Plants as Medicine

Part II: But first…. A history lesson! 
How can it be, that we… citizens of the USA 🇺🇸…., with practically unlimited access to western medicine, are currently among the sickest in the world? 😷😭  Study after study supports the same conclusion…
💰💰💰We spend more on healthcare for worse health outcomes than comparable countries around the world, regardless of age or income.💰💰💰
Part of the problem is the belief in the “insta” system, and how it applies to the healthcare industry.. Americans expect to go to a doctor and receive a prescription for “something”, and they are dissatisfied if the doctor sends them away without one. (not all problems are solved by pills!)
It is no longer surprising to me when a patient can neither tell me the name of their medication or even what it’s for when I talk to them at the pharmacy. They just need a refill of their “little yellow pill”. #blindtrust 😳
When we have 20% of US citizens on 5 or more prescription medications a day (often written by more than one physician), the odds of drug interactions goes up considerably. The odds of side effects and deficiencies rises exponentially as well. #playingwithfire
Prescription drug errors kill more than 100,000 Americans a year, and medical error is the 3rd most leading cause of death in the United States (3rd only to heart disease and cancer… two largely “preventable by lifestyle” diseases). An estimated 1.5 million people die each year from these top 3 causes. 
Now that’s a pandemic worthy of being called a pandemic!
#whereisthemedia
We forget that regardless of our heritage, our forefathers (and fore-mama’s) used tools from nature. 🌿 The most dangerous part of living was to make it from infancy to puberty. The dangers of infancy and childhood stemmed more from malnutrition and poor sanitation than anything else with the exception of actual childbirth (a high risk situation for both mother and child).
Our ancestors were not of the “insta” world, and they were loaded with practical knowledge, intelligence, and common sense. #theoriginalsurvivors  They understood that wounds and injuries (visible or not) took time to heal. They also passed down healing “recipes” from generation to generation. Scientific studies (thousands of them) now provide evidence of the mechanism of action of these herbal remedies. 🌿 Many cultures also understood that emotions were, more often than not, tied to specific illnesses. (ex: Grief is often a harbinger of lung dis-ease if not dealt with properly)….. not because of superstition but because of biology and physics. 
So what happened? How did we manage to lose all of this very important information?  We know we live in a “need it now” world where “fast medicine” is king. Where did “slow” medicine go, and how and why did it nearly disappear?
Have you ever heard of a guy named John D Rockefeller? He was an oil tycoon in the early 1900’s who, at one time, controlled 90% of our country’s oil.
Rockefeller was arguably the wealthiest man in the world in his time. 💰💰💰💰💰💰Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie (another tycoon of the era) had money, and they wanted more. These two men were well aware of the many healing modalities in existence in the very early 1900’s. Chiropractic care, naturopathy, homeopathy, holistic care (the most common of all) nurtured mind, body (using common to the area plants), and spirit (The USA was a strong Christian nation back then, and faith was infused into all aspects of life 🙏).
Abraham Flexner (who was neither a physician or a medical scientist) was hired by Carnegie and Rockefeller. He was a former school teacher with specialized training in psychology.
Flexner produced a report (known as Carnegie Foundation Bulletin Number Four or “The Flexner Report”) that was submitted to Congress in 1910. The report concluded that (among other things) all the natural healing modalities (which have been around since before Jesus!) were unscientific quackery and should be outlawed.  It also called for the standardization of medical education, allowing only allopathic (patented medicine and medicine practiced in a modern “westernized” fashion) based medical licenses to be issued. It was a tremendous blow to naturally based medicine that is still felt to this day in the USA. 😭
Why would this be an important piece of history? Well, Rockefeller wanted more control of the medical world, and he wanted to sell the “new fangled” patented pharmaceutical drugs 💊(which coincidentally had a petroleum base). The problem was that nearly everyone was comfortable using their versions of “slow” medicine all over the country. Plant based therapeutics are not patent-able, and Rockefeller knew that in order to control the pharmaceutical industry, he would need to put the kibosh on natural remedies.  The Flexner Report achieved this purpose, and nearly overnight, people had no choice but to move from “slow” medicine to “fast” medicine, and doctors had no choice but to abide by the new rules or risk being jailed or losing their license. Sadly, this is still the case today. #controlfoodandhealthandyoucontrolthepeople
Most history books paint this event  in a different light. I remember reading about it in pharmacy school 30 years ago, and (in the naivety of my tender college years) thought it was quite an achievement to have so quickly modernized medicine. I just didn’t realize back then that most commonly published history is slanted towards the victors, and therefore doesn’t always reflect the entire truth.
This history is important as a segue to learning how to heal properly.
Stay tuned for Part III….. Mind over Medicine 💊.
xoxo~ liz
www.goodmedicine.info 👈 (ready to learn how to be the CEO of you? )
#historyisimportant
#everythinggoodtakestime
#ThanksYL