Plants have provided nourishment and healing since prehistoric times. Humans around the world developed a deep understanding of using the leaves, roots and flowers around them to improve and protect their health. In Asia, particularly in what’s now China and India, doctors and scholars began writing down their observations and insights well over two thousand years ago. Other cultures around the world have relied mostly on oral transmission of their healing practices.

In the last few centuries, people started to travel more and share their medicinal knowledge with others, along the silk road, up and down the Americas, and in other far-flung places. Europeans developed natural healing methods as an alternative to often toxic medicines used by orthodox physicians. They also learned from indigenous peoples in Africa, Asia, Australia, Oceania, and, of course, the Americas. Naturopathic medicine continues to evolve and incorporate knowledge and experience from both traditional and modern medical practice.

As doctors of East Asian medicine and naturopathic medicine, we nowadays have a solid knowledge base of botanical medicine based on empirical and research evidence. We spend years in medical school studying not only conventional medicine and pharmacology but especially the properties and effects of medicinal plants and how to use them to good effect, and safely so.

Like doctors of conventional biomedicine, doctors of Chinese and naturopathic medicine are very analytical in their approach to arrive at a thorough diagnosis of your health condition or illness before deciding which medicinal herbs to use to help you heal. We pay close attention not only to the choice of herbs themselves but also to the way they were grown, harvested, processed and stored. We select the form of administration (such as teas, tinctures, capsules, tablets, salves, liniments, etc.) and their dosage and duration based on your needs, constitution and health goals.

We work with reputable professional herbal companies to access the highest quality of products available. This not only helps keep you safe but also ensures that you don’t waste your time and money on natural medicines that do not deliver.

Botanical therapy is generally very safe if prescribed and monitored by an experienced clinician. Licensed and credentialed practitioners of Chinese medicine and naturopathy have spent years studying medical herbology and understand potential interactions with pharmaceutical drugs better than most conventional physicians. Self-medicating with botanicals can be dangerous because many herbs are quite potent and need to be selected for the right reasons, at the right dosage, and for the right duration.

When we recommend botanical therapy to you, we source the medicines from licensed pharmacies and through our online dispensary at Fullscript. They will ship your herbal prescriptions directly to your home, so no trip to Chinatown is needed.