Chris Kilham
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 Chris Kilham is an author, medicine hunter and educator and the founder of Cowboy Medicine Expeditions. He conducts field research on natural medicine around the world, develops new botanical health products and creates educational programs for the natural products field. Kilham is the author of 10 books including Kava, Medicine Hunting in Paradise, published by Park Street Press.
Today’s increased demand for botanical remedies indicates a new willingness to turn back to nature for relief of common health problems. Plant-based medicines are being used more readily by people who would have previously turned to over-the-counter and prescription drugs. But as plant-based remedies appear on store shelves in tablets and capsules, in bottles and boxes, we can learn valuable lessons from the people, places and traditions from which medicinal plants originate.
In my work I have the great good fortune to travel around the world, investigating plant medicines in their native lands and spending time with indigenous people. In this capacity as a medicine hunter, I learn about medicinal plant cultivation, harvesting, use and trade from one region to another.
In the field many medicinal plants are used effectively to relieve indigestion, headaches, respiratory distress, pain, infections and a multitude of minor and major health disorders. But do the healing effects of plants properly prepared by indigenous healers translate into effective, tableted and encapsulated products on store shelves? Sometimes they do and sometimes they unquestionably do not. Kava (Piper methysticum), for example, is a superior relaxant when consumed as a water extract in a coconut shell in the Pacific islands. But ground up kava root compressed into a pill is a completely worthless product that possesses no value.
To effectively translate the value of healthful plants into modern herbal products, we can turn to traditional methods of preparation for clues. Natives in the Pacific islands only consume an extract of kava roots. They never grind up kava and eat it. Modern research corroborates that only by extracting kava can one derive its tranquilizing benefits. Responsible companies which truly wish to serve the health of customers will put out products made with kava extract, not ground up root, to ensure a beneficial effect.
Dosage too is a critical issue in botanical medicine. We can look to an up-and-coming plant like maca (Lepidium meyennii), Peru’s natural Viagra, as an example. In the central highlands of Peru the people there eat maca in quantity, thereby enhancing energy, libido and sexual function. The key to success with maca is in consuming enough. Will supplement companies put enough maca or maca extract into products to impart an effect?
Being a medicine hunter gives me a vantage point from which to gaze down the long corridors of history and tradition, in the company of those whose lives are inextricably intertwined with plants and plant medicines, to garner precious knowledge about how these natural agents can best be used to relieve human suffering.
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