Plant-Based Medicine

When I have small ailments, I ask Annika if she has something for treatment.

In the last two years, she has invested a lot of time understanding and knowing medicine and plants.

I started to learn about wild herbs several years earlier, but she quickly surpassed me in knowledge.

Like me, she learned mainly in my teacher Uwe’s wilderness camp, where Astrid Mittelstaedt is teaching longer courses on wild herbs.

Annika created a wide array of teas, tinctures, and salves. Almost all use plants that either grow in our garden or are collected in nature.

Some of this stuff works stronger than what you get at the pharmacy.

I’m sometimes astonished at how well this stuff works.

Some pharmacists are skeptical about plant-based medicine. Weird because initially, all medications come from plants, animals, and fungi.

Synthesized medicine works well, but it doesn’t render “ancient” medicine useless.

If I need a heavy-duty antibiotic, I won’t delude myself into thinking that I’m getting the desired effect from drinking chamomile tea.

Synthetic and “natural” medicine are not at war with each other.

Knowing plant medicine is part of taking responsibility for yourself, so you don’t have to rely on doctors and pharmacies for some small stuff necessarily.

It can also prevent unnecessarily prolonging your suffering by just “sitting it out.”

Joseph Bartz
06.07.2021