Dietary Chinese Herbs

This work presents up-to-date information on chemical, pharmacological, clinical studies and historical uses of common dietary Chinese herbs. A brief chronological review of Chinese literatures on dietary herb uses, with chapters dedicated to each selected dietary herb, and with plant Latin name indices is provided. Examined are the health benefits that have been studied for centuries. A wide range of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) herbs are investigated for their suitability into daily diets for maintaining general wellness or disease prevention. In the past decade, natural health products, dietary supplements, functional foods, or nutraceuticals have emerged in the West due to the increasing demand for non-pharmaceutical healthcare products. Traditional Chinese Medicine disease prevention and treatment incorporates the use of foods, and herbal medicine in an integrated manner, and thus the dietary Chinese herbs in used in TCM for thousands of years could be sources for developing new, effective, and safe ingredients to capture the rapidly expanding opportunity in the global market place.