An excerpt from Be Your Own Herbalist by Michelle Schoffro Cook, PhD, DNM I did not know that an uneventful spring day almost twenty-five years ago would become one of such significance in my life. I was nineteen and had just withdrawn from a university degree program in journalism because of severe illness. A few years earlier, my doctors had diagnosed a rare genetic disease. They proceeded to subject my body to harsh treatment that did nothing to alleviate the original symptoms but instead left me fragile, exhausted, and devastated as I watched my dreams and life fall apart. By the time I was nineteen, my life was not going as planned, but I had made peace with it. On this particular spring day, I managed to get myself out of bed, washed, clothed, and onto the elevator, and even to take the fifty or so steps to sit on a park bench beside a nearby canal. Proud and exhausted from this unusual experience of getting myself outdoors, I was happy to sit in the sunlight and regain my breath. I was accustomed to spending the days alone in silence and contemplation: thinking and getting in touch with my feelings had replaced the physical activities that had once occupied my days. I looked around and noticed that dotting the grass were clover leaves and their purple flowers, oddly shaped leaves that I later learned were lamb’s quarters, and brilliant yellow dandelion heads. I wondered about the purpose of these plants, which gardeners seemed to hate so much. Only days earlier my doctor, who practiced hundreds of miles away, had told me over the phone that there really wasn’t anything he could do to help me. He apologized with a sadness that seemed sincere and explained that the research on such a rare disease was antiquated at best. I had been hoping he would allay my fears and concerns about my health and a treatment that had produced side effects worse than the condition it was meant to treat. Instead, his words filled me with an overwhelming grief for the life I had once had and a hopelessness I never imagined possible. Yet this particular combination of grief and hopelessness, experienced on this park bench on this particular day, would change my life. While contemplating the purpose of these odd herbal misfits in the monoculture we know as grass and at the same time knowing that the most caring physician of the dozens who treated me had given up any hope of improvement in my condition, I asked myself, “What if Mother Nature provided the cure for every disease imaginable? What if these plants that gardeners dismiss as weeds could heal a person’s ills?” I felt the sunlight on my face and warming my body, and at that moment I knew that I needed to study herbs. I signed up for the only course I could find, a distance-learning course, in hopes that in the limited periods of lucidity I had each day, I could learn about herbal medicine. That day marked the first step on a powerful and amazing journey that has lasted nearly twenty-five years. I hope that reading this book will help you take an important step on your own journey. My study of Mother Nature’s medicine, as I call it, has taken many forms. That first distance-education herbal course fueled a passion for herbs that led me to read endlessly and take additional courses. As my health improved, I was able to venture on guided herb walks and voraciously research the latest studies in herbal medicine. I learned about plants that healed all sorts of diseases. “How could I not have been taught this before?” I thought, angry and hopeful both at once. I learned about plants that eliminated arthritis, those that reversed diabetes, and even plants that healed cancer. It seemed that for every illness, Mother Nature had a cure that outranked our best pharmaceutical medicine. Shockingly, many of these medicines go ignored, even though they lie right at our feet. As I grew stronger, I began to drive out to the forest near my home, carrying the manual from my first herbal course along with a bag and scissors to collect these wild medicines. It was as though a magical kingdom had appeared before me. Every time I spotted a new flower or plant, I flipped through the pages of my well-worn textbook to find out what this overlooked plant could heal. I discovered that the much-hated dandelion purifies the blood and kidneys and may even be a cancer cure. I found that calendula heals skin conditions, echinacea restores the immune system, feverfew banishes migraines, juniper heals the kidneys, milk thistle protects the liver, clover balances hormones, and St. John’s wort lifts the spirits. The list went on. How could I have seen these plants on lawns, in forests, and along riverbeds as a child, yet never have learned of their amazing healing abilities? Spurred by my newfound knowledge and greatly improved health, I continued my studies to become a board-certified doctor of natural medicine, registered nutritional consulting practitioner, certified herbal medicine practitioner, and registered orthomolecular health specialist. As my health improved, my passion for and belief in the healing abilities of herbs grew stronger. At the same time, I learned that billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies were getting rich scouring the earth for new plant compounds they could extract, synthesize, patent, and then manufacture into so-called wonder drugs that promise to reverse and even cure our worst ailments and diseases. But in separating these plant compounds from the essential nutrients and other beneficial substances found naturally alongside the original compound, and then attempting to re-create these naturally occurring compounds in the laboratory, they were actually reducing the effectiveness of the plant medicine and creating drugs that carried long lists of side effects and frequently a steep price tag. I learned that the third leading cause of death is the correct use of these drugs and that they kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. I learned that pharmaceutical companies held patents on many once-natural but now synthetically derived drugs that frequently allowed them to charge sick people hundreds or even thousands of dollars each month. I realized that many of these people were losing their pensions, their hard-earned cash, and even their homes in a desperate attempt to recover some semblance of a normal life. Millions of people couldn’t afford the drugs that they believed could restore their quality of life. I knew that the medication I had been prescribed was killing me. I had all of the “common,” “less common,” and “rare” side effects and all but three of the “extremely rare” side effects listed in the pharmaceutical books for the drug I had been told my life depended on. The only three I hadn’t experienced were blindness, coma, and death. More than a dozen specialists had told me I would surely die if I discontinued taking the medication. I decided that since they had been wrong about there being no hope for me, they were also wrong about the medication. While my decision to discontinue the medication took only a second to make, it took me nearly two years to implement. Slowly and gradually I reduced my dose until, with bated breath, I took the last pill …and waited…and waited…and waited. Finally, I had the evidence I needed to prove that my doctors, while well trained and mostly well intentioned, were wrong. Not only was I alive, but I felt hopeful again. I’m not suggesting that there is no place for pharmaceutical drugs and so-called modern medicine in our society, but total reliance on this system is failing to help many people and actively ruining the lives of many others. It certainly has its strengths in emergency medicine, but at its core it has become a system that values profit over people, and that is something I cannot accept. Conversely, Mother Nature’s medicine, along with some expert guidance, can empower people, restore hope, and bring communities — poor or rich — together. Pharmaceutical-based medicine, du
e to its often-high cost, has frequently only been available to the rich, while natural medicine is available to rich and poor alike. Additionally, natural medicine is a local option that is readily available to people around the world, no matter how remote their communities may be. Pharmaceutical giants have largely played God by determining which diseases are worthy of their attention and research, decisions that are driven largely by profit. Conversely, there is no inherent bias in natural medicine. There are natural medicines for just about every condition that exists, and more applications are being discovered almost daily. Unlike many pharmaceutical drugs that kill or cause serious side effects even when they are correctly used, most natural medicines are safe when used correctly. Natural medicines are available to the suffering people who need them, regardless of their financial resources, their location in the world, or the type of disease from which they are suffering.
Michelle Schoffro Cook, PhD, DNM, author of Be Your Own Herbalist is a certified herbalist and board-certified doctor of natural medicine. She holds advanced degrees in health nutrition, orthomolecular nutrition, and acupuncture. She lives, and grows her own food and herbal medicines, near Vancouver, BC, Canada. Her websites are DrMichelleCook.com and HealthySurvivalist.com. Excerpted from the book Be Your Own Herbalist: Essential Herbs for Health, Beauty, and Cooking. Copyright © 2016 by Michelle Schoffro Cook, PhD, DNM, Printed with permission from New World Library.