Why We're Dependent On Plants For Medicine | Sophie Lamb & Naomi Murray | TEDxRoyalTunbridgeWells

[0:15]My sister Sophie and I come from a background where herbal medicine was the norm in our house. And if we became poorly, we would turn to plants for medicine. In the winter, we would have time syrup for coughs, and in the summer we return to the delicate eye-bright for hay fever. At the weekends and during the holidays, we would be out with our father, getting knee-deep in the bogs of the Scottish Highlands. Filling our sacks with bog bean or going to the sand dunes to pick the eyebright. At home in our kitchen, the red Agra would always have herbs macerating next to it or drying on top. This is because our father is a medical herbalist. And down the generations before him were doctors and herbalists and surgeons. Our great, great, great grandfather, Dr. Samuel Lamb, would have been in his surgery at around the same time that Mr. Boots opened his first herbalist shop in 1849, which would become the roots of the great Empire today familiar on many a high street. We realized this was a unique childhood, but at the same time, how can something so innate and real to us be so foreign and distant to others? Especially when we know that the majority of the drugs that we use today are derived from plants and used every day in conventional medical settings. In the same way that we're losing the connection between the milk in the fridge and the cow in the field, we're losing that precious connection between the plants in the field and the medicines in our cupboards. The World Health Organization has an official list of essential medicines. And these are necessary for any healthcare system. And these are the most safe and effective medicines available to us. But here's the thing, a substantial proportion of these drugs come from plants. In other words, we depend on plants for our most vital medicines. For example, we have Lidocaine, the most commonly used anesthetic in dentistry. Lidocaine is developed from cocaine, which of course comes from the Coca leaf. And it's thanks to that observation of the numbing effect of the Coca leaf in the mouth, that we have Lidocaine and many of our other modern anesthetics. If you go for an eye exam, you might be given atropine eye drops, which dilate the pupil to allow a better examination of the inside of the eye. Atropine is actually from Atropa belladonna or more commonly known as the deadly nightshade. And who can forget morphine from the opium poppy, which has tended to pains of World War injuries and continues to be unrivaled as the most potent form of analgesia since it was first isolated more than 200 years ago. And morphine is still extracted directly from the plant. And we owe the discovery of Metformin, the first line treatment for type 2 diabetes, to the French lilac or Galega officinalis, a plant always used by herbalists to treat this condition. Oncology too has found many of its greats in the plant kingdom. We have Vinblastine from the Madagascar periwinkle, and we have Taxol, which is a breast cancer drug that comes from the European U tree. Taxol is directly harvested from the leaves of that tree. In fact, 90% of all drugs in the field of oncology are found in either plants or other natural products. And two of our most important antimalarial drugs, Quinine from the cinchona tree and Artemisinin from sweet wormwood have saved millions of lives and are still extracted directly from the plants. But before we even end up in the emergency room or the dental chair, how about the plant-based medicines in your own cupboards at home? If you think about Aspirin, one of the most widely used drugs in the world, it comes from a compound found in meadowsweet. And the sweet scent of this herb always takes me straight back to my father's dispensary in Scotland. You might even have a painkiller in your cabinet that contains caffeine, which comes from either a bean or a leaf. And both caffeine and aspirin are on the list of essential medicines. Now, let's take a compound like caffeine and have a closer look at one of the plants it can be found in. Camellia sinensis, it's where we get our green tea and our breakfast tea. Now come with me below the surface of this leaf and explore another world within a world. The tea leaf has reportedly 4,000 different bioactive compounds. A bioactive compound is a compound which exerts a measurable physiological effect on the human or animal which is consuming it. The studies are clear. Tea protects against heart disease and cancer. But which of these 4,000 compounds is that due to? Is it one? Is it a few? Or is it the synergy and symphony of the whole? And did you know that the stimulating effect of caffeine in your tea is perfectly complemented and balanced by an amino acid unique to the tea leaf called L-theanine. So while caffeine elevates your sense of alertness and focus, L-theanine stimulates alpha brainwaves, the same type observed during meditation and the net result is a focused calm. You are literally drinking medicine every single day in your cup of tea. Our grandmother lived to the age of 96, on no drugs and towards the end a diet of tea and biscuits. Who can say what influence the tea had on her longevity? Your daily cup could be your greatest health ally. And in the same way that we risk missing out on the synergy of the whole plant, what might we be missing out on when we treat parts of ourselves rather than the whole? For example, if we have a headache, conventional medicine will aim to target the pain, which of course is a justifiable thing to do, but with little or no consideration for the hormones, dietary influences or digestive health at play. Do you know the old-fashioned name for depression? Melancholia or melancholy. That Latin word breaks down to melan, black, cholia, bile. In other words, depressive states were traditionally viewed as disorders perhaps relating to the digestive tract. Of course, depression is a multifactorial disorder, but that old view, that traditional view is more in line with the most recent research which is coming out into depression relating it to inflammation, autoimmune disease and digestive disorders. So let's take a plant like milk thistle, and now let's relate that to a rather unusual reason for hospital admission, mushroom poisoning. Now mushroom foraging is enjoyed the world over, but there have always been incidents of mistaken identity. And with a name like death cap, you know you're going to be in trouble if you eat that by accident. Ingestion of this mushroom is associated with high death rate due to rapid liver failure. But in hospitals around the world, an extract of milk thistle is intravenously being used and is saving people's lives, in fact, cutting death rates by half and preserving the health of the liver. Milk thistle is one of our most favorite herbs and has always been used traditionally by herbalists to to preserve the liver and to support the health and function of it. You know, 80% of the developing world still rely on plants and natural products for their medicine. Not because these people are poor, not because they're ignorant, but because they're safe and effective options. And if we just think about that story of milk thistle and remember this, that many if not most of the plant derived drugs that we use today are used in the similar way of the traditional medicinal use of the plant that they came from. But now from the emergency room to global use, let's end up on your own doorstep at home with the dandelion. Most people don't know this, but the dandelion is able to activate the largest nerve in your body. At the back of your tongue, you have bitter receptors, and when you eat or taste a better plant like the dandelion, when these receptors are activated, they go on to stimulate the vagal nerve. The vagal nerve innervates all of your digestive organs, improving their tone and function. So you see with some of these plants, the healing actually begins in the mouth. And if that weren't amazing enough, I'm always in awe of the dandelion, this humble, bumblebee-loving weed. At the moment is being researched to see if it's can be efficient in the treatment of blood cancers, including lymphoma and leukemia. You see the further you look at these plants, the more amazing they get. Thank you so much for taking this brief Albatross view with us over the landscape of plant medicine. We hope it's left you curious for more, with a more openness to the potentials for your own health, and most of all, for a greater appreciation for the life-saving medicines which are growing all around us. Thank you.