Healing Arts Report
Volume 1, No.
5
SCIENCE REPORT: New guide to safe usage of medicinal plants
HEALING ARTS: Apprentices of native healers find ways to pass on the knowledge
HEALTH TRENDS: Ritual, symbolism, and health
HEALTH RESOURCES: A relaxation exercise and a home-study course in a book
COMING EVENTS: Two conferences for the health-minded
One of our most neglected medical resources is the use of herbs. We've lost contact with this heritage, partly by losing contact with the out-of-doors, which is the natural way we would become acquainted with plant properties. You can look at the aisle of over-the-counter medicines in any grocery store to see that people have not lost the wish to gain mastery over the discomforts of common health conditions.
There is a resurgence of interest in plant medicine among consumers and doctors interested in complementary medicine. At the same time, medical students in the United States receive no training in the use of herbs. Health
food and grocery stores carry herbs, packaged in ways that preserve them better than ever -- tea bags, capsules, or tinctures. Magazine articles about them proliferate. Most of the easily accessible information, however, is often incomplete because health claims made on nutritional supplements are very limited by law unless they are subjected to the same process required for drugs by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
A newly-translated book from Germany will provide professionals and consumers with valuable information regarding herbs. Every medical and health sciences library should own it.
Using Herbs and Medicinal Plants Safely
A German government book called The German Commission E Monographs is soon to be available in English. According to Mark Blumenthal, senior editor of the English translation, and author and columnist for Whole Foods magazine, this system is considered by medicinal plant experts to be the most sensible way to evaluate the therapeutic use of plants. Speaking at the WorldMed Conference
on alternative and complementary therapies, Blumenthal said that there are over 430 monographs covering about 300 herbs and herb combinations, including all the practical information anyone would want to know, such as:
* uses
* dosages
* contraindications -- conditions that make its use inadvisable
* side effects
* chemical data -- listing some of the primary chemical constituents
About 200 of those herbs have received a positive assessment by Commission E, meaning they can be sold as drugs in Germany. Commission E is the panel of experts from the German Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices, the German equivalent of the FDA. The assessment of an herb is based on available literature, which includes historical and traditional use, data, and chemical analyses, both pharmacological and toxicological. It also includes clinical and epidemiological studies, patient records, and reports from physicians.
Special Category Would Solve Legal Difficulties
Blumenthal points out that plants have been used for healing throughout history. Even animals use them instinctively. Moreover, extensive information about many of them already exists. What is needed is a special category for herbs as a separate class of medicines as well as promotion of guidelines about their use and safety. Congress clearly needs to recognize herbs as a unique category of medicines.
Blumenthal explains that in the United States there are significant difficulties, even beyond the lack of training, that interfere with making use of nature's medicines. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) allows manufacturers and marketers of herbs and other dietary supplements to give relatively extensive directions for use, including dosage, potential side effects, contraindications (if any), and other appropriate warnings.
However, DSHEA allows only limited information on the label that conveys a potential health benefit from the product. The law allows "statements of nutritional support" and so-called structure and function claims for a product but does not allow a therapeutic or drug claim or a disease prevention claim. For example, manufacturers are able to claim that capsules of cranberry powder can help maintain urinary tract health but cannot claim prevention nor treatment of urinary tract infection.
The fact is that many people use herbs as substitutes for conventional FDA-approved over-the-counter medicines in addition to using them for prevention of disease and for maintaining wellness. In order for any health claims to be made legally, herbs would have to be classified as drugs. If they were treated as new drugs, it would cost $1 - $5 million to test a single compound. In addition, as a natural product, there would be no ownership of patents with which to earn back the costs of such research.
Patents For Plant Products
Patents can be attained by inventing improved methods of processing plants and for formulating pharmaceutical or personal-care products using a plant. According to writer Karen Dean, in HerbalGram magazine, aloe vera is an example of a plant that has become more available and more popular as a source for products. Processing and storing the plant in a way that preserves its qualities is usually one of the biggest challenges. She describes a recent patent that stakes claims on components of dehydrated aloe vera gel and uses them to treat a wide variety of conditions including cancer, viral infections, and infestations.1 The claims made with this patent are so broad that she believes anyone else developing pharmaceutical applications from aloe vera needs to examine it carefully in order not to infringe on that patent.
Herb Medical School Courses
While 70 percent of the physicians in Germany regularly prescribe plants for healing, or phytomedicines, not one American medical school offers a single undergraduate course on herbal medicine. Only two medical schools offer post-graduate education classes in herbs. Columbia University in New York City has a one-week post-graduate course for physicians, and the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center has just begun the Program in Integrative Medicines for physicians.
Similarly, after twenty years of proof that diet is an effective contributor to healing, only 20 percent of American medical schools offer courses in diet and nutrition as a standard part of medical training. Medical schools have been very slow to integrate even proven therapies in their programs. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the world population in developing countries commonly uses plants for healing while the official U.S. health care system essentially ignores this valuable resource.
Commonly Used Herbs
Blumenthal is also author of the first home study course in phytomedicines for pharmacists. He has been a consultant to the Office of Alternative Medicine and the World Health Organization. Below he describes some better known herbs and their proven uses:
* Ginkgo improves peripheral circulation and increases blood flow to the brain and extremities.
* Echinacea improves immune function.
* Kava kava prevents anxiety.
* Milk thistle improves liver function.
* Oil of peppermint relieves irritable bowel syndrome if taken in enteric-coated capsules.
* Saw palmetto improves benign prostatic hyperplasia.
* Valerian can be used as a sleep aid.
* St John's wort is effective as an anti-depressant for mild to moderate cases of depression.
Blumenthal is founder and executive director of the American Botanical Council, a nonprofit group dedicated to disseminating responsible information about plant medicines. A subscription to Herbal-Gram magazine costs $25. It is packed with herbal information and the Council's own 300-book list of recommended publications on herb-related research. The German Commission E Monographs is available to our readers for $149 prepaid, freight included. After July 1, the price is $189, plus shipping. Order by Item No. B181-HAR. Call 800-373-7105.
The Herb Research Foundation is a sister organization which has a consumer hotline about herbs. Membership is $35 and includes a subscription to HerbalGram and one free herb information packet valued at $5.00. Phone 303-449-2265.
Save Species, Create New Medicines
When the famous Harvard botanist, Richard Evans Schultes, challenged his students to salvage some of the native medico-botanical lore before it got lost along with the cultures that gave it birth, Mark J. Plotkin, Ph.D. accepted the challenge. According to Schultes, Plotkin is one of "the last generation of ethnobotanists who will be able to see the Amazonian Indians living a life not all that different from their ancestors of thousands of years before."2
Civilization is rapidly encroaching on primitive peoples and their immediate environment. The pace is accelerated due to world wars, commercial interests, missionaries, and tourism. One of these changes is that the necessities of life are now being brought in from outside the culture. People who once were creative in their use of the immediate environment have come to devalue their own knowledge and skills. To illustrate this, Plotkin shows photographs of the shamans with whom he worked. Within ten years, the transition from breech cloths to contemporary clothing and the transformation of the environment from deep forest to open fields can be observed.
Possible Cures For Diabetes and Other Diseases
Plotkin tells of a native woman who was dying of diabetes. Her urine was so sweet that ants gathered to it on the jungle floor. Plotkin's shaman teacher brought her a plant that cured her. Overnight, her blood sugar returned to normal from almost four times that amount. In a recent phone interview Plotkin said he saw her in September, 1996, two years after the original event and she is continuing to do well, taking the medicine only as needed. "In fact," he added, "two more women have come forward with diabetes and they are taking the medicine and doing well, too."
Standardized Extracts
Plotkin would like to see the development of standardized extracts in addition to single chemical components, which would make the whole process of collecting these plants affordable and timely. As the laws stand now, developing a drug can cost in excess of $50 million and often takes fifteen years before it can be approved.
With the rapid destruction of the rain forest, it may be too late to acquire the knowledge, much less the plants. By using standardized extracts, we could pay the indigenous culture to grow the plants. This would save the plants, provide a livelihood for the indigenous people, and, most importantly, create new and needed medicines.
Teaching Tribes To Value Their Culture
Plotkin promised one of the old shamans that he would come back one day and give the tribe written accounts of what he had learned from them. For many years, the last shamans have had no apprentices. With interest being shown the shamans by the conventional Western world, they have been able to attract new apprentices. In Plotkin's case, the shaman's apprentices are fact-checking his writing and helping translate his work back into their own language. Plotkin believes that one of the most important aspects of this project is the validation of their own culture in their eyes. It is helping them understand the global importance of their unique knowledge.
Belize Healer Shares His Knowledge
Rosita Arvigo, a naprapathic physician born in Chicago, homesteaded with her family in Belize. While Dr. Arvigo and her husband, Dr. Greg Shropshire, built their farm and ran a healing clinic, Arvigo would regularly walk two hours through the jungle to meet with the respected healer, Don Elijio Panti. She tells of the process of winning his trust, helping him collect and prepare plants for medicinal use, being barely able to keep up with him in spite of his being twice her age, and eventually being taught by him. When Don Elijio died in February, 1996 at the age of 103, she made a commitment to him. She and Dr. Shropshire would continue to run a clinic in Belize where they see patients and carry on Don Elijio's work.
During the four years that Arvigo studied with Don Elijio, they watched the destruction of hundreds of acres of rain forest. However, the conservation-minded nation of Belize, set aside a forest reserve for the study and preservation of medicinal plants. In order
to protect Don Elijio's wisdom, his mystical methods of healing, and the pharmacy known as the rain forest, Arvigo has played a pivotal role by creating many educational projects.
On their farm, Drs. Arvigo and Shropshire, along with Dr. Michael Balick of the New York Botanical Garden, founded the Ix Chel Tropical Research Foundation with the specific purpose of educating people about medicinal plants. One of Ix Chel's educational tools, created to honor Don Elijio, is the Panti Maya Medicine Trail. Arvigo and her son originally bushed the trail and painted signs identifying thirty-five of the most useful plants growing there. Shropshire built a thatched healer's hut, which is a replica of Don Elijio's old clinic. Thousands of students, tourists, and health professionals visit the Trail each year.
The Foundation has created a series of classes and seminars for the people of Belize as part of the educational program. A recently-produced video called Diary of a Belizean Girl: Learning Herbal Wisdom from our Elders is distributed and shown to all Belizean school children without charge.
Early in 1997, the Ix Chel Tropical Research Foundation introduced a new line of herbal dietary supplements, "Rain Forest Remedies". Seven different extracts have been produced based on a combination of ancient Maya traditions and modern herbalism. Products include "Female Tonic", " Male Tonic", "Back Support", and "Belly Be Good", a formula to soothe and support the digestive system.
Drs. Arvigo and Balick have written a book entitled, Rain Forest Remedies: 100 Healing Herbs of Belize. In it, they discuss the ancient traditional uses of herbs for healing in Central America, based on their research with elderly traditional healers such as Don Elijio Panti, Hortense Robinson, Thomas Green, and many other practitioners in Belize. They are in the process of writing an encyclopedia of the useful plants of Belize.
Mark Plotkin, author of Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, can be contacted through the American Botanical Council at 512-331-8868. Visit his ethnobotany website at http:www.ethnobotany.org for interviews and more.
Read about Rosita Arvigo's apprenticeship in her book, Sastun, published by Harper San Francisco in 1994. For information about current seminars, write: Ix Chel Tropical Research Foundation, San Ignacio, General Delivery, Cayo District, Belize, Central America. If you wish to make a tax-deductible donation to the Belize Ethnobotany Project, the collaborative study of the useful plants of Belize by New York Botanical Garden and Ix Chel Foundation, write the check to New York Botanical Garden --Belize Ethnobotany Project and mail it to Michael Balick, Ph.D., Director of the Institute of Economic Botany, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458. Rain Forest Remedies and books by Balick and Arvigo are distributed by Lotus Brands, 414-889-8561
Ritual, Symbolism, and Health
While not all ritual depends on the involvement of other people, community -- even a temporary one -- often plays a vital role. Community provides significance and support. While the dictionary definition of `ritual' focuses on form or repetition of prescribed practices, living ritual has within it room for flexibility and attention to specific needs. The dictionary definition leaves out the most important parts -- context and meaning.
Lewis Mehl-Madrona, M.D., author of Coyote Medicine, describes certain essential qualities of ritual. He says that "ritual helps human beings to trust". Through ritual we can be changed by an energy that is not our own, a power that brings us into harmony with the earth. He suggests that:
* the location of the ritual must be situated carefully in its physical space
* it must be approached as a transformative process
* and to fulfill its role as catalyst, its purpose must be clearly stated
The doctor laments how modern medicine, even psychotherapy, has become procedure- and prescription-driven. This is unfortunate because our psyches respond powerfully to ritual. There is a natural and sensual draw in ritual prayer, movement, and music. Ritual, he believes, rekindles faith that prayers are answered. He tells of experiencing, time after time, working with a patient for months with almost no improvement of their illness. Then they "would do a ritual together, and an im-mutable problem would transform itself, literally overnight".
Ritual in Native American Medicine
In Coyote Medicine, Mehl-Madrona describes his personal struggle to bridge the cultural gap and emphatically different paradigms of his mixed Native American/ Kentucky heritage and his conventional Western medical training. He was a child prodigy and finished medical school at an early age. However, he began four residencies, earned a doctorate, ran a health clinic, was a medical researcher, and worked in numerous hospitals before he was able to settle his conflicts over the practice of medicine well enough to complete a residency.
During those difficult years, he sought out Native American healers and began to learn their practice of medicine. It was vital for him to find a way to synthesize these two world views because both were essential to him. Much of his study with healers revolved around sweat lodge rituals which allow participants to experience the arising of symbols which contribute to their healing. In our culture, this is a practice most often experienced by artists. The status of artists on the edge of conventional society reflects the lack of cultural connection. With the current development of imagery work and the growing appreciation of mind/body and ethnic medicines, however, using imagery for healing is beginning to find its way into our culture.
Symbols Different From Signs
A ritual may be practiced mechanically, only for its form and without an openness to its many levels of possibility. We often call signs symbols but signs are what we consciously design, for example, the logo for a product or company. Carl Jung explains in his essay on approaching the unconscious in Man and His Symbols, "... a symbol always stands for something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. Symbols, moreover, are natural and spontaneous products." They arise from the unconscious.
Symbols seem to be involuntary expressions emanating from a collective origin. They imply perceiving beyond our ordinary senses, beyond the concrete. In Seeing With the Mind's Eye, author Mike Samuels, M.D. describes them as "a mechanism for understanding". A symbol is a bridge between the physical world limited by our senses and the metaphysical one which we do not fully comprehend. Samuels goes on to say, "The effect of a particular symbol is different for each perceiver of that symbol; but there are generalizations that link most people's experiences."
Ritual And The Collective Unconscious
Biologist Rupert Sheldrake postulates that morphogenetic fields (discussed in the last issue of Healing Arts Report) might also have a kind of memory which could explain Jung's concept of the collective unconscious and the continuing power of ritual. According to Sheldrake, "... for a ritual to be effective it has to link to these ancient patterns or morphic fields. If you make up something totally new with no background, it won't have any resonant power, at least to start with." He describes the flowering of new forms of religious ritual and how the forms often seem to reinvent old ones, which may give them some power. In an interview for Hootenanny magazine, he points out how "traditional cultures believe that rituals are a way of connecting through time, of collapsing time."
According to Professor Lawrence E. Sullivan, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University, it is natural for health and healing to be a subject connected to religion. Founders of the great religious traditions not only healed people but also presented new understandings of wholeness or health. Often, the search for healing requires developing a new relationship with others and the world. Symptoms become symbols of our state of being. In illness, the forces that create and destroy us become visible. Finding meaning becomes an achievement. Sullivan says, we "are impelled to try to discover, clarify, or achieve meaning through creative expression."
Rituals Provide Focus In Creative And Life Cycles
For twenty years, Mbali Umoja has designed and implemented art programs in schools, psychiatric hospitals, and prisons. Her way of working with people is through ritual because she believes ritual allows individuals to use them as centering tools and guides. Ritual provides the vehicle for acting on and talking about the meaning of one's life.
At Common Boundary's conference on Intentional Living, presenter, Umoja reveals ritual as a place to focus on and discover meaning. In our culture, most of us are immigrants transported into a new culture. We have become alienated from the internal language of the spirit of our ancestors. We have not yet replaced or redeveloped a language that works for us. Through a few simple acts, she brings her workshop participants in touch with the power and experience of ritual and the role it can play in healing cultural estrangement.
Ancient Rituals
Umoja points out that one of the oldest rituals is that of honoring ancestors. Other ancient rituals include libation, feasting, silence, joyful noise, and the creation of sacred space. In her workshop, each participant names several ancestors they wish to honor. Whoever speaks holds a huge and magnificent seed pod from Umoja's homeland of Barbados and then passes it to the next person.
Participants report the effects:
* they feel emotionally moved by thinking deeply of and speaking aloud the name of the people being honored
* they are surprised at their own honoring of some people who are younger or unrelated, yet realizing that the person is an ancestor in spirit, if not in fact
* they sense the presence of the person named
Over all, this ritual provides connection, a sense of origin, and a unique place in the world.
Participants discuss personal rituals which instigate joy, provide new viewpoints or actions to take, or evoke wholeness and health. In contrast, one person describes what he called rut-uals which are distinguished by providing comfort or efficiency but not an open door through which new information could be received. Umoja describes rituals as "the name I call myself when I want myself to answer."
Healing At-Risk Youth
By using ritual activities in rites-of-passage programs for at-risk youth, Umoja creates a forum in which the youngsters can speak about the ideas and feelings that are most important to them. She emphasizes the empowering qualities of sharing "meaning" with them and the youngsters' participation in creative activity.
Through the use of colors, natural objects, and descriptive symbolism brought into the dialog by all participants, she engages them in contemplating their life actions. In their work on creative projects, they are encouraged to become aware of what is given and what they can give back to the community. She suggests that people wanting to contribute healing to their community look for already-existing mechanisms which can serve as rites-of-passage, such as drill teams or sports teams. These teams can provide a framework for self-designed challenging goals and a final initiation or celebration which is naturally appreciated by the commun- ity and which can be shared with it.
Lewis Mehl-Madrona, M.D., research assistant professor in the Native American Research and Training Center at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, is author of Coyote Medicine published by Scribner, New York, 1997.
Mike Samuels, M.D. is author of Well Baby Book and Seeing With the Mind's Eye. He is founder and director of Art As A Healing Force project. He uses art and guided imagery with cancer patients and people with life threatening illnesses. He can be reached at 415-868-0533.
Rupert Sheldrake lives in London. He is author of Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science published by The Berkeley Publishing Group, New York 1995. The Putnam Berkeley Web site address is http://www. Berkeley.com
Lawrence E. Sullivan, Ph.D. is on sabbatical this year from his position as director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard. He is editor of Healing and Restoring: Health and Medicine in the World's Religious Traditions, and author of Icanchu's Dream. Both books deal with healing, symbolism, and ritual.
Mbali Umoja uses elements from three well- known antidrug and anti-violence projects: Peacetools, the Banner Project, and Project RESPECT. She recommends reading Bill Alexander's Management of the Spirit. Umoja currently lives and works in Barbados, West Indies. To reach her for workshops, contact Edward B. Bell, Sr., at 56 E. Sedgwick Street, Philadelphia, PA 19119, 215-849-8049.
Learning to Relax
To James S. Gordon, M.D., author of Manifesto for a New Medicine, mind-body approaches are "central to the new medicine". They are essential to the most direct form of primary care, which is self-care. These approaches include visualization, biofeedback, hypnosis, waking dream, relaxation, imagery, meditation, and more. They are ways of using the mind's power for the sake of one's health. Gordon tells about Edmund Jacobson's progressive muscular relaxation. Jacobson was a physician who taught at Harvard almost 90 years ago. He observed that mental or emotional stimuli or stress cause our skeletal muscles and the smooth muscles of organs to contract. When this occurs over long periods of time, the body cannot fully recuperate and becomes exhausted, setting the stage for illness.
In order to bypass the contradictory order of telling a person to "try to relax", Jacobson thought he could find a way to help them do it. First, he had them create more tension in muscles that are under conscious control and then let go of them. He figured that the same tension and relaxation would occur in the muscles of the internal organs which are controlled by the autonomic nervous system. This turns out to be correct.
Here is how Gordon suggests practicing. Begin at the feet and move up, contracting and relaxing each group of muscles. Inhale with each contraction, exhale with each relaxation. The muscle groups are: feet, calves, thighs, genitals, anus, abdomen, chest, shoulders, upper arms, forearms, hands, neck, face, scalp, and back.
When Gordon first tried this exercise on himself, he found that it worked. He believes it is a good way of learning how to meditate and that it has several distinct advantages:
* it allows the person to develop greater awareness of his own body
* it provides immediate positive feedback while giving the person something to do
* it feels safe to someone who is not used to the silence or apparent passivity of concentration or awareness exercises
Relaxation has distinct physical effects. It relaxes muscles, decreases blood pressure, respiratory rate, and the production of stress hormones. It slows brain waves, improves immunity, improves mood, and lessens pain.3
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., is founder of the Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. He also notes that mental and emotional factors have significant influence on our health. At his clinic, they teach meditation to people who have a wide range of medical problems, most of them life-threatening. They learn how to take care of themselves as an adjunct to conventional medical treatment. The eight-week self-directed program in the art of conscious living is now in book form, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. Delta, New York, 1991.
James S. Gordon's Center for Mind-Body Medicine is located in Washington, DC. Phone
202-966-7338. Jon Kabat-Zinn's Stress Reduction Clinic is in Worcester, MA. Call 508-856-2656 for more information.
Herbs and Healing
Gaia Herbal Research Institute will be holding their annual symposium, Medicines From the Earth, in Black Mountain, North Carolina May 31 to June 2. People with all levels of knowledge are welcome. Herbal experts from around the country will be giving workshops, lectures, and herb walks. For more information, phone 800-252-0688.
The International Society for the Study of Subtle Energy and Energy Medicine will be holding their seventh annual conference Planetary Energies: Interconnections and Healing in Boulder, Colorado June 13-18. For more information phone 303-278-2228 or fax 303-279-3539.
Best wishes,
Barbara June Appelgren, Editor
ENDNOTES
1. The inventors of this process for dehydrated aloe vera gel are Bill H. McAnalley and others. The patent, No. 308,838, is assigned to Carrington Laboratories, Inc., Irving, Texas, and was issued on May 3, 1994.
2. As stated by Richard Evans Schultes in the foreward to Mark J. Plotkin, Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice (New York: Viking, 1993).
3. See J. Gordon, Manifesto for a New Medicine, (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1996):116-119.
Healing Arts Report
Advisory Board Members:
Deborah Crabbe, C.N.M., M.S. William Gough, M.S.
Marc Micozzi, M.D., Ph.D. Joel Shepperd, M.D.
Healing Arts Report is published monthly by Zillah, Inc.
Copyright 1997 by Healing Arts Report
Mailing address: P.O. Box 1728, Winchester, VA 22601
Editor: BJ Appelgren Publisher: Bruce Appelgren
Internet Editor: Mark Schulte Editorial Assistant: Buster Katz
Healing Arts Report presents educational health-related information and news only. The material contained herein is intended for general information and should not be construed as medical advice or medical opinions. It does not apply to specific medical conditions, treatments, or other specific factual circumstances. It does not constitute recommendations for self-treatment nor is it intended to replace consultations with qualified medical care providers or information provided by manufacturers or retailers about their products. Decisions regarding diagnosis and treatment are to be made by the reader in the exercise of his or her judgment. The source of all news and information contained herein is provided. Healing Arts Report does not test or otherwise independently verify nor warrant the validity, accuracy, timeliness, completeness, or utility of its contents.
