Covid-19 and Natural Medicine
The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus across the globe caused a certain kind of existential panic that many of us were not used to entertaining. Runs on toilet paper and hand sanitizer were the first markers of our terror followed with increasingly dire warnings, recommendations, and mandates to stay home, shelter-in-place, and avoid all unnecessary contact. Now we are living with the constant threat of infection and tragedy. We are burned by it while also feeling like we can’t continue to care about this thing that has been going on for so long. The struggle is real. Let me begin the content on this page with this important statement:
Covid-19 is a serious condition that should be treated with all the gravity that it is due.
Once we internalize the reality that we will be dealing with this virus for many more months to one degree or another, a different sort of anxiety can start to take hold and a series of questions starts to emerge:
How are we going to survive the economic impacts?
How will I make it through the continued onslaught of isolation, cancelled plans, and working from home?
How can I continue to protect myself and my family?
What medicines or supplements can I take to stave off the virus?
Social distancing and face coverings are for your protection and especially for the protection of vulnerable populations. Take this situation seriously.
These queries are totally normal and what all of us are wondering. Since my expertise does not extend into the economic or psychological realms, I can just say that we are all in this situation together and with some practiced calm and reaching deep for compassion and patience, we will weather the realities of paying mortgages and rents, car notes and credit card bills. There will be continued pain but it will eventually give way. It will also take some effort to remind ourselves that we need to remain vigilant and even if Thanksgiving doesn’t look like usual this year, try not to worry too much. There will be another one next year.
Where my insight and experience become relevant are on the subsequent questions about health and protection. As a person who practices medicine and deals with patients from all walks of life, many of whom are dealing with serious and sometimes life-threatening diseases, I want to underscore that it is important to take the guidance from state and local governments seriously as well as making the things we’ve heard about from the CDC about handwashing and face-covering as part of your daily and recurring habits. While you may be young or healthy, the transmission of this disease is not only about your health. The rapid transmission rate of the virus and the fact that we still do not fully grasp how and in what ways it moves through our environment make it essential that we all take precautions to minimize person-to-person contact outside of the people we live and share space with already. And when we do interact with other humans, cover your face. I know it feels restrictive or that you can’t breathe very well. You are fine. Cover. Your. Mouth. AND. Nose.
Next, THERE IS NO SINGLE HERB OR SUPPLEMENT THAT WILL STOP THIS VIRUS. Let me say that again: NO SINGLE HERB OR SUPPLEMENT WILL SAVE YOU. I want to be emphatic about this point because in crises like this one, many people who live in the often ethically-gray space of nutriceutical distribution are looking to sell you something “for your immune system” or to “keep your body in top shape” to stop the virus in its tracks. While it is certainly possible to use herbs and supplements to help keep your body in peak condition, this “health banking” mindset primarily works for people who are already mostly healthy. Let me explain: how many times have you read something online, or heard something on the radio, or got told something by the hot guy at your gym that sounded like something like this: “Well you’ve got to start turmeric. I mean it is so great for dealing with inflammation. All kinds of inflammation. I mean more research is showing that inflammation is the root of all diseases so getting turmeric in your juice blend or in a capsule is going to be clutch for dealing with (insert idiopathic condition here like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, restless leg syndrome).”
Now, don’t interpret my glib tone as diminishing the conditions above. We treat them regularly in our clinic, and they are sometimes debilitating problems for patients. But I use this example to underscore the fact that these kinds of supplement recommendations are not based on any real expertise. Turmeric is a very useful herb for a variety of conditions including body pain, irritable bowels, post surgery recovery and more. But using that herb requires more than taking a trip to your local health food store to buy a bottle of standardized Turmeric and taking the label dosage because you heard it’s “supposed to be good for joint pain.” What are you looking for while taking it? How will you measure its effectiveness on your condition? How long will you take it for to decide if it is helping? And all of these unexamined questions are just to see if turmeric is going to maybe take the edge off of a non-life threatening condition. With regard to Covid-19 and herbal promises to keep you safe, relying on uninformed or worse, ill-informed, advice could have mortal consequences.
“Having the legal authorization to prescribe herbal medicine does not automatically confer the knowledge and skill to do so successfully.”
Qualified and experienced Chinese Medicine practitioners who use herbs regularly in their practices will have the requisite training and clinical application to prescribe herbal formulas that are targeted and that have measurable outcomes. While the scope of practice for licensed acupuncturists in most states allow those practitioners to use herbal medicine, having the legal authorization to prescribe herbal medicine does not automatically confer the knowledge and skill to do so successfully.
THE VAST MAJORITY OF ACUPUNCTURISTS IN THE UNITED STATES DO NOT HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE OR EXPERIENCE TO PRESCRIBE HERBS EFFECTIVELY. This is not just my opinion and observation. The American Society of Acupuncturists even mentioned this point explicitly in their guidance to the profession during this pandemic. What that means is that if you’ve heard that you need some Chinese skullcap or some ephedra (called ma huang in mandarin) or maybe just get a little teapill of this or a powder of that, STOP. These herbs that we use to help people with real problems are serious medicine. What you are taking on the advice of well-intentioned but no less ill-informed practitioners at least could be a waste of your time and money or at worst could have severe side-effects from incorrect administration. These are herbs are not some mild elderberry extract your cousin made or a great herbal tea Gweneth Paltrow sold you. Know your medicine and know what it’s for.
The Rub
I want you to use herbal medicine. I want you to treat your body with respect and love. I want you to lean on its incredible ability to heal and repair. And I want you to do all of that with a qualified Chinese Medicine physician in your corner. The universities of Google and Facebook have given us so much knowledge but they have also made it difficult to know what to believe, what to trust, and what steps to take. But remember that expertise is real, training is real, and there are practitioners out there who can keep you healthy during these difficult times.
Please find a qualified Chinese herbal practitioner in your area who helps patients with internal medicine problems. You can ask them how many of their patients use herbs as part or all of their treatment plan and if that number is less than 65%, keep looking. Ask that practitioner if they have a well-supplied pharmacy company that they work with or if they fill the formulas themselves, and then ask if they can get herbs in lots of forms like granules, whole herbs, and/or pills. Your goal here is to assess whether or not they have systems established around herbal medicine and how deep their use of that modality is. It doesn’t matter if you’re not sure what you’re asking about; what you are trying to assess is the practitioner’s ease (or lack thereof) with answering.
Chinese medicine is well-suited to helping patients reduce the intensity of infections and to ease the symptoms of people who are really feeling the weight of their illnesses, whether that illness be Covid-19 or any of the other hundreds of conditions that we treat in our field. Get someone in your corner who knows what they are doing. Ask them a million questions and then do what they ask you to do. Health is not a mystery.
Wishing you the best during these difficult times,
Travis H. Kern, MAcOM, Dipl. OM, LAc
Founder, Root & Branch Chinese Medicine Pharmacy and Clinic