Herbal medicine works best when practiced holistically—that is, with an intent to heal the entire body and get at the sources of physical and emotional imbalance, instead of just treating the symptoms. For example, if you tend to get headaches, you can use herbs not only to ease the pain but also to eliminate the underlying condition causing the pain. This would eventually restore health and balance so that you no longer get headaches. That is real healing. To achieve this kind of result, a new look at health and healing is required. You must consider not only what you may be taking as medicine—both herbs and drugs—but your diet, your lifestyle, your mental attitude and the role that these factors play in keeping you healthy or contributing to disease.
Both traditional herbalists and modern herbal researchers believe that herbs, when properly used, encourage the body to heal itself. Herbal researcher Hildebert Wagner, Ph.D., of the Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology at the University of Munich specializes in studying herbs that improve immunity. He describes herbs as inherently health-promoting, rather than disease-killing: "With herbal remedies, it is not so much a case of totally blocking a reaction in the organism, as, for example, with cortisone or chemotherapy. Herbal preparations serve very often to regulate and stimulate the organism to promote self-healing tendencies."