Services
Herbal Medicine
Herbal medicine is a system of healthcare working with medicines made from plants, shrubs, trees and fungi, utilising their phytochemistry and energetics. Herbal medicine can help in most cases.
Herbal medicine is not the same as mainstream allopathic medicine. One main difference between the two systems is that herbal medicine can be considered slow medicine and is concerned in its purest form, with the patient’s constitution and not pathology. This idea goes back in recorded history for at least 3000 years.
Traditional herbal medicine aims to help the body heal itself by supporting the body’s self-regulating mechanisms. Traditional herbal medicine is also based on the concept of vitalism. The vital force is found within all creation and all parts of nature and can be divided into five elements and categorised by the four humours and the seven classical planets.
This filing cabinet of ideas is merely a language to connect with the deeper concepts of traditional vitalistic herbalism.
As a trained and registered medical herbalist, I am familiar with modern pathological understanding of disease, but I practice in a much more traditional framework. Traditional herbal medicine is not about suppressing symptoms (which is a commonality in modern pathological-focused medicine, known as allopathic medicine, or modern medicine), and because of this concept of not suppressing symptoms, but righting the constitution of the patient, leads to traditional Western herbal medicine being a gentle and progressive method of healing. It can take time to heal.
David Cypher, Registered Medical Herbalist
How I Work
I am happy to come to a home where other people are as long as the consultation is undertaken in a private space between myself and the patient.
There is a very rare need to do any physical examination within traditional herbal medicine.
The consultation will be a conversation between the herbalist and the patient.
During this consultation we have a chance to explore your current and past health. Health is not just the physical thing, we will also look into your emotional and spiritual balance (whatever that means for you).
During the consultation I will take your blood pressure and examine your tongue, nails and face.
The dispensing of the herbs takes place at my home, which means I can deliver the herbs to your home later that day, arrange to meet you somewhere, or post them. I like to have time to think about the herbs we are going to be working with, and to dedicate some time to creating a personally tailored medicine for the patient.
Bear in mind that for every year the patient has been in imbalance, on average two months of herbal treatment are required.
I work mainly with herbs that have been extracted in alcohol as a solvent (tinctures), but will when appropriate prescribed teas and creams.
If alcohol-based tinctures are a concern, there are other methods of dispensing that we can explore.
To take the medicine, 5 ml (about 0.17 oz) of tincture is placed into a glass or cup and a little water is added before consumption.
Your Appointment
This consultation differs from seeing a doctor in one important way, that the herbalist and the patient are equals and colleagues in the endeavour of healing.
After this consultation I will dispense two weeks’ worth of herbs, then we will have a half hour consultation two weeks later, after which I will dispense a further two weeks’ worth of medicine.
At some point the space between appointments will lengthen to four weeks. At this point I will dispense four weeks’ worth of medicine.
Some of these appointments may be done remotely via Zoom. This keeps down the overheads and costs and makes the treatment more accessible.
Every six weeks I suggest that the patient ceases to take any internal medication prescribed by me for a week. This allows the body to catch up with itself and handle its own business. This is to prepare the body, mind and spirit to eventually stop taking herbal medicine.
Costs
Currently, I can see patients in a room that I will hire either in Street or Glastonbury, (£6 for the hour), or I can travel to the patient’s home and do a consultation there. The initial consultation fee is £30. The medicines cost £10 with a further £5 for any creams prescribed.
If you are struggling to meet this cost, we can discuss the best way forward.
I have kept the cost low so that it is not a barrier to healing.
Follow-up consultations are £15 for half an hour, and the same costs for the medicines (£10 for tinctures and £5 for creams).