Herbal medicines: advantages and disadvantages of their use

Abstract

The use of medicinal plants is currently quite widespread, being popular as a form of complementary and alternative medicine in more developed countries, while herbal medicines are synthetic drugs, acting both on the human and animal organism due to the chemicals they contain, responsible for the activities. Despite the numerous benefits of applying herbal medicine in complementary medicine in many countries, there is still much debate about the benefits versus adverse events associated with herbal medicine applications, and it is estimated that very few unwanted events that have occurred have actually been reported. Therefore, our aim was to investigate the adverse effects and benefits of using plant-derived medicines. Pharmacological. The present study is a scoping review of the bibliographic type. The VHL databases, which included LILACS, MEDLINE, IBECS, BDENF and CINAHL, Cochrane Library, SciELO, PubMed and Google Scholar, were used. The following descriptors were selected: "Phytotherapeutic Drugs" AND "Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions" AND "Safety".  The WHO estimates that more than 80% of the world's population currently relies on traditional and herbal healing modalities for primary health care and well-being. Currently, there are thousands of herbal medicines with numerous benefits, such as synthetic and natural plant products with antioxidant properties are being explored as potential treatments for neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, caution must be exercised with its use as there are still numerous issues associated with safety, including product quality, poor practices, interactions, contaminants, and toxicities.