Herb-Drug Interactions Aren't What The Internet Says They Are

But in the meantime, today, we're going to talk about just this problem, what I see happening in the space and how to better navigate it and why we think and why I think we need better conversations around this topic.

So I've already kind of laid the foundation that there's a lot of fear surrounding this topic in the alternative health and wellness space and in the medical space.

So if you ask your doctor if you can take herbs while you're on drugs, they probably aren't going to be very favorable.

Most doctors think herbs are either dangerous or they're ineffective, so why do we need them? They don't see the importance of herbs in helping people with their health.

They don't have the perspectives that you or I might have.

They're not coming to this with the same information that we are coming to this with.

It's not in their training.

It's not in their purview.

They don't have the space to learn herbalism.

That's an entirely different craft.

So Most doctors are openly dismissive of herbs.

If you are coming on drugs and you want to talk to your doctor about what herbs to take, they're most likely not going to be your best friends in navigating that topic.

And as you are interacting with blogs and health influencers and doctors and people talking about these things in the space, you're going to see a lot of fear in the conversations.

You're going to see long lists of contraindications.

You're going to see long lists of herb-drug interactions.

You are going to see a lot of scenarios happening that you think you have to be aware of in navigating herbal recommendations in practice.

The truth of the matter is Most herb-drug interactions are overblown and have stepped into the theoretical side.

So we have pharmacists in labs telling us what's possible.

They're not telling us what's probable.

They're not They're not telling us what's going to happen when we have an actual human and an actual whole herb.

They're thinking, okay, this herb has this one property, and if we extract this property and we magnify it, then this is a possible outcome.

But just because it's theoretically possible doesn't mean it's what actually happens when we are in clinical practice.

And this is the conversation we need to start having because when we approach this topic out of fear, one of two things happens.

One, we avoid it and we don't help people that are on it.

drugs and then they don't get served in this other capacity that could really really serve them or we are afraid and we strap ourselves into this spot where we are so drowning in all the theory and the contraindications that we don't feel confident making or any herbal recommendations and all of a sudden like our materia medica is gone because we have nothing left to recommend and that can very easily happen if you start just picking up every piece of information that's out there on the internet.