Relevance of Ayurveda. Therapy of Holistic Application and Classification of Herbs

The efficacy of herbal extracts has been often questioned due to presence of natural toxin loads like alkaloids and terpenes as well as farm-level applied synthetic crop protection chemicals called pesticides, if any, and fungal toxins like aflatoxins. In addition, the efficacy of synthetically prepared drugs is challenged on account of containing process by-products and exerting side effects. The midway therefore emerges as isolation of active ingredients from herbs or any food source. On the other side, Ayurveda underlines holistic approaches in development of medicine in which organic herbal powders—with or without aqueous herbal extracts—are utilised as drug ingredients. It has been observed that herbs holistically are more effective than the active ingredients isolated from them, if side effects too are considered along with time taken in recuperation. In general, the antimicrobial susceptibility tests do not always confirm the same therapeutic action of drugs (against particular microbial) corresponding to particular disease for which those are traditionally known and holistically underlined in Ayurveda. It might be concluded that the therapeutic system Ayurveda is still quite relevant.