Herbal Drugs and Fingerprints Evidence Based Herbal Drugs
Evidence based herbal drugs are on hi-acceptance day by day due to health friendly nature compared to synthetic drugs. The active ingredients in herbal drugs are different chemical classes, e.g. alkaloids, coumarins, flavonoids, glycosides, phenols, stero
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The use of herbals as drug is older than recorded history, as mute witness to this fact are marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) root, hyacinth (Hyacinthus orientalis), and yarrow (Achillea millefolium), found carefully tucked around the bones of a Stone Age man in Iraq. These herbs are used as demulcent, diuretic, and common cold remedy, respectively, even today. Ayurveda and TCM are two great living traditions of the world which are related to herbal healthcare. Every continent has its folk system for healing and caring, and a few are still recognized by the state healthcare agencies, in different countries. King Hammurabi of Babylon (1800 bc) had prescribed the use of mint for digestive disorders; now, it has been established by modern science that peppermint indeed relieves nausea and vomiting by mildly anesthetizing the lining of the stomach. The knowledge of herbal drugs was widely disseminated throughout Europe by the seventeenth century. Nicholas Culpeper had written “A Physical Directory” and “The English Physician,” the first manuals that a layperson could use for healthcare, and it is still widely referred and quoted. The first publication of the US Pharmacopoeia (1820) included an authoritative listing of herbal drugs, with descriptions of their properties, uses, dosages, and tests of purity. It was periodically revised and became the legal standard for medical compounds in 1906, but with development of synthetic chemistry, synthetic therapeutic ingredients gained preference, and herbal drugs became the secondary choice. The synthetic therapeutic products could not be accepted more due to severe side effects, and there was relook for herbal therapy, and natural products were found as storehouse of different molecular designs, even beyond the human imagination. A few traditional remedies directly passed the modern molecular approach for treatment, for example, ephedrine, an active ingredient of Ephedra, is used in the commercial pharmaceutical preparations for the relief of asthma symptoms and other respiratory problems, as it helps the patient to breathe more easily, while Ephedra in TCM was in use since 2,000 years back to treat the same ailments. Foxglove (Digitalis lanata) leaves are known since 1775, till the date, as cardiac stimulant and keeps alive the millions of heart patients worldwide. The active ingredient has been identified as digoxin, a medicine of all pharmacopoeias.
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I Herbal Drugs: A Review on Practices
There are over 750,000 plants on earth, but relatively, only a very few have been studied for healing. Modern pharmacology looks for one active ingredient and seeks to isolate it, with the exclusion of all others. Most of the research done on herbals is focused on identifying and isolating active ingredients, rather than studying the medicinal properties of whole herb. Herbalists, however, consider that the power of herbal lies in the interaction of all its ingredients. Used as a drug, herbals offer synergistic interactions between ingredients both known and unknown. FDA has categoriz
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