Plant Adaptogens: Natural Medicaments for 21 ^st Century?

Abstract

Abstract This review is devoted to adaptogens, plant products capable of producing nonspecific responses in the human body, resulting in increasing the resistance against multiple stressors (physical, chemical or biological) and capable of having a normalizing effect to the human body. Adaptogens must be non‐toxic, harmless, capable of not influencing normal body functions more than required, and capable of treating depression, a common neuropsychiatric illness, the importance of which is increasing by number of new patients every year. Number of plants are able to produce natural compounds, which meet the criteria of becoming adaptogens. The most known of them are used in traditional medicine for centuries. This review summarizes data from several most important plant sources of adaptogens, however, it does not cover the field of adaptogens in all its variability. Based on the literature search covering the two past decades, it is focused at several most important plant species and their products, and at their proven or potential pharmacological effects in treating several important diseases.