Retinal Artery Occlusion Leading to Blindness Case

[Dominik Daling]

What is the most efficient method when your patient can only afford to spend 50% of what is adivsable on herbs? Give herbs for two weeks and then pause two weeks so that they take them half the time over the course of a treatment program? Or cut the dose to 8g per day instead? In Germany, there is a raging debate about the quality assessment of granules going on. Most pharmacies have stopped selling granules because they are obliged to test every single granule for its content. My pharmacy offered an administration method I was not familiar with: powdered herbs. They grind up bulk herbs, and the patient is to decoct them (no matter if it contains FZ, LG or any other herb requiring different decoction times) for 10 minutes at home, store the decoction in the fridge (7 days worth). Also, they talk about administering one third of the daily bulk dose because in powdered form, the herbs have a larger surface which releases more of the active ingredients. Is this a doable thing for those patients that shy away from regular bulk, or is it nonsense?

[Christoph Ludwig Beer]

Hi Dominik Daling, I have some experience to offer on both topics: First, if your patient can’t spend much on herbs, that’s just sad, but in general there seem to be two avenues: If the disease is acute and serious, do bulk and normal dosage. If the condition is chronic, but not too serious (like exhaustion), then I found that even down to 9g per day of granules of something like TXS or SQW still worked, not as fast maybe, but patient was advised it might take longer, so they’re fine with that because they think they’re spending less money. Second scenario is the issue about powered bulk herbs. Quite a few ICEAMERs have tried this method in the past and it seems to work – however, to me there are still questions remaining on how to properly cook FZ when it’s ground up, or cooking times of volatile herbs that if cooked too long could lose their main active agents. For the time being, I’m getting people to cook powered prescriptions for 10 min, and then strain them, or 30 min if they contain aconite.I’d be interested in what other people’s thoughts are on this, like Laurie Ayres or J-p Staats or Dominic Harbinson.

[laurieayres]

First, and this may not sound very helpful, but I am of the opinion that it is a greater waste of money to spend half the amount of money on herbs and take them at a does or frequency that isn’t effective then to spend twice the amount on effective treatment. I do use powdered herbs on some patients. If there is FZ, then I get them to boil them longer, 30-45min, depending on the dose, as I’ve tried shorter boils on myself in powders and haven’t had serious toxicity, but have felt a restless jumpy feeling that I’ve noticed in bulk FZ when it’s on the edge of being under-boiled. Others may use shorter times, though. With minerals I either do the 30-45min boil (as I’m often using FZ with them), or if I want a shorter boil, then I’ve told them to just leave the herbs to stand for a longer period of time after boiling, and hour or so, this seems to work ok.

[Author]

Posts