Herbs are certainly more than their categories, Violet or Burdock are certainly MORE than alteratives… but they are also just that, alteratives. I think these categories are very useful reference points. And traditional medicine such as TCM and Ayurveda have partially survived so long because they provide a useful reference point that works for their practitioners. All words create categories, and therefor, limitations. But in the same way, the words allow to understand each other more quickly and efficiently. It’s a balancing act of course.

I do think metabolism is a very specific thing, and that most alteratives are very specific to the metabolism, and that most herbalists would do very well to understand the metabolism much better. And of course metabolism is much more than elimination or circulation…

Every herb has its own core nature, and way of being in the human body, but the larger patterns are also useful in the right context. I mean, wouldn’t it be difficult to communicate about herbs without any terminology, no “stagnant qi” no “diaphoretic” no “yin deficiency” ?

Alterative is such a broad term, as you said, there are a zillion different sub categories among alteratives….i just think of them as altering the way the system functions. Call it elimination, circulation, metabolism or what have you… I guess I’m not a real fan of such general “categories’ in which herbs are classified. I know you’ve already spoken to this in a previous post, but most herbs are so much MORE than their category…

jim, I agree, but then the word tonic gets so tricky, so I’ve not been using it much lately until I come up with a consistent definition to post and use over and over… I certainly do not think of alteratives in terms of blood cleansing but its a good reference point since it’s been so culturally common, and being from the South I have to give the term a nod LOL

I did lump lymphatics and more general alteratives together for this post, since it was made for a general audience. You’ll most likely be happy to hear that there’s two more alterative posts coming, one on alterative foods and one on alterative differentials (have you been sneaking looks at my notes jim? it almost seems so from your comment…). I chose to break them up for simplicity’s sake.

and one of these days I’d like to do a whole post on the connections and overlaps between the lymph and the metabolism….

I think its more appropriate to think about them as “metabolic tonics” than as “blood cleansers/purifiers”, since their action is main manifested via metabolic function (the whole of it – assimilation and utilization and elimination), and the end result of “purifying blood” comes from this process, rather than a direct action on the blood itself.

I like to think of all alteratives as working via this process, but each individually having sway over specific portions of it. So, yellow dock and dandelion and nettle and cleavers are all metabolic tonics, but yellow dock and dandelion are more specific to the liver and lower GI, nettle to the adrenals and kidneys, cleavers to the kidneys and lymph… Burdock seems, to me, to have the most equalized action, affecting all the systems without being so focused on a few.

Of course, there are exceptions all over the place, since the boxes we fit over plants to catagorize them are our constructions, not theirs… for example, red root, poke, echinacea and baptisia are all considered alteratives, but primarily act via the lymph and not so much on metabolism.

I think, though, that many alteratives exist in the hazy undivided territory between food and medicine. Many metabolic woes, I deem, come from the fact that we don’t consume alterative foods anymore.