Then I spent a year training at the Canterbury College of Natural Medicine. I have a Certificate of Natural Health. In that time, I learned that it's really not that simple and is usually a lot of work, trial and error. There is so much more to it than reaching for the right herb or even the right part of the herb.
My certificate was a taster in a variety of modalities. There were more in depth and advanced courses that could be taken to specialise in any of the areas that we studied. While I did learn a lot of useful things that have made a difference to most minor ailments in my family, I recognise that it does not qualify me to treat anything more serious and I wouldn't try.
With this background in place, I am frequently horrified by herbal recommendations that I see online. Many groups now have rules against giving medicinal herbal advice and with good reason. Many apparently safe herbs have nasty contraindications and bad interactions with medication. You can't know for sure when reading someone's question what the source of the problem is. You can't know that they're telling you the whole truth, learn about family history and you can't know anything about their physicality - all of which are important.
Now there comes people wanting to be special and create their own websites. I wrote about Mr V and his appalling website just a couple of days ago. I am not going to provide a link to his website, because he takes page views and shares as validation - even though I know many of those views and shares are people reading it in horror and sharing it to other places as a warning about bad and dangerous information.
Instead, let me do a screenshot (he gave permission for this) of his latest offering, under the heading Angel's Turnip: A Monograph:
I guess we got lucky in that he's now citing sources. But I also read up on one of those sources, the Plant Biographies by Sue Eland and found that he missed out some really important information. To be specific:
Warning – bitter root is poisonous and should only be used under the supervision of a qualified practitioner. It can cause nausea, purging, lowered heart rate, vomiting, appetite loss and death. The milky juice can cause blistering on the skin. Livestock have been killed by eating the leaves.
I'm quite sure that any of you reading can see why this is problematic. On his website, he recommends chewing on a root as a cure for "some weird western medication" while one of his sources says it's poisonous and should only be used under qualified supervision.
This was raised, and well, I'll give you a snippet of how the conversation went:
This is a fairly standard response from this chap. I pointed out that I have a herbal that recommends white lead and mercury in salves and ointments but so far that appears to have been ignored.
What really, really scares me about this is that people share his view that warning about the dangers of untrained, unqualified advice like this is just fear-mongering and that it's all perfectly safe. He has no formal training - he has freely admitted this, he is picking and choosing what information to share from useful websites (leaving out the safety warnings) and using other questionable websites.
If a few leaves can kill livestock - animals with a digestive system designed to process many things that will kill people and weighing at least three times the average person and usually more like five or six times the weight of the average person - imagine what it will do to you.
Sadly, he just doesn't seem to take any of it seriously and beyond giving out warnings, I don't know what else I can do.
Will it take a death and a lawsuit before it stops?
Still disheartened
Debbie
Are you saying your opinion is more important than someone else's Debbie.
ReplyDeleteHow do opinions have fuck all to do with recommending poisonous herbs be ingested? Or being horrified that someone is doing that?
ReplyDeleteAbout the same as people who falsify known history to suit their "happy".
ReplyDeleteSometimes its "not just opinion". Sometimes that "opinion" is backed with knowledge, experience, and research.
Are you seriously still so butthurt over a six month dead disagreement that you're bringing it up in a sideways manner on something that has nothing whatsoever to do with it?
ReplyDeleteOne that you're again expecting me to justify what other people have said or rather your strawman interpretation/projection of what you think they meant rather than what they actually said.
Get over it dude.
Not butthurt but again you go on the attack and fast with the insults.
ReplyDeleteI said to myself I'd give it a year and a 2 days, ie 366 days) to see if the universe would spit out you throwing up your opinion as "facts" in the parallel situation to what I was in (better informed than others.)
Believe it or not the universe isn't all about you, nor does it run to your beck and call; so this indeed does have "something to do with it".
You claim to have "facts" from superior knowledge and experience from directly dealing with the material at hand.
Yet when I do it - you state it's "my opinion" and that it has no superiority to others opinions.
When you do it - you expect everyone else to believe its "facts" and that your opinion is far superior to that other persons.
And I can even go one step further about your facts re:poison and remind you of the alchemist Paracelsus.
As usual what I'm expecting, is that I simply state your hypocrisy, hold that mirror up to yourself so you have a chance to realise what you did, what you do. As for expecting _you_ to do anything... I don't do that - its contrary to Intent, Will, and Magical process - so why an earth after all this time would you accuse me of doing expectation on others behaviour.
I'm amused by how someone involved in magic, concepts, and thoughtforms could ever think such happenstance is "sideways manner"...
The whole opinion thing wasn't about you, as I had said repeatedly. But since you're so determined to wear it as it must have been about you, it suggests that this is how YOU actually feel about what you had to say then. Own your shit, don't try to pass it off onto me.
ReplyDeleteYou tell yourself whatever you need to Carl. I'm not interested in trying to have a conversation with you anymore. It is not possible to have a useful discussion with you. You assume, you project, you build strawmen by the dozen and you expect me to defend things that either other people said or that no one has said or even implied.
I'm done.
Comments are not going anywhere nice. I've decided that comments are now going to require confirmation from me before they will be published on this blog and if they offer no additional value to the article/argument other than serving to insult then they will not be confirmed. If you don't like it, tough titties... go read another blog.
ReplyDelete