Plant Synergy — The integrity of Herbal Medicine

Synergy can be seen throughout the plant kingdom in both simple and profound ways. Synergy is the interaction of two (or more) agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects, i.e. when two herbs (or more) are combined together to provide a more broad-spectrum result. Synergism is a fundamental process in herbal medicine integrity.

A clinical trial of saffron with turmeric together has shown that with their similar yet also varying biological pathways, they can produce a greater beneficial effect on major depressive disorder, than if taken alone to treat the same condition.

Medicinal plants contain hundreds if not thousands of unique compounds. Models based on single molecular entities (when a single plant constituent is tested or researched) do not accurately describe or capture the complexity of interactions among the many constituents in medicine plants and the multi-constituent extracts made from them.

In the mainstream pharmaceutical view, there is a single active constituent in a plant that explains its activity, which can be isolated and used as a conventional drug. This idea is reinforced by the fact that many widely-used drugs are either single molecules isolated from plants or semisynthetic variants of natural molecules. This also means that certain single molecules can be patented, which gives us some understanding as to why this so widely occurs ($$$).

Many companies, especially those offering branded ingredients, standardise their extracts to contain only the constituents they identify as being the “most active” or providing specific effects. The choice is often based on preclinical studies showing activity in animals, and pharmaceutical-level studies confirming activity in humans. However the use of the whole plant and all its constituents, combined with other herbs and all their constituents, really underpins the philosophy and integrity of herbal medicine, as well as traditional herbal medicine.

Production of herbal products today is far more sophisticated than it was hundreds of years ago, but there is a risk that in the isolation and standardisation of specific phyto-chemicals, we lose the proverbial ‘forest for the trees’, that is, we lose the plant synergy.

The current research on many important medicinal herbs under appreciates the value of complex mixtures compared with single isolated constituents.
Herbal synergy is not just looking at what one plant can do on its own, rather looking at what two or more plants can do together, which can create a very powerful result.
The phytochemicals of certain plants actually increase when they were extracted together, this is synergy at work.

To harness true ‘plant intelligence’ we should be acting in accordance with nature and utilising the full spectrum of compounds provided in a herb or plant, honouring the symbiotic relationship between plants themselves, and with us when we ingest them.