Epigenetics

Another notable property of Chinese Herbal medicine is the ability to switch off genes that are causing allergic or inflammatory responses.

Many health conditions may have been inherited from our parents, or grandparents. They are hard wired, so to speak, in our genes. If one parent has psoriasis, then their children have an 8% chance of inheriting it. If both parents have psoriasis, then the percentage goes up to 41%. If both parents have atopic eczema, or asthma, or hayfever, then around 81% of their children may develop one, or more, of these themselves. Gene expression is thought to be the root cause for many chronic inflammatory disorders.

Even though many inflammatory conditions are genetic and may have been inherited from our parents, as noted above, many people treated with herbal medicine are able to experience long term remission. Why is this? If a condition is genetic, or is hard-wired, then why are so many individuals able to see their condition disappear for long stretches of time, or even for life? One of the reasons for this amazing observation is thought to be due to epigenetics, which deals with the mechanisms responsible for turning genes on or off. The actual gene may be fixed, and unchangeable, but the genes must be expressed or “turned on “epigenetically in order to activate the disease response

Herbal medicines are thought to influence our epigenetics. Their ability to regulate an imbalanced immune system and bring the body back to long term homeostasis is thought to be largely related to epigenetic expression. It seems to be that herbal medicine help create the environment necessary to turn many of the genes, responsible for disease, off.

Dr Erikson first witnessed the power of herbal medicine to manage chronic inflammation when his own wife used them for her chronic eczema. For more than 22 years, she had suffered terribly with eczema, covering most of her body. She had been told that steroid creams were the only way to calm her skin down, but that she had to be careful due to their potent side effects. Within 3 months of ingesting a custom designed tea made of various raw herbal ingredients, Dr. Erikson’s wife was free of eczema, for the first time in her entire life. After stopping the medicines, her skin remained eczema free for well over 10 years, showing that the herbs helped her body realize normal health so that she could function without dependency on any drug.