modeling for Clinical Medicine by Kamyar M. Hedayat
Read The Theory of Endobiogeny Online by Kamyar M. Hedayat and Jean-Claude Lapraz | Books

Go to Chapter 16. Gives the best explanation I've ever come across about medicinal plants and advantages to tisanes, decoctions, mother tinctures, dry extracts etc.

You can do a 7-day trial of Scribd to access. I'm hooked on the book and this is just volume 1 of 4. But Chapter 16 of this volume would be enough to address your questions.
 

yerrag

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I'm reading The Theory of Endobiogeny: Volume 1: Global Systems Thinking and Biological Modeling for Clinical Medicine by Kamyar M. Hedayat
Read The Theory of Endobiogeny Online by Kamyar M. Hedayat and Jean-Claude Lapraz | Books

Go to Chapter 16. Gives the best explanation I've ever come across about medicinal plants and advantages to tisanes, decoctions, mother tinctures, dry extracts etc.

You can do a 7-day trial of Scribd to access. I'm hooked on the book and this is just volume 1 of 4. But Chapter 16 of this volume would be enough to address your questions.
A sample-

Global extracts vs isolated compounds

The first level of complexity of medicinal plants is the number of active compounds they contain. For example, a single plant may contain over 100 identifiable active compounds. This is in our experience, a point of strength. The polychemical nature of medicinal plants offers a polyvalent action that is clustered around specific units of dysfunction. The example of Avena sativa previously mentioned is demonstrative. From the perspective of reductionism, this is the primary criticism. Medicinal plants are considered to be unreliable for clinical or treatment because we can- not know which single compound is precisely at work. Thus, it is also difficult to regulate as a drug because a single active ingredient at a constant and reliable level of concentration must be present in order for a claim to be made of changes to structure or function of the organisms. These criticisms are based on 17th-century notions that objects and events follow a linear, deterministic path, that control of this path is
power, that power equals control, and that control equals progress. Because diseases since the 20th century are considered to be the result of single faulty genes producing single faulty proteins and/or single faulty receptors, it is not only rational but imperative to use a single compound that works at a single level of dysfunction, as the thinking goes. The number of side effects related to the use of pharmaceutical compounds from upstream and downstream disruption of physiology bears witness to the notion that the greater the attempt control, the greater the loss of control in the physiologic dynamic.

Single extracts that lead to harm

The activity of compounds contained within a single medicinal plant is synergistic and work best as a global extract. There are three general outcomes from the use of single compound extracts from whole plants: (1) harm, (2) reduced physiologic control and narrowed spectrum of activity, and (3) increased physiologic control but narrowed spectrum of activity.
 

gately

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Some of the medicinal herbs mentioned in this thread are incredibly potent and if someone is very ill or already imbalanced, then they should see a qualified Chinese Medicine or Tibetan Medicine practitioner who will utilize empirical diagnosis to determine what’s appropriate.

(The only reason I leave out Ayurvedic practitioners is that system of medicine is essentially dead, everywhere, including in India. There’s essentially no qualified Ayurvedic practitioners left.)

And for anyone not very ill, herbs like the above were rarely used in isolation, they were compounded into formulas that gave balance to the respective herb qualities. There's a reason many of these herbs were “medicinal.” And playing around with highly potent medicinal herbs is a pretty easy way to imbalance yourself.

Just look at the people on this board who thought they could play herbalist and have been damaged from ashwaghanda alone.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
 
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Lollipop2

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(The only reason I leave out Ayurvedic practitioners is that system of medicine is essentially dead, everywhere, including in India. There’s essentially no qualified Ayurvedic practitioners left.)
Dr. Vasant Lad in Alburquerque and his clinic in Pune where he does advanced practicum in December.
 

gately

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Dr. Vasant Lad in Alburquerque and his clinic in Pune where he does advanced practicum in December.
*is a charlatan who doesn’t help anyone.

Edit: maybe I’m being too harsh. I’ve only read his work and I’ve never seen him personally, though I believe I’ve seen some people he’s trained.

Anyone can see my thoughts on modern Ayurveda in the Ayurvedic thread I’ve already commented in.

It’s a dead system of medicine. I don’t know how to be more clear. So anyone practicing it in earnest is de facto a charlatan, whether they know it or not. No one in modern Ayurveda is getting significant results with serious disease. The whole system has been bastardized too much. Nothing pisses me off more than someone with a diagnosis of a few years left to live traveling to get panchakarma and eating kichari and taking poorly prescribed Ayurvedic herbs like it’s going to do a lick of good. If anything, they just die faster due the oh too often prescribed vegetarianism.

There’s traditional systems of medicine that are still in tact, namely Tibetan Medicine...which essentially is Ayurveda but without the corruption. And there’s still some Classical Chinese medicine practitioners who are capable, but they are increasingly rare...even in China, because of Mao systemizing everything into “Traditional Chinese Medicine.”
 
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yerrag

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Some of the medicinal herbs mentioned in this thread are incredibly potent and if someone is very ill or already imbalanced, then they should see a qualified Chinese Medicine or Tibetan Medicine practitioner who will utilize empirical diagnosis to determine what’s appropriate.

(The only reason I leave out Ayurvedic practitioners is that system of medicine is essentially dead, everywhere, including in India. There’s essentially no qualified Ayurvedic practitioners left.)

And for anyone not very ill, herbs like the above were rarely used in isolation, they were compounded into formulas that gave balance to the respective herb qualities. There's a reason many of these herbs were “medicinal.” And playing around with highly potent medicinal herbs is a pretty easy way to imbalance yourself.

Just look at the people on this board who thought they could play herbalist and have been damaged from ashwaghanda alone.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
This is why I've decided to see a TCM doctor.

I wasn't keen on seeing a TCM doctor. I have a deep-seated stereotype of TCM doctors being an old man who can feel my pulse, look at my tongue, etc. and then instantaneously know what's wrong with me and prescribe me a decoction. With little asked, and little said. He would say something is wrong with the liver and the kidneys (there's not much left except the heart and the pancreas and the brain). Which is vague. And then he'll say something about being warm and being cold. And I'm to follow him blindly.

Which isn't very different from seeing a conventional western doctor, as far as trusting everything a doctor says goes. I'm taking a decoction made from herbs, and not something synthetic and not patented.

So, I was happy recommended a pair of TCM doctors in their 30s - a brother-sister tandem. That they came from Taiwan, and studied in Beijing, and can read blood work sealed the deal for me.

First consult, I got a decoction and I took it for a week. My temps went up by 0.2C. I would feel hypoglycemic. I would also have an itchy throat. I would urinate more, and my urine would be more foamy, instead of less . My blood pressure would rise further, a disappointment because I went there to lower my blood pressure.

In a nutshell, all the signs point to my condition getting worse.

I told the TCM doctor about it, and she changed the formula, and now I'm in the middle of trying this second decoction.

I had to just follow her lead for now, and trust that she knows what she's doing.

I know enough as to why my blood pressure is the way it is. It's complicated enough, but I can explain it well if anyone cared to listen. I tried to do this to the TCM doctor. But it's outside her training, being that my approach is more western medicine-based, and I sensed that the more I talked, the more she would be tuned out.

So, for now, I'm being a good patient, and keeping my fingers crossed, hoping her way would still pull me out of my high blood pressure condition.

I've done my own research on what Chinese herb and decoction I would use, but I'm keeping this as my last option (TCM-wise, as I still have to explore urine therapy and homeopathy). If the TCM doctor were to still be unable to find the right decoction for me after a month, I hope that I can convince her to give me her thoughts on the TCM decoction I've been thinking of using.

I feel conventional western drugs and therapy won't help me. But TCM may not either, unless I can give some meaningful input to a TCM practitioner willing to listen to my n=1. Finding a good TCM doctor may be the most difficult challenge.
 
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Lollipop2

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*is a charlatan who doesn’t help anyone.
I saw him in his clinic in India for 50 rupees. He helped me a lot. I wouldn’t exactly call him a charlatan. Did you see him personally or is this secondary feedback? BTW...the clinic was full and he stayed til late on Friday night seeing everyone. Indians paid 10 rupees edit: for free actually.
 

gately

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I saw him in his clinic in India for 50 rupees. He helped me a lot. I wouldn’t exactly call him a charlatan. Did you see him personally or is this secondary feedback? BTW...the clinic was full and he stayed til late on Friday night seeing everyone. Indians paid 10 rupees edit: for free actually.

I made an edit to my post. I’m glad he helped you. I have a negative opinion of Ayurveda overall. I spent years working with the modality, traveling all over the country, and I rarely saw anyone with a serious disease improve. And I saw a tremendous amount of suffering caused by their dietary injunctions.
 

Runenight201

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Some of the medicinal herbs mentioned in this thread are incredibly potent and if someone is very ill or already imbalanced, then they should see a qualified Chinese Medicine or Tibetan Medicine practitioner who will utilize empirical diagnosis to determine what’s appropriate.

(The only reason I leave out Ayurvedic practitioners is that system of medicine is essentially dead, everywhere, including in India. There’s essentially no qualified Ayurvedic practitioners left.)

And for anyone not very ill, herbs like the above were rarely used in isolation, they were compounded into formulas that gave balance to the respective herb qualities. There's a reason many of these herbs were “medicinal.” And playing around with highly potent medicinal herbs is a pretty easy way to imbalance yourself.

Just look at the people on this board who thought they could play herbalist and have been damaged from ashwaghanda alone.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

How can one determine a qualified TC/Tibetan medicinal practitioner vs a charlatan?
 

yerrag

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I saw him in his clinic in India for 50 rupees. He helped me a lot. I wouldn’t exactly call him a charlatan. Did you see him personally or is this secondary feedback? BTW...the clinic was full and he stayed til late on Friday night seeing everyone. Indians paid 10 rupees edit: for free actually.

I'm glad there are Ayurveda practitioners who know what they're doing.

I just have this impression that the art or science has been destroyed by the British Empire, who have supplanted the art with their version of Ayurveda.

There may be pockets of good Ayurveda left, but it is not a unified art but a smattering of passed down traditions that have not maintained a whole body of unadultered knowledge.

It would be like eating different kinds of biryani from Pakistan to India to Bangladesh, as if the provincial variations aren't enough confusing already.
 

Lollipop2

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I made an edit to my post. I’m glad he helped you. I have a negative opinion of Ayurveda overall. I spent years working with the modality, traveling all over the country, and I rarely saw anyone with a serious disease improve. And I saw a tremendous amount of suffering caused by their dietary injunctions.
Now this I am completely on board with and agree. I do not like Auyrveda. I had an acute condition and the medicine he prescribed worked great. I would never trust this system for anything chronic.
 

gately

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I'm glad there are Ayurveda practitioners who knew what they're doing.

I just have this impression that the art or science has been destroyed by the British Empire, who have supplanted the art with their version of Ayurveda.

There may be pockets of good Ayurveda left, but it is not a unified art but a smattering of passed down traditions that have not maintained a whole body of unadultered knowledge.

It would be like eating different kinds of biryani from Pakistan to India to Bangladesh, as if the provincial variations aren't enough confusing already.
Weirdly enough, it wasn’t the British who destroyed Ayurveda. It was religious puritanicals many years before all that humbug. (Just like it was the communists who destroyed Chinese Medicine.) There are supposedly some decent Ayurvedic practitioners left in India, but I've yet to seen any evidence of this. I found one family in Kerala that I suspect to be the real deal, but beyond that, it's a whole lot of hot garbage and spa treatments posing as authentic panchkarma. As I posted in the Ayurvedic thread, some here might be interested to read this blog: trueayurveda

To give you an idea how bastardized Ayurveda has become: Basmati rice is considered the WORST grade of rice in ancient Ayurveda. If you've ever read anything about diet in modern Ayurveda, that should exemplify just how far the current system has fallen from the tree.

This is why I've decided to see a TCM doctor.

I wasn't keen on seeing a TCM doctor. I have a deep-seated stereotype of TCM doctors being an old man who can feel my pulse, look at my tongue, etc. and then instantaneously know what's wrong with me and prescribe me a decoction. With little asked, and little said. He would say something is wrong with the liver and the kidneys (there's not much left except the heart and the pancreas and the brain). Which is vague. And then he'll say something about being warm and being cold. And I'm to follow him blindly.

Which isn't very different from seeing a conventional western doctor, as far as trusting everything a doctor says goes. I'm taking a decoction made from herbs, and not something synthetic and not patented.

So, I was happy recommended a pair of TCM doctors in their 30s - a brother-sister tandem. That they came from Taiwan, and studied in Beijing, and can read blood work sealed the deal for me.

First consult, I got a decoction and I took it for a week. My temps went up by 0.2C. I would feel hypoglycemic. I would also have an itchy throat. I would urinate more, and my urine would be more foamy, instead of less . My blood pressure would rise further, a disappointment because I went there to lower my blood pressure.

In a nutshell, all the signs point to my condition getting worse.

I told the TCM doctor about it, and she changed the formula, and now I'm in the middle of trying this second decoction.

I had to just follow her lead for now, and trust that she knows what she's doing.

I know enough as to why my blood pressure is the way it is. It's complicated enough, but I can explain it well if anyone cared to listen. I tried to do this to the TCM doctor. But it's outside her training, being that my approach is more western medicine-based, and I sensed that the more I talked, the more she would be tuned out.

So, for now, I'm being a good patient, and keeping my fingers crossed, hoping her way would still pull me out of my high blood pressure condition.

I've done my own research on what Chinese herb and decoction I would use, but I'm keeping this as my last option (TCM-wise, as I still have to explore urine therapy and homeopathy). If the TCM doctor were to still be unable to find the right decoction for me after a month, I hope that I can convince her to give me her thoughts on the TCM decoction I've been thinking of using.

I feel conventional western drugs and therapy won't help me. But TCM may not either, unless I can give some meaningful input to a TCM practitioner willing to listen to my n=1. Finding a good TCM doctor may be the most difficult challenge.
I hope it helps. It's increasingly difficult to find a qualified Chinese Medicine practitioner. I should say that just because someone can read blood tests doesn't mean jack unfortunately, and having been trained in China unfortunately doesn't mean what it used to. You might in fact be better off seeing the aforementioned old wise man who reads your pulse / tongue and doesn't tell you anything. Who knows?

For supportive, overall balancing, anyone trained from one of the decent Chinese Medicine university-hospitals in China is going to be alright. But for serious conditions, the whole endeavor of "TCM" is kind of a fools errand, imo. There's literally only a handful of practitioners in the US (for instance) I could earnestly recommend. Where I recommend a run of the mill "qualified" TCM practitioner is for certain conditions: female hormones, overall balancing, eczema, fertility, and generally minor things of that nature. And even then it's going to be a crapshoot finding someone who actually will make a difference beyond what placebo will do. That is especially true for Accupunture (needling), for which I can name only three practitioners in the US who know what they're doing. The rest of Accupunture (in the US or Europe) is basically placebo and the stress-relieving effect of being alone in a room with nice music playing while you think your energy is being balanced. But some people need that. Some people just need a quiet place to be for 30 minutes a week while they imagine they're being healed.

How can one determine a qualified TC/Tibetan medicinal practitioner vs a charlatan?
That's a tough question. I inexplicably developed a lot of connections in the Eastern Medicine world when I was a young man, and so when I became chronically ill in my early twenties, I spent many years seeing some of the "top" practitioners in the USA. I was able to get into to see people that have had closed practices for many years, people who literally wrote the books others are studying in Eastern Medicine schools. For a few years, I would move to a different city every year to work with someone else if I wasn't getting the results I wanted. (I saw all the "top" guys in Seattle, New York, and Chicago.) And I never did see results, until I finally found someone who did authentic Chinese Medicine, and my mind was blown by the differences in their treatments and herbal prescriptions. It was night and day different. And, having known I had been searching for the "real deal" for many years, we'd have long conversations about just how bastardized Chinese medicine had become. The truth is more dire than people imagine. The reality is, there is almost zero criteria I'm aware of for determining who is a qualified practitioner because there's almost none left. I'm talking a few people in the states, a few people in Europe, and not a whole lot in China either. I hope that slowly changes, and the people I know who DO know what they are doing, are trying their best to train the next generation of practitioners and get their schools in place...but it's hard doing that and running a clinic.

What I can say is this, because of the difficulty in finding a qualified practitioner in these systems of medicine, it might require relocating to work with someone decent. Tibetan Medicine holds a lot of promise, for instance, if you can get to Dharmshala. Contacting the Men-Tsee-Khang (The Tibetan Medical and Astro Institute founded by the Dalai Lama) to arrange a prolonged stay and treatments is one way to go. Another option is probably asking them for the names of trained practitioners in the states, of which there are a couple who aren't horrible (to my knowledge). For Chinese Medicine, finding someone who graduated from SIOM in Seattle would be a good bet for finding a general practitioner. And if you're seriously ill, anyone is welcome to PM me and I'll tell you who to see, but their clinic is on the East Coast.

Now this I am completely on board with and agree. I do not like Auyrveda. I had an acute condition and the medicine he prescribed worked great. I would never trust this system for anything chronic.
Again, I feel bad calling Lad a charlatan. It was a knee-jerk reaction. For all I know he's doing great work, I just don't like what I've read by him and, again, despise modern Ayurveda with a passion. I shouldn't criticize practitioners by name on a public forum unless I know for certain the work they do is altogether ineffective. My bad. (And sorry Lad.)
 
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