Recently, new compounds from medicinal plants were discovered, and they were used as anti-severe diseases. Therefore, this book covers interested research topics dealing with isolation, purification, and identification of active ingredients from wild and medicinal plants. This discovery will lead to an increase in the global pharmaceutical market as well as open such new gate for medicinal plant research. This book will add significant information to medical researchers and can be used for postgraduate students.

In this book, a worldwide panel of leading experts discuss the role of inflammation in the pathogenesis of major chronic diseases and the current controversy regarding risk versus benefit of selective cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitors. The authors provide exciting and enlightening perspectives on COX-2 and related molecular targets in the future of medicine, including historical perspectives.

The use of different foods, herbs, and spices to treat or prevent disease has been recorded for thousands of years. Egyptian papyrus, hieroglyphics and ancient texts from the Middle East have described the cultivation and preparations of herbs and botanicals to "cure the sick". There are even older records from China and India. Some ancient scripts describe the use of medicinal plants which have never been seen within European cultures. Indeed, all ancient civilizations have pictorial records of different foods, herbs, and spices being used for medical purposes. However, there are fundamental issues pertaining to the scientific evidence for the use of these agents or their extracts in modern medicine. There have been considerable advances in scientific techniques over the last few decades. These have been used to examine the composition and applications of traditional cures. Modern science has also seen the investigation of herbs, spices and botanicals beyond their traditional usage. For example, plants which have been used for “digestion” or “medical ills” since time immemorial are now being investigated for anti-cancer properties or their toxicity, using high throughput screening. Techniques also include molecular biology, cellular biochemistry, physiology, endocrinology and even medical imaging. However, much of the material relating to the scientific basis or applications of traditional foods, herbs, spices and botanicals is scattered among various sources. The widespread applicability of foods or botanicals are rarely described and cautionary notes on toxicity are often ignored. These issues are explored in Ancient and Traditional Foods, Plants, Herbs and Spices used in Cardiovascular Health and Disease. Features: Investigates alternative healthcare paradigms that use traditional dietary foods, plant-derived materials, and extracts to treat cardiovascular diseases Provides information on diets, specific agents, and extracts Many chapters focus on plant-derived material, providing a historical background, uses, toxicity and cautionary notes and summary points With contributions from leading international experts, this book is useful for cardiologists, nutritionists, physicians, healthcare workers, food scientists and those working in the food industry, pharmacologists, and research scientists.

Early anthropological evidence for plant use as medicine is 60,000 years old as reported from the Neanderthal grave in Iraq. The importance of plants as medicine is further supported by archeological evidence from Asia and the Middle East. Today, around 1.4 billion people in South Asia alone have no access to modern health care, and rely instead on traditional medicine to alleviate various symptoms. On a global basis, approximately 50 to 80 thousand plant species are used either natively or as pharmaceutical derivatives for life-threatening conditions that include diabetes, hypertension and cancers. As the demand for plant-based medicine rises, there is an unmet need to investigate the quality, safety and efficacy of these herbals by the “scientific methods”. Current research on drug discovery from medicinal plants involves a multifaceted approach combining botanical, phytochemical, analytical, and molecular techniques. For instance, high throughput robotic screens have been developed by industry; it is now possible to carry out 50,000 tests per day in the search for compounds, which act on a key enzyme or a subset of receptors. This and other bioassays thus offer hope that one may eventually identify compounds for treating a variety of diseases or conditions. However, drug development from natural products is not without its problems. Frequent challenges encountered include the procurement of raw materials, the selection and implementation of appropriate high-throughput bioassays, and the scaling-up of preparative procedures. Research scientists should therefore arm themselves with the right tools and knowledge in order to harness the vast potentials of plant-based therapeutics. The main objective of Plant and Human Health is to serve as a comprehensive guide for this endeavor. Volume 1 highlights how humans from specific areas or cultures use indigenous plants. Despite technological developments, herbal drugs still occupy a preferential place in a majority of the population in the third world and have slowly taken roots as alternative medicine in the West. The integration of modern science with traditional uses of herbal drugs is important for our understanding of this ethnobotanical relationship. Volume 2 deals with the phytochemical and molecular characterization of herbal medicine. Specifically, it focuess on the secondary metabolic compounds, which afford protection against diseases. Lastly, Volume 3 discusses the physiological mechanisms by which the active ingredients of medicinal plants serve to improve human health. Together this three-volume collection intends to bridge the gap for herbalists, traditional and modern medical practitioners, and students and researchers in botany and horticulture.

Wildcraft your way to wellness! In Southwest Medicinal Plants, John Slattery is your trusted guide to finding, identifying, harvesting, and using 112 of the region’s most powerful wild plants. You’ll learn how to safely and ethically forage, and how to use wild plants in herbal medicines including teas, tinctures, and salves. Plant profiles include clear, color photographs, identification tips, medicinal uses and herbal preparations, and harvesting suggestions. Lists of what to forage for each season makes the guide useful year-round. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers, naturalists, and herbalists in Arizona, southern California, southern Colorado, southern Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, western and central Texas, and southern Utah.

This book presents up-to-date information on a total of 75 native and non-native medicinal plants growing in Singapore. Comprehensive and useful information from the published literature — including plant descriptions and origins, traditional medicinal uses, phytoconstituents, pharmacological activities, adverse reactions, toxicities, and reported drug-herb interactions — is presented in an easy-to-read manner for easy and quick reference. There is no minimum level of knowledge required to read this book, and botanical and medical glossaries are also provided for readers' convenience.The book will be of great practical benefit to a wide-ranging audience. Educators and students in complementary medicine and health, pharmacognosy, medicinal chemistry, natural products, pharmacology, toxicology, pharmacovigilance, medicine, pharmacy, nursing, botany, biology, chemistry and life sciences will find the information useful. The book will also appeal to clinicians, pharmacists, nurses and researchers, as it contains a comprehensive reference list at the end for further reading.

In 1997, with the support of the National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA, a WHO informal discussion developed draft guidelines for methodology on research and evaluation of traditional medicine. Since then, the draft has been revised four times. The guidelines were finalized at a WHO consultation in April 2000, in Hong Kong, China, with the support of the Government of Hong Kong SAR. The guidelines focus on the current major debates on safety and efficacy of traditional medicine, and are intended to raise and answer some challenging questions concerning the evidence base. They also clarify certain commonly used but unclear definitions. The guidelines present some national regulations for the evaluation of herbal medicine, and also recommend new approaches for carrying out clinical research, for example, using the WHO QOL user manual. The quality of life (QOL) manual was developed by the WHO Programme on Mental Health, and may also be used to evaluate the results of clinical research in traditional medicine.