When choosing between chemical pills and sets of herbs, most people choose herbs. Because they think they are more environmentally friendly, and therefore safer. Let’s see if this is really the case.
Why do plants have a therapeutic effect
Let’s look at the plant in terms of chemistry. Any chamomile is a huge factory with a bunch of different workshops, in each of which the transformation of certain chemicals into other chemicals takes place. And these workshops themselves consist of chemicals. In fact, any plant is a thousand different chemicals connected to each other.
If we swallow the plant, all of these substances will reach our stomachs. Some of them will be neutralized by the digestive system. For example, by hydrochloric acid in the stomach or by the liver. The main function of the liver is precisely to turn substances that can harm our body into substances that are harmless or at least less harmful. The rest of the substances that can’t be neutralized get into our bloodstream. They are transported throughout the body and have various effects.
The problem is that the plant does not contain one particular substance, but many different ones that have different effects. For example, in chamomile, the substance responsible for its anti-inflammatory, sedative (from Latin sedatio “soothing”) and analgesic properties is responsible for one single substance – hamazulene. That is, if we want to get an analgesic effect, we need only this substance. The remaining thousands of substances contained in chamomile will have a non-main (side) effect, which in a particular case may be undesirable, or even harmful.
How to make a drug less harmful
So what to do in order to get rid of all these ballast substances? In folk medicine, there are many ways to do this. The easiest way is to mechanically separate the part that contains the necessary substance. For example, if the substance is in the roots, we don’t have to eat the stem and leaves.
You can also make a decoction. This will work if the desired component is soluble in water and the other substances are not. Or vice versa, if the desired substance is insoluble in water, you can get rid of the water-soluble unnecessary substances. But this method is not ideal either. The plant usually has more than one water-soluble substance, and a significant amount of the unnecessary substance seeps in with the desired substance.
You can dry the plant. In the process of drying, some of the unnecessary substances will break down and we will be left with a cleaner product.
There are different folk methods of cleaning. The problem is that to do everything really well, you have to understand what you have to do and why. To understand what substance the plant contains, what substances prevent it from separating, how to separate them. In other words, one must have a serious knowledge of chemistry. And even knowledge does not guarantee a high degree of purification. Because some substances are very similar in their physical and chemical properties, and it is extremely difficult to separate them from each other. And it is impossible to do many things at home, unless you have a vacuum high-temperature distillation unit somewhere in your closet, for example.
So the degree of purification of the right substance from the unnecessary in this case is quite low. But the good news is that there are specially trained people who can maximally purify the desired substance. And also make sure that you get a strictly specific dose of the substance, not the vague “5 sheets per 2 liters of hot water.” After all, even if it is a medicine, exceeding the dosage may well be detrimental. And make it so that the substance is convenient to consume. Not in the form of a greenish slurry, but, for example, in the form of a small compressed tablet.
What pills are made of
Yes, in fact, many pills do just that – they take a medicinal plant, purify it from unnecessary stuff, isolate a particular active ingredient, and pack it in a convenient form for consumption. That is, many pills are essentially the same plant, only without the harmful impurities. Created by a proven technology and under the supervision of specialists.
Sometimes it happens that it is difficult or economically unprofitable to purify a certain substance. In this case, the substance is created artificially. That is, they combine some substances with others in order to obtain the desired substance. But one need not fear this either. The molecules of chamazulene, mentioned above, obtained by purifying chamomile from impurities, or the molecules of the same chamazulene, created artificially, are exactly the same. They consist of exactly the same atoms, have the same structure and have exactly the same effect.
How plants have healing properties
It’s worth realizing that plants don’t grow to cure us of disease. They live their lives – they grow their own leaves, fight insects that want to eat their stems, and produce pollen to continue their lineage. And only by happy coincidence does a particular species produce a substance that can help cure a human disease. The plant began to produce this substance for a completely different purpose. For example, the substance mentioned earlier, which humans use as a painkiller, the plant produced, for example, for protection against insects. By ingesting this substance, the insect would be paralyzed, and it would not be able to harm the plant any further.
That is, its main function is not to anesthetize. To anesthetize is its side function. The substance may be ideal for paralyzing insects, but it has significant disadvantages in anesthetizing.
Why medications have side effects
The main reason why many drugs have side effects is precisely because we are not using the perfect substance.
There are receptors in every cell of our enormous organism. These are switches, which, when pressed, activate a certain mechanism. Medicines act on these switches and switch everything so that the body is cured.
The only problem is that many receptors are similar to each other. And one drug does not act on a specific group of cells, for example, in the lungs. It also switches receptors in the cells of the liver, kidneys, heart, and any other organs. It can be compared to carpet bombing – we have accomplished our task, but we have also damaged many other organs in the process. All medicines that are derived from plants are just that.
Modern pharmacology is working to create drugs that will hit a specific target as precisely as possible, causing minimal harm. These drugs are called selective (from Latin seligere “to choose”) – that is, they act selectively on specific receptors. Because of this, in the future, drugs will cause fewer and fewer side effects, provided, of course, that they are taken correctly.
And finally. Many opponents of traditional medicine cite as one of their arguments that the main goal of doctors is to make money. Well, the phytotherapy (herbal sales) market is a $60 billion global market, and the sale of medicinal plants remains a largely unregulated and uncontrolled area.
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