FORESTS AND
HEALTH
HEALTH
Forests are very important to health. Up to 80 per cent of the world’s population still rely on traditional medicines, and the ingredients for many of many of these come directly from trees plants that grow in forests.
The ancient system of herbal medicine practiced in India, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia known as Ayurveda- uses over 8,000 plant remedies, while traditional Chinese doctors use about 5,000 species of plant. The Kayapo Indians of Brazil, for example, can diagnose and treat over 150 different types of dysentery and diarrhea alone.
Modern medicines:- But it is not just traditional doctors who use the forests. The active ingredients in many modern medicines are taken directly from forest plants or trees, while other are made in laboratories by copying the chemical structures they contain. A quarter of all the drugs available on prescription today are extracted directly from plants.
Many plant based drugs are now used to treat illnesses that were once thought incurable. The rosy periwinkle from Madagascar and the Caribbean has given us two important drugs which help fight forms of cancer. The use of one of these, vincristine, means that four out of every five children who get leukemia now recover. Active ingredients in the monsoon forest plant known as snake root, or rauvolfia, are very impotent in controlling high blood pressure and have a tranquilizing effect.
Pharmaceutical medicines:- Although many pharmaceutical companies are now keen to find new active substances in plants, less than 5 per cent of the world’s rain forest species have been studies so far their value to medicine.
Forests can help us to recover from illness and to relax. Recent studies have shown that hospital patients with a view of trees from their windows recover more quickly than those who can only see other buildings. Forests are important as recreation areas as well.
