I'm a Black Herbalist...and I Don't Like Dr. Sebi
I liken myself to a Kendrick level hater when it comes to Sebi-ism.
Here’s my thing…he’s not a doctor. I could honestly stop this little hateration in this dancerie right there. Anyone who has the gall to name themselves a doctor and they aren’t is obviously diluted on a catastrophic level. I’m sorry - he cured himself of the mental illness he had apparently. Cured himself. Of mental illness.
I won’t do a tell all on the man’s story, but context is important. Alfredo Bowman was born in the ‘30s and is of Honduran descent. As the story goes, he came to states and went to numerous doctors for a series of ailments. After not getting the relief he wanted, he traveled to Mexico in his 30s and supposedly a healer got him together. At this point, he then returned to the states…and created his own medicine? Dr. Sebi’s Cell Food was born. He had several claims that were rooted in a core ingredient: sea moss. His claims included that he cured HIV/AIDS, cancer, blindness, mental illness, and more. His methodology was rooted in the presence of mucus in the body and by turning the blood alkaline (our blood is at a neutral pH), then it would eliminate the mucus and therefore disease. Another part of his personal framework was that the “African gene” vibrated on a different level and his medicines complimented that. He even went as a far as to write letters to African countries to tell them this.
He was sued once in 1987 for claiming to be a doctor and won because they couldn’t prove he was making medical diagnoses (this is still illegal, herbalists have a set a words we cannot use or else we might get sued). This lawsuit was the basis of the documentary that the late Nipsey Hussle was working on. He was then hit with another lawsuit in which he lost and was fined for consumer fraud. He then went on to be detained on money laundering charges and died in prison for pneumonia back in Honduras.
Mexico?
Let’s just start there: what in the hot fuck did you learn from a healer in Mexico that led you to believe that you could then return to the states and immediately start medicine making? To take it even a step further, he didn’t return with plants native to Honduras (I’ve heard rumblings that he was an herbalist back home), he came back selling Mexican plants? Hello? Does that not strike anyone as weird? Apparently not as his “legacy” was enough for people to take interest in. I’ll get to this later.
Put that mf sea moss down.
I can tell that this topic really sends me on a spiral, stay with me. Let’s start with sea moss. PHEWY. To be honest, I’m not going to stay here long. A creator and dietitian on Tiktok summed it up beautifully and I’m going to let her speak:
Meanwhile, I want you to know that I don’t agree with everything this creator does or says just because she is a dietician. However, she ate down here and in a very concise way.
When it comes to sea moss, one of the things that I consider is “what is moss’ function in nature?”. Alongside being a natural habitat and essential to ecosystems, moss is a sponge. It absorbs its water and nutrients from its environment, which sounds great right? It also absorbs toxins and acts as a filtration system for its environment. As much as it uptakes fabulous things, it also cleans. Numerous scientific studies have been done that counts moss as a bioindicator of pollutants in the air and water it resides in¹. You can take the moss out of the water and find arsenic and many other contaminants deeply embedded in its tissues². So essentially, everyone is obsessed with a mass farm produced vacuum filter. Got it.
In terms of it making a person feel better…of course it might. So many of us are deficient in those few essential vitamins and minerals so out of 92 random compounds, something in it is bound to hit a nerve. It’s like you sitting in a room with nothing else but yourself and then someone starts dropping 92 balls in. At some point, something is going to touch you.
Leave your coochie pH alone.
Now this alkalinity shit. Our blood is mostly neutral, if not mildly alkaline already. Coochie? Acidic. Stomach? Acidic. Those are core components and keys to their functioning. There is no actual science behind the idea that being alkaline in totality will heal you. To note, you also can’t turn your body alkaline completely, but you can put your body in a state of alkalosis³. That is a pathological condition with several life threatening symptoms - not a goal. This idea, this idea of alkalinity, is pseudoscience.
In terms of the alkalinity ridding you of mucus. Also not the case. Also also, not revolutionary. It was Hippocrates that created the Humors - yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. He suggested that excess or deficiency of any of these could create disease or imbalance in the body. Further drawing on that, Galen added his own touch later with physis and pneuma. The humoral system has elements that influence constitutional herbalism as it stands today. To note the idea that mucus in the body can be out of whack is inherently ancient and almost every indigenous medicine system has its own way of dealing with excess mucus (Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, Ancient Egypt, hello?) and guess what? None of their solutions involve trying change the acid-base balance in the body. NEXT!
Sports balls are Black men’s balls in a white supremacist culture.
Now, I have dabbled in a little Frances Cress-Welsing. Say what you want, the lady had a little something to her and melanin theory. However, there is no such thing as the African gene. So I’m not going to parade into a break down of vibration, electromagnetic field, current, qi, etc. Yes, those things do exist so I will not try to delegitimize the idea that Black people might vibrate different. I would then say so does everyone else and I’m completely unsure that it is based in race DNA more than it is in the spiritual aspects of a person or people.
I took a gander at Dr. Sebi’s Cell Food brand, it is no longer associated with the Bowman family (he has 22 kids, one daughter has a health business in ATL). From an herbalism prospective, I can see value in incorporating things like bladderwrack for very specific ailments. I also know that plants high in iodine can be critically harmful to those with an overactive thyroid gland. Mosses, algae, etc. are extremely high iodine and there is not a single warning on any of these products about that. I can also see the value in plants like sarsaparilla. I struggle however to find the efficacy in the formulas when some of the plants listed are wholly Mexican and I, nor the average Black American person, have the relationship with the land of Mexico needed to know how to use that plant or for the plant to lend us its medicine. I don’t even know what the plants are, my guy. There are also no nutrition facts listed on the site and there are no images of the label. I won’t be purchasing to find out, however I did see somewhere that there is a tiny disclaimer: there may be more ingredients in this than what is listed here. Now that is spooky behavior.
A Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day…
Let me land my plane. I said that I would circle back to Nipsey and the overarching obsession Black folk have with Dr. Sebi. I think the man is a crackpot. I don’t think that his death was an assassination attempt on the Black healer like Nip and others would name. However, there is something to be said about the removal of a figure in the Black community: no matter how wrong or right the figure was.
Dr. Sebi was a symbol of hope within the Western medical system that has failed Black people from its inception. Actually, most prominent natural healers that are Black and famous fall under this category of people. They become idols, symbols of hope that there is another way and that Black people have been right about the mistreatment of their bodies all along. That we are being gaslit and that there are options. He gave us hope. Most importantly, he gave us autonomy. Now class, historically what happens when a large group of Black people have hope in something that eventually lends to their power and restoration of autonomy? Mhmm. I have no doubts that he could have been a target of assassination…but not because he was curing Black people. It would be because he empowered us. For that reason and for that alone, I don’t sit on the internet arguing with every Sebi’d person I encounter in my work.
I joke and jest about my disdain for Dr. Sebi and I make light of my dissatisfaction at what Black people choose to invest in. However, I understand greatly how we got to this point. How someone who preached pseudoscience can make us feel seen and understood as pseudoscience is one of the few practices that offer us validation in a white supremacist society. I also understand how embracing the scientific tools and measures we have at hand, the ones built to devalue Black people, can feel antithetical to liberation and getting well.
I am of the mind that I take what I can and figure out how it works. From there, I can engineer it to my needs. Biology does have anti-Black sentiment just as all science does. Also true is that there are some things that are completely indisputable and too highly studied. I choose to focus on the latter to make room for my own thoughts and frameworks to develop outside of that. That’s how I approach healing and that is where my critique of the basic tenets of Sebi-ism come from. I have a video on my Tiktok that starts with “fuck Dr. Sebi” and that is because I strongly feel that anyone who would launder money, make false health claims, and otherwise swindle mass audiences who are so desperate for clarity is a charlatan and nasty person, at best. I am also extremely critical, if not downright immediately scared, of herbalists who use Dr. Sebi’s work, formulas, or general praxis as a part of their work. As soon as an “herbalist” mentions sea moss, I run. Pursuing alkalinity and taking herbs in random combos and doses from a man who made a career out of false medical claims is dangerous, full stop. With two things able to be true, I will also always hold a certain tenderness for a Black man who inspired so many to be critical of what they are told and take control over their health. I can talk my shit, but you can’t. Ya’ll know the you I’m talking about.
Consider that if you start to eat better, cut out processed foods, eat more fruit and veg, take some herbs, and take a dirty mineral gel…it’s likely that you’d feel a bit better off the strength of eating better. Not because Dr. Sebi figured out the health crisis. Please.
1 Radziemska, M., Mazur, Z., Bes, A., Majewski, G., Gusiatin, Z. M., & Brtnicky, M. (2019). Using Mosses as Bioindicators of Potentially Toxic Element Contamination in Ecologically Valuable Areas Located in the Vicinity of a Road: A Case Study. International journal of environmental research and public health, 16(20), 3963. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16203963
2 Mackey, A. (2019, May 17). SNAPSHOT: These plants can quickly filter toxins from water. Discover Magazine. https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/snapshot-these-plants-can-quickly-filter-toxins-from-water
3 Sur M, Hashmi MF. Alkalosis. [Updated 2024 Oct 29]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2025 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK545269/