Botanical Medicines

11-04-23 00 / episode: 85

Script

"Botanical medicines that means medicines that are made from plants because botanical is just another word for saying plants.

Ok.

Now this is kind of a confusing area.

If we talk about medicine, what is a medicine? As I did a bit of research, I found there was sort of a fuzzy area.

There's some medicine that you, you take the medicine and it has an effect on your body.

A good example is uh aspirin.

Aspirin comes from plants.

It comes from willow trees originally, I think, or birch trees, one of the two and they purified aspirin out of the plant, put it into the medicine, people took it and their pain went down a bit, their fever went down a bit.

Ok.

That was good.

But then there's a lot of plants that we take that have some kind of indirect benefit that's difficult to measure.

They say it makes you better.

For instance, there's a plant called Echinacea.

Now, I haven't grown it.

I haven't bought it in a flower shop, but this funny name plant Echinacea.

Well, I once bought some tea Echinacea tea because everybody said it would help get rid of your cold if you catch a cold drink, Echinacea tea or if you don't have a cold drink the tea anyway and you won't catch a cold.

Now, the problem is it hasn't been proven to make colds better or to prevent you from getting the cold in the first place.

So, is that a medicine or not? It turns out there's a lot of plants like that, they seem to have some benefits and people take them for those good benefits.

But it's not a clear 1-1 relationship.

If I put money in my bank, my bank account gets bigger.

If I take Echinacea tea, I can't say that I won't catch a cold.

Do you have any plants that you take to prevent some kind of illness or do you have any plants that you take for other benefits? Tell me about it when you can."