Excerpts from Carmina Gadelica

Around the turn of the 20th century, Alexander Carmichael collected poems, hymns and incantations from the Scottish highlands into a six-volume compendium that includes both (extensive) Christian and Pagan verses. The digitized edition of Volume II includes a number of gems, with facing text in the original Gaelic. Here are some excerpts:

Kevin Spelman - molecular bio of immunomodulators

From the AHG symposium

Kevin Spelman

Immunomodulators: botanical medicines that through the dynamical regulation of informational molecules alter the activity of the immune systems.

Cytokines and the cytokine theory of disease (Czura, CJ 2005): overproduction of cytokines can cause the clinical manifestations of disease. But it can begin on an emotional level (anger/shame as opposed to medidative states) - then as cytokines levels increase, disease manifests: first depression, pain, anorexia. Then, psoriasis, colitis. Then, tissue damage and arthritis. Finally, shock and organ failure.

Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and other cytokines like Epidermal Growth Factor stimulate a series of intracellular changes that ultimately have effects in the nucleus - on genetic expression. When, in researching botanicals, we look at                                           the  nucleus, we're getting somewhere.

Lisa Ganora - synergy in botanical medicines

From the AHG Symposium

Lisa Ganora - synergy in botanical medicines

The scientific research process makes it difficult to research more than a small handful of chemicals at a time. Considering that, by some estimates, botanicals contain up to 10,000 active constituents, scientific research runs up against a limit very quickly. Fortunately, we have a practical use history to turn to: we've been eating these plants for a long time with no harm.

Polymolecular approaches, which rely on synergy, have a unique ability to interface with the complex biological system of the human being. Plants provide this. Huge difference compared to pharmaceutical agents. Additionally, pharmaceuticals are very new on the scene. And most aren't cheap (whereas plants...)