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About Herbs

By Fred Martimes

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 14May2010
Word count: 404
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Herbs are plants lacking a permanent woody stem and many are flowering garden plants that can serve as a medicinal plant or simply a nuisance. The most common herbs that just about all people are familiar with are cooking herbs or the use of herbs and spices in order to prepare exotic, gourmet or cultural foods for flavor. From the beginning of recorded history, herbs have been an important part of both cooking and medicine for peoples all civilizations around the world. In fact, medicinal herbs are even mentioned in the Bible and much historical literature.

Any plant that is used for medicinal purposes will most likely be referred to as an herb and has been for several thousand years in both Europe and the Mediterranean area. While the strict definition for herbs is applicable only to non-woody plants, herbs are sometimes even considered to be derived from any part of a plant that is used in the flavoring of foods or as a medicinal treatment. This means that for many cultures, herbs can come from bark, fruit, the flower, a leaf, root and especially a non-woody plant.

Herbs can be classified in a number of different ways as there are several different systems of herbal medicine that are acknowledged today like Native American, European, Chinese, Ayurvedic and Western herbalism. While the guidelines and reasons for herbal use can vary from system to system, the general belief in how herbs should be used to treat the body as a whole remains the same. Herbs are considered to be the most effective when they are used in working together with the body to produce an effect greater than the sum of their individual effects with each individual's natural energy.

Herbs can be classified into five simple categories including nutritive, which are food products, bitter, which are phenol compounds, saponins and alkaloids, mucilaginous, which are polysaccharides, astringent, which are tannins and aromatic, which are volatile oils. Using this system to identify herbs makes using taste and smell the best way for recognition or substitution in the administering of herbs. It may often be necessary to find similar or comparable herbs for substitution as seasons may make specific herbs hard to come by.

Whilst some people still find herbs to be an important, they're use in medicine has since the advent of prescription and synthetic medicines. However, plants do still remain the main source of drugs.

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