Why We Choose Whole Plant Ingredients and Why it Matters
You know, for a long while there has been this underlying difference between pharmaceutical medicine and natural medicine and we think it was always like that. But this is really not the case.
It kind of parallels how Psychology used to be about the human soul until it abandoned it and suppressed its very existence by denying it was even there.
Before Professor Wilhelm Wundt of Leipzig, Germany, put forth his work on behavioral psychology people were very aware of how things affected them as a whole. They didn’t separate behavior from the soul. Behavior was a manifestation of the soul, not some reaction to biological or mechanical stimulus.
A person mattered. His whole life was taken into account in order to make the correct changes and underlying factors were remedied, not overpowered or covered up.
The change happened in Psychology in 1874. At that time medicine ran on the principles of Vitalism. But it wasn’t long till this materialism from Psychology infected the populace and had them abandoning their spiritual nature for the “miracle” of modern science.
Vitalism said that living things were different from nonliving things because they had a vital force. Like the French élan vital or the Greek entelechy. This force was said to govern an organism's unique properties of self-organization and autonomous actions, operating beyond simple physical and chemical laws.
This was and is still the basis of Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine, Homeopathy and many other old and effective systems of medicine. The goal of these systems is to restore proper and healthy balance to the forces stemming from the vital force.
We had a golden age of medicine in America for about 30 years. Some more well-meaning and intelligent doctors got tired of losing patients due to bloodletting and other unworkable practices and studied everything around them to seek out workable practices to actually heal their patients. They called themselves the Eclectics. They embraced the idea of Vitalism and relied on herbs and homeopathy heavily. For 30 years, late 1800’s to the beginning of the 1900’s, people could go to an actual mainstream doctor, educated in the most prestigious medical schools and actually get well without this business of the cure causing the next malady. They used clean remedies that did not leave energy ridges or poisons to start the next problem.
The definition of Vitalism was squirreled- specifically it was adulterated by the addition that substances produced in the body were vital substances and therefore required vital energy to make and couldn’t be produced in a lab.
And then lo and behold a college chemistry professor named Friedrich Wohler mixes and heats silver cyanate with ammonium chloride, both non vital substances, and synthesized Urea. Urea being “a vital substance” made by the body. And based on this, the whole of Vitalism was advertised to be debunked and organic chemistry was born.
Anyone who tried to refute that that wasn’t all of Vitalism got challenged to prove Vitalism by isolating this Life force, which of course was not physically possible.
And so the way was bulldozed for modern medicine to deny remedies that were alive and affected energy and then everything was explained by mechanistic biology and chemistry. This made it okay to make substances out of toxic material like petroleum just because they could get the same arrangement of atoms and molecules as the physical part of a living remedy.
But when you isolate an ingredient, whether you synthesize it or extract it, you lose the power of the whole. Even if you don’t believe in anything spiritual, you can physically measure the effect of synergy.
So for many, many more years, in fact earlier than recorded history, man had believed in his spiritual nature and sought remedies that took into account the whole person and his life, not just a behavior to be tweaked. We should probably spell holistic medicine Wholistic medicine.
In fact, we got the term holism from a South African philosopher who, in 1926, which was after Vitalism had newly been replaced by petrochemical drugs, tried to influence people back toward a spiritual idea. He noticed that things and people were more than just the sum of their parts. He was noticing the spiritual dynamics that were present beyond just isolated parts. He didn’t quite describe it as a dynamic though, but he did point it out as a synergy happening. He coined “holism” from the Greek holos meaning whole.
From this he contrasted specialized medicine with wholeness principles, and that brought back some of the spiritual dynamic and it became about whole body systems rather than specific body parts.
Now I ask you, would you rather take a substance that was made from petroleum, with which you can’t both ingest and stay healthy (It’s poisonous), or a plant that is a healthy food?
As much as we like to think that science can find out exactly what is in a liquid solution (If the substance isn’t a liquid, it usually has to be dissolved to be analyzed), it still has many limitations. You can’t just analyze a liquid by pouring it through a machine that lists out everything that’s in it. Would be nice, except it would ruin the game for chemists who have to run many individual tests and add it up and take an educated guess as to what is in it. A lot of things can sneak by.
Although they can identify the most plentiful compounds, they cannot tell what traces there are from where it was sourced unless they look specifically for them. But they have to know it is there or assume it is there in order to look for it. And they have to have the specific tests to find it. And they can’t predict if the molecule will act the same way from both sources, the living and the lab. You can only tell that by trying it.
So, these limitations cannot tell you the traces of poisons that will add up in your body, but they also can’t analyze a plant and find all the traces in it of good stuff that might be catalyzing good effects on the body either.
How long has it taken biochemists to discover all of the vitamins? Well Vitamin B1 was discovered in 1910, Vitamin A was discovered in 1913, Vitamin C and D were discovered in 1920, Vitamin E in 1922, Vitamin K1 in 1929, Vitamin B5 in 1931, Vitamin B6 in 1934, Vitamin B7 (Biotin) and B3 (Niacin) in 1936, Vitamin B9 (Folic Acid) and Vitamin B12 in 1948. That’s 38 years.
Although the recipes of biochemical supplements improve over time as more things get discovered, one has no idea of the totality of Nature’s recipe. And by experimental evidence, natural extracts or whole source products in general are friendlier to health and are more effective at bringing about and supporting health.
Unfortunately, any evidence of this nature can be refuted by saying there needs to be more evidence. Which is why the existing evidence never gets to be official evidence.
Evidence does not need to be official to be true. It only has to be true for you to be workable.
If choosing between an isolated and/or synthesized ingredient and a whole plant ingredient, which would you think might do you the most good?
I hope you have understood the principle of “live vs dead” and the “synergy versus isolated” concepts I have tried to convey to you and you have answered “whole plant ingredient”!!
If so, I am pleased to have accomplished my goal, and you have learned something vital that you can use to navigate the confusing subject of nutrition.
I hope I have made it clear to you why we choose whole plant ingredients and why it matters. We love bringing you the best!