Plants have been used for centuries by different human groups, since they represent the main source of natural products, which due to their important therapeutic effects are used both in the human body and in that of other animals, to treat various ailments Sananga.
In Mexico there is a vast pre-Hispanic and Mesoamerican heritage, evidenced by the abundant resource of medicinal herbs in the Cruz-Badiano Codex, which contains 185 plants with a description of their physical characteristics, the method of preparation as a remedy and the way of employment in various pathological situations.
There is a wide range of plant species, whose therapeutic action has not yet been confirmed. That is why Mexican herbalism represents a viable resource to find new treatments against degenerative diseases such as cancer, osteoarthritis, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, etc.
Despite the dizzying advances in science in general, and medicine in particular, the ideal treatment of various diseases such as AIDS and the flu is pending, despite the great resource represented by the chemical synthesis of medicinal plants. However, there is greater hope of finding new medications by delving into ancient resources, such as those used in the common diet, towards which scientific studies have focused in search of chemoprevention of multiple diseases.
Therefore, it is important to recover and revalue popular traditional knowledge regarding the use of plants, take advantage of them as a resource, as well as revalue and analyze human-plant relationships, from an anthropological, ecological, botanical and medicinal point of view. Despite the assumption that current ethnic groups have little/no “written” pre-Hispanic information, they have preserved the knowledge of Traditional Medicine through oral tradition, as a legacy of ancient knowledge that subsists as a health alternative for people from of the lower social strata of Mexico in different States, as well as the inhabitants of the suburbs of large cities, who use Traditional Medicine as an important health care resource, since it is low cost and easy to access, as opposed to the difficult access to expensive allopathic medicine.