Wight Herbal Medicine

27/08/2026

This is really important as it has the potential to significantly restrict herbal medicine practice in the UK.

Demand UK regain control over food supplements regulation

10/08/2026

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1681051020694542&set=a.441412761325047

Someone called a Consultant Medical Herbalist (aka - me) a “witch doctor & charlatan.”

Fine. Let’s be precise.

A Consultant Medical Herbalist is not an Instagram aesthetic.

Proper training looks like years of study. On a NIMH-accredited pathway such as Heartwood, that means roughly 4–6 years, around 3,600 academic hours plus 500 clinical hours. Anatomy. Physiology. Pathophysiology. Pharmacognosy. Phytochemistry. Materia medica. Clinical examination. Differential diagnosis. Manufacturing. A final clinical exam. Traditionally an apprentice herbalist would train for 14 years. There was nothing basic about the demands placed on them.

In the UK, Schedule 20 law exists for a reason. Some potent herbs are restricted to one-to-one practitioner consultation. That is regulation, not vibes. Only professional herbalists are permitted to use them in practice.

And “unregulated”? The National Institute of Medical Herbalists has professional lineage back to 1864. Codes of practice. A register. A complaints process.

Calling trained clinicians quacks protects a monopoly narrative. Actual quackery is untrained advice sold with commercial certainty and zero clinical grounding.

If you are choosing care, ask the boring questions:
What is the qualification?
Are they on a professional register?
How many supervised clinical hours?
Do they take a proper case history and examine you?
Not anyone is a Consultant Medical Herbalist. Further, not everyone should be.

09/08/2026

Most people don't realise that the trials on pharmaceutical medications are typically looking for short term acute reactions with most trials only being 12-18 weeks at most. The real trials go on in the community with use but yet only 1% of adverse reactions are estimated to be reported to the yellow card scheme.
Herbal medicine can be very effective in pain management, not least as it seeks to get at the drivers behind it.

Six or more prescriptions associated with, respectively, 29% and 85% heightened risks And risks more than doubled in 18-64 year olds, shows large medical record study Receiving six or more prescriptions of the drug gabapentin for low back pain is associated with significantly increased risks of deve...

02/08/2026

In herbal medicine the goal is not to simply treat the symptoms, although that may be a part of it; rather it is to get at the root cause, which is often multi-factorial. Often, a bespoke prescription will contain up to ten herbs and sit alongside a tea as well. A consultation with a qualified medical herbalist is the best way to ensure herbal medicine is effective as it will be tailored to the individual and their unique situation and address what their body is trying to tell them. https://www.facebook.com/reel/977416702022467

01/08/2026

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1432170872086971

A GP and medical herbalist who was one of the people who trained me in clinical skills.

13/07/2026

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10840669/. Sun exposure has been associated with melanoma and people are strongly encouraged to use sunscreens. However, most people don't realise that the overwhelming majority of cases of melanoma do not occur on skin typically exposed to sunlight: you may be surprised to hear that approximately 75% of cases are found in unexposed locations, such as the bottom of the foot.
Research also suggests that melanoma decreases with more sun exposure and that the use of sunscreens does not decrease its incidence. In fact, a uk study involving over 470,000 people found that individuals who reported using sunscreen more frequently had substantially higher risk of multiple skin cancers — even after researchers accounted for major confounding factors like age, s*x, skin type, tanning ability, sunburn history, sunlamp use, and time spent outdoors.

A history of sunburn however does appear to be associated with melanoma, but there is little to suggest that moderate amounts of tanning are a factor, and much to indicate that it may be beneficial. Why so? Vitamin D3! D3 is created by the interaction of ultraviolet B radiation and cholesterol on or near the skin's surface. It then migrates through the skin's layers into the bloodstream and is stored in tissues and the liver, to be drawn upon when levels are low. Getting sunshine in the summer builds on these stores ready for winter. Diet is also a source of Vit D3 although it can be challenging to get enough through most conventional diets.

Avoiding sun exposure around midday reduces the risk of burning and taking a graded approach to exposure allows your body to build up its own sunscreen in the form of melanin. There are also some oils that have a natural SPF which also nourish the skin, meaning it is less likely to become damaged. At Wight Herbal Medicine we make a body butter that contains butters (which both have an SPF of around 4 and 6 respectively) alongside raspberry seed oil which has been shown in studies to achieve an SPF of nearly 20.

Despite well-established relationships between sun exposure and skin cancer pathogenesis/progression, specific gene-environment interactions in at-risk individuals remain poorly-understood. We leveraged a UK Biobank cohort of basal cell carcinoma ...

10/07/2026

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2213905426111879. In herbal medicine we often see people who have been on psychiatric medications for decades, who were never given the opportunity to make an informed decision - about the short and long-term side-effects including withdrawal. Herbal medicine can be very helpful to support mental health including medication withdrawal. Having a consultation with a qualified medical herbalist can enable you to explore your options.

06/07/2026

I deliver talks on the Island about the history of herbal medicine and talk about iatrogenesis - that is, the causation of a disease, a harmful complication, or other ill effect by any medical activity, including diagnosis, intervention, error, or negligence.

UK ranks in bottom third of global study for deaths from ‘adverse effects of medical treatment’

05/07/2026

With so many herbs we need to consider what is behind the safety restrictions. Is it really about safety or profit or lack of for the pharmaceutical industry? Having a consultation with a qualified, registered medical herbalist ensures you can be sure of the real safety issues/possible interactions.

Safety is not the issue with scrutiny of 117 substances (mostly botanicals and plant preparations) that have been flagged for severe restriction or potential bans in a major European regulatory report. These evaluations will fail to consider risk-benefit analysis and will fail to consider processing...