Indonesia's traditional herbal medicine, jamu, for instance, costs a tenth of the price of Western drugs.
Tradition is a useful guide but, in herbal medicine as in other areas, innovation counts too.
So I ask Fancy Hands to research a course of home treatment involving homeopathy and herbal medicine.
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Stormvogel, the Herbal Barge, gives natural medicine consultations, sells herbal remedies and holds workshops on herbal medicine making.
Maureen Robertson, from the Scottish School of Herbal Medicine, said camomile worked by removing heat from the body.
Anyone who experiences side-effects after taking a herbal medicine can report this to the MHRA using its Yellow Card Scheme.
The soldier is semi-nomadic, has the adopted Afghan name Sheikh Abdullah and practises herbal medicine, Russia's RIA news agency reports.
The EU is also proposing to regulate the herbal medicine industry.
Mary Boughton, of the Dorset-based herbal medicine specialists, Dorwest, said her business had already lost money as a result of the VAT change.
Instead, it proposes to make herbal medicine itself more scientific by conducting clinical trials of traditional treatments for more than 20 medical conditions.
Effects of the traditional Chinese herbal medicine Yi-Gan San for cholinesterase inhibitor-resistant visual hallucinations and neuropsychiatric symptoms in patients with dementia with Lewy bodies.
Hogg got enough money to build the first few of what are now six Chinese herbal medicine shops in London, operating under the Sen name.
One of these firms, Ranbaxy, has already opened a small research and development division for herbal medicine and is beginning to look at remedies for conditions such as diabetes.
Lord Pearson, a patron of the Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine in the UK, prompted laughter from peers by suggesting he had "benefited much from it over the years".
This is for example the case of herbal medicine which power is generally underestimated and insufficiently known, or of practices that are exclusively turned to without consideration of their limitations.
When I asked what Liang Zi Fitness was, one of the girls politely handed me a menu, which described different kinds of acupressure massages combined with Chinese herbal medicine treatments.
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"Growing and processing herbal medicine are value-added activities that will create new income sources - and provide substitutes for unprofitable crops, as well as cheap alternative medicine for everyone, " she says.
Rippe said it's difficult to quantify exactly how much more concentrated the supplement is compared to foods, but he said the supplements are "consistent with" supplements that have been used by in Chinese herbal medicine for thousands of years.
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If the drug candidate is derived from an herbal medicine that is legally marketed and hasn't caused safety problems, it may be able to skip the early-stage safety trial and go right to midstage clinical trials, which measure efficacy and determine proper dosing.
Chi-Med Chief Executive Hogg believes that herbal Chinese medicine is an underexploited reservoir of many more such drug candidates.
While on the rivers, organic health and beauty forays are innumerable Kerala is the cradle of Aryuvedic medicine expert herbal remedies are plucked fresh from the abundant supply of plants that flourish here.
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In considering the effectiveness of any medicine, conventional or herbal, it's important to remember that the placebo effect, or the patient's desire to believe in a cure, can have a powerful influence.
You see as much enthusiasm for homeopathy, chiropractic, herbal remedies and other forms of folk medicine on the far right as on the far left, and for the same fundamental reason: distrust of expertise, of the scientific method, and of the good intentions of the authorities.
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Behind these plans is a passion for alternative medicine inspired by his mother's use of herbal recipes.
The Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has issued a warning about Herbal Flos Lonicerae (Herbal Xenicol).
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