For thousands of years, treating an infection or staving off disease called for gathering a variety of different plants from your environment and turning them into medicine. The process might involve applying them topically, grinding them into a fine powder or boiling them into a drink like tea. Today, modern pharmaceuticals have mostly replaced the practice of using plants as medicine — at least in the U.S. and other Western countries. But some people still turn to plants as an alternative, often after exhausting other options within modern medicine.
“We see a lot of people in our clinic that have chronic conditions and have gone through the conventional health care system and have not gotten relief,” says Kat McKinnon, an herbalist and Clinic Program Director at the Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism. While McKinnon and other clinical herbalists can't prescribe medicines by law, they can instead work with clients collaboratively to recommend plant-based therapies that might provide some relief. And what most people don't realize, McKinnon says, is that the plant-based therapies they recommend are everywhere, usually growing in the clients' own backyards. Here are just a few common ones that McKinnon and her team recommend often.
