I thought this was a pretty cool article that you guys might enjoy. I'm not exactly sure where I stand on most of the so called "natural medicines", but I do think the subject is really interesting.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/natures_pharmacy_kilham
As the debate over health care reform rages on and insurance premiums climb precipitously higher, the state of modern medicine is in critical condition. More and more people are falling ill, while increasingly fewer have access to the pricey, patented drugs that purport to cure them. The situation looks dire—that is, unless you ask author, professor, and intrepid botanical explorer Chris Kilham. The solution to our health care woes, he insists, is growing all around us: plant medicines. Having traveled to over 20 countries seeking out the most remarkable remedies nature has to offer, Kilham works to bring the powerful healing effects of these little-known plants to the rest of the world.
I recently chatted with Chris Kilham about medicine hunting, Amazonian shamanism, and his upcoming appearance at Evolver Atlanta’s EvolverFest 2010.
RS: You go by the title Chris Kilham, “Medicine Hunter.” What does this mean exactly?
Chris Kilham: Well, I investigate plant medicines—you know, they can be roots, flowers, seeds, nut oils, whatever they might be—in different native places around the world. So you know, India, China, South and Central America. I’ve been doing a lot of work in the Amazon over the past dozen years or so.
I investigate plants that in almost all cases I already know about. So I go to the Amazon to investigate, let’s say, cat’s claw. You know, cat’s claw is out there, there’s a lot of information on it. But I may want to help to get this plant greater recognition, broader use, broader trade. So I’ll go to these native places and spend time with anybody and everybody who’s involved with the plant. And that inevitably leads to participating in rituals and ceremonies and activities that might be different from what we’re doing back here in the U.S. And then when I come back here, I help to establish trade between companies and native entities so they can get an economic benefit from the trade in these plants—and do it in a way that’s ethical and environmentally sustainable.
And then to add to that I spend a lot of time on television these days—on Fox, on other news channels—promoting plant medicine to the world. Letting people know about these things so they understand that these are real, these things work. These aren’t secondary or alternative—these are the most rock-solid, guaranteed beneficial pharmacy we’ve got. So that’s kind of what I do.
And there’s a big challenge then in convincing people of the efficacy of plant medicines over standard pharmaceuticals?
Well, yeah, I mean, we are the single most drug-crazed culture in the entire world. Our pharmaceutical use is, I think, five times that of other developed countries. We’re insane about drugs. And so as a result, we’re heavily marketed to, the entire health system is biased toward promoting and dispensing these drugs, and most of the health system mechanisms are basically drug delivery mechanisms. So it’s deeply entrenched in our culture. And yet plant medicine is the number one most popular medicine in use today on planet Earth. So sometimes people really appreciate getting that perspective: “Oh, this is the number one category of medicine in the world.” There are lots of reasons for it.
You have a quote on your website that says, “85% of the people in the world rely primarily on herbs as medicines.” Here in the U.S. typically when we get sick we visit a doctor, get prescribed medicines and treated in that way. How does this work in other parts of the world that primarily use herbs to treat illness?
Well, it depends on the place in the world, you know? If it’s Germany you might walk into a pharmacy and buy your herbal products there. Your herbal cold remedies may be on the shelf of pharmacies – and only pharmacies. Or you may live in the Amazon and you go to the local herbalist who pulls a bunch of different plants, boils them in a pot, and makes you drink them and hang out there for a couple of days, and get well and then go.
You know, the methods of dispensing these plant drugs and the cultures vary immensely. In rural China, it’s all teapot medicine. In Morocco, it’s vendors in the public squares with hundreds of trays of different herbs and seeds and oils and other types of naturally derived agents. You go to them and tell them what your health need is and they make stuff up for you, you know? So it ranges from products that have gone through this whole scientific process, and plants that have not which may be every bit as effective.
I think of this woman I’ve gone to see three times now in Malaysia. She’s an herbalist, and she takes all of these herbs in their crudest dry form and makes these products. She has this really large clientele of people who come to her for them exactly because they work. So it’s all over the place in terms of how people put these things out.
So, how did this all start for you, then? How did you first get interested in studying plant medicines?
Well I always think it’s sufficient to say I was a hippie in the ‘60s. That should explain everything! [Laughs.] You know we kind of like all woke up one day and said, “Natural is better, we all have to learn to cook brown rice, let’s start doing yoga, let’s meditate, let’s find out about plant drugs and consume all of them.”
And I think through that I became exposed to people who would come to me and say, “Hey man, have you ever tried Ginseng?” I’d be like, “Ginseng, I’ve heard of that.” So I would read up on things. There was far less information then than there is now. And eventually, oh gosh, I think when I was around 19 or so, I wound up on an herb walk with a then kind of famous herbalist, this guy named Ben Charles Harris. And at the end of that, after basically walking through the exact same kind of flora that I’d grown up around my entire life, walking behind this guy and have him talking about the medicinal properties of basically every plant was pretty amazing to me.
And from that point on through study I developed a college curriculum. I made up my own major—basically it was holistic health—and I did a lot of herbal study. It just grew from there reading hundreds of books, and you know, traveling all over the world investigating these things with the scientists and doctors and herbalists. It’s just been this growing body of knowledge and interest.
You do a lot of work to promote maca. I’d never heard of this before. It’s a Peruvian plant, right?
Yeah, well, maca is a root that looks like a turnip. It only grows at very high altitude—over ten and a half, eleven thousand feet, but most abundantly at fourteen to fifteen thousand feet. So, way up in the Andes. And it has unusual energy enhancing, stamina promoting, and overall sexual and reproductive health enhancing properties. It’s a big, big deal. So, I’ve been involved with maca for about 13 years. These days my primary client is a French company called Naturex. You know, I need to have somebody pay for all my field research. It’s not free to bop around the world. And so they’re very much involved in the maca trade. I’m the person who goes back and forth between the source up there and the company.
So in that capacity, I’ve worked to promote maca. Because this is wonderful stuff. It’s got what they like to call the triple bottom line. If you eat maca, if you take a maca product that’s legitimate, you’re gonna feel this overall enhancement. It’s unquestionably this “make-you-feel-very-very-good
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