Why Herbal Medicine? A Case for Plants, and the Missing Tier

People ask me all the time how I got into herbalism… I, like most of us in this community had a turning point — a moment where we weren’t given the care we needed, where we were flagged as a “WW” or “Whining Woman” (this is disturbingly a real colloquial term used for women who have a whole host of unexplainable problems) and sent home without a deeper look. Maybe someone we love was hurting and we felt helpless that we weren’t able to do more to help and that spurred us on and we went looking for a way to be supportive or even take over their care because there were no other options - the care pipeline had run out and we were at the end of the care road. 

Mine started in a body that was struggling - by the time I was in college I had chronic pain from an ankle/foot surgery gone wrong — nerve and vascular damage in both legs, joint pain in my hips that woke me up at night, brain fog, anxiety, menstrual cycles that leveled me, and constipation that had been going on for years. I went to gynecologists, orthopedists, primary care, psychiatrists, an arthritis specialist. I was nineteen years old and I kept getting sent home without any answers (my labs were normal) and a repetitive insinuation that it must be in my head or that they had nothing for me.

Then one day on a run, Blue Vervain (Verbena brasiliensis)  or maybe Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium purpureum)… caught my eye and it just sort of struck me…. People used to be able to take care of themselves- I don’t have to wait around for someone else to figure me out, or make me feel better…they obviously aren’t as motivated to help me not feel like sh*t as I am. I didn't know where to start or what I was doing, I was hopeful and very naive but I started. 

I don’t believe this is a singular experience - as the whisper of herbal medicine is an inkling we all have. All of us descend, if we go back far enough, to people groups who lived off the land, gathered food medicine and spices, and relied solely on herbal medicine as their ONLY medicine. 

We Are Missing a Care Tier

Sadly, the story of the failures of the American healthcare model are as plentiful as its triumphs. We do have pretty stellar emergency intervention, complex diagnostics, surgery, and acute trauma care… IF you can access that care and IF your provider takes you seriously. 

But before we even get to that tier of care, 

Primary Care > Specialist or 

Urgent Care > ER…

there is a giant hole in our model that makes it weak. 

In human history, and in many cultures throughout the world, Grandma knew — and knows — how to treat 30 or so health care issues at home. When her interventions didn't have the intended effect, you called the professional herbalist or healer. 

In robust and community-first-based care models, the advent of modern medicine didn't replace granny care or professional healer care - it was additive. Modern medical care came after Community Care, as an additional tier — vaccines, major surgery, and so on. But in the US, we replaced the whole model, and now we have over-professionalized healthcare that sometimes actively discourages at-home care. This model is top-tier heavy, and this means that we have a massive gap in care.

Oddly enough, this doesn’t manifest like you might initially assume. Perhaps you are thinking that we are just missing the care at the bottom of the care models, and then people wait to go to the doctor until it’s a bigger deal…but that isn’t what happens.  We don’t end up with only an absence of the lower tiers, but this gutting of Community Care manifests all the way up throughout the whole of our current care infrastructure. 

I think this is best illustrated in the types of clients that have ended up in my office, as a Clinical Herbalist.

When I first started my clinical practice, I expected to be seeing a lot of people for snotty noses, sore throats, and general healthcare issues. I expected to be adjunct support. I expected to be the bottom of the care pyramid—Community Care— but man, oh man, was I wrong. 

Right out of the gate, I was seeing chronic Lyme disease clients, people who were unable to get answers from the Mayo Clinic (which have some of the most prestigious diagnostics teams in the United States), people with long-term diseases resistant to treatment, people who were about to be put on kidney dialysis, people with autoimmune kidney disease on their third transplant. 

I was NOT expecting that. 

And I think this illustrates that when we don't have a robust care model in which people are supported at a basic level — with dietary interventions, sleep, social medicine, coaching,  and herbal medicine — we create weakness in the entire system. And then “fill in the gaps” care providers (like professional herbalists) end up patching up the entire system…bottom to top, without the governmental protections of licensure, insurance, safety nets, or perceived cultural credibility to back them up.   

This Community Care first model all feels pretty pie in the sky until you look at what other countries with a more expanded care model fully intact are doing. 

China is a good example. Since 2009, the Chinese government has issued nearly 30 major policy decisions integrating traditional Chinese medicine into their national healthcare system — with the explicit goal that 95% of community health centers can provide TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) services (Current Policies and Measures on the Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China, PMC, 2020). The WHO actually recognizes China's system as one of only four fully integrative healthcare systems in the world, where practitioners are dual-trained in both TCM and Western Medicine (Factors Affecting Definitions of and Approaches to Integrative Medicine, PMC, 2015). 

Herbalists and medical doctors exist inside the same system, and are sometimes even the same person - phew- none of that silly infighting!

And China isn't even the outlier here — we are. According to the WHO, more than 80% of the world's population across 170 of their 194 member states uses some form of traditional medicine as their first response to illness (Integrating Traditional Medicine in Health Care, WHO, 2023). For most of the world, plant medicine isn't fringe, alternative, or a last resort. It's just medicine and an important part of the care system.

It's the first call, not the last one. And somewhere along the way, we decided to skip it entirely and act like that was progress.

This Is an Invitation

You do not have to choose between granny care, herbal care, community care,  and advanced or higher modern medical care.

If it isn’t clear yet…it's a false binary.

What I'm asking and hoping we do… is that we rebuild the missing tier — the keystone tier that catches you before you fall all the way to the bottom. The one that gives you options, and agency and creates the systemic and personal resilience that we need to be carried through our lives in health.  

That's why herbal medicine matters to me. 

That's why it matters for all of us.

P.S. — If you want to start building that foundation — one plant at a time, with depth, science, and real clinical experience behind it — that's exactly what the Herbal Medicine Monthly Subscription Program is for. Come learn with me. Click here.