植物療法

Phytotherapy is the study of the use of extracts from natural origin as medicines or health-promoting agents.植物療法是研究將天然提取物用作藥物或促進健康的藥物。 Even though phytotherapy is usually regarded as "alternative medicine" in the Western countries,when critically carried out, is considered an essential component of modern pharmacognosy.即使在西方國家通常將植物療法視為“替代藥物”，但嚴格執行時，仍被認為是現代生藥學的重要組成部分。
In herbal medicine standardization refers to providing processed plant material that meets a specified concentration of a specific marker constituent.在草藥中，標準化是指提供滿足特定標誌物成分指定濃度的加工植物材料。 Active constituent concentrations may be misleading measures of potency if cofactors are not present.如果不存在輔因子，則活性成分的濃度可能會誤導效價。 A further problem is that the important constituent is often unknown.另一個問題是重要的成分通常是未知的。 For instance St John's wort is often standardized to the antiviral constituent hypericin which is now known to be the "active ingredient" for antidepressant use.例如，聖約翰草通常被標準化為抗病毒成分金絲桃素，現在被稱為抗抑鬱藥的“活性成分”。 Other companies standardize to hyperforin or both, although there may be some 24 known possible constituents.其他公司標準化使用Hyperforin或兩者同時使用，儘管可能有大約XNUMX種已知的可能成分。 Only a minority of chemicals used as standardization markers are known to be active constituents.已知只有少數用作標準化標記的化學物質是有效成分。 Standardization has not been standardized yet: different companies use different markers, or different levels of the same markers, or different methods of testing for marker compounds.標準化尚未標準化：不同的公司使用不同的標記，或相同標記的水平不同，或測試標記化合物的方法不同。 Herbalist and manufacturer David Winston points out that whenever different compounds are chosen as "active ingredients" for different herbs, there is a chance that suppliers will get a substandard batch (low on the chemical markers) and mix it with a batch higher in the desired marker to compensate for the difference.草藥專家和製造商David Winston指出，每當將不同的化合物選擇為不同草藥的“活性成分”時，供應商就有機會得到不合格的批次（化學標記物含量較低）並將其與所需含量較高的批次混合。標記以補償差異。