A Guide to Medicinal Plants

Medicinal plants form the basis for entire systems of medicine that have helped many people around the world and continue to do so today. Each individual herb has different properties and uses depending on both its active ingredients and the proportions of other ingredients.

Important Considerations

• Using medicinal plants is not the same as using herbal supplements. Medicinal plants range in effectiveness from the relatively benign, like the emollient aloe vera, to the intensely bioactive and potentially deadly, like foxglove (from which the prescription drug digitalis is derived). Medicinal plants should be harvested and/or used only under the direction of an experienced professional. Please do not use the advice of any book or website to prescribe medicinal plants for yourself or anyone else.

Pharmacologic Action

• Medicinal plants function in two general ways. A few plants, like foxglove, have a primary active agent that can be isolated and used. Most medicinal plants, however, must be used in their entirety because their active and inactive components work in synergy to produce the desired effects. Because most medicinal plants produce a complex dynamic of action, you should only use them under the direction of an experienced professional.

Medical Systems

• Two of the most commonly accessible medical systems that use medicinal plants are Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Ayurvedic medicine from India. These systems rely on the observable effects of these plants and not necessarily on the actual mechanics of the process. Practitioners of TCM often prescribe teas made from herbs, roots, seeds and barks of various plants and in varying proportions in specific dosages to treat conditions; this is the practice of medicine, and far more complex than preparing a simple cup of chamomile tea. View the usage of medicinal plants as medicine which should be prescribed by a professional .