There are certain cases in which the field of herbal medicine also makes use of bee products as well as fungi, certain animal parts, shells, and minerals in treatment.
There are a lot of plants which produce substances which can prove to be useful for the preservation of the health of both humans as well as animals. These numerous substances include tannins, phenols, and aromatic substances. A lot of them are also secondary metabolites. In most of the cases, these substances are used by the plants as a kind of defense mechanism to protect themselves from predators such as herbivores, insects, and micro organisms. Most of the herbs used by humans to season or flavor the food they eat also have medicinal compounds which are useful.
In the recent years the search and the use of drugs, as well as dietary supplements, which have been derived from plants has increased to a large extent. There are a lot of botanists, pharmacologists, micro biologists, and chemists interested in natural products that have been looking for phytochemicals which can be used to treat a number of different diseases.
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