It is unfortunate that after some doctors finish family medicine residency, they realize that they have become pill pushers. It is at that moment they recognize how truly helpless many people are. Most people don’t even know how to manage a cold without antibiotics due to decades of societal training. Our modern medical system has disenfranchised people, leaving them with few tools to manage basic health needs.

The medical system has convinced people that it knows their bodies better than they do; that home and natural remedies are quackery, and that anything that works must be learned in medical school. Although the many pharmaceuticals and modern medical advances are at times a godsend, their over-the-top marketing results in people disavowing traditional methods of healing and heeding their own common sense. People need to know how to care for themselves.

Doctor means “to teach” in Latin. Teaching people how to manage things like colds, abscesses and other ailments is critical to feeling empowered and helping people understand their own bodies. Medicine men and women using nutrition and herbal remedies show us that this is just the tip of the iceberg in supporting our health and living in symbiosis with the world around us. Great herbalists and medicine people find medicine all around them.

In urban areas, we kill the valuable herbs as weeds with toxins and replace them with grasses that then need harmful fertilizers to grow. We throw away grass clippings and buy mulch. We fill our yards with grass and other plants that need extra attention but serves no purpose other than to support a societal aesthetic and big business in place of edible foods. Those dandelions we kill are high in antioxidants and vitamin C, and the roots are great for liver detox. This is all part of the industrialization and supporting of a material system that we truly need to reconsider as we move forward.

We can still learn the ancient medicine and wisdom of the Earth. Females often served as medicine women in ancient times, and it is time to bring that back to families. Beautiful, strong, creative women are yearning for this ancient connection to our inner medicine women, our inner wise woman. They are finding the rites of passage that color our ancestral lineage. God created so much of what we need on the Earth and now is the time for us all to move back to the roots of who we are. 

Let’s use the best of modern medicine. but slow down, dig deep, look around and undo the training of the past 100 years. Let’s shift our dependence on medicine to understanding our bodies, our connections, our environment, our food, and herbals. Let’s love and hug each other and share what we learn. Let’s rediscover the powerful medicines that are all around us.

Cammy Benton is an integrative and functional medicine medical doctor and the owner of Benton Integrative Medicine and the Medspa, located at 16415 Northcross Dr., Ste. B, in Huntersville (also includes Medspa) and 514 N. NC-16 Bus Hwy, in Denver. For more information, call 704-775-6029 or visit BentonIntegrative.com/blog.

Benton Integrative Medicine & The Medspa - Huntersville & Denver - 16415 Northcross Drive Suite C, Huntersville, NC

At Benton Integrative Medicine we provide holistic health care with Direct Primary Care, Healing & Wellness and Medical Spa services and products. Our membership model based Direct Pr... Read More »