by Dr. Josh Axe
Healing without harm
It’s clear to me that we’ve placed our faith in a medical industry that puts profits over people—one that is myopically focused on treating individual symptoms instead of seeing human health as a complex mix of physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness. Contrast that with ancient healers. For them, healing was a partnership. Without the benefit of microscopes or modern technology, they built a vast reservoir of knowledge based on careful physical examination, including listening to their patients’ concerns and paying close attention to their emotional and spiritual well-being. Instead of targeting superficial symptoms, the therapeutics these early healers discovered, like acupuncture, meditation, herbs, and essential oils, work on a deep, holistic level, treating the root cause of disease and restoring the well-being of the body and mind as a whole. And physicians around the world continued to use them through the millennia not because they were profitable, but because they were safe and effective.
Western medicine still dismisses these ancient remedies as “alternative.” But it’s arrogant to marginalize thousands of years of wisdom. In fact, I believe that ancient treatments should be our go-to therapies for non-emergency health problems. And that happens to be the case in many places where people live the longest, including Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Indeed, roughly four billion people around the world—or 80 percent of the population—rely on herbal medicine as a primary source of treatment.46 Herbal remedies, as Yale neurologist Steven Novella has pointed out, “have been part of scientific medicine for decades, if not centuries.” How can treatments that have stood the test of time be “alternative”?
The simple answer: They’re not. Many contemporary drugs are derived from compounds found in herbs and other plants. More than two thousand years ago, Hippocrates prescribed the leaves of the willow plant for his patients with headaches and muscle pain. Fast-forward to the 1800s, when scientists discovered that those leaves contain salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin. Similarly, in the seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries in South Africa started using the bark of the cinchona tree to fight malaria, probably because the native population used it as a cure. Two hundred years later, scientists extracted quinine, a common modern malaria treatment, from the tree’s bark.
Similarly, we think of mind-body wellness as a cutting-edge concept. But as early as 2000 BC, ancient Middle Eastern and Asian practitioners knew that our emotional, spiritual, and mental health affects our physical well-being, an idea that was also embraced by Hippocrates and other ancient Greek physicians—it is even mentioned in the Bible. In Proverbs 17:22, King Solomon says, “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a depressed and broken spirit dries up the bones.”
And while fasting and using herbs might seem ultramodern, Hippocrates actually focused much of his practice on those very approaches. In fact, he documented more than two hundred healing herbs, and he taught that plant-based medicine could save lives. His philosophy was based on this core idea: “Everyone has a doctor in him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food.”
Ancient Jewish texts and the Bible are filled with medical wisdom and health advice that’s being “rediscovered” today as well. Prayer, meditation, essential oils, and fasting all have roots in early religious traditions. A passage in James 5:14 reads, “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.” Holy anointing oil was a blend of myrrh, cinnamon, cassia, calamus, and olive—a combination that has potent healing properties. In the book of Leviticus, God tells the Israelites not to eat pork and shellfish, because they can contain toxins—concerns that have been confirmed by modern science.
Unlike the one-size-fits-all Western approach, ancient treatments are tailored to individuals in all their diversity and complexity. And that’s how I believe we need to approach medicine going forward. Since you picked up this book, I assume you’re interested in that idea as well—and I’m glad you’re here.
An abundance of ancient wisdom awaits you in these pages. Some may be familiar to you, some completely foreign. Either way, the information will help you take control of your health and make more informed choices when faced with illness and disease. Every ancient remedy I endorse is effective for treating the ailments that plague modern culture and ruin too many people’s health—and together, these time-tested treatments serve as a powerful antidote to our dangerous reliance on toxic, costly pharmaceuticals.
CHAPTER 2
Curing the Root Cause
Why Treating Symptoms Destroys Your Health—and Ancient Wisdom Heals
When I was a kid, every time I had a cold my mom gave me the same meal: canned chicken noodle soup and ginger ale. But you know what? It always took me a while to kick the virus. Maybe you had a similar experience when you were young. Given what I know now about healing, I understand why those foods didn’t help me recover. The soup was filled with monosodium glutamate, white flour noodles, and other artificial, processed ingredients that cause inflammation in the body—the opposite of what your body needs to beat a virus—and the ginger ale was essentially carbonated high-fructose corn syrup with 40 grams of sugar per serving, another inflammatory substance.
But there is a valid reason my mom (and maybe yours) believed those foods were healing: In ancient Chinese and Jewish medicine, homemade chicken soup and ginger herb tea were cold-fighting staples. They’re so effective they’ve been handed down through the millennia and even made their way into Western folk medicine. My grandmother gave those remedies to my mom when she was a child. And my wife, Chelsea, and I use them today to kick colds and other bugs with ease.
Those ancient remedies work because they target one of the underlying causes of a cold: being too cold internally. That idea undoubtedly sounds odd if you were raised exclusively on the Western model. How can your body be cold? I admit, it’s a different way of thinking about health and healing—and I’ll explain this and other ancient concepts later in the chapter. For now, it’s enough to know the basics: In TCM, if you’re too cold on the inside, the cure is to eat warming foods, like ginger, garlic, oregano, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and homemade chicken broth. Similarly, if your body has too much heat, you need to cool it down with foods like apples, grapefruit, cucumber, lettuce, celery, yogurt, eggs, and peppermint.
In ancient medicine, the goal of treatment is to restore balance to your internal environment and strengthen your organ systems (including your immune system), which accomplishes something Western pharmaceuticals don’t: healing the underlying root cause of illness. Let’s return to the example of viruses. You’ve probably heard of “germ theory”—the idea that many common illnesses are caused by contagious pathogens. Louis Pasteur, a French scientist, proved the theory in the 1900s. But it doesn’t answer a critical question: Why does one person get sick and another remain healthy when they’re exposed to the same microbes? The ancient answer is that toxicity and deficiencies due to poor diet, a sedentary lifestyle, smoking, and toxic stress, along with other negative emotions, weaken your organ systems and inhibit your immune system’s ability to fight off pathogens. In other words, your underlying health makes you more susceptible not only to coming down with seasonal viruses but also to dying from them.
If it takes you a long time to recover from viral and bacterial infections, it’s most likely a sign your immune system is weak. You can see this idea at play every cold and flu season, as well as during the Covid-19 pandemic, when people over the age of seventy or those diagnosed with immune deficiency were more severely affected, and more likely to die, than those who are young and healthy. The ancient truth is that healing doesn’t come from a miracle drug, but from within your own body. If your immune system is strong and functioning optimally, you can fight off viruses and bacteria with relative ease. You might not even develop sym
ptoms at all. One problem with relying on a new drug or vaccine to target a virus is there will always be another virus, which requires another medication or immunization. But if you build your immune system, which is designed to fight off all manner of foreign pathogens, you will not only protect yourself from dangerous bugs, but also reduce your risk of cancer, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. In other words, you’ll improve your health overall. And here’s what I find remarkable: Ancient remedies and lifestyle strategies can keep your immune system robust and, as a result, give you the protection you need to fight viruses and bacteria, even as you age.
Movement and meditation, both of which, as I’ve mentioned, have roots in ancient healing, have been shown to strengthen the immune system, as have probiotic foods, zinc, and vitamins A, C, and D—all plentiful in ancient diets. What’s more, TCM has included strategies to protect the body from viral epidemics for thousands of years. The Huangdi’s Internal Classic, written two thousand years ago, recommended immune-boosting herbs, a healthy diet, and other lifestyle approaches to increase qi (cellular energy) and strengthen the immune system in order to fend off rampaging pathogens.
Indeed, there’s a whole world of ancient immune-boosting, virus-fighting herbs and essential oils that has long been ignored by Western medicine. Elderberry, echinacea, oregano, andrographis, astragalus, garlic, and turkey tail mushrooms all contain virus-fighting compounds that can help your body eradicate illness-causing pathogens. And they’re remarkably effective. A paper published in the Chinese Journal of Integrative Medicine in April 2020 reported on seven studies looking at the performance of a TCM herbal formula during the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak and the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic.1 The formula, which contains a variety of immune-strengthening herbs, including astragalus, atractylodes, licorice root, and others, provided protection to Chinese doctors and nurses during both outbreaks. In three studies on SARS, none of the participants who took the TCM formula contracted the deadly illness. Likewise, the infection rate of H1N1 was significantly lower among those who took the formula than it was among those who didn’t. Similarly, there’s preliminary research showing that substances in oranges (hesperidin), galangal (galangin), green tea (EGCG), and onions (quercetin) might suppress Covid-19 infection. I’m often asked why there aren’t any large, randomized, controlled double-blind studies into the effectiveness of these remedies. Here’s why: Those studies are expensive, and no big pharmaceutical company is going to fund them. But here’s what we have in place of that evidence: Thousands of years of history of their use. (In chapter 6 you’ll find an in-depth look at the antiviral properties of specific herbs, and chapter 8 delves into the most effective essential oils.)
Imagine a world where the government spent billions of dollars battling obesity, diabetes, and heart disease—factors that impair the immune system and, during the Covid-19 pandemic, doubled the risk of winding up in intensive care—and making sure everyone had a healthy diet of bone broth, citrus fruits, and an array of immunity-boosting vegetables. When the next contagious bug begins circulating, what if doctors handed out vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, and an herbal formula with elderberry, echinacea, and astragalus? This type of care would dramatically bolster people’s immune function.
In any case, these ancient dietary, herbal, and lifestyle approaches should be part of your stay-well arsenal during regular cold and flu seasons—and are especially important when a novel virus (one that your immune system has never encountered) is spreading like wildfire around the globe.
Think about how this ancient knowledge could change your everyday life when the next big superbug strikes. If you believe the Western paradigm—that we’re essentially helpless without pharmaceutical intervention—you’ll be overwhelmed by fear, which impairs your immune system. However, if you understand that keeping your organ systems and immune system strong gives you the power to fight off seasonal superbugs, you’ll focus your energy on eating immune-boosting foods; reducing stress with strategies like meditation and regular exercise; and taking herbs and essential oils that fight viruses and fortify your immune system. I can tell you from working with thousands of patients over the years that the conventional medical mindset increases your risk of illness, while the empowering ancient medicine approach offers real protection—and leads to extraordinary health and longevity.
Tapping into your body’s secret superpower: its ability to heal itself
Ancient healing is effective because it treats the two most common underlying causes of poor health: toxicity (from inflammatory foods, environmental toxins, and unhealthy emotions, like anger, worry, fear, loneliness, grudge-holding, resentment, and stress) and deficiencies (like vitamin and mineral deficits as well as lack of joy, hope, love, forgiveness, and connection).
Three Types of Medical Treatments
Conventional Medicine: drugs and surgery prescribed as a treatment to cover up symptoms
Integrative Medicine: general diet recommendations for everyone; supplements, exercise, and natural therapies to treat causes of symptoms
Ancient Medicine: personalized diet, herbal supplements, essential oils, exercise, holistic treatments, emotional health recommendations aimed at treating the root cause of the disease
While this is a departure from the current Western model, it couldn’t be more needed. When I first opened my functional medical clinic in Nashville, I was shocked by how many patients came to see me after they had already been to three, four, six, or even more mainstream doctors. As I sat and talked with each of these patients, I heard the same basic story over and over: The cycle of starting a medication, developing side effects, then receiving another prescription or two to treat those secondary issues often continued for years—all the while, these people who had once been reasonably healthy, became increasingly debilitated, ill, and infirm. Just as disturbing, they started thinking of themselves as sickly—as people with chronic health problems that could be managed with medication but could never be cured. By the time they landed in my office, many had all but resigned themselves to a life of poor health.
During our first appointments, as I talked to them extensively about their lives and the histories of their symptoms, I was struck by the eerie similarities that emerged. In the majority of cases, the origin of a patient’s health problems could be traced to a toxic lifestyle, an out-of-balance emotional life, or both. For instance, most were under a lot of stress, often due to factors like a divorce, an ill child or parent, financial concerns, or a crushing workload. Some had suffered trauma, either in childhood or adulthood, that still made them tear up years later. Many ate poorly, because they were always on the go, or they had too little time (or know-how) to cook, or the nearest market was a convenience store with no fruits or vegetables or fresh meat, fish, or chicken. A significant number didn’t exercise, either because they sat at a desk all day, or had a long commute to and from work, or were uncomfortably overweight, or just had trouble getting into the habit.
When I started treating these patients with personalized dietary and lifestyle changes that have been used for centuries, as well as ancient herbs and essential oils, which reduce inflammation and bolster the functioning of key organs on a cellular level, they began to feel better. They lost weight, their energy rebounded, and they regained a sense of control over their lives.
What’s more, with every appointment, I saw tangible—often dramatic—improvements. Over the course of a few years, more than fifty of my patients with type 2 diabetes were able to reverse their diagnosis. When they began moving more and eating more like our ancient ancestors—eliminating sugar and carbs and upping their intake of veggies, grass-fed beef, wild-caught fish, and healthy fats—their insulin production normalized and their blood sugar levels dropped, often to the point where they no longer needed medication. Similarly, dozens of patients with autoimmune disease, leaky gut syndrome, migraines, and clinical depression overcame their ailments and returned to good health.
And i
t wasn’t just their bodies that healed. As their health turned around, these patients began seeing themselves in a different light. They no longer thought of themselves as sick people who would never be well; instead, they felt transformed into healthy people who occasionally got sick.
Ancient remedies aren’t overnight cures or instant fixes—and that can be frustrating for those accustomed to a Western perspective. When you feel poorly or learn that you have a health problem, it’s natural to want to get better right away. Popping a pharmaceutical appeals to that desire for an instant fix. But our get-well-quick mindset overlooks an important truth: The body was designed to heal itself—to fight off bacteria and other viruses, knit together wounds, and kill off cells that have developed mutations. I believe that God put that healing power within each of us. But regardless of your beliefs, your body heals itself. Think about it: If you cut your hand, what happens? The skin weaves itself back together. Or how about when you get a cold virus? You spike a fever, feel crummy for a bit, then begin to get well. As Hippocrates said, “The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.”
Prescription (and even over-the-counter) drugs ignore and sometimes override the remarkable recuperative capacity hard-wired into our systems; they force the body to do things it wouldn’t do naturally, which, not surprisingly, causes downstream problems. Ancient remedies, on the other hand, complement your internal restorative ability, gently coaxing and supporting your body to do what it does best: heal itself.