Plant-based, sustainable, eco-friendly, natural products are growing rapidly in popularity and interest in herbal medicines and their effect is more prevalent than ever before.  There is a global trend towards using natural health products over pharmaceutical alternatives because plant-based extracts are seen as safer, more natural and healthier.

Natural Medicine dates back thousands of years.  Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, American Indians, Africans and Aborigines all have strong herbal medicine roots.

In Europe and America, this knowledge of herbal medicine mostly disappeared as the majority of people who practiced herbal medicine were classified as witches and executed.  Over the past few centuries, modern scholars estimate that approximately 40-50,000 herbal medicine practitioners were executed as “witches” in Europe and the American colonies.

Herbal medicines have provided the world’s populations with safe, effective and low-cost medicines for centuries.  They have a rich and extensive historical basis in use and study which can be referenced to ancient medical writings.  More importantly, modern research has validated many of the traditional uses ascribed to botanical extracts.  When integrated into medical care with other medications, botanicals can provide consumers and patients with the best chance of maintaining a high quality of life.

In the early 1990s, Congress established an Office of Alternative Medicine within the National Institutes of Health.  Seven years later, the office expanded into the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) with a $50 million budget dedicated to studying just about every treatment that didn’t involve pharmaceuticals or surgery.

As a sign of mainstream adoption of botanical remedies, President Obama’s omnibus budget measure in December 2014 removed the word “alternative” from NCCAM’s name, changing it to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)

In 2015, Tu Youyou, a herbal medicine practitioner without a doctorate, medical degree or western training received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for her work with botanical extracts.  Tasked with the problem of finding a cure for malaria, Tu Youyou turned to ancient Chinese medical texts from the Zhou, Qing and Han Dynasties.  While reading a 1,6000 year old text, she found a recipe titled “Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One’s Sleeve” that discussed the use of sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) for treating malaria induced fevers.  A corresponding text written by Ge Hong in 340 A.D., the originator of First Aid in Chinese Medicine, outlined a botanical extraction process for effectively isolating the antimalarial substance from the plant.  This substance eventually became known as artemisinin and is still widely used around the world for the treatment of Malaria. 

Outside of the US, Herbal Extracts have maintained popularity in the developing world and adoption continues to spread to “industrialized” nations

• In China, traditional herbal preparations account for 30% - 50% of the total medicinal consumption
• In Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Zambia, the first line of treatment for 60% of children with high fever resulting from malaria is the use of herbal medicines at home.
• In Europe, North America and other industrialized regions, over 50% of the population have reported using or trying herbal extracts.

Total Holistic Care by Chitiva

Chitiva operates Total Holistic Care Centers, with a mission of making botanical extracts easy and accessible to the surrounding community by

• Offering botanical extracts in a tasty and easy to consume format with a spoonful of sugar…
• Offering education & training on the cultivation, extraction and infusion of botanicals

To accomplish this goal, we have a menu consisting of

• Botanicals
• Ice Cream
• Baked Goods
• Drinks

We also offer education & classes to the community on cultivation, extraction and infusions, with curriculum focused on

• Botanical Cultivation
• Botanical Extraction
• Botanical Infusion