Herbal Drugs and Their High Demand in Treating Diseases

The philosophies of one age become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday will become the wisdom of tomorrow. 

Not many years ago, medical advances and innovations in the pharmaceutical industry made it seem that the use of herbal remedies in developed countries would gradually diminish to insignificant levels. It is a paradox, therefore, that at a time when there is such an unprecedented number of therapeutic drugs available for the treatment of several diseases, herbal remedies continue to be in demand among the general public (NeWall et al., 1996). 

Academic medical centers are currently facing up to the challenge of incorporating so-called alternative medicine and integrative medicine into the educational programs of their scientifically based institutions. The question is no longer whether it should be done but how to do it. (Fishman, 2001 Weil, 2005). 

Recent surveys show that at least half the population in the U.S. uses one of the diverse array of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practices. Virtually all these are complementary rather than alternative. These figures have grown dramatically over the past decades despite the fact that few insurance plans provide coverage for many CAM procedures. Users pay an estimated 27 billion a year out of pocket for these services and make more visits to CAM practitioners than to primary-care physicians. 

No single definition adequately captures the range of practices that fall under the CAM rubric. Those that define CAM as practices that are not part of mainstream medicine, or as practices used by patients to manage their own health care, or as therapies not widely taught in Western medical schools or available in most hospitals, fail to capture the complexity of this field. CAM includes health-care practices that range from the use of vitamins, herbal remedies, and massage therapies to the ancient traditions of Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, along with chiropractic techniques, naturopathy homeopathic medicine, meditation, hypnosis, acupuncture, and a host of other less well-known approaches to health and health care. 

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Herbal Drugs and Their High Demand in Treating Diseases... 

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