Brahma Singh - New Age herbals: resource, quality and pharmacognosy

Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018

Brahma Singh 1

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Brahma Singh

India, China, and many other countries in the world follow a living tradition with herbs and herbals. In fact, India can be called an emporium of herbs. World Health Organizations estimates quoted time and again by press, book writers, and others indicate that still 80% of world population surprisingly depends on herbals for their primary health care. Herbs being an important part of healthy life, human life, and herbals seem inseparable. The curative and preventive capabilities of herbs in most of the ailments or medicinal plants are known and documented amply too in ancient literature of different civilizations in India and abroad. The enormous literature emphasizes that nature has created a perfect system to keep human healthy. If health problem is there, herbs are also there in good number to overcome it. One has to find it out (research) and document. In this context it is further emphasized that nature has provided natural solution to most of the health aspects of human being. Herbs are identified by hit and trial method since the inception of life on planet earth. Ancient literature do have mentions of herbal medicines for much-talked-about age-related and other difficult-to-cure diseases, namely, memory loss (dementia), tremor, immunity loss, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, diabetes, liver disorders, and several others for which still few or no modern medicines with high percentage of relief and subsequent management are available.

Before the advancement of bio- and chemo-sciences as well as technologies, treatment of diseases was dependent mainly on herbs and the herbalist knowledge which was either inherited or studied in isolation. Interestingly the knowledge is based on empirical findings (without documenting data due to lack of organized health system as that of present day) deploying human subjects with remarkable more or less complete success (almost 100%). This is a marvelous and lasting way of dealing with health issues without knowing the chemistry, chemical constituents of the medicine, and their mode of action. With the advancement in modern medical science, which has done wonders in medical surgery and others, the importance of herbal treatment has significantly not only suffered, but research on the system had gone in low key if not very low or forgotten. The place of traditional phyto-medicines/herbals has obviously been taken over by synthetic medicines. This system popularly known as allopathy is flourishing world over despite side effects caused by synthetic drugs and late development of resistance in pathogen to antibiotics. Abuse to synthetic drugs and molecules leading to several side effects, toxicity and inefficiency besides suppressive effect, have compelled the health maintenance system to relook and selectively adopt the ancient herbal system, generally termed as traditional system of medicine, with present-day health science at least in India. The introduction of synthetic aspirin (basically understood herbal) and use of plant-based drugs like cinchona, cocaine, codeine, morphine, digitoxin, quinine, artemisinin, and others played a significant role in creation of belief among human health professionals in the effectiveness of enormous natural herbal wealth. The formula Take a handful of one-year-old wormwood, soften it in twice as much water, squeeze the plants out and drink the juice from a fourth-century Chinese medical text inspired the 84-year-old Chinese pharmacologist Youyou Tu to research the medicinal effects of sweet wormwood ( Artemisia annua ) and develop a new malarial treatment, artemisinin. It has saved over 1.5 million lives around the world and bagged Tu recently the Nobel Prize in Medicine. The editor considers this system as new age herbals. Here herbals mean plants or botanicals used as medicines both preventive and curative. As stated earlier herbals obviously were quite popular before the development of modern medical science. In India new age herbals are applicable to Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, Amchi, Homeopathy, and others. In fact medicinal plant-based system of medicine (both preventive and curative) providing lead and support to modern medical system is also new age herbals. Accordingly ethnomedicinal uses of plant species documented in different countries are being followed to take clue to develop synthetic drugs wherever possible. As per estimates of Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Government of India, 4635 ethnic communities in India use more than 7500 species of plants for human and animal health care ( because they have proven safety by their continuous use over the centuries. As stated earlier treatment with medicinal plants is considered very safe as there are no or minimal side effects. Herbal remedies are in synchronization with nature, which is considered an advantage. The distinct advantage is that the use of herbal treatments is independent of age groups and gender.

Despite lack of systematic research data, the use of herbal medicines is on the increase these days as has been stated earlier. Realizing the potential and importance of herbs, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi (mainly deals with modern system of medicine), has started compiling information on them in the form of Book Review Indian Medicinal Plants. Several such volumes have already been published by the council for the use of researchers, students, and those owning the knowledge (intellectual property rights). The ICMR monograph on each plant/herb deals with a wide range of information under major heads general information, pharmacognostic, chemical, pharmacological and biological, clinical, and toxicological studies with complete references of cited work (Tandon ). This is of great help to convince the scientific community and health practitioners to consider the usefulness of herbs and herbals and undertake research on medicinal plants. In fact medicinal plants are storehouses of a large number of useful bioactive ingredients which have enormous potential for use in synthetic drugs or modern medicine development. Medicinal plants have also contributed in development of human cultures around the whole world exhibiting the way to healthy life. Certain plants, rich in nutrition and capable of overcoming common and uncommon nutrient deficiencies and associated diseases in the body, are recommended for therapeutic purposes. Some of these plants include turmeric, ginger, lemon, green tea, walnuts, aloe, pepper, beetroot, carrot, and others which are otherwise also part of human diet in India and other countries.

Herbs, world over, have gained popularity in biological control of agriculture pests and residential and workplaces because of organic way of life and environment concern making them important sources for pharmaceutical manufacturing.