Phytotherapy >>>> Place of herbal medicine in the general medical practice

Place of herbal medicine in the general medical practice.

Mankind discovered medicinal properties of plants long ago. The most ancient cultures: Sanskrit, Chinese, Greek, Latin and European studied the healing properties of plants for many centuries, created treatises in which they described recipes for preparing herbal infusions, decoctions and ointments. Over time, this knowledge has been corrected and improved based on modern medical scientific discoveries. Until the chemical industry and its branch - the pharmaceutical industry - were created, and mankind did not learn to synthesize many substances of plant origin artificially, medicines were prepared from the collected plant materials.

What are medicinal plants interesting for medicine? Modern medicine plants is attracted by the fact that in the process of their growth, plants synthesize various organic substances, among which there are many biologically active compounds, and which have certain pharmacological effects on the human and animal organism.

Biologically active substances include:

carbohydrates,
polysaccharides,
vitamins,
alkaloids,

organic acids,
enzymes,
hormones,
macro- and microelements,
mucus,
tannins,
resinous substances,
coumarins,
phytoncides,
gums and other substances.

To date, there is still no universal classifier that would assign certain plants to certain chemical groups, since this is difficult because plants contain substances of many chemical groups at the same time. Therefore, plants are conventionally classified according to their belonging to the main chemical groups of biologically active substances: containing carbohydrates, glycosides, coumarins, alkaloids, etc.

Therapeutic methods of using medicinal plants in the treatment and prevention of various diseases require knowledge of the botanical characteristics of the plant, its chemical composition, the rules for drawing up recipes, indications and contraindications for the use of various medicinal plants.

Phytotherapeutic treatment can be prescribed only after a thorough examination of the patient. You should be aware that many biologically active compounds of plant origin are not sufficiently studied, therefore , phytotherapy must be used with caution, relying on modern scientific research and discoveries in the field of chemistry.

In medical practice, dosage forms from plants are used - infusions, decoctions, extracts, which are prepared extemporally (that is, as needed). How the dosage form is prepared is of great importance.

To use medicinal plants in therapy, it is necessary to know the solubility of biologically active substances in hot and cold water, alcohol solutions. The manufacture of aqueous solutions of dosage forms should take into account the possibility of increasing the concentration of sparingly soluble and insoluble substances due to the presence of mucus, polysaccharides (saponins, pectins), which act as surfactants (surfactants).

You should also know that aqueous solutions of mucus and polysaccharides tend to change the properties of substances such as fatty and essential oils, lactones, coumarins, which will acquire the properties of partially water-soluble substances and pass with the help of hot water into infusions and decoctions.

It should be borne in mind that the solubility of some biologically active substances in the composition of plants will differ, since they may be in a bound state, and not in a free one. For example, polysaccharides are associated with proteins and metals, while stearins are associated with saponins. And such ties can only be broken in industrial chemical laboratories.