Ethnic Knowledge and Perspectives of Medicinal Plants: A 2-Volume Set

Preserving and disseminating valuable ethnic knowledge of medicinal plants gained over thousands of years, this comprehensive 2-volume set aims to promote the integration and safeguarding of biodiversity.

Volume 1: Traditional Use of Medicinal Plants for Disease Prevention and Treatment

This volume explores the benefits of medicinal plants in disease prevention, treatment, and management, discussing their traditional use as promising therapeutics for various human ailments, including cancer, liver conditions, and COVID-19. It examines the efficacy of Ayurvedic and Chinese herbal medicine, Indian traditional medicine, and other ethnic herbal practices used by indigenous peoples from around the world, such as Azerbaijan, South America, Turkey, and India.

A variety of medicinal plants are discussed, including over 100 wild mushrooms with their medicinal and healthcare purposes elaborated on. This volume focuses primarily on natural plant resources for addressing specific health issues.

Volume 2: Medicinal Plants for Nutrition and Dietary Benefits

This volume looks at traditional medicinal plant use for their nutritional and dietary benefits, encouraging the preservation of biodiversity for healthy and sustainable diets. It presents information on over 2200 vascular plant taxa from 127 families, as well as many taxa from leaf parts, fruits, underground parts, floral parts, seeds, and more that have potential use as edible food plants.

Ethnic knowledge on the wild edible mushrooms is an emerging area, unique and dependent on folk knowledge of tribals. This volume discusses the unique nutritional attributes of wild edible mushrooms (206 species belonging to 73 genera) in Southern India. The authors also examine various lichens as nutritional aids and medicine, as well as flavoring agents and spices.

Fucoidans derived from seaweeds (and spirulina) are described for their antioxidant activity, nutritional and anti-aging properties, antiviral activities, anti-cancer properties, anti-diabetic properties, and more. The authors analyze how ethnicity affects healthcare and nutritive systems at different levels through various dynamics such as lower income, inability for services uptake, disputes among different ethnic groups, cultural attitudes, and disease prevalence.

Together, these two important volumes aim to preserve and disseminate the valuable ethnic knowledge of medicinal plants gained over thousands of years and to promote the value of integrating and safeguarding biodiversity.

Publisher: Apple Academic Press
Publication Date: October 20, 2023
Language: English
ISBN: 9781774912294, 9781000811858