List of Herbs and Spices, What are herbs?, Why should I use herbal products?

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List of Herbs and Spices

An herb is a plant or part of a plant used for its flavor, scent, or potential therapeutic properties. Includes flowers, leaves, bark, fruit, seeds, stems, and roots. Herbal medicine products are dietary supplements that people take to improve their health. Many herbs have been used for a long time for claimed health benefits. They are sold as tablets, capsules, powders, teas, extracts and fresh or dried plants. However, some can cause health problems, some are not effective and some may interact with other drugs you are taking.

Dietary supplement is a product that contains vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, enzymes, and/or other ingredients intended to supplement the diet. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has special labeling requirements for dietary supplements and treats them as foods, not drugs.

List of Herbs and spices at a glance
Aloe Vera Astragalus Bilberry Bitter Orange Black Cohosh Cat's Claw Chamomile Chasteberry Cranberry Dandelion Echinacea Ephedra European Elder	Evening Primrose Oil Fenugreek Feverfew Flaxseed and Flaxseed Oil Garlic Ginger Ginkgo Ginseng (Asian) Goldenseal Grape Seed Extract Green Tea Hawthorn Hoodia		Horse Chestnut Kava Lavender Licorice Root Milk Thistle Mistletoe Peppermint Red Clover Saw Palmetto St. John's Wort Turmeric Valerian Yohimbe
List of herbs used for their Roots Astragalus Dandelion Kava Black Cohosh Echinacea Ginseng (Asian)		List of herbs used for their leaves Aloe Vera Dandelion Green Tea Echinacea Ephedra Peppermint European Elder		List of herbs used for their fruits Bilberry Bitter Orange Chasteberry Cranberry European Elder Hawthorn Saw Palmetto
list of herbs used for their Bulbs Garlic Ginger		list of herbs used for their Bark or Stems Cat's Claw Yohimbe Ephedra		list of herbs used for their flowers Dandelion Chamomile Echinacea Red Clover

Herb List used for their Seeds Fenugreek	herb list used as Oil Peppermint Oil Evening Primrose Oil	list of herbs to control appetite Hoodia
list of herbs used as aphrodisiacs Ginseng (Asian)	list of herbs to cure asthma	list of herbs to cure arthritis Turmeric Evening Primrose Oil Peppermint
list of herbs to cure bronchitis Ginkgo Licorice Root Red Clover	list of herbs for behavioral control Horse Chestnut	list of herbs to fight cholesterol Red Clover Avocado
herb list to control Coughing European Elder	list of herbs to help digestion and loss of appetite Bitter Orange	herb list for diabetes and loss of appetite Fenugreek
list of herbs to help sexual dysfunction Yohimbe	list of herbs to fight fatigue Kava
list of herbs to treat mental disorders and nerve pains St. John's Wort	List of herbs	list of herbs for sleep disorder Valerian
list of herbs that boosts the immune system Ginseng (Asian) Cat's Claw Echinacea	list of herbs for menstrual irregularities and PMS Black Cohosh Chasteberry Red Clover Turmeric	list of herbs to fight viral infections Cat's Claw
list of herbs for Insomnia Chamomile	list of herbs to help Urinary Tract Infections Cranberry Saw Palmetto	list of herbs to treat Liver Problems Dandelion
list of herbs to treat Nasal Congestion Ephedra	herb list used as Laxative Aloe Vera	list of herbs to reduce hyper activity Horse Chestnut
list of herbs to control and lower high blood pressure Hawthorn Garlic	herb list to improve alertness and focus Horse Chestnut	list of herbs for weight control Hoodia
list of herbs used for skin problems Aloe Vera	List of herbs to treat itchy skin	list of herbs to treat Varicose Veins Horse Chestnut
List of Asian Herbs

To use an herbal product as safely as possible:

Consult your doctor first
Do not take a bigger dose than the label recommends
Take it under the guidance of a trained medical professional
Be especially cautious if you are pregnant or nursing

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Why should I use herbal products?

The decision to use herbs to improve your health is, as with all health decisions, a personal one. There are, however, many good reasons to consider herbal products to complement your own health care methods. One of the best reason, however, may be the fact that herbs and herbal products, continue to provide real health benefits while maintaining a remarkable safety profile. Readily available natural substances were the first medicines used by humans. Primitive and ancient civilizations as well as contemporary cultures throughout the world have always relied on herbs to provide the benefits that have been observed with their use. In fact, the World Health Organization has estimated that 80 percent of the world's population continues to use traditional therapies, a major part of which are derived from plants, as their primary health care tools. In our own time and culture, most herbs are available in the form of "herbal supplements." These products are found in the form of teas, tablets, capsules, liquid extracts, and others. We now have ready access to products that bring the herbal traditions from all over the world in a variety of convenient forms. In addition, scientific inquiries continue to develop our knowledge of the benefits of plants, and often validate the observations made over the past centuries.

Are herbs safe?

Plants that enjoy broad culinary and therapeutic usage are generally safe. We can flavor our food with any number of herbs to make a meal more flavorful. We can appreciate a delicious cup of peppermint leaf or ginger root tea, or benefit from the soothing properties of marshmallow root or the bark of slippery elm. We can take an herbal supplement containing dandelion root or saw palmetto berries, or any number of the other herbs. Although allergies and reactions have been recorded for a few herbs that are widely used in foods and supplements, such individual concerns are also seen with many foods, and do not diminish the safety profile of the many herbs that are generally recognized as safe. On the other hand, and as everyone knows, there are any number of plants that are highly toxic, even deadly.

Herbs in history - Courtesy of Wikipedia

In the written record, the study of herbs dates back over 5,000 years to the Sumerians, who described well-established medicinal uses for such plants as laurel, caraway, and thyme. The first known Chinese herb book (or herbal), dating from about 2700 B.C., lists 365 medicinal plants and their uses - including ma-Huang, the shrub that introduced the drug ephedrine to modern medicine. The Egyptians of 1000 B.C. are known to have used garlic, opium, castor oil, coriander, mint, indigo, and other herbs for medicine and the Old Testament also mentions herb use and cultivation, including mandrake, vetch, caraway, wheat, barley, and rye.

Like their predecessors, the ancient Greeks and Romans made medicinal use of plants. Greek and Roman medicinal practices, as preserved in the writings of Hippocrates and - especially - Galen, provided the patterns for later western medicine. Hippocrates advocated the use of a few simple herbal drugs - along with fresh air, rest, and proper diet. Galen, on the other had, recommended large doses of more or less complicated drug mixtures - including plant, animal, and mineral ingredients. The Greek physician compiled the first European treatise on the properties and uses of medicinal plants, De Materia Medica. In the first century AD, Dioscorides wrote a compendium of more that 500 plants that remained an authoritative reference into the seventeenth century. Similarly important for herbalists and botanists of later centuries was the Greek book that founded the science of botany, Theophrastus’ Historia Plantarum, written in the fourth century B.C.

The uses of plants for medicine and other purposes changed little during the Middle Ages. The early Christian church discouraged the formal practice of medicine, preferring faith healing; but many Greek and Roman writings on medicine, as on other subjects, were preserved by diligent hand copying of manuscripts in monasteries. The monasteries thus tended to become local centers of medical knowledge, and their herb gardens provided the raw materials for simple treatment of common disorders. At the same time, folk medicine in the home and village continues uninterrupted, supporting numerous wandering and settled herbalists. Among these were the “wise-women,” who prescribed herbal remedies often along with spells and enchantments. It was not until the later Middle Ages that women who were knowledgeable in herb lore became the targets of the witch hysteria. One of the most famous women in the herbal tradition was Saint Hildegard of Bingen. A twelfth century Benedictine nun, she wrote a medical text called Causes and Cures.

Medical schools began to return in the eleventh century, teaching Galen’s system. At the time, the Arabic world was more advanced in science than Europe. As a trading culture, the Arabs had access to plant material from distant places such as China and India. Herbals, medical texts and translations of the classics of antiquity filtered in from east to west. Alongside the university system, folk medicine continued to thrive. Plants were burdened with a mass of both pagan and Christian superstition that often was more important than their actual properties. The continuing importance of herbs for the centuries following the Middle Ages is indicated by the hundreds of herbals published after the invention of printing in the fifteenth century. Theophrastus’ Historia Plantarum was on of the first books to be printed, and Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica was not far behind.

The fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were the great age of herbals, many of them available for the first time in English and other languages rather than Latin or Greek. The first herbal to be published in English was the anonymous Grete Herball of 1526. The two best-known herbals in English wereThe Herball or General History of Plants (1597) by John Gerard and The English Physician Enlarged (1653) by Nicholas Culpeper. Gerard’s text was basically a pirated translation of a book by the Belgian herbalist Dodoens and his illustrations came from a German botanical work. The original edition contained many errors due to faulty matching of the two parts. Culpeper’s blend of traditional medicine with astrology, magic, and folklore was ridiculed by the physicians of his day yet his book - like Gerard’s and other herbals - enjoyed phenomenal popularity. The Age of Exploration and the Columian Exchange introduced new medicinal plants to Europe. The Badianus Manuscript was an illustrated Aztec herbal translated into Latin in the 16th century.

But the seventeenth century also saw the beginning of a slow erosion of the pre-eminent position held by plants as sources of therapeutic effects. The introduction by the physician. Paracelsus of active chemical drugs (like arsenic, copper sulfate, iron, mercury, and sulfur), followed by the rapid development of chemistry and the other physical sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, led increasingly to the dominance of chemotherapy - chemical medicine - as the orthodox system of the twentieth century.