Growing Chinese Medicinal Herbs to Prevent and Treat Chronic Illness

Chronic illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, are on the rise throughout the world due to modern diets and other factors. Western medicine has been ineffective in preventing or treating them. Thus, members of the public have sought alternatives. In the past 50 years, two social movements in the United States have shared an understanding of health in relation to the natural world. Chinese herbal medicine and practitioners of ecological agriculture agree that the nutritional requirements of complex living organisms are interconnected. Empirical findings in these applied sciences are supported by recent discoveries. However, economic constraints inhibit development. Each field is described separately, with notes from the author’s direct experience.