Welcome to Natural MD Radio, your place to hear the whole truth on health and medicine for women and children and get the tools you need to take back your health naturally starting now.

I'm Dr. Aviva Ram and this week I am bringing you the start of an exciting new feature in Natural MD radio. I'm going to

bring you episodes specifically about my favorite herbal medicines and we're going to call this

feature the natural MD library. What you may or may not know about me if you don't

I have been an herbalist for 35 years I started studying herbal medicine

when I was 15 years old and have a bit of a reputation for it internationally in a

good way I'm not notorious but I am well known, probably one of the leaning

herbalists in the world, in Western herbal medicine for women and children's herbal health

care or botanical medicine. and I'm known for my women's herbal

medicine and I'm known for my women's herbal textbook,

Botanical Medicines for Women,

which won the James Duke Award

from the American Botanical Council.

I am the medical director for the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia.

For about a decade, I was the president of the American

herbalists guild. And as you know herbs are really one of my first go-tos

therapeutically in my clinical practice, when I teach, and certainly for my home and loved ones. I use herbal medicine as an

extension of food. My order of therapies is usually something like anything I can do mind body to start anything I can do with food and then herbs

and while certainly pharmaceuticals have an important role in our lives when needed.

Botanical medicines really should be our first medicine

beyond food when we can.

They are environmentally, ecologically friendly,

...