Herbs that heal: Floristic boon to the natural healthcare system

Abstract

Over the past decade, herbal medicines have become a topic of global importance, making an impact on both world health and international trade. Among prehistoric civilizations, India has been known to be loaded depository of medicinal herbs. Medicinal plants continue to play a vital role in the healthcare system of large proportions of the world's population. Different herbs are obtained from different parts of the plant, i.e., roots, leaves, barks, seeds or flowers. The consumption of fruits and vegetables has been found to be associated with lowering of these diseases as they contain a large amount of phenolics compounds, antioxidants and flavonoids. Phenolics occur naturally in plants and are present in fruits, vegetables, leaves, nuts, seeds and flowers; therefore, they are present in the human diet, but are also used in some medicinal preparations. Medicinal plants have been acknowledged as an impending source of natural antioxidants throughout the world. The medicinal value of plant lies in chemical substances that produce a definite physiological action on human body. The most essential bioactive constituents of these herbs include alkaloids, tannins, flavonoids and phenolic compounds. Taking into account of this fact, hereby the present study was conducted on Triphala and its fruit constituents, viz, Amla (Phyllanthus emblica Linn.), Bahera (Terminalia belerica Roxb.) and Harad (Terminalia chebula Retz.) in order to obtain these natural therapeutic agents to appear as a floristic boon to natural health care system. The results showed that aqueous fruit extracts of E. officinalis, T. chebula and T. belerica could serve as a potential antioxidant and antimicrobial constituents. This methodical exploration of these Indian medicinal herbs proved crucial for getting to know about their chemical constituents and functionality in Ayurvedic medicine, and contributes to the search for natural sources of strong antioxidants.