Roots, berries, leaves, resins, twigs and flowers have been used for thousands of years to heal and maintain health. Native Americans reduced fevers with willow bark for generations before its chemical code was broken and the remedy was sold as aspirin. The ingredient in foxgloves, which miraculously cured 19th century British heart patients was found to be a substance now manufactured as digitalis. The main ingredient in Reserpine, the first synthetic tranquilizer and a breakthough in treating mental illness, was discovered in a root which Nigerian tribes used to cure "moon-madness".
"Modern medicine tends to be skeptical about herbal perparations," says Dr. Sarah Sallon, pediatrician, gastroenterologist and director of the Natural Medicine Research Unit (NMRU) at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. "But more and more researchers are developing an enthusiam for serious, objective and independent investigation of traditional remedies."
The NMRU was established six years ago to conduct well-founded and relevant scientific research into what Sallon is convinced will prove to be a pharmacopoeial treasure-house of traditional healing. So far, its main focus has been the esoteric discipline of Tibetan medicine. Scientific examination of Tibetan healing has only recently become possible. A religious tradition, the secrets of Tibetan medicine were guarded for 1,500 years inside Tibet's great monasteries, taught only to physician monks. Only after the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959 and the flight of the Dalai Lama to Dharamsala in northern India, did the knowledge of Tibetan healing at last become known beyond the confines of the monasteries.
Sallon visited the Dharamsala Tibetan Medical Center in 1987, and was fascinated by the complex holistic medical system she encountered - with its carefullly defined relationship between mind and body - and the apparent effectiveness of its remedies. She determined to investigate further. With the establishement of the NMRU seven years later, she joined forces with Padma Ltd. of Switzerland, the world's only commercial producer of Tibetan medicines, and initiated a full-scale study at Hadassah of a Tibetan formula sold in Switzerland and the US.
A combination of 22 plants and minerals, Padma Basic is used in Tibet for disorders caused by over-consumption of red meat, fat and alcohol - a condition that known in Western medicine as arteriosclerosis. One of its symptoms is painfully clogged arteries in the legs. In a three-year study of 80 elderly people suffering from this condition, Hadassah researchers found that Padma Basic significantly improved the patients' clinical condition, bettering both their walking ability and blood pressure measurements in the legs. These results, published in The Journal of Vascular Surgery, have been confirmed in independent Danish, Swiss, Polish and British studies.
The research continues, as Hadassah scientists examine Padma Basic to see how it works and what else it might do. They are also in the early stages of investigating other Tibetan preparations, including Padma Lax, used in Tibet as a bowel tonic. Israeli researchers are studying how it affects irritable bowel, a syndrome accounting for some 70 percent of all visits to gastroenterologists in the West.
The findings of this scholarly research have resulted in a growing popularity of Padma preparations, which has, in turn, resulted in a problem of supply. With each Tibetan medicine comprising some 20 different herbs, all of which must be organically grown in an Asian climate, obtaining raw materials has become a great challenge. Sallon stepped out of the laboratory to find a solution.
"Israel is known for its agricultural expertise, and we have a range of climatic zones here - desert, mountain, Mediterranean, subtropical - so I started looking around for reliable high-quality growers. Kibbutz Ketura, 30 miles north of Eilat, was the third place I checked out. I found them very expert, very research-minded and very enthusiastic." "
Horticulturist Dr. Elaine Solowey of Ketura welcomed the idea with open arms and has since designated two of the 20 acres of her experimental orchards to Tibetan herbs. "I've always been interested in medicinal plants, and I was looking for an organic project, because that's the way I believe all agriculture should be," she says.
Israel's exploration of Tibetan healing, both agricultural and medicinal, has the resounding support not only of scientists and consumers, but of the Dalai Lama himself.
"We've made and used our medicines for generations," he said on a visit to Israel last year. We know they work. But our recipes aren't understood in the West because they're not in the language of modern science. We're delighted Israeli research is making them comprehensible to a wider world."