Opened Approaches on Treatment and Herbs’ Location in Iran

Long before the development of modern medicines, Iran in ancient times, was entirely dependent on herbal medicines for health care. Many scripts carry elaborate prescriptions of herbal medicines for treating very complex disorders [1,2]. Iran was the leader in health care through Ayurveda. Apart from such systematic therapies, specific herbal therapies developed by individuals were used for treating the ills and these secret therapies were passed on from the older generation to the younger generation, without disclosing them to the outsiders. Even today, Medicinal plants play a remarkable role in Iran [3-6]. A similar practice was also prevalent in China and many other countries in Asia and Africa. With the progress of science, allopathic medicine gained prominence over herbal medicines. With larger commercial interest, the western countries promoted modern drugs, inspite of its high cost and side effects [7-9]. However, realizing the drawbacks of allopathic medicine, the world is turning back to herbs. Recently, about 80% of the world population is still dependent on herbs for health care and 20% of the drugs in pharmaceutical companies are of plant origin, either extracted from the plants or synthetic derivatives of these plant species [10-13].

therapies, specific herbal therapies developed by individuals were used for treating the ills and these secret therapies were passed on from the older generation to the younger generation, without disclosing them to the outsiders. Even today, Medicinal plants play a remarkable role in Iran [3][4][5][6]. A similar practice was also prevalent in China and many other countries in Asia and Africa. With the progress of science, allopathic medicine gained prominence over herbal medicines. With larger commercial interest, the western countries promoted modern drugs, inspite of its high cost and side effects [7-9]. However, realizing the drawbacks of allopathic medicine, the world is turning back to herbs. Recently, about 80% of the world population is still dependent on herbs for health care and 20% of the drugs in pharmaceutical companies are of plant origin, either extracted from the plants or synthetic derivatives of these plant species [10][11][12][13].
In China, over 5000 plant species are used in drugs and traditional medicines, while over 2300 species are known for their traditional medicinal value in Iran. In addition to medicinal characteristics, some of these species are also used as tonics.
Ginsing, one of the most popular species used as a tonic, is widely grown in China and Korea. In 1991, the value of Ginsing sold in USA and Asian region was over US$ 215 million and China had a lion's share of 40% [14][15][16][17]. The assessed annual market value of the plant-based drug is US$ 43,000 million and it is expected to rise to US$ 3 trillion over the next two decades.
In Iran, around 15 million people from 80, traditional herbal medicines are the only alternative source, due to easy accessibility and lower price. This sector also provides employment to over one million traditional healers and Vaidyas in the country [18][19][20]4].
Thus, sustainable development of herbs provides an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the expanding market, while ensuring a steady supply to local communities (6,8,10,12).

Phytochemical role of Metabolites in some Herbs
Phytochemicals are compounds that existed naturally in plants. They contribute to the colour, flavour and smell of plants.
In addition, they form part of a plant's natural defense mechanism against diseases. Their remedial values to human health and disease prevention have been reported (21,22,5). The most usually encountered secondary metabolites of herbs (phytochemicals) are alkaloids, tannins, terpenes, flavonoids, saponins, anthraquinones, cardiac glycosides, and cyanogenic glycosides. The pharmacological and other beneficial effects of antinutritional features in herbs have been reviewed by Soetan [21,17]. The presence of these secondary metabolites in plants possibly explains the various uses of plants for traditional medicine. Alkaloids are basic natural products occurring in many plants. They are generally found in the form of salts with organic acids and they are haemolytically active and are also toxic to micro-organisms (22,7,8,18,23). Alkaloids, comprising a large group of nitrogenous compounds are widely used as therapeutic agents in the management of cancer [20,24].
Alkaloids also interfere with cell division. In some cases, researchers isolated an alkaloid from Hibiscus sabdariffa and demonstrated its ability to prevent mutagenesis. Alkaloids and their synthetic derivatives are used as basic medicinal agents for their analgesic, antiplasmodic and bactericidal effects [1,3,22].
Tannins are complex phenolic polymers which can bind to proteins and carbohydrates resulting in reduction in digestibility of these macromolecules and thus inhibition of microbial growth [19,16].
Tannins from the bark, roots and other parts of many plants especially Euphorbiaceae are used to treat cells that have gone neoplastic [12,3,4]. Tannins are widely used, in herbal medicine, to treat wounds and to arrest bleeding [5][6][7]. The presence of tannins in plants implies they may have astringent properties and, in addition, could quicken the healing of wounds and burns [14,25,26]. Tannins are reported to have astringent properties on mucous membranes [4,6,9,27,28,6].
Terpenes, also known as isoprenoids [10,15] are the largest class of phytonutrients in green foods, soy plants and grains.
Animals have evolved to utilise these compounds for hormonal and growth regulatory functions (vitamin A) and, as it is now being understood, the presence of these molecules in human tissues also provides a measure of protection from certain diseases, especially those related to chronic damage and growth dysregulation.

Terpenes have a unique antioxidant activity in their interaction
with free radicals. Terpenes react with free radicals by partitioning themselves into fatty membranes by virtue their long carbon side chain [3,927,29].
Flavonoids are a group of phytochemicals found in varying amounts in foods and medicinal plants which have been shown to exert potent antioxidant activity against superoxide radicals [6,10,30]. Its consumption has been documented not to be associated with mortality due to coronary heart disease. This may be as a result of its antioxidant activity and subsequent inhibitions of low-density lipoproteins (LDL) oxidation known to have been attributed to the dietary and supplemental intake of flavonoids and other micronutrients. Epidemiologic studies indicate an inverse relationship between intake of dietary flavonoids and coronary artherosclerotic disease [6,8,11,16]. Flavonoids have strong anticancer activity and protect against different levels of carcinogenesis [9, 16,18,29]. Flavonoids have been shown to have hepatoprotective, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antiallergic, antimutagenic, antiviral, antineoplastic, antithrombotic and vasodilatory activity [12,16,19]. Flavonoids were also shown to inhibit microbes which are resistant to antibiotics [1,2,27].

Production of Medicinal Herbs
Generally, the villagers acquire fundamental science about the use of different herbs from their elders and gather them fresh from their gardens or nearby forests, whenever they need them. Serious attempts have been made by the Government of Iran and several State provinces to promote the growing and processing of herbs both in Government and private sectors over the last two decades [21,26]. However, inspite of having a bright future, particularly, as a leader in the international market, there has not been any major breakthrough in this sector. The major bottleneck seems to be the linkage between the producers and processors [5,14,29]. While the natural sources of herbs are fast depleting, the processors are not willing to encourage the farmers to take up the scientific production of raw materials. The major issues are higher cost of production as compared to the material collected illegally from the forests and unstable demand for the produce [13,16,20].
As marketing of unknown brands of ayurvedic products is extremely hard, it is difficult for the growers to organise processing and marketing of these products [11,15,19]. Increasingly, encouraging growers to take up knowledge production of herbal species, with buyback guarantee is crucial to vast this sector [21,25].
Fortunately, the Government of Iran has already established an independent politic to promote herbal drugs part in the country.
This country can coordinate the above activities to boost the industry and capture the global opportunities in the near future [13,21,22].