If you like fine dining, you will like herbal medicine.

What is it about eating a nice meal, in a nice place, with a bunch of family and friends that feels so good? Is it the people, the ambience, the food itself? Obviously it is all of the above, but I want to highlight one important point about the food, which is that we want our food to actually look like a product that came from the planet we live on. We want our food to look like food, right?

All of us believe that our food should look like it came from nature. Carrots need to look like carrots, broccoli like broccoli, etc. Even though vitamin supplements exist for the purpose of nurturing the malnourished, they will never replace a good hearty meal of real food that looks like it came from nature. I believe we all feel that. We would all be terribly insulted if our waiter brought us a plate full of pills and capsules, with added “artificial flavours” to help them go down.

Every parent has experience in watching their children grow from tiny bean sprouts up to sturdy strong adults, purely from eating food that looked like it came from nature. We all have a deep seated trust that our food will provide for us the basic nutrients to grow and be healthy. Of course I am talking about real, whole foods, that are fresh. I am not talking about overly processed and refined foods that may obviously lead to disease.

You get my gist right? We all trust that when our food is healthy, we will be healthy. We all know what healthy food is – whole, fresh, with lots of variety, looks like it came from Nature…

But then why do many of us still think that our medicine needs to be different? Have you ever asked yourself why you may spend all day cooking a Thanksgiving meal, having shopped for the finest looking vegetables and the best free range organic turkey you could find, but then turn around the next day and pop a bunch of advil, or some other type of synthetic medicine? Does that not seem a bit strange to you, considering that all of our medicines up to just a hundred or so years ago were nature derived?

Why do we trust that nature can grow babies into strong adults, but not make us better when we are sick? This is a bit of a disconnect to me. Could it be that we were tricked somehow through media, branding, marketing, and big industry aimed at taking away our connection to natures pharmacy?

Whenever I visit my parents home I will watch a little television (do not have one at home) and I will be absolutely amazed at the amount of advertisements that push synthetic medicines for every problem under the sun! They use attractive models who showcase their products in shinning fancy boxes, with glossy colourful lettering, declaring this is the best remedy for your allergies, your eczema, your depression, or whatever. These ads even play on ones emotions by depicting real life scenarios, so as to help the audience connect to their message – which is “Hey folks! Ask your Doctor for a prescription to buy my product!” Is this really ethical? How good is the average person at separating out good marketing versus good medicine?

Chinese herbal medicine cannot be marketed on the same scale, simply because there are way too many variables to take into account when writing a prescription. As I said in a previous blog, with just 6 different herbs in a formula I could come up with almost 6 trillion different recipes! How could a company ever market that. How could a company ever market the complexities of the unique individual, it is impossible.

This is why we have herbal medicines that, like our food, come from nature. They are perfect the way they are. For thousands upon thousands of years people learned how to use natural medicines to treat pretty much every single disorder in existence, and we still do. Natural medicine modalities like Chinese medicine take great pride in being able to treat the really tough stuff, the real degenerative, chronic and even life challenging stuff with herbal medicines. This is real, as real as the nice plate of Natural foods you love to enjoy at your favourite restaurant.

Pharmaceutical medicines do have a place and they do save lives – for sure. Good doctors will know when these medicines may be necessary. Good doctors also know of the power of properly prescribed herbal medicines, using them as a starting place – first.

Wishing you health,

Dr. Trevor Erikson

Disclaimer – Herbal medicines do not taste as good as fine dining, that is for sure!