Watch out when self-prescribing

Watch out when self-prescribing…

It’s really amazing that so many people are interested in and getting back to foraging and using herbs and plants in more medical ways, but I just wanted to share a little ‘word of warning’ about this too.

There is a tendency, especially when you have been unwell for some time to hope that the next herb/supplement/potion will ‘fix’ you in some way and to start trying them all.  Every single week now I find a new client comes to see me and is taking crazy amounts of these items in a bid to become well again (I did this once upon a time too).

The thing is that if you do not know much about what you are taking, if you’ve not been trained in these herbs and the practice of herbal/natural medicines etc then what you have inadvertently done has been prescribing yourself medicines in a very allopathic way.

What I mean by this is that you are probably not looking at the body as a whole but at the fact you have a headache, and you found out a certain herb is good for the headache and you take that.  Then you do the same for your digestive system and the same for your fungus issue too.  Although occasionally you may get lucky with this approach it’s not looking at the body as a whole.  There are almost always roots causes behind health issues that have almost nothing to do with the area of the body they show up in and that root cause is usually upsetting multiple systems of the body and not just one area.

When we take a step back and look at everything going on in the body, mind and sprit and ask the right questions about things that you may not think are even important (things like you general body temperature and how you body deals with certain things) then we start to understand the root cause(s) and can address them.

When we take the allopathic approach and don’t consider the body as a whole and also what you are already taking and the fuel you are using then we often go round in circles and find ourselves taking and using many approaches to many calls from the body to address something that really nothing to do with the new symptom that’s popped up.

When we address roots causes things start to shift and we also save ourselves a fortune on tons of supplements/pills/potions/lotion, because 90% of the time most of these are not needed and much of the time, they are not only not helpful but also hindering health.

Moving back to living in thriving in a more natural way does not mean taking tons of herbs instead of meds, it’s means stopping, listening and learning from the nervous system / body and fuelling in in the ways it needs once more so it can do the rest and bring balance and vitality back.