Matthew Wood - Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix: The Science of Healing at the Cellular Level

Holistic Medicine
and the
Extracellular Matrix

Matthew Wood is among the most respected and well-known herbalists of our era and is the author of several brilliant textbooks on herbal medicine. Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix is his opus and masterpiece. Exceptionally well written and impeccably researched, this book debunks the popular theory that cells of the body function as independent units existing independently of one another. Instead, he meticulously reveals in easy-to-understand terms the implications of the extracellular matrix, the inner ocean in which the cells exist, and how this simple switch hugely impacts our understanding of healing. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in health, healing, and medicine.

ROSEMARY GLADSTAR, HERBALIST AND AUTHOR OF PLANTING THE FUTURE

Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix is a deep examination of the scientific justification of concepts discussed in traditional systems of medicine for millenniathat the human organism is a living wholeness unto itself, not a compilation of unintelligent biochemical and cellular machinery. This groundbreaking text reveals the truth of how our bodies function at a fundamental level and how we can rejuvenate our health on all levels with natural, holistic approaches to healing. Its akin to the discovery of the heliocentric model of our solar system but for the understanding and practice of holistic medicine... truly revolutionary.

SAJAH POPHAM, AUTHOR OF EVOLUTIONARY HERBALISM

Matthew Woods book turns biomedical physiology on its head and presents a science-based holistic perspective on how and why herbs really work. His finest book yet!

ROBERT DALE ROGERS, RH (AHG), AUTHOR OF ROGERS SCHOOL OF HERBAL MEDICINE

In his groundbreaking book, Holistic Medicine and the Extracellular Matrix, Matthew Wood brings us a more balanced scientific perspective and further proves the basic tenet of holism while condemning reductionism as a model for how biological systems work. A revolutionary work poised to overthrow the conceptual foundation of modern science and its therapeutic models and drug therapies, this book directs treatment toward the individual as a whole and blows the lid off a onesize-fits-all approach to modern pharmacology and compares our situation to that of Galileo and the Church. I recommend this book for all students of herbalism, holistic medicine, and the curative arts.

THEA SUMMER DEER, CLINICAL HERBALIST AND AUTHOR OF WISDOM OF THE PLANT DEVAS

Matthew Woods brilliant new book definitively establishes the scientific basis of holistic healing. Wood shows how optimal healthhomeostasisis in the extracellular matrix, the fundamental basis of alternative medicine. Drugs circumvent the self-regulation of our bodies and are creating more diabetes, cardiovascular distress, and cancer, yet holistic therapies improve the cellular environment and our bodies balance. I especially admire this book because Wood brings in Arthur Firstenbergs research on the intensifying electromagnetic frequencies as the cause of much modern disease. The extracellular matrix that transports our bodily fluids is very sensitive to these frequencies that may be causing the huge rise in inflammation today. This is a must-read for herbalists, acupuncturists, chiropractors, energy therapists, bodyworkers, and anyone directing their own path to healing.

BARBARA HAND CLOW, AUTHOR OF ASTROLOGY AND THE RISING OF KUNDALINI

Foreword

Stephen Harrod Buhner

Once [reductive] science convinced us the world was dead, it could begin its autopsy in earnest.

JAMES HILLMAN

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.

GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER

We are in difficult times, and its time for a change. Most people on this Earth know it. The challenges we face are demanding a significant alteration in the way we approach this planet that is our home, the lack of kindness in our cultures systemic denigration of the weak and notrich, and how we view and treat diseases and those who are suffering from them.

In my many medical herbals, the series of ecological books culminating with Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm, and in a number of my recent articles and blog posts, I have been arguing for the emergence of a more sophisticated and holistic approach in our relation to Earth. This includes herbal medicine (and so many other things) as well as necessitates a shift from the approach of the reductive phytorationalists who keep producing simplistic texts based on a very flawed medical model.

We are no longer in the late nineteenth or mid twentieth centuries. The world is changing and so is disease. And the pictures of the human body, this Earth, and life itself that the reductive world keeps teaching children are terribly flawed, so inaccurate in fact that it is those beliefs that are destroying the fabric of our planetary home as well as keeping alive an approach to medicine whose paradigm is not sufficient to deal with what we are now facing: the rise of antibiotic resistant diseases, viral pandemics, the emergence of ecological disruption diseases such as Lyme, as well as the massive development of chronic conditions such as long Covid.

American herbalists, of necessity, need to abandon that older medical model and actively create our own unique and sophisticated paradigm of health, plant medicines, the human body, and the role of the practitioner in healing. Regrettably, the current training of clinical herbalists still uses a reductive medical approach to plants, the human body, and disease, with little room for the human elements that are essential to healing, and shows as well a complete lack of awareness of the actual nature of organs, organisms, plants, and Earth (as self-organizing, nonlinear, highly intelligent, living systems displaying emergent behavior).

In fact, the more serious and academic herbal training has become, the worse it gets. The world doesnt need more baby doctors trying to get mom and dad to like them and let them play in the big sandbox. The medical approach to healing (except in dealing with severe physical trauma) is flawed beyond salvaging. An entirely new system needs to be created, which is what we, as herbalists, should be doing. (Those with chronic diseases such as Lyme, COPD, and long Covid already know this.)

I have long bemoaned the fact that there are so very few herbalists and texts that are pushing the envelope, that is, taking on the challenge of doing this, creating the sophisticated foundations and understandings that are necessary for a truly holistic, sophisticated healing work based around the use of plant medicines.

Few if any clinical schools, of whatever sort, train their students in establishing rapport, active listening, empathy, effective communication techniques, the psychological dynamics of disease and health, or anything else related to the human beings that come to them in their suffering. It is an egregious failure, and, frankly, contemptible. None of those programs are apparently aware of complexity theory, living organ systems, nonlinearity in living systems, ecology, or even the extent and importance of the human and Earth microbiomes. (We have a microbiome in our lungs denied to be in existence until a decade ago; that we have commensal bacterial populations throughout our bodies is still not widely recognized.)