Abstract

Recently, many diseases related to the life style or the ageing have grown by leap and bounds, needing appropriate solutions and the present focus is to find solace in the lap of nature. The various approaches include the use of herbal or plant medicines (being used from an ancient time all over the world especially India, China and several other countries of Asia), health foods (functional foods), fermented foods, phyto-chemicals and nutraceuticals, bioactive compounds, etc in the cure of such diseases. The major reason for their use is the general belief amongst the people is that such substances are useful in the cure and do not cause any side effect unlike the allopathic medicines. The phyto-chemicals, nutraceuticals, bioactive compounds or the fermented foods have been claimed for the cure of several ailments. The foods containing the phyto-chemicals are termed as nutraceuticals include various nutrients, dietary supplements, specially designed diets or herbal products of both plant and animal origin. However, there are several concerns in the use of these types of approaches and the products. For example many nutraceuticals, herbal medicines or similar photo-chemicals, fermented foods have never been investigated at all for their active component, mechanism of action, metabolic pathways, therapeutic values or the demonstratable effect in model systems. So it is important to apply modern science and tools including chemo-matrix, metabolomics, nutrigenomic to understand the traditional systems of medicine (phyto-chemicals, the Traditional System of Chinese Medicine (TSCM), Ayurveda) and phyto-chemicals with advanced biotechnology, diverse applications and advantages could be exhibited not only in bringing benefits to increase the diversity and composition of herbal phyto-chemicals, but also helping to elucidate the treatment mechanism and accelerate new drug discovery from Chinese herbal medicine. The mechanism of action along with the efficacy of various phyto-chemicals in different clinical conditions needs to be established with help of in vivo studies. Indigenous fermented foods are the major sources of bioactive compounds, reflecting the great usefulness of these foods in human health. It is apparent that interdisciplinary research involving biochemistry, nutrition, microbiology, physiology, pathology and pharmacology should be conducted especially validation. Another concern for the use of nutraceuticals is the lack of quality control, a very serious aspect which needs to be tackled with suitable standards and the methods of evaluation. Overall, it is clearly a fertile ground research for the future.

Abbreviations: TSCM: Traditional System of Chinese Medicine; NCDs: Non-Communicable Diseases; WHO: World Health Organization; CVD: Cardiovascular Diseases; Das: Dicarboxylic Acids; HMPs: Herbal Medicinal Products; SRs : Systemic Review; EFSA: European Food Safety Authority; TCHM: Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine; CHM: Chinese Herbal Medicine; QAMS: Quantitative Analysis Of Multi-Components By Single Marker