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Is using herbal medicine for health political?

  • Sebastian Pole
    Sebastian Pole

    I am a registered member of the Ayurvedic Professionals Association, Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine and a Fellow of the Unified Register of Herbal Practitioners. I qualified as a herbalist with the aim of using the principles of Ayurveda (the ancient art of living wisely) and the Herbal tradition to help transform health. I have been in clinical practice since 1998.

    Having co-founded Pukka Herbs in 2001 I have become experienced in organic herb growing, practitioner grade quality and sustainable value chains. I am a Trustee of the FairWild Foundation, a Director of The Betonica School of Herbal Medicine and an Advisor to The American Herbal Pharmacopoeia and The Sustainable Herbs Project. Fluent in Hindi, a qualified Yoga therapist and passionate about projects with a higher purpose, I am on a mission to bring the incredible power of plants into people’s life. And that is why I started Herbal Reality and what it is all about.

    I live in a forest garden farm in Somerset growing over 100 species of medicinal plants and trees. And a lot of weeds!

    Author of Ayurvedic Medicine, The Principles of Traditional Practice (Elsevier 2006), A Pukka Life (Quadrille 2011), Celebrating 10 Pukka years (2012) and Cleanse, Nurture, Restore with Herbal Tea (Frances Lincoln 2016).

    Listen to our Herbcast podcast with Sebastian as the host.

  • 7:58 reading time (ish)
  • Sustainability & Social Welfare

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” – Plato

It’s all political

Is using herbal medicine for health political

In a way, if being political means standing up for what you believe in, everything we do is consciously or unconsciously political. From the food we eat, the newspapers we read to the opinions we spout, we are expressing our views. These behaviours influence how we live together and how society is managed, as our collective world view ultimately leads to political power. Everything we buy, consume, use and do ultimately has a social and political consequence. In a world dominated by seemingly intractable established political and economic forces, this personal agency gives us some sense of individual autonomy. Whilst it is not always easy, and some have more choice than others, we can choose where we invest our resources. But are we making the choices that meet our values and lead to the world we want? Are governments encouraging us to make the right choices?

For example, the political and economic values of the last century have largely led to the current disruption of Nature, that is now overflowing into widespread health disruption, resulting in a ‘climate health emergency’. Whether it’s urban air pollution from nitrogen-fertiliser particulates exacerbating the asthma crisis, or the industrialised agricultural-food model leading to poor diet resulting in the diabetes epidemic, or deforestation coupled with poor animal husbandry causing an increase in infectious diseases, the consequences on health are significant. The current health and medical ideology is evidently not helping enough people enough of the time. It is certainly not working with Nature. We urgently need a harmonised approach to both human, economic and ecological health that is good for the individual, affordable and benefits the ecosystem.

Sebastian Pole

I am a registered member of the Ayurvedic Professionals Association, Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine and a Fellow of the Unified Register of Herbal Practitioners. I qualified as a herbalist with... Read more

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