Chapter 7: Benefits of Herbal Medicine

Warm Up Questions

• Have you or anyone you know ever tried herbal medicine to treat a condition or illness?
• What are some traditional ways of treating diseases in your country?
• Do you think there are benefits to using herbal medicine instead of the traditional type of medicine used in North America?

Key Terms

antioxidants

substances that protect cells from damage from cancer-causing chemicals

Doppler Radar System

a system used to track weather patterns based on the increase or decrease in the frequency of sound or light waves

GDP

Gross Domestic Product

herbal medicine

medical treatment of illnesses and conditions based on herb and plant use

Pacific Northwest (PNW)

an area in the Northwestern United States and Western provinces of Canada located between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains

WHO

World Health Organization

Reading

1. What do Steve Jobs, Ariana Grande, and Christopher Nolan have in common?

• After Steve Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2003, he apparently delayed surgery to remove the tumour –the recommended treatment– for nine months (Rettner, 2011). During that interval, he attempted to treat his cancer with alternative medicine, including a special diet, according to news reports.
• In her weight-loss journey, Ariana Grande emphasizes nutrient-dense diets, which include dandelion tea to promote the intake of antioxidants and aid blood sugar control as well as prevent cancer.
• Christopher Nolan, on the other hand, isn’t a big fan of losing weight or caring much about diet. However, he’d invested in several companies within the industry and regional health organizations that use such treatment strategies.

At this point, you have probably found the key to this puzzle among them: herbal medicine.

Why is Herbal Medicine Worth the Discussion?

2. You may feel confused why Christopher Nolan, a film director, would be willing to devote so much of his money to a totally unrelated industry –a seemingly low-profile and underdeveloped area of study. But here are the facts: By the year 2030, global revenue for herbal medicine will reach USD $356 billion (Market Research Future, 2022). In Washington State alone, the annual GDP contribution of hops (a kind of herb) production is $482.2 million, placing it number one in the country (Washington State Department of Agriculture, 2021).

3. When it turns from business to consumption, the statistics are far more impressive. According to the University of Texas at El Paso, more than half of the adult population in the United States consumes some type of dietary supplement (University of Texas at El Paso, n.d.). About one third of the adult U.S. population uses medicinal herbs as some form of alternative therapy.

What Makes Herbal Medicine Stand Out?

4. What’s worth mentioning is that in recent years, it’s actually the COVID-19 pandemic that pushed herbal medicine onto the stage of healthcare. Pharmaceutical scholars at the University College of London and Liverpool John Moores University anticipate that many patients can add symptomatic treatments, such as herbal medicines, to their current treatment with COVID (Silveira et al., 2020). In their study, they selected several species listed by the WHO that were widely used in curing respiratory diseases and evaluated their performance compared with modern medicine such as ibuprofen.

5. The results are astonishing: A total of 39 herbal medicines were identified as very likely to appeal to the COVID-19 patient. While the following assessments are still being conducted, we can see the enormous potential lying beneath herbal medicine in the healthcare industry.

6. Fighting diseases with herbs can be traced back to the past decades when herbs are considered dietary supplements and are subject to regulation as specified in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, which provides a very different framework for the regulation of herbal products other than pharmaceutical drugs (Wachtel-Galor & Benzie, 2011).

Importance of Herbs

7. Herbs are equally important as members of their ecosystem as they are to us. Hundreds of animal species in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) forest and many of them live on herbs as food. Insects, especially pollinators, depend on plants for a mutual relationship.

8. With the development of technology and computerized surveillance systems, farmers nowadays are able to monitor, and track, real-time climate activities as well as the health status of the herbs. Technologists invent systems that rely on historical weather patterns that have been passed down through generations, rather than traditional Doppler radar systems used in agriculture for a long time.

9. Climate change presents new challenges to land managers. At stake is the ability to make thoughtful, science-based decisions and to add climate change considerations to our project and management plans. Scientists also must prioritize the opportunities that can be included in adaptation strategies because funding and time are limited, now more than ever (Devine et al., 2012).

Conclusion

10. Scientists alone cannot save our herbs. Farmers, as practitioners, are the people who live with these plants throughout their lives. Even though automatic irrigation systems and monitors can maintain the plants within a good environment, certain herbs that require strict living conditions still need farmers to take care of their growth.

11. Lisa Hamilton, a natural journalist and blogger, went on a trip to rural Oregon in 2009 to meet a member of the Farmers Conservation Alliance (FCA), whose work benefits local rural communities. They educate farmers about saving energy and water and in turn money. They educate the larger public about rural people and issues; among their projects are these great slideshows that tell the stories of particularly innovative individuals. They’re also developing greener technology for rural areas, such as low-impact hydroelectric power.

12. “I was surprised to come across a glimmer of hope—peace, even—in an ingenious invention with a humble name: the farmers’ screen,” Lisa said when she first saw the farmers’ invention to control water loss from the soil. She called them “unconventional farmers” (Hamilton, 2009).

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Comprehension Questions

1. Why do you think Christopher Nolan, a film director, was willing to devote so much of his money to the totally unrelated industry of herbal medicine?
2. What is the main reason mentioned by the author for the recent increase in interest in herbal medicine?
3. The author lists some ways that herbs are important. What is one way that herbs are important? Give an example of one of the ways.
4. What are two ways that technology can help farmers nowadays? Give one example.
5. What are some of the challenges that climate change has on farming? Give one example.
6. What example of an invention does Lisa Hamilton give at the end of the article? Why do you think she calls the farmers who invented it “unconventional farmers”?

Chapter 7 Answer Key

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary Practice

Definitions Chapter 7

Fill in the Blanks Chapter 7

Collocations Chapter 7

References

Devine, W., Aubry, C., Bower, A., Miller, J. & Maggiulli Ahr, N. (2012). Climate change and forest trees in the pacific northwest: A vulnerability assessment and recommended actions for national forests. U.S. Forest Service & United States Department of Agriculture. https://ecoshare.info/projects/ccft/

Market Research Future. (2022). Herbal medicine market size worth USD 356 billion by 2030 at 10.9% CAGR – Report by Market Research Future (MRFR). Yahoo! Finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/herbal-medicine-market-size-worth-133000998.html

Rettner, R. (2011, Oct. 14). Did alternative medicine kill Steve Jobs? LiveScience. https://www.livescience.com/16551-steve-jobs-alternative-medicine-pancreatic-cancer-treatment.html.

Silveira, D., Prieto-Garcia, J.M., Boylan, F.  Estrada, O., Fonseca-Bazzo, Y.M., Jamal, C.M., Magalhães, P.O., Pereira, E.O., Tomczyk, M.,  Heinrich, M. (2020). COVID-19: Is there evidence for the use of herbal medicines as adjuvant symptomatic therapy? Frontiers in Pharmacology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2020.581840

University of Texas at El Paso (n.d.). How popular is herbal medicine in the U.S.? https://www.utep.edu/herbal-safety/top-selling-herbal-products-in-the-us.html

Wachtel-Galor, S. & Benzie, I.F.F. (2011). Chapter 1: Herbal medicine: An introduction to its history, usage, regulation, current trends, and research needs. In S. Wachtel-Galor & I.F.F. Benzie, (Eds.) Herbal medicine: Biomolecular and clinical aspects (2nd ed.). CRC Press/Taylor & Francis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92773/

Washington State Department of Agriculture. (2021). Washington agriculture. https://agr.wa.gov/washington-agriculture.

Hamilton, L. (2009, June 19). Unconventional farmers: Simple ingenuity in the Pacific Northwest. Audubon. https://www.audubon.org/news/unconventional-farmers-simple-ingenuity-pacific-northwest.