Plant medicine, also called herbal medicine, botanical medicine, or phytomedicine is the use of seeds, berries, roots, leaves, bark, or flowers for medicinal purposes. Plant medicine has a long history, much longer than conventional medicine, going all the back to the ancient Egyptians, Chinese and likely to the very first garden. As science has moved forward so has the advances in pre-clinical and clinical research of plant medicine to help support a healthy lifestyle.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80% of the people worldwide rely on herbal medicines as a part of their primary health care. In Europe, specifically Germany, there are 600 to 700 plant based medicines available by prescription. Even more interesting, about 70% of German physicians prescribe plant medicine.

How popular is plant medicine?

Here’s a few statistics

• China – traditional herbal preparations account for 30%-50% of the total medicinal consumption.
• Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Zambia – the first line of treatment for 60% of children with high fever resulting from malaria is the use of herbal medicines at home.
• Europe, North America and other industrialized regions – over 50% of the population have used complementary or alternative medicine at least once.
• San Francisco, London and South Africa – 75% of people living with HIV/AIDS use TM/CAM.
• Canada – 70% of the population in have used complementary medicine at least once.
• Germany, 90% of the population have used a natural remedy at some point in their life. Between 1995 and 2000, the number of doctors who had undergone special training in natural remedy medicine had almost doubled to 10 800.
• United States – 158 million of the adult population use complementary medicines and according to the USA Commission for Alternative and Complementary medicines, US $17 billion was spent on traditional remedies in 2000.
• United Kingdom – annual expenditure on alternative medicine is US$ 230 million.
• The global market for herbal medicines currently stands at over US $ 60 billion annually and is growing steadily.

Throughout the world there is a pattern of using plant medicine whether it is from the whole plant, an extract, tea, or tincture in primary medical care. Another important consideration is that the majority of pharmaceuticals, possibly as high as 80%, are either originally derived from a natural source (e.g. plants, bacteria, etc.) or a chemical modification of a natural form.