The length of herbal treatment depends on many factors like how long you have had the condition, the severity of the condition, other medications you take and your overall state of health. Often, people can have had mild symptoms or a feeling that things just aren’t right for some time before a health condition actually shows up in tests.
Herbs are most often gentle acting and may take longer to begin to achieve their desired effect on the body than pharmaceutical medicines. They are also less likely to cause unwanted side-effects.
An example
A good example of how a herbal medicine works over time can be seen with flax seeds, which are often used ground up in food, or in capsules for constipation. Flax seeds work at first by increasing the stool bulk and later by reducing bloating. Over the course of one to three months, as a result of their use, new bacteria establish themselves in the colon to digest fibres. This adjustment of the body (and its symbiotic bacteria) is needed to bring about the full-healing result of the herbal treatment, which results in a reduction in bloating and normalisation of the stool.
