Step 1: Have a problem that currently lacks a decent solution.
Step 2: Figure out a solution.
Step 3: Find out how to run a business.
This is how Elk Haven Herbals started. First a little background:
I was born in Bermuda as my Father, an American military man had a Bermudian mother and ended up working on the American military base when there was one there. One evening while washing cars with his buddy he met my mother. The rest is history.
My parents were extremely adventurous and what one would call outdoorsy. Once on a visit to North Carolina they decided the grass there was greener and decided to make the mountains our home. Nonetheless, we still visited Bermuda every summer.
Like my parents, I always loved the outdoors and growing up in the mountains inspired me to eventually study Biology in college. I loved Biology, particularly botany. I spent forever in undergrad getting degrees in both Biology and Anthropology.
One summer returning from a trip I had taken alone to visit my grandparents I noticed a small oddly colored patch of skin beside my ankle. I thought to myself “well that’s odd” but didn’t give it any further thought.
Later I found out I had Tinea versicolor. I tried treating it. First I tried over the counter antifungals, and then with prescriptions. After years of struggle I had no luck.
I decided to go to graduate school. Towards the end of graduate school I became re-interested in solving my unsolvable skin crisis and pursued it as a side project. I now had access to a variety of databases through the university and most importantly, the intellectual skillset to properly interpret and use the information I found. I was successful in figuring out a cure for myself, but this discussion is an adventure on its own.
I taught classes while in grad school and that opportunity led to my position as a professor of a state university. For some reason I get a lot of questions from students that are medical in nature. It started in grad school and continues to this day. I used to think to myself “I’m not a doctor, why are people asking me these things?” Later in grad school I ended up becoming close friends with a number of medical doctors and I realized why: They follow a specific scientific methodology for problem solving and to many people outside of medicine, it seems that anyone with an advanced science degree should be able to follow this methodology.
“I’m not a doctor, why are people asking me these things?”
We live in a new time where ineffective treatments are often revealed to a large constantly connected platform. In this new time, rigorous scientific study is being applied to many herbal compounds and other plant derivatives. People often forget that nature has indeed historically had the answer. The first antibiotics came from moldy soybean curds. The first antivirals were from marine sponges. Applying the same level of scrutiny to botanical compounds as we do modern synthetic ones reveals that some of them are effective treatments and some of them are not. This is in fact the current state of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
I’m not a doctor. I never wanted to be. They are amazing irreplaceable patrons of society. They’re also subject to an extremely complex network of politics from patients to pharmaceutical companies. I’m just a budding college professor with an intense interest in botanicals. I’m also familiar with the rigor and detail of the newest scientific methods and results of such studies. I will continue to bring you novel treatments for unique medical problems. I will bring you stories of the history of botanicals and how many of their derivatives have ended up as 29 dollar-a-pill headache treatments. I will not be your doctor. I will be your Modern Medicine Man.
Signed,
The Modern Medicine Man
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