Most of our grandmothers' generation had herb gardens, or used herbs as medicine. Only during this century have herbs come under the scrutiny of government inspection. One reason we must test herbs is economic: Drug companies must show a profit. Roughly one third of all medical drugs come from isolated active plant ingredients. But drug companies can't put a brand name on something that grows like a weed; they have to break down a plant's hundreds of components, testing for years at great expense. Then they can claim to have discovered the active ingredient. However, many times the active ingredient does not work as well as the entire plant. According to tests done in Germany, Saint John's word, the entire herb, kills the AIDS virus in the test tube, while hypericum, the isolated active ingredient, does not.

Unfortunately, a younger generation seems to have adopted a skeptical attitude concerning the healing properties of herbs because of all the talk about testing. Asian remedies have been tested in the laboratory of life for thousands of years. They are proven safe because people - not rats - have used them for generations without suffering dangerous side effects. Many herbs are even assimilated as foods.

Another reason why Asian herbal cures are safe is that most of them are prepared in combinations, not singly. To understand why this is so, consider the body. It is made up of parts working together. The healthy body does more than one thing at a time, and so do herbal combinations. Such natural medicines respect the body's innate need for balance. 

For example, digestive herbal combinations are made of such herbs. Some may stimulate stomach acids or digestive enzymes, while others may help release bile or reduce water retention in order to smooth digestion. For comfortable, healthy digestion, all these processes should happen at the same time. This may seem obvious, but it is exactly the reason why many medical drugs have toxic side effects, while herbs do not. Good digestion requires the coordinated functioning of many processes at once, and herbal combinations can do many things at once in order to maintain balance.

Also, the characters of plants and drugs are intrinsically different from each other. There is a built-in safety factor in plants, in that they are made up of many components, sometimes as many as several hundred, that can be isolated into ingredients. A medical drug often uses only one of those chemical ingredients-say, one out of four hundred. Laboratory testing can tell us what effect that drug has on one part of the body. For example, an antacid drug that treats ulcers can inhibit the flow of a particular enzyme. But that same drug also affects other tissues throughout the body. It can cause enzyme activity that is a precur- sor to a toxin. That is, it can cause a toxic effect in some other part of the body, a bad side effect. Herbal remedies use more of the plant. Its hundreds of components work together, assuring absorption of the remedy with fewer unpredictable actions. Why? Because the body considers a natural remedy to be a food. The whole herb does not affect cellular activity the way a drug canBecause it does not work on the cellu- lar level. Herbs improve nutrition or chi production in the way a food does, not in the way an enzyme does. By using herbal combinations, the remedy's sphere of activity can be guided to the appropriate part of the body, thus avoiding adverse side effects. For example, several medical drugs used to treat high blood pressure coincidentally reduce inflammation throughout the entire body, and have been known to cause sexual impotence, a high price to pay. By contrast, Chinese patent remedies such as Blood Pressure Repressing Tablets treat head- ache and dizziness from hypertension with herbs such as coptis and scutellaria, which affect head symptoms without damaging a person's sex life. Thus the area of treatment becomes more specific with herbal combinations. By combining herbs, we protect ourselves from the weakening effects of any treatment.

Without proper diagnosis, the use of any food or herb might cause temporary unpleasant effects. This happens when innate imbalances are aggravated. For instance, if we had fever and took inflammatory herbs or foods, the fever could rise. If we ate hot peppers for stomachache, or raw salad for diarrhea and cramps, we would feel worse and have bad side effects. By listening to our body, we avoid such mistakes. Often our reaction to poor food choices is enough warning for us to stop. The same kind of instinctive decision is often made with herbs. Nevertheless, there are times when symptoms become temporarily worse from using natural remedies, such as when the body (or the mind) is fighting to maintain an illness. This is especially true of deep, chronic problems, because bad habits are hard to break, even those that lead to disease. However, discomforts often clear up after only a few doses of herbs, when blocked chi is freed. Successful herbal regimens are organized in combinations of herbs that reduce symptoms of withdrawal and discomfort due to cleansing. Often all you will need is reassurance or further directions on dosage or how to take a remedy.