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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Trevor Sayers on being a 'doctor': They don't know I have degree

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20120520

Even though his brand of med­i­cine has been crit­i­cised re­cent­ly by a gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor and some med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, herbal­ist Trevor Say­ers says he's not show­ing any­one his de­gree in nat­ur­al med­i­cine, telling them where he stud­ied or with whom. "If you un­der­stand what is the mean­ing of a doc­tor, its some­one who takes care of the sick. I al­so stud­ied nat­ur­al med­i­cine all over the world," said Say­ers. When asked to spec­i­fy lo­ca­tions, he sim­ply re­peat­ed "all over the world".

Last week, in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Sub­has Ramkhelawan said that the Min­istry of Health needs to crack down on the un­reg­u­lat­ed herbal med­i­cine in­dus­try. He claimed con­sumers were be­ing scammed by promis­es for cures to ma­jor dis­eases like can­cer and di­a­betes.

Say­ers said he's not in­ter­est­ed in re­spond­ing to com­ments. "They don't know I have de­gree. I re­moved my­self from deal­ing with that be­cause af­ter study­ing and hav­ing every­body well, I went to in­sti­tu­tions where every­body's sick and I refuse to prac­tice cer­tain things. I refuse to prac­tice med­i­cine that makes peo­ple sick."

The 53-year old Laven­tille-born busi­ness man said that it was through his fa­ther and vil­lage at large that he learned every­thing there is to know about treat­ing ill­ness­es with nat­ur­al med­i­cine. To Say­ers, herbal med­i­cine is a lost tra­di­tion that he is work­ing to re­vive.

He said that while grow­ing up vis­its to phar­ma­cies and hos­pi­tals were not the norm. "Nat­ur­al med­i­cine is like oxy­gen, its a way of life from the be­gin­ning of man un­til about 1986 when things have changed.The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple would've gone to a prac­ti­tion­er if they fell or if they were go­ing to have a ba­by," he said.

"The hos­pi­tal was more for ac­ci­dents not for the com­mon cold or fever and peo­ple would've had their own cures. Just how you know to eat dasheen and cas­sa­va you would've known to get some Christ­mas bush if you have the cold." Not­ing the shift from herbal med­i­cine to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, fif­teen years ago re­sult­ed in his open­ing a busi­ness of cures. Say­ers owns 13 Nat­u­ralised Herbs out­lets through­out Trinidad, To­ba­go, Grena­da and St. Lu­cia, the Herbs Nat­ur­al man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny in San­ta Cruz and the Save the Youth Foun­da­tion, with bases in Mi­a­mi and Trinidad.

At his Duke Street, Port-of-Spain store the walls are clut­tered with shelves of plas­tic bot­tles stor­ing green, red and or­ange con­coc­tions; Clean Outs for bac­te­ria at $50 per 8 ounce bot­tle; colon cleansers made with pu­ri­fied "healthy" wa­ter and Ep­som salts. Large jars la­belled sage, pique cayenne, aloes and even char­coal fight for space with the $300 pack­age of My Hard Long Wood - erec­tile dys­func­tion tablets made from grape seed, gar­lic, and pars­ley to name a few.

The sta­mi­na man pills ad­ver­tised in the Sta­mi­na Man video that got him fea­tured on Amer­i­can E! TV's The Soup ear­li­er this year are $25 a pill or $550 for a month's sup­ply. Say­ers at­trib­ut­es his strength to dai­ly use of herbs and a healthy di­et. He's a fa­ther of twelve and adopt­ed fa­ther of 24.

For high blood pres­sure the cure can be bois­cano or tamarind leaf. For can­cer, he said ther­a­py to "build con­fi­dence" was need­ed. Halfway through the in­ter­view the San Fer­nan­do of­fice called with re­ports that a woman had been cured of her­pes through us­ing his prod­ucts. He was re­luc­tant to re­veal all the se­crets of treat­ment, how­ev­er.

Say­ers said that he is ded­i­cat­ed to na­tion build­ing and has com­mit­ted him­self to run­ning a lo­cal­ly self-suf­fi­cient busi­ness. He trains the 50-mem­ber Nat­u­ralised Herbs staff where every­thing from test­ing urine sam­ples to sell­ing his three self-pub­lished books is in-house. There's no need to out­source in his opin­ion. "We have our own labs. We un­der­stand every­thing. This is el­e­men­tary."


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