Dr. Richard Schulze

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Dr. Richard Schulze: The Original Natural Health Revolutionary

Wisdom from one of the early pioneers of modern Natural Healing.

Using Organic and Wild-Harvested Herbs


Dear Dr. Schulze,

I have noticed that you don't use 100% organic herbs when making your formula, yet you say you are the best. I don't understand how you can claim you are the best but you don't exclusively use organically grown herbs.

— Suzanne V. in Goodland, Kansas


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Dear Suzanne,

My answer is very simple and to the point. Everyone has their focus. Many herbal companies' focus is to make 100% organic herbal formulas. Mine is not.

Coming from the clinic, and being a practicing natural and herbal doctor all of my life, I have a very different focus.


I REPEAT, their focus is “organic”, my focus is to help you to heal your diseases.

To achieve this mission, and to make the most effective herbal medicine, I will use ANY herbs I feel are the most POTENT, and the most PURE. And contrary to what many believe, organic is not always the most potent, nor the most pure. Let me explain…

To begin with, I was one of the earliest promoters of using organic herbs of anyone I know. Sure, there are a few who came before me in the organic movement, but not many. Decades ago, I was ridiculed, harassed and even threatened by other herbalists, herbal organizations and even other herbal manufacturers because I aggressively promoted the use of organic herbs. If it weren't for me, the organic herbal movement in America would not be even close to where it is today.

In the early days of my clinic, I put extreme pressure on every herb supplier in America to grow organic herbs for me, and I let them know I would pay ten times more for the herbs if necessary, and I did. I put my money where my mouth is, simply because I wanted the absolute best for my patients and their families. Still, the vast majority of all herbal manufacturers used the cheaper, non-organic herbs.

Today, only a few hundred herbs are grown organically, so if you make organic your absolute herbal limitation, well, you are very limited in the healing you can do with your herbal medicine. This is simply because you will be very limited in what you can make by using only the few herbs that are organically grown.

Also, many herbs cannot even be grown organically. In fact, some herbs cannot even be grown at all, at least no farmer as of yet has figured out how to grow them.

For whatever reason, many herbs that naturally grow in the wild cannot be farmed. Herbs that are foraged in the wild are what I call “wild-harvested” herbs. The vast majority of the millions of species of herbs in the world are not available organically grown.

Sure, more and more organically grown herbs are available every day, and I check daily, but it is still only a small percentage of all the herbs that grow wild in the world. What I call “Wild-Harvested” herbs are ones that are not cultivated, but found to naturally occur and can be harvested in nature, with minimal environmental impact, from some of the most pristine fields and forests in the world.

Most cultivated organically grown herbs are far superior to regular chemically grown herbs. This is just one reason why I use organic herbs and have promoted organic so much over the years. Organic foods and herbs contain 4 to 10 times more potent phytochemicals than chemically grown herbs. But, organic is not always better, like with ginseng. Most commercially cultivated organic ginseng, as far as I am concerned, is worthless junk, compared to the “wild-harvested” Appalachian Blue-Ridge Mountain Ginseng I use. This is why the cultivated sells for $50 or $100 a pound and the wild-harvested I use can sell from $1,000 to $5,000 a pound. So, while organically grown is better than chemically grown, it is not always better than what nature has created.

Also, many herbs like Chaparral (Larrea tridentate), which I forage in the California deserts like Death Valley, well; no one is growing anything like this anywhere. Why not? Because there are thousands of acres of it growing in the wild.

I also use Transitional Farmers and Organic “Dropouts” (farmers who grow organically, but won't deal with all the new, organic regulatory agencies) and I understand why they refuse.

In fact, the chemically-grown, commercial farmers were losing so much money to the organic farmers (because people wanted to buy only organic) that the chemical farmers lobbied the government to put so many rules, regulations, restrictions and stipulations on organic farmers, that what you have to do to grow organic today (i.e. all the paperwork, and money) well, many organic farmers I know, who have been growing organic all of their lives, just couldn't take all the bullshit and all of the regulatory agencies and all the cost anymore, so they just stopped using the word organic all-together. But, they still grow the best organic herbs in the world. They are just organic rebels, or what I call organic “dropouts”.

Then there is the sterilization problem. Today, almost all herbs that are grown, even organically, are sterilized with toxic Ethylene Oxide gas to kill bacteria, but are still called organic because the sterilization process is done after the fact, after they are grown, and takes place after they are harvested. So they are still labeled as “organically grown”, even though they are gassed with carcinogenic and mutagenic chemicals and these toxic and poisonous chemical residues remain on the plants.

Finally, many herbal single-celled microplants-like the ones I use in my SuperFood Plus-like Spirulina and Saccharomyces cervisiae are not organically grown because they are not actually grown, at least in the ground that is, but grown in water or in tanks, so they can't be called Organically Grown for a number of reasons.

I hope you can see, that my bottom line comes back into clear focus. Again, my focus is to make the most POTENT and most EFFECTIVE herbal medicine, and the PUREST.

To do this I use the finest herbs money can buy. Yes, many times they are “Organically Grown”, but sometimes they are “Wild-Harvested” or foraged in nature. Sometimes they are organically grown by my “organic dropout” farmers who are some of the finest organic growers in the world, but they just won't do all the paperwork and pay all of the fees and jump through the hoops anymore, and to be honest I don't blame them. And other times it is simply because the herbs are manufactured, biodynamic micro-herbs.

So I guess it all comes down to trusting me, old Dr. Schulze, to carefully choose the finest, purest and most potent herbs, and to make the most effective clinical herbal formulas for you and your loved ones to use.

What I can guarantee you is that I take this trust more seriously than anyone else I have ever met. My customers aren't just buying herbs. They are putting their trust in my family and me, whether in health or in dis-ease, and I take this trust very, very, very seriously. I am humbled.

Maybe the final difference is, that when I get ill, or my son or my family are ill, we use the same herbal medicine I make and sell to you: Dr. Schulze's Original Clinical Formulae. We use the exact same herbal medicine I make right off the same shelf. Most of the other herbal manufacturers can't say this and don't use their own herbal medicine when they get sick. I know this because they are my customers too.

– Dr. Schulze



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