Total Body Wellness Through Tonic Herbs:       

The Unidirectional
Now imagine the orthodox medical model's approach to those conditions The physician administers drugs that push the body in the opposite direction of the stressor or disease-causing agent, in an effort to return the process to a healthy state. The drug is normally foreign to the Individual and the body cannot use it in a normal manner, the body can only respond to the drug in a certain way. It the drug works, the acute condition disappears and the drug is withdrawn. If the side effects of the drug are not too serious, the body will eventually regain total health, but only offer the drug is withdrawn. The reason drugs have so many side effects is that they upset balances in so many different physiological processes while attempting to correct the targeted problem. Thus IS not an optimum approach to restoring health, even though it may be effective in halting the progress of certain kinds of disease. Certainly no one would consider continuing the use of a drug once health had been restored. Even the use of drugs such as cortisone and insulin which mimic chemicals produced by the body is fraught with side effects, blunting of normal physiology, ups and downs in response, and so forth. While the specific purpose of drugs is to restore health, these substances are typically inadequate to the task In terms of our teeter totter model, the weight applied to one end of the board by the drug has a tendency to push the board through the balance point and unbalance it in the other direction. At the same time, it is unbalancing other boards around the playground with unpredictable and sometimes devastating consequences. The drug just keeps on pushing in one direction and the longer it is applied the further it pushes. In the body if the normal homeostatic set point is over shot, the drug just continues pushing. Then, as often as not, you have to take another drug to push the body or process back the other direction. This kind of chaotic approach to medicine keeps the body under constant stress and seldom allows normal, disease-free life to occur.

Stated simply, drugs are uni-directional in action. Ironically counter to normal expectations, that is also the way almost all herbs work. The difference between uni-directional herbs and drugs is that herbs lack the side effects of drugs and are generally milder in action. Like drugs, however, non-tonic herbs, i.e., almost all known herbs, are only able to push the body in one direction. For instance, if your immune system is depressed, an immunostimulant herb will push it back toward normal. However, continued use of that herb will eventually push the body beyond normal balance toward over activity which, ironically, will manifest itself as a blunted immune system response. Prolonged use of an immunosuppresant herb would produce a similar blunting of immunoresponsiveness.

The use of uni-directional substances has its place, especially in the presence of acute disease that requires immediate, quick-acting and relatively strong action. However, because uni-directional substances do not restore and maintain "balance," people often find themselves somewhat "out of balance" all of the time (e.g. using energizing substances to enhance performance during the day, and then needing depressant agents to put themselves to sleep at night). More commonly, people have to make complex decisions about which herbs to take when, and how long. An extensive knowledge of the particular actions of each individual herb is required in order to choose the correct herb to match the immediate needs of the body. A wrong decision can lead to less than satisfactory results. As we will presently learn, using tonic herbs avoids these kind of problems. Uni-directional, non-tonic herbs may be freely used when required, but most consumers will get better results if they will use tonics both before and after the use of non-tonics because the tonics are better at maintaining an even keel, or balance.

In summary, the body prefers a state of balance and struggles to maintain balance in the face of countless forces and stresses the produce an imbalance. An imbalance is disease. Drugs and unidirectional herbs (non-tonics) are often used to correct an Imbalance and fight disease, but lack the capacity to truly restore and maintain balance, or health. That property is the sole domain of "tonics."

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