A review on traditional Medicinal Plants and their usage

Abstract

Man uses medicinal plants in many ways to meet his basic need that is food, clothing and shelter since ancient times. As per World Health Organization (WHO) 80% of the world population still depend on medicinal plants. Medicinal plants have been utilized for a large number of years to flavour and preserve food, to treat wellbeing issue and to avoid illnesses including epidemics. These plants are rich source of bioactive components like phenols, flavonoids, triterpenoids, tannins etc. These bioactive components are rich source of functional foods. Recently medicinal plant based functional food becoming more popular among consumers due to constant health awareness, lesser side effects, availabiity and economic value. The medicinal plants based food may have antioxidant, antimicrobial, antiinflammatory, antidiabetic, anticarcinogenic, cadiotonic activities. Thus this review was undertaken to explain various aspects of different medicinal plants like giloy, curry leaf, amla, aloe vera and asparagus.