#36 Plant And Human Energetics, Synergy, and Treating People with David Winston

What if the best medicine for your body has nothing to do with treating your disease and everything to do with treating you?

That's the question at the heart of this conversation, and I am so honored to bring you one of the most respected voices in herbal medicine today, David Winston.

In this episode of the Wild Herbs Podcast, I talk with herbalist and ethnobotanist David Winston about how plant energetics and human energetics help match herbs to a person’s constitution so we treat people rather than diseases. David reflects on herbal medicine’s resurgence since the late 1960s, shares how his early connection with plants began in childhood, and explains why herbalism and orthodox medicine are complementary.

We discuss the difference between treating a disease and treating a person, nootropic herbs, compliance and dosing forms, the concept of synergy in herbal formulas, nature’s role in mental health, foundations of health, and mimosa (Albizia) bark as a powerful mood elevator. David also describes his two-year clinical training program and formula-building approach.

Timestamp:

00:00 Teaser

01:05 Meet our guest, David Winston

02:29 Herbalism then and now

07:01 How plants chose him

09:32 Plants communicate wisdom

18:12 Science and tradition together

20:28 Herbs versus medicine