This week (week 5) we will start the study of medicinal plant constituents. Please watch the video about cells and their anatomy, and pages 1-7 in the Constituents workbook which you can download as a pdf file. I don’t expect you to read through the entire workbook, but you can browse through it and keep it for reference. This will give you an overview of these amazing energetic components of plants.
The main presentation this week will be my slide show that has an audio presentation coordinated with the slides. I have provided the first 4 parts and you can find Alkaloids in the Supplementary Folder:
1. Introduction (please watch)
2. Carbohydrates, including the immuno-stimulating beta-glucans in medicinal mushrooms
3. Terpenes, including essential oils
4. Phenolic compounds, including flavonoids, coumarins, etc.
When you open the Power Point presentation, you can change the slides manually, or just watch and listen to the presentation which will change the slides automatically as I speak. Depending on how interested you are in the workings of plants and their chemistry, energetics, and pharmacology, you can watch the entire presentation.
I’ve been presenting this for many years and have refined it and brought it up to date as my understanding of the chemistry of plants has matured. I’ve also had many semesters of chemistry, including 2 years of biochemistry. I found that a lot of plant chemistry may take some time to sink in. Sticking with it and having an interest will pay dividends and give you a completely different point of view. It’s like studying our own anatomy and physiology to understand how to bring about health and how foods and exercise, stretching and other daily activities can promote health or disease. After many presentations of the constituent presentation, I have tried to make it interesting and accessible. I hope I’ve succeeded, at least to a certain extent, I know plant chemistry is complex and many of us are not familiar with the chemistry of life.
Please think about how having a better understanding of plant chemistry can enhance your understanding of the art of herbalism, including growing, processing, drying, selecting the best part of the plant for medicine, making products and extracts, formulations, and matching the herbs to the person or patient.
Remember that plants have chloroplasts, which are green machinery that can capture light energy from the sun, 93 million miles away and upgrade electrons to a higher energy level. It uses this energy for its daily functions, but also stores energy in the form of sugar, upon which most of life on planet earth requires.
From simple building blocks of sugars, air and carbon dioxide it produces an amazing array of thousands of individual chemicals. It uses these chemicals to sense what is happening in its environment, respond to the environment (like building chemicals that repel browsers that might eat it), and for communication with other organisms, including other plants.
Plants don’t have nervous systems and brains (they do signal each other with electrical pulses though), but they are highly intelligent, and use these complex chemicals to thrive in the world. Studies show they can even recognize “kin,” genetically close relatives.
The study of plant chemistry can help herbalists learn more about the toxicity, biological activities, growing, and extraction methods to optimize the medicine.
Many thanks!
CH
