HUMAN HEALTH AND ITS MAINTENANCE WITH THE AID OF MEDICINAL PLANTS
Julian Barker
Fellow of the Linnean Society of London Fellow of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists Member of the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy
AEON
First published in 2020 by
Aeon Books
PO Box 76401
London W5 9RG
Copyright © 2020 by Julian Barker
The right of Julian Barker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-91280-760-4
Typeset by Medlar Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd, India
Printed in Great Britain
The primary responsibility of the practitioneris to the health of the patient,and not to the furtherance of herbal medicine,to humanity not to ideology.In gratitude to them I dedicate this work to my patientswithout whom it could not have existed.And also to my friend and mentorDr Jean-Claude Laprazbut for whom my own trajectory would have taken a very different course.
CONTENTS
SECTION ONE: HEALTH: WHAT CAN WE MEAN?
Definition of health for the purposes of the current work
The scope and purpose of the model
Model of health in this current work
SECTION TWO: AXIOMS, THEOREMS AND IDEOLOGY
The sound of one hand clapping
There is no life without motion
There is no life without energy
SECTION THREE: THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF THE ADAPTIVE RESPONSE
Five crucial interlocking ideas
2/5: The interconnected matrices
Human drives as a function of time
5/5: The distribution of energy (maintenance of a ratio between capacitance and adaptation)
Recapitulation of Section 3–The biological basis of the adaptive response
Some examples of accumulation and discharge
The constant cycle of accumulation and discharge
Summary of common chronic conditions
Footnote to Section 3: adaptive capacity is not a heritable trait
SECTION FOUR: POISE AS AN ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO HEALTH
Binaries: the garden with forking paths
Circadian binaries and transition zones