What If the Weed Isn’t the Problem?

Maybe medicine doesn’t begin with choosing between nature and modern science. Maybe it begins by becoming curious enough to study both.

 

I have spent more than twenty years studying plants, nutrition, traditional medicine, human health, and scientific research.

And one thing continues to fascinate me……….we are often terrified of the things growing naturally beneath our feet…while being remarkably comfortable swallowing, injecting, spraying, or consuming things we have never bothered to investigate.

 

I’m not saying pharmaceuticals are always bad.  I’m not saying herbs are always good.  I’m saying something much simpler:

Why are we so selective about what we question?

I have spent countless hours over the years reading PubMed and other medical literature.  There is an enormous body of research investigating medicinal plants, plant compounds, traditional remedies, nutrition, phytochemicals, inflammation, immune function, digestion, neurological pathways, and thousands of other subjects connected to the natural world that you are not gonna hear on the news, or in your doctors office.

Some research is preliminary.  Some is laboratory research.  Some involve animals.  Some involve humans.  Some traditional uses hold up beautifully under scientific investigation…and sometimes science simply hasn’t caught up with the question yet.

That is why I don’t say, “This plant cures that disease.”  I ask, “What do we actually know about this plant?”

That is a much better question.

We Kill It, Then Drive to the Store to Buy What Was Inside It

 

Take the humble dandelion.  For many people, it is the mortal enemy of the American lawn.  We are taught to spray it, poison, dig it out, call it invasive and declare war!!!  😂

Meanwhile, dandelion is an edible plant containing vitamins, minerals, fiber, carotenoids, polyphenols, and other naturally occurring compounds that researchers continue to study.  So sometimes I look at the world we have created and laugh.  We spend money killing nutrient-containing plants, with KNOWN carcinogens…then drive to a store…and spend more money buying nutrients….then wonder why we feel so disconnected to ourselves….to life itself……far away from the picture of health we were sold by following these instructions……

I’m not suggesting everybody go outside and start eating random yard weeds.  PLEASE DO NOT DO THAT!  Correct identification matters.  Where the plant grew matters.  Whether pesticides, herbicides, road runoff, animal waste, or other contaminants are present matters.  The part of the plant matters.  Timing of harvest matters.  Preparation matters.  Your health conditions matter.  Your medications matter.  Allergies matter.  Pregnancy matters.  Dose matters.

As I’ve addressed many times before, Natural is not another word for harmless.  But neither is “pharmaceutical,” “supplement,” “approved,” “sold in a store,” or “my doctor gave it to me.”

Everything deserves intelligent consideration.

Maybe We Should Stop Blindly Trusting Anything

 

People sometimes assume that because I work with plants, I want everyone to distrust modern medicine.  I don’t. Emergency medicine is extraordinary.  Trauma medicine saves lives.  Surgery saves lives.  Diagnostics can uncover things we could never determine by simply looking at someone.   There are medications that profoundly improve and extend human lives in certain circumstances…

But medications can also have side effects!  Herbs can also have side effects!  Supplements can interact with medications.  Foods can interact with conditions and medications…

People are complicated.

That is why my philosophy has never been, “Just take “this” for “that!”  My philosophy more resonates with, “Stop blindly trusting anything!”

Ask more questions.  Learn.  Read.  Investigate.  Understand risks.  Understand benefits.   Take a bigger role in understanding your own body.  And whenever possible, become an active participant in your health instead of simply handing your body to somebody else and hoping for the best.

And While We’re Asking Questions… What Exactly Made You Sick?

 

This is another thing I have encountered over and over.  Someone will tell me, “I’m allergic to avocado.”

So I ask, “How do you know?”

And sometimes the answer is, “Well, one time I ate some prepared guacamole from a can and got terribly sick.”

Okay….

But what exactly caused the reaction?  Was it avocado?  Was it another ingredient?  A preservative?  A spice?  Something the food was processed with?  Something else they ate that day?  Food contamination?  Or was it genuinely avocado?

You cannot necessarily determine that from one reaction to a product containing multiple ingredients.

I have personally known people who avoided foods for decades because they believed they were allergic, only to later discover that they could eat the fresh food without experiencing the reaction they remembered from a processed version.

I once knew a man in his fifties who believed for years that he could not tolerate pineapple because he had gotten sick after drinking canned pineapple juice.

Much later, he tried freshly juiced pineapple…..and no problem!  Does that prove nobody is allergic to pineapple?  Of course not.

True food allergies are real and can be dangerous!  It simply illustrates the question I wish more people would ask……….

“How do you know what caused the reaction?”  Why automatically blame the pineapple or the avocado?  I’ve even seen people blame lavender for reactions to lavender scented baby wipes!  Was it really the lavender?  Was it even real lavender to begin with?  Or could it have been some of the other ingredients…?

That question matters.

If someone believes they have a genuine food allergy, especially if there has ever been swelling, difficulty breathing, faintness, hives, or another severe reaction, that belongs in the hands of a qualified medical professional or allergist.

But curiosity still matters……Sometimes we blame the avocado when the avocado happened to be sharing a container with fifteen other things…

 

We Have Become Strangely Disconnected From Food

 

Here is another thing I find interesting.  Someone may be frightened by the idea of drinking a tea made from a correctly identified edible plant…while taking several pills every morning without knowing what the active ingredient does, how it is metabolized, what nutrients it may affect, or what its major interactions are!  In fact MOST don’t even look up the common side effects of said meds!!!

Someone may be suspicious of nettles growing outside…but completely comfortable buying a bottle containing twenty ingredients they cannot pronounce.  Someone may spray an edible plant with poison because it appeared in the wrong place…and then drive to the health-food store looking for something “natural.”  lol

Again; I’m not saying the bottle is automatically bad and the plants are automatically good…I’m asking why the plant is automatically suspicious.

Food Is More Than a List of Vitamins

 

We have also been taught to think about nutrition in strangely isolated pieces…Vitamin C, Iron, Calcium, Magnesium, Vitamin K, Vitamin A, etc……..

Put them into a tablet.  Take tablet. Nutrition complete……………???

Except food is vastly more complicated than that.

Whole foods contain fiber, water, minerals, vitamins, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, pigments, phytochemicals, and countless compounds interacting together….the way they were meant to be consumed…

Supplements can absolutely be useful.  Some people need them.  Certain deficiencies may require concentrated supplementation.  But swallowing a multivitamin is not the same thing as eating a diverse, nutrient-rich diet.

And perhaps instead of asking only, “What supplement should I buy?”  We could occasionally ask, “What food am I missing?”

Or even, “What edible plants have I been mowing down for twenty years without ever learning their names?”

Just because someone, the news, teachers, etc told you it should be mowed….

 

What If We Added Just a Little Wildness Back?

 

Imagine if people learned only five safe, common edible plants in their area.  Not 50-100.  Just 5???  What if we learn them correctly?  Which parts are traditionally eaten….Learned how to prepare them…?  What if we learned the risks and benefits without relying on hearsay from so called trusted sources?  What if we learned the possible interactions with medications or even foods?  Learned where not to harvest them…?

And then maybe………when appropriate and safe……..introduced a little more diversity into the diet…?

A leaf here, a tea there…A wild green mixed into something familiar……?  Not because we believe one cup of “weed tea” will cure everything.  But because perhaps the human diet was never supposed to consist of twenty cultivated foods, supplements in plastic bottles, and everything else arriving through a drive-through window.

Maybe diversity matters.  Maybe knowledge matters.  Maybe reconnecting with food matters.  Maybe knowing what grows outside your door is worth something even if you never use any of it medicinally.

I would like to point out that in all the health coaching sessions I have done over the decades, after suggesting potential herbs that MIGHT help, I ask what’s growing in their yards…..and 100% of the time, each herb we discussed was already planted, by God….or a bird…for their use….right under their feet.  Coincidence???

I Am Not Trying to Replace Your Doctor With a Dandelion

 

This part always needs saying.  I am not suggesting that someone stop a necessary medication because they discovered a plant.  I am not suggesting people treat serious illness without appropriate medical care.  I am not suggesting that centuries of traditional use automatically prove a remedy works.  But what if???

Tradition can give us a reason to investigate…our anscenstors survived all these centuries BEFORE pharma and chemical corporations somehow…….?  Sure, science can help us test those questions….but what is their motivation if they can’t make a profit off it?

Clinical experience gives us another kind of information.  And the individual person standing in front of us adds another enormous variable.  I believe all of those things can sit at the same table.  I do not understand why we have been taught that we must choose a team.

Nature OR modern “science.”  Why?  Plants contain chemistry.  Our bodies contain chemistry.  Medicine is chemistry.  Food is chemistry.  Digestion is chemistry.

The question isn’t whether something is “chemical.”  Everything is.

More useful questions are…What is it?  What does it do?  At what dose?  For whom?  Under what conditions?  What evidence exists?  What risks exist?  What interactions exist?  And is it appropriate for this particular human being?

THOSE are questions worth asking.

Maybe the Most Dangerous Thing Is Never Asking

 

I don’t want people blindly drinking herbs because somebody on Facebook told them to.  I also don’t want people blindly taking anything else because somebody in a white coat told them to.  I want curious people.  Educated people.  People who understand that asking a question is not automatic rebellion.  People who are willing to read past the headline.  People willing to say, “I don’t know. Let me learn.”

We live in a world where many of us can identify dozens of corporate logos instantly…but cannot identify five edible plants growing in our own yards.  That is fascinating to me.  We recognize packaging better than plants.  Brands better than trees.  Products better than ecosystems.  And perhaps reconnecting with nature does not require abandoning modern medicine entirel…

Perhaps it simply requires remembering that medicine did not begin in a pharmaceutical laboratory.  Long before pharmacies existed, humans observed.  They tasted.  They recorded. They experimented.  They learned what nourished.  They learned what harmed.  They passed knowledge forward.  Sometimes they were right.  Sometimes they were wrong.

Just because modern “science” gave us better tools for figuring out the difference, doesn’t mean that science is right all the time….remember covid?  How did blindly following the news work out for you?

This should make us MORE curious about traditional knowledge, not less.

So the next time you see something growing where you think it shouldn’t…before reaching for the mower…before reaching for the poison…before deciding it is useless…maybe ask one little question……….“What are you?”

You might still decide to pull it…..but at least you’ll know what you’re pulling.  Because maybe the weed was never the problem.  Maybe the problem was that somewhere along the way…

we forgot to ask what it was before we decided it had no value.