Complementary Alternative Cardiovascular Medicine
Complementary Alternative Cardiovascular Medicine
Complementary Alternative Cardiovascular Medicine
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12 <strong>Alternative</strong> <strong>Cardiovascular</strong> <strong>Medicine</strong><br />
The early history of medicine parallels the history of herbal medicine:<br />
the first books written about medicine were also the first books<br />
written about herbs, including Chinese texts from 5000 yr ago, such<br />
as the famous herbal of the Yellow Emperor and the Egyptian text Ebers<br />
papyrus, written 3500 yr ago. In Western medicine, the father of modern<br />
medicine, Theophrastus, is also the father of modern botany.<br />
Theophrastus published the first book describing plants in detail in 320 BC,<br />
which was also the first Western book about their medicinal uses.<br />
Herbal medicine has been at the heart of medicine in every culture in<br />
the world and at every time throughout history. Today, according to the<br />
World Health Organization (WHO), more than 80% of the world’s population<br />
relies on traditional medicines, mostly plant based, as their main<br />
source of health care (2). This figure includes not only the large populations<br />
of China and India and all of the less developed countries of the<br />
world but also many modern nations. Even in the United States, approx<br />
25% of our prescription medicines are still extracted from plants or are<br />
synthetic copies of plant chemicals (3), and at least 57% of our top<br />
prescription medicines are derived in some way from plants, including<br />
semisynthetics, in which plant chemicals are used as building blocks for<br />
synthetic drugs (4). A semisynthetic drug made from a plant chemical<br />
doesn’t necessarily resemble anything naturally found in the plant, but<br />
it could not be made without the plant chemical as a starting point.<br />
Making drugs in the laboratory is a newer practice than most people<br />
realize. The first synthetic chemical was produced in the mid-19th century,<br />
and the widespread use of synthetic drugs began during the last 70<br />
yr. In the United States, natural remedies were replaced by powerful<br />
synthetic or highly purified “wonder drugs.” However, in our haste to<br />
embrace “scientific” medicine, we quickly forgot the contributions nature<br />
made and still makes to medicine. Most synthetic drugs are duplicates or<br />
modifications of the same plant chemicals that make herbs work. For<br />
example, the world’s oldest known cultivated medicinal plant is the<br />
Chinese herb ma huang, or Ephedra, which is grown for more than 5000<br />
yr in China for treating respiratory disease, including asthma. Ephedra<br />
is the source of ephedrine, which is still used today to treat asthma, and<br />
pseudoephedrine, which is used as a nasal decongestant. These compounds<br />
can be made synthetically in a laboratory but are no more effective<br />
than extracts of the plant.<br />
The focus of research in the 20th century shifted from the study of<br />
whole plants toward single “active principles” and synthetic chemicals.<br />
Plant drug research in the United States came to a virtual standstill as<br />
doctors and scientists turned increasingly to laboratory-made medicines.<br />
Because pharmacists and doctors no longer needed to know about the<br />
plants themselves, courses on plant medicines disappeared from medical