Doctorates in Herbology, Herbal Medicine?

Neither. This was strictly for getting a better understanding of what's available.

I did get helpful responses, yours included. Thank you.

 

I've spent the last couple of years window shopping for the same thing. I recently completed a Master of Science in Therapeutic Herbalism from Maryland University of Integrative Health, and I had a really great experience. When I went through, the curriculum was hybridized, however it looks as though you have a 100% online option if you aren't interested in the clinical concentration. If you are interested in the certified nutrition specialist (CNS) credential, which is usually only reserved for those with doctoral-level education, then you have the ability to fulfill some additional nutritional and clinical coursework to become eligible (MUIH reciprocity agreement with the Board for Certification of Nutrition Specialists). This is a really great opportunity IF you want to break into a career in nutrition with a strong background in herbs.

As you've probably noticed, doctoral training in herbalism is extremely sparse in the United States save pursuing a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine (ND) or Doctor of Oriental Medicine (DOM) degree, as mentioned previously. Even then, you have to keep in mind that herbs are only briefly touched upon in an ND curriculum and you are expected to study a full range of CAM modalities, which may or may not sit well with you. In my case, I was only interested in herbs and the MUIH curriculum fulfilled that interest for me and then some. With regards to Oriental Medicine, you are going to learn a completely different healing philosophy from western herbalism. If rhinoceros horns and beetles fit your definition of herbs and you are willing to undergo years of training in acupuncture, then go for it. Chinese herbs and acupuncture are generally inseparable, whereas western herbalism is a standalone (and presently unregulated) system of healing.

I am leaning toward a Doctor of Health Sciences (DHSc) curriculum, a Doctor of Clinical Nutrition (DCN), or some such interdisciplinary program that opens the door to furthering my studies. I have yet to find a pure doctoral program in herbology without questionable accreditation and institutional reputation. If you are interested in master's programs, I am happy to name off a few more that come to mind.

Or you can go the conventional route and become an allopathic physician (MD) or osteopathic physician (DO). Having MD after your name does tend to carry a lot of credibility and could open the door to researching CAM without the raised eyebrows... and yes, it exists! You are entering into fascinating discipline which bridges tradition with science, and a $60 billion industry to back it. With that said, do expect the occasional eye-roll from the biomedical community. Good luck!

 

Hi King Solamona,

I'm not looking to go into the field, but that was a great post! Thank you!

 

Here's a Doctor of Health Science in Integrative Healthcare (DEAC). While it isn't a degree in herbology, they allow a personalized concentration and seem to have at least some coursework in herbal medicine.

Of course, you could also supplement the actual herbal coursework with other things that might prove useful like Human Pathology etc.

Since the program requires a Masters, I imagine you might consider the Master of Herbalism program at ACHS (also DEAC) and then bounce to Huntington for the DHS. While the DHS seems like it would be for the unlicensed practitioner who wants to be a "Doctor" (or the Masters level licensed practitioner who desires the same) the curriculum seems to allow for enough wiggle room for you to load up on research courses and take it in the direction you are suggesting.

Obviously, you're unlikely to get a full time teaching position at an RA school with a DEAC doctorate. But, in this space, you're unlikely to be teaching at an RA school anyway (unless you are teaching at an RA Chiro or Naturopathic school). Then again, if you really made a name for yourself in the herb world those schools might be willing to flex.

 

That ACHS (DEAC) masters is estimated as costing around $21k...

 

Well, it certainly isn't cheap. But a Naturopathic Medical School will set you back six figures and only a handful of states actual license the profession.

In New York, I've seen a number of Naturopaths bragging about their Vermont licenses to try to lend credibility to themselves but the fact remains that they are legally entitled to offer the same level of healthcare that I am.

I don't think you're going to get any cheaper while still having the benefits of accreditation. There might be some foreign options, of course, but accredited and focused on herbs was the task and this fits the bill.

Besides, a UofPhoenix Associates degree costs more than this doctorate so it's kind of a bargain.

 

I'd even go so far as to state that the Huntington DHS is likely marginally more useful than the UPhoenix associate's degree.

 

You raise an interesting thought. The other day I was thinking about how narrow the educational options are for Herbology and if that makes an NA Masters/Doctorate more valuable in that field than it would in others when it comes to teaching. I don't know if there is a shortage of qualified people there, but if so, I could see the NA teaching issue being less of an issue, unless institutions are willing and able to hold out for an RA credentialed candidate.

 

A lot of it depends on the program, I would imagine.

Not too far away from where I live is the New York Chiropractic College which also has an acupuncture and oriental medicine program. So, I decided to flip through their faculty directory just to see what their qualifications were like.

Most of them were either chiropractors or Ac/OM practitioners (M.S. Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine). A few had an M.S. in Acupuncture only (a degree offered at NYCC). The rest seemed to have a fairly broad mix likely to teach the other courses in the program that weren't directly Acupuncture or Oriental Medicine.

Oriental Medicine is regulated in every state I had the desire to check (only a handful). So it seems a few herbalists have taken to calling themselves "Western Herbalists" to distinguish their herb dispensaries from those that would fall under the regulations of the Ac/OM licenses.

If you wanted to teach at an Acupuncture/OM school, I imagine that they would want those credentials. There are Doctor of Acupuncture/OM programs out there but I don't believe any of the accredited (ACAOM) doctoral programs are available by DL. If they are, it is almost certainly limited to those who already completed the licensure qualifying Masters at an ACAOM accredited school.

So I think your ability to teach might be limited to schools that:

1. Teach herbalism even if only as elective coursework and not a degree program
2. Don't also teach Acupuncture/OM

That's a pretty limited space.

The only undergrad herbalism program I found was at Bastyr which also has an AOM school. Having those AOM professors pull double duty and teach undergrad herbalism wouldn't be terribly surprising to me. So I decided to take a closer look at their faculty in the Botanical Medicine Department.

All of them are Naturopaths except for one; he has a PhD in Toxicology from the University of Minnesota.

But, again, I think it also depends upon what sort of a name you make for yourself. No one is going to hire someone to teach just because they have a Doctor of Health Sciences (whether NA or RA). If you were a publishing fiend and built up a solid reputation in this community? Anything can happen.

In that sense I think it's a bit like when we see a professor at an RA bible college with an unaccredited doctorate; his reputation in the Christian academic community likely matters more in that niche circle than accreditation.

Unlike the bible school situation, however, schools like Bastyr seem to be pretty pissed about the unaccredited "health" colleges out there, directly referring to them as "shams" in their "accreditation matters" section. In there, they urge you to only consider a program accredited by a USDOE accreditor.

This shouldn't be terribly surprising because ACAOM also does institutional accreditation. So they can't really say "RA or the highway" without kind of poking their programmatic accreditors in the eye. Does that mean they would flex on a DEAC doctorate? Maybe? Huntington isn't exactly the University of Phoenix. We don't see tens of thousands of their DHS grads on the street. I'd guess that the bulk of their grads just use it to add "Doctor" to their business cards. Or maybe they are all struggling academics who thought along the same lines as what we are discussing here and have found themselves unable to break into this particular area of academia.

But if a residential program isn't in the cards and this is something you really want to do then it might be a decent shot. I wouldn't recommend this path to a traditional student. But for a mid-career changer? There are far riskier and far more expensive options out there that make this seem like an "OK" choice, depending upon your exact circumstances and goals.

 

I bet there are a lot of teaching options at the unaccredited level to where the NA/RA situation wouldn't matter. Question there is, would a person want to sully their rep teaching at a place with no accreditation oversight, especially in a field that deals with health?

Then again, if the school is paying the right price, they could get some strong candidates.

 

Depends on the school and what is being taught.

Unaccredited university? Yeah, that's a path that might screw you down the road.

School that only offers certificates? Probably not going to hurt you particularly in this space. There are a good number of herbal schools (online and otherwise) that don't actually offer academic credentials. There are at least two advertising on the bulletin board at Wegmans on any given day.

"Teaching" at Clayton wouldn't help your resume. But teaching at a small, private, nonacademic herbal school (the sort of thing programs like Bastyr are hoping you'll start up when you graduate) is probably less of an issue.

But if your goal is research then I would suggest throwing yourself into research full force and hoping it results in teaching rather than the other way around.

 

Neither Iron Maiden nor Freud, but Floyd.

 

Your methodology appears sound and if certain regulatory hurdles are lifted I may attempt to replicate your work. I feel the peer review may help bring your research into the mainstream.

 

Modern pharmaceuticals don't even go to South America, or the jungles, looking for compounds anymore. That stopped a long while back. Everything now is synthesized. Anything from plants are from very small research labs. Big pharms then purchase those. It's too costly to look for drugs in jungles and too hit or miss. I'm not agreeing with that approach, but that's where we are today.

 

When you have research universities doing work in botanical medicine big pharm companies don't need to explore the jungle looking for secret compounds. They simply sponsor research at those universities. Where do you think the research money comes from? Sponsored research tends to outpace government grants by significant amounts.

Also, while it's terribly romantic to think of some botanist wearing an Indiana Jones hat and exploring the jungle looking for some secret compound that will cure cancer, many of these countries have scientific communities that are fully capable of undertaking that task, likely in more efficient ways, and having that research make it around the world in a matter of seconds.

So, I get what you're saying, but I think you are seeing broader implications in it than there really are. Doctors tend to spend less face-to-face time with patients than they did 30-50 years ago. That doesn't mean people aren't getting healthcare. We added more trained professionals into the mix. The fact that pharmaceutical companies aren't going into the jungle doesn't mean that naturally occurring compounds aren't being studied. IT just means that pharmaceutical companies are big and rich enough that they don't have to pay people to do that basic level of research. They can allow others to do it and then pick it up further along in the process.

 

I didn't say natural substances are not being studied. However, since we don't usually get a chain of custody document with the compounds, unless we do competitive intelligence work, we don't even know where the compounds come from or what started the research in the first place. Plants? Maybe. Animals? Maybe. Made up out of thin air? Maybe. Maybe some scientist extracted a plant compound and it did something. He then synthesized it for further experimentation. He then swaps out some atoms and takes it further. Some scientist saw the red dot(a hit) from a horseshoe crab, after testing. Bam! More research into compounds and it gets to be part of a library. Those compound libraries end up on the auction block at some point. Small biotechs are always cash poor..eventually. Big pharms love buying these libraries. It is cheaper. Already known compounds needing synthesized, solubilized, and deposited into well plates, NMRs, CRCs, etc.

Pharmaceutics and healthcare are two very different animals. I didn't mention healthcare...but I have lots of scary stories about hospitals I have worked with previously. Pharms also buy a lot of tissues from the healthcare arena. Healthcare companies(hospitals) make a ton of coin off tissue sales. I have worked Discovery a long time. I have seen it all.

 

Hospitals may generate a lot of revenue from tissue collection but they certainly do not make a profit from it. Such would be a felony. The cost of storing and collecting tissue is high. And I suppose you could argue that the hospital benefits from this "recouping" of costs and maybe it is some clever accounting to simply show it as a wash, but the myth that hospitals are making a mint from selling your grandma's eyes is largely the sort of hokum that alternative therapy providers peddle. Not all of them, mind you. Some of them settle in fine as "complementary" providers. Others make their bread and butter from selling a story about how the hospitals would just as soon kill you to make a buck than heal you.

A friend once gave my some astragalus root because I felt I was coming down with a cold. Hey, all natural, why not? Took it and I didn't really observe anything significant. I also didn't get sick. Coincidence? Probably. So the next time I got sick I bought some of my own astragalus root. Same company as last time. Ten minutes after I took the pill I was sweating profusely. I must've looked pretty bad because one of my coworkers insisted on calling our company first responders. I was having some pretty severe heart palpitations. I was pretty sure it was a heart attack. Went to the hospital to get checked out. Potential side effect for astragalus? Heart palpitations and screwing up your blood pressure. I couldn't figure out why it would have happened this time and not the other time(s) I took the stuff. Aside from the fact that these things are sold as supplements and do not require any FDA approval it is virtually impossible to determine the concentration of a particular ingredient in a root or plant. Herbalists don't measure the amount of a particular chemical in the plant. They simply measure the plant. They might give me 20mg of astragalus root. However, they have no way of knowing if the active ingredient (the one that screws with my heart) is in the same concentration in one 20mg batch of root as in another 20mg batch of root.

I can drink willow bark tea as a pain reliever or fever reducer. Aside from the issue as above, it is also likely to be fairly harsh on my stomach. Fortunately, these compounds have been synthesized and can be delivered in uniform dosages through a regulated system.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of big pharma for many reasons. I think that there are pills and medicines that treat nonexistent conditions with side effects that are worse than the actual conditions. That's a huge problem. But there are also many products offered by pharmaceutical companies that do what the herbal remedies do in a safer manner. I'm all about staying healthy through proper diet and exercise and totally on board with the idea that plants can help heal us. But there are some conditions where modern pharmaceutical intervention is literally the difference between life and death.

Clearly there are universities dedicating research to botanical medicine. And medical research in South America has increased pretty significantly over the past 100 years. My point is simply that you are lamenting the fact that we aren't sending scientists into the jungle. My contention is that we probably don't need to. Between local (South American) scientists being able to do that, if they need to, and botanical medicine researchers able to grow plants from all over the world in their labs the botanical world becomes a lot smaller.

 

It was a decent movie on this topic.

 

I don't see any line items going to unis for research. Nor at another big pharm where I worked. Now, we do some small deals with schools, but not sponsoring the research. Schools often approach us and have us do their work believe it or not. We are setup for that. We do get rights to the data around the hits, though. Don't get me wrong. There is some specific research sponsored. Very specific and not a ton. So it isn't "they simply sponsor the research".