Medicinal plants are a wonderful gift to give to friends and family. Not only do they provide health benefits, but they also help to purify the air and ensure a positive ambiance. They can also make a lovely addition to the home or office. You can purchase several types of medicinal plants and keep them in different rooms of the house.
Although medicinal plants are currently limited to small plots of land near farmer's houses, there is a need to restore barren lands to grow them. It is also necessary to ensure that medicinal plants are allocated to a specific place based on the choice of farmers, rather than on government regulations. There is also a lack of linkages among stakeholders and capacity-building programs, resulting in low yields and a lack of commercialization of plants. In addition, primary producers are dependent on middlemen for sales of their produce.
Medicinal plants have been used by our earliest ancestors to treat various ailments. This knowledge has been gathered throughout prehistory, pre-modern times and even before, and it predates any other form of medical treatment. Many people are turning back to the roots, and this article aims to provide an overview of some of the most common plants used for medicinal purposes.
The use of medicinal plants is increasing around the world. In fact, about 25 percent of all medicines in developed countries are made from plants. And that number is even higher in third-world countries. In rural areas, medicinal plants constitute the primary health care system. These medicines are completely natural, free of side effects and cost a fraction of pharmaceutical medicines. And most importantly, they can be consumed by people of all ages and backgrounds.
There are several reasons that medicinal plants are becoming increasingly recognized. One of the most notable is an escalating faith in herbal medicine. While allopathic medicine can cure a wide variety of ailments, herbal medicines tend to have fewer side effects and are often cheaper. Furthermore, the increasing demand for plant-based medicines is putting a heavy pressure on the wild populations of high-value medicinal plants. The threat to these species comes from overharvesting, low population density and limited geographic distribution.
One of the major challenges with medicinal plants is preserving indigenous knowledge. The traditional knowledge of medicinal plants has been developed over centuries, and it must be considered in improving the sector and allocating scarce resources. The establishment of medicinal plant conservation areas and the development of farming based on traditional herbal use is a positive step in promoting this traditional knowledge.
Plants have long been used as medicines, and the Sumerian civilization used them for hundreds of years. Medicinal plants were widely used by ancient Chinese and Egyptian civilizations. The Egyptians documented their knowledge of herbal medicine on temple walls, and later, on the Ebers papyrus. In about two thousand BC, the Greek physician Dioscorides wrote his De Materia Medica, detailing over a thousand recipes for medicines. This work became a standard text for over a thousand years.