Asian consumers on shrinking budgets are opting for cheaper traditional remedies over expensive modern treatments.

CNN: SPECIAL REPORT: HEALTH

Many of the wild herbs are used by people all over the world as traditional remedies.

BBC: The Greek island of old age

In many Asian countries, customers for traditional remedies are getting younger.

CNN: SPECIAL REPORT: HEALTH

Smaller companies, among them Pharmakon, based in Hong Kong, and Marco Polo Technologies, based in Bethesda, Maryland, are also applying modern techniques to standardised traditional remedies, before launching them in America.

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But firms making traditional remedies are, like their pharmaceutical counterparts, feeling the pinch of government reforms and cuts in the national drugs budget: as many as a third of traditional producers are in the red.

ECONOMIST: Eastern promise

In Thailand, only hospitals are allowed to research and produce new herbal medicines, and while Western drugs can be approved in months, traditional remedies that make use of any modern processing or ingredients may take a decade or more to be cleared.

CNN: SPECIAL REPORT: HEALTH

This blurs the line between herbs and traditional drugs, further weakening the case for making a legislative distinction between the two kinds of remedies.

ECONOMIST: Herbal remedies