Indications ,
Contraindications and The Healing Crisis

Some months ago, we started helping a client suffering from a severe case of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). About six months before he came to see us, he had been doing just fine with only minor symptoms. However, in the preceding six months he had gone steadily downhill, to the point that he had become nearly completely paralyzed. His decline in health started when he was persuaded to take some supplements from an MLM company (not NSP). Even though he was growing steadily worse on these supplements, the distributor urged him to continue to take them, claiming he was just experiencing a "healing crisis."
The product was an immune stimulant. Products which stimulate the immune system are contraindicated in autoimmune disorders because they aggravate symptoms. Even though this rather dramatic case didn't involve products from Nature's Sunshine, it alerted me to the serious need to educate people about the difference between side effects, aggravations and the "healing crisis" because I have also seen many NSP people label a worsening of symptoms as a "healing crisis" when it was clearly nothing of the sort.
 

Choosing the Right Herb for the Right Job

We all know that drugs have side effects. These side effects are unwanted reactions people experience due to the toxic nature of these chemicals. I don't see the herbs we use as having side effects, per se, although one can get unwanted reactions from these herbs. Generally speaking, however, these actions are simply part of the overall action of the plant. For example, black cohosh may cause dizziness and headaches, but this is due to the fact that it relaxes blood vessels and increases blood flow to the brain. Thus, taken to excess it can create a vasodilative headache. However, it also relieves vasoconstrictive headaches, where tension is causing too little blood flow to the brain. This is not a paradox, it is simply a matter of understanding how the herb works.

In a similar manner, licorice root promotes excretion of potassium, retention of sodium, hydration of body tissues and increased blood pressure. For a person who is tired, dehydrated and suffering from low blood pressure, this is a great herb. However, for a person suffering from fluid retention and high blood pressure, it can aggravate his or her condition.

Hence, we can say that black cohosh is contraindicated for people with vasodilative headaches. Licorice root is contraindicated with high blood pressure and fluid retention.
Herbs are very safe, but this does not mean they cannot aggravate a person's health problems and make them worse instead of better. After all, common foods aggravate many illnesses (milk in sinus problems, sugar with hypoglycemia, etc.), but it doesn't mean that the food is toxic. It is a principle of balance. When the body is out of balance in certain ways it cannot handle certain substances.

I like this explanation given by Dr. William Cook in his 1890 Physio-Medical Dispensatory. Dr. Cook compared giving the incorrect remedy to giving soda crackers to a man dying of thirst. While the crackers aren't toxic in and of themselves, they would aggravate the thirsty man's condition rather than aid it.
Obviously, no one with any common sense would try to revive a dehydrated person with soda crackers. However, I find that many people in our modern society lack common sense, especially when it comes to dealing with health problems.

For example, if a person took cascara sagrada and experienced some diarrhea, we couldn't call that a "healing crisis." Cascara causes evacuation of the bowel: take too much and you'll get diarrhea! So, just plain common sense tells us cascara sagrada is contraindicated (not recommended) in cases of diarrhea. Contraindicated means the herb will worsen the problem because it further aggravates the existing imbalance of the body.
Of course, that is a ridiculous example because it is so obvious. Most herbal contraindications are much more subtle. In fact, the imbalances an herb might cause from taking too much are usually very slow and cumulative. However, they still exist. We might compare them to the problems associated with drinking coffee. Although we don't think of coffee as an herb, it is a medicinal plant and a strong one at that. One cup isn't likely to do any serious harm to the body, but we know that continuous consumption will. The imbalances caused by constant use of coffee creep up slowly and one might miss the connection unless one understands the nature of the medicine.

Many of our stronger medicinal plants, such as ephedra, lobelia, ginseng, kava kava, goldenseal, etc. have no harm with occasional use, but when taken repeatedly over a period of time, they can cause imbalances in the system. A person untrained in understanding these effects might miss the connection because the development is gradual and cumulative, not immediate, but the connection is there.

Let me give a very practical example. Recently I did a telephone consolation with a gentleman suffering from skin rashes. Various Managers had attributed it to yeast infections and other problems and he had tried many programs without success. In taking a case history, I learned he was taking over twenty supplements daily,
including a full dose of MegaChel(10 tablets), NutriCalm (3 tablets, and Niacin (2 tablets). Since niacin is already present in both MegaChel and NutriCalm, I calculated he was taking enough niacin to cause a skin rash and urged him to back off on his supplements. This is just one of many cases where I've been able to help someone feel better by REDUCING the number of supplements they are taking.
 

What’s The Difference?

So, how do we recognize the difference between an aggravation of symptoms caused by recommending the wrong supplements and a healing crisis? Well, before we can answer that question we need to understand exactly what a healing crisis is, and we can't understand a healing crisis until we understand the nature of the disease crisis.

Every acute ailment has a moment of crisis. It is the turning point of the disease. You may recall the old-time movies when the doctor says, "The crisis has passed." He is saying, the disease has turned and the person is starting to get well.

The crisis occurs because acute illness is a response of the body to irritation. Whenever something has invaded the body, be it a bacteria, a virus or an environmental toxin, the immune system tries to expel it as soon as it becomes alerted to its presence. It does this by mustering the energy forces of the body to create an accelerated elimination through one of the elimination channels (bowels, urinary tract, respiratory passages, the skin or the menses in women). The disease crisis is the point when the body is able to mount enough resistance to expel the invader.

The simplest example of this process is food poisoning. Several hours after eating hours after eating some tainted food we start to feel uneasy. This queasy feeling in the stomach is created by the body in response to the irritating substances in the stomach. This discomfort or "disease" (literally meaning "lack of ease") builds as the body musters its forces to expel the contents of the stomach. It does this by inducing vomiting.
The actual episode of vomiting is the "crisis" point of the disease. This is when the symptoms reach their peak and the "dis-ease" is at its greatest. Once the vomiting has ceased, the crisis has passed, and we begin to feel better because the irritants have been expelled from our system. Once we have finished throwing up, the irritant is gone. The battle the body has just engaged in leaves us feeling drained, so it takes some rest to recover our former strength, but we are now on the mend, that is, the crisis has passed.

A similar principle is at work with respiratory congestion. I have found that if one encourages the drainage and expulsion of phlegm, that the length of the illness is shortened. The drainage is the “crisis” of a cold. Skin eruptions are another form of “crisis” elimination that the body uses to expel viruses such as chicken pox and measles. Fevers generally break when a person throw3s up, clears their bowel and/or begins to sweat. In each case it is when the body is able to successfully expel what is bothering it that the crisis (symptoms of elimination) is over.

One cannot have a healing crisis unless one has had a suppressed disease crisis. That is, at some point in the person’s history they had an illness where they either took medication to suppress the attempts of the body to eliminate the irritants or their system lacked the vitality to mount an effective response. Hence, the irritant remains in the system awaiting a time when the body has enough energy to mount a response.
 

Cleansing Herbs Don’t Create a Healing Crisis

A healing crisis cannot be generated simply by taking cleansing herbs. Cleansing herbs themselves represent a slight irritation to the body which stimulates the body's cleansing mechanisms to accelerate the rate of discharge. Cleansing herbs, like the eliminative functions manifested in the disease crisis, use up the body's energies and deplete them. This is why building is necessary. One must nourish the body's tissues with wholesome foods, nutrients and tonics in order to replenish energy reserves.

Having laid this background we are now ready to understand the nature of a healing crisis. First, in order for a healing crisis to occur, the body must be in a weakened state, housing toxins that it does not possess the vitality to eliminate. This is the situation that sets up the need for a healing crisis. If one gives a person cleansing herbs, this will not evoke a healing crisis because it mere I y depletes the existing energy reserves further. A healing crisis always comes when one employs a tonic or building therapy. In fact, it is most likely to occur when one starts putting more whole, live (raw) foods in their diet.

 When the body becomes strong enough through building or tonic therapy to expel what was previously irritating it, it generates symptoms of elimination to discharge the irritant. It recreates the same crisis elimination that it was unable to complete before. Thus, in a healing crisis the body discharges stored irritants in response to BUILDING therapy and the course of the disease turns, leaving the person feeling better.
Let me rephrase this so that everyone can understand this clearly. A healing crisis is always preceded by nutritional or building therapy which causes the person to become stronger, have more energy and feel better. Then, after they have started to feel better for a while, the body gains the strength to create an ELIMINATIVE process that discharges toxins from the body. When a person doesn't feel good on an herbal program and they grow weaker or feel worse, this is not a healing crisis. To put it bluntly, one does not “get worse” to "feel better."

Furthermore, my experience with the phenomenon of the healing crisis suggests that it is a generally a short lived occurrence that passes within 24- 48 hours at the very most. Many healing crises I am aware of have lasted only a few hours. Generally speaking, the person did not feel weak or fatigued afterwards. It came at a time when they were feeling much better, then suddenly felt worse for a short period, then threw up, had a bout of diarrhea or some other eliminative reaction, then felt better.
 

Examples of Healing Crisis

Let me give you some personal experiences to illustrate. I had chronic sinus problems when I was young. For the first twenty years of my life my sinuses were plugged. I was given antibiotics, antihistamines and even had surgery for a deviated septum, all with no lasting results. When I finally got into natural health, changed my diet and cleaned out my colon, I got rid of the sinus problems. About ten years later, I had an abscessed tooth. I had a root canal and the doctor wanted to put me on an antibiotic. I told him no and decided to use herbs to treat the residual infection. I took two cloves of raw garlic and four capsules of goldenseal about four times per day.

On the second or third day of this regime, I passed a bright orange-colored mucus from my sinuses that smelled like antibiotics. Shortly thereafter I passed a tan-colored mucus that also smelled like antibiotics. A nurse who worked for me said that sounded like ampicillin and tetracycline, two antibiotics I had taken years before. I felt that my body must have finally been able to discharge the remnants of these medIcations from my system.

Please note, however, that I did not feel sick, per se. I simply had a sudden discharge, and felt stronger and "lighter" after the discharge ended. There was no lingering feeling of ill health or lengthy disease process. My body just discharged the stuff and that was it.

It reminded me of a story a man told me who worked with Dr. C. Samuel West at the same time I did. This man had previously been in a mental hospitalon heavy medications and had gotten off the medications and into natural healing. He went on a mild food diet consisting primarily of fresh fruits and vegetables for two weeks. He also bounced on the mini-trampoline daily to get his lymphatics working. He was feeling great. Then, one morning after bouncing on the mini-trampoline he suddenly felt nauseous. He went to the bathroom and threw up. He told me he could both smell and taste the drugs he had been given many years earlier. Afterwards he immediately felt a new surge of energy.

Another example of a healing crisis was a man I spoke with when lecturing for NSP in England. He was using ALJ for his sinuses and couldn't figure out why they ran more when he took it. I explained that the AL-J was decongesting his sinuses, breaking up the trapped mucus and allowing the body to discharge it. Like me, he had respiratory congestion for years. He said x-rays of his lungs showed he had some spots. on them from some previous bouts with pneumonia. I checked him and discovered he also had a hiatal hernia, which I pulled down and showed him how to keep it down.

About a week later he came to another class I was teaching in England. He told me that a couple of days after I had worked on him, he woke up and coughed for several hours, discharging a lot of mucus and phlegm from his lungs. When, this had passed and he could breathe more freely and deeply than he had in years.
In all three examples I've given you, the person was doing positive things to support their health and feeling better when they had a sudden discharge of material from the body. Then, after that discharge they immediately felt even better.

That, my friends, is a healing crisis. So, I'd like everyone to stop excusing bad reactions (aggravations) to herbal products or supplements as a "healing crisis." Remember, a true healing crisis involves a discharge, is short-lived and is accompanied by feeling better, not worse.

I'm not trying to put a damper on anyone's enthusiasm for herbs, but I would like to get people to use more common sense. If a person isn't feeling good on the program you recommended, then reevaluate, don't just keep hoping they'll get better. Frankly, I've never felt comfortable with the way many people recommend herbs so casually. You see, I've never used herbs like this myself. Not ever. Not with myself, not with my family, and especially not with my clients.

One of the reasons I understand herbalism so well is that I've tended to use simple programs and remedies and I have carefully observed the effects of the herbs I've given. In other words, I'm constantly observing, making recommendations, watching the effects of those recommendations and then modifying the recommendations.
Let me give you a practical example of how I work. A man came into our herb shop some time ago and spoke to me privately about a problem with impotence. He was interested in trying some ginseng. He was robust and hearty, an adrenal-type Native American. I know that Korean ginseng is a heating remedy, indicated for those who tend to be cold and feeble, so I discouraged him from using it. I muscle-tested him on American ginseng (because it is more cooling), but he didn't test positively for that either. Next, I thought of Damiana which stimulates pelvic blood flow. My observations suggested his problem might be related to poor blood flow in the pelvic area. He tested strong for that, so I told him to take it, come back in a couple of weeks and give me a report on the results.

He came back and reported improvement, but the "cure" was incomplete. So I added a little bit of yohimbe (3-5 drops of an extract) along with the damiana. He came back the next time very pleased with the results. Shortly thereafter, NSP came out with Men's Formula. He tried that and was very satisfied with the product.
He told me that his father was a Native American medicine man and he had apprenticed as an herbalist. He further stated that he was very impressed with the manner in which I recommended herbs. He liked the idea that I gave a suggestion, then checked up on how it had worked and modified my recommendations. He also liked the fact that I kept my recommendations simple. He said that this was what his father had taught him to do.

This is my point: we need to observe the reactions people have to what we recommend and be responsible enough to reevaluate our programs when they aren't working in a reasonable amount of time. I've talked to people who've been on programs for months with no sign of improvement and people are telling them to "just stick with it". Sorry, but herbs don't take that long to work. Here's what I mean by a reasonable amount of time.

Acute conditions should show improvement within 24 hours. For chronic conditions I expect a person to notice improvement within 7-10 days, although I usually see improvement in 3-4 days when I'm on the right track. Even with degenerative conditions, improvement should occur within two to three weeks. Please keep in mind we're talking about improvement, not cure. It is true that the cure can take months, but if you don't see improvement within these time frames you are probably on the wrong track. Reevaluate the case and start over.

Oh, by the way, the gentleman with MS that I mentioned in the beginning of this article is doing fine.
Until next time, Steven.

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