ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE Edited by Hiroshi Sakagami Alternative Medicine http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/46204 Edited by Hiroshi Sakagami Contributors Christina Ross, Hiroshi Sakagami, Tomohiko Matsuta, Toshikazu Yasui, Takaaki Oizumi, Madoka Kitajima, Tomoko Sugiura, Hiroshi Oizumi, Oguchi Katsuji, Daeyoun Hwang, Amirhossein Sahebkar, Seyed Ahmad Emami, Vagner Santos, Tsutomu Hatano, Xing-Tai Li, Qihe Xu, Fan Qu, Olavi Pelkonen, Akihito Yokosuka, Yoshihiro Mimaki, Shintaro Ishikawa, Masaji Yamamoto, Judy Yuen-Man Siu Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2012 InTech All chapters are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. 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Publishing Process Manager Ana Pantar Technical Editor InTech DTP team Cover InTech Design team First published December, 2012 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechopen.com Alternative Medicine, Edited by Hiroshi Sakagami p. cm. ISBN 978-953-51-0903-7 free online editions of InTech Books and Journals can be found at www.intechopen.com Contents Preface VII Section 1 Historical and Cultural Perception 1 Chapter 1 Cancer and Its Treatment in Main Ancient Books of Islamic Iranian Traditional Medicine (7th to 14th Century AD) 3 Amirhossein Sahebkar, Nilufar Tayarani-Najaran, Zahra Tayarani- Najaran and Seyed Ahmad Emami Chapter 2 The Cultural Perceptions, Folk Taxonomies and the Relationship with Alternative Medicine Practices Among Hong Kong People 25 Judy Yuen-man Siu Section 2 Compositional Analysis 47 Chapter 3 Herbal Drugs in Traditional Japanese Medicine 49 Tsutomu Hatano Chapter 4 Phytochemicals of the Chinese Herbal Medicine Tacca chantrieri Rhizomes 67 Akihito Yokosuka and Yoshihiro Mimaki Chapter 5 Application of Saponin-Containing Plants in Foods and Cosmetics 85 Yukiyoshi Tamura, Masazumi Miyakoshi and Masaji Yamamoto Section 3 Therapeutic Potential 103 Chapter 6 Energy Medicine 105 Christina L. Ross Chapter 7 Propolis: Alternative Medicine for the Treatment of Oral Microbial Diseases 133 Vagner Rodrigues Santos Chapter 8 Functional Evaluation of Sasa Makino et Shibata Leaf Extract as Group III OTC Drug 171 Hiroshi Sakagami, Tomohiko Matsuta, Toshikazu Yasui, Oguchi Katsuji, Madoka Kitajima, Tomoko Sugiura, Hiroshi Oizumi and Takaaki Oizumi Section 4 Action Mechanism and Future Direction 201 Chapter 9 Promotion of Blood Fluidity Using Electroacupuncture Stimulation 203 Shintaro Ishikawa, Kazuhito Asano and Tadashi Hisamitsu Chapter 10 Enormous Potential for Development Liriope platyphylla Wang et Tang as a Therapeutic Drug on the Human Chronic Disease 221 Dae Youn Hwang Chapter 11 Investigation on the Mechanism of Qi-Invigoration from a Perspective of Effects of Sijunzi Decoction on Mitochondrial Energy Metabolism 247 Xing-Tai Li Chapter 12 Network Pharmacology and Traditional Chinese Medicine 277 Qihe Xu, Fan Qu and Olavi Pelkonen ContentsVI Preface Alternative medicine is recognized as medical products and practices that do not belong to the standard cares taken by medical doctors, doctors of osteopathy and allied health profes‐ sionals. Alternative medicine includes the mind-body interventions (i.e., meditation, yoga, acupuncture, deep-breathing exercises, guided imageryAny of various techniques (such as a series of verbal suggestions) used to guide another person or oneself in imagining sensa‐ tions—especially in visualizing an image in the mind—to bring about a desired physical re‐ sponse (such as stress reduction).hypnotherapy, progressive relaxation, tai chi), the practices based on putative energy field (also called biofield) (i.e., qi gong, healing touch) and the bio‐ logically based therapies (i.e., herbal medicines, vitamins, minerals other natural products mostly available as over the counter dietary supplements). Among them, herbs, relaxation and massage are worldwide popular. The therapeutic potential of acupuncture and herbs has been documented during the long history of human uses. Herbal medicines are used in the hospitals of Japan, Korea and China for the treatments of several diseases that are resist‐ ant to or inoperable by chemotherapeutic agents. Increasing amounts of research funds are poured into the study of alternative medicine. Furthermore, most of the medical universities in U.S. incorporate the lectures of alternative medicine. Recently developed technologies spanning through the fields of genomics, proteomics and metabolomics would surely be‐ come potential tools for the elucidation of the action mechanisms of alternative medicine. However, due to the lack of well-designed clinical trials, the safety and effectiveness of many alternative therapies are unclear. Accumulation of scientific evidence, based on the component analysis by three-dimensional high-performance liquid chromatography, phar‐ macokinetics-pharmacodynamics analysis and clinical trials are urgent to fill this gap. The book Alternative Medicine consists of 12 original chapters that are divided into four parts. Part 1 describes the historical (chapter 1) and cultural perception (chapter 2) of alter‐ native medicine. Part 2 presents the topics of structure-activity relationship of anti-bacterial tannins (chapter 3), anti-tumor steroidal glycosides (chapter 4) and anti-yeast saponins (chapter 5) purified from various plants, using the state-of-the-art analytical technologies. Part 3 reveals the therapeutic potential of energy (chapter 6), herbal (chapter 7) and over- the-counter medicines (chapter 8). Part 4 proposes the action mechanism of electroacupunc‐ ture (chapter 9), herbal medicine (chapter 10) and Qi-invigoration (chapter 11), and introdu‐ ces new concept of “Network Pharmacology” that is expected to become the powerful tool for designing drugs and the estimation of therapeutic potential and side effects of alterna‐ tive medicine (chapter 12). All these chapters are written by world experts who are reviewing their original and others’ research. Overall, alternative medicine has developed into a multitude of medical products and practices that significantly improve the body condition and show disease prevention ac‐ tions. The content of the book does not cover all areas of alternative medicine, but provides the reader with insights into selected aspects of established and new therapies. The book will, therefore, no doubt be useful to students, clinicians, teachers and researchers who have interest in advances in alternative medicines. Hiroshi Sakagami Division of Pharmacology Department of Diagnostic and Therapeutic Sciences Meikai University School of Dentistry, Japan Preface VIII Section 1 Historical and Cultural Perception [...]... practicing alternative medicine “Medical anthropologists have shown that the application of values to types of illness has an important influence upon the decisions people make in responding to particular episodes of sickness” [2] Hong Kong is a medical pluralistic society Alongside the mainstream medical system of bi‐ omedicine, other alternative medical systems such as traditional Chinese medicine, ... 1206 A.D.); pp 585–586 23 Chapter 2 The Cultural Perceptions, Folk Taxonomies and the Relationship with Alternative Medicine Practices Among Hong Kong People Judy Yuen-man Siu Additional information is available at the end of the chapter http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53281 1 Introduction Alternative medicine is often embedded in a society’s social and cultural beliefs Every society has its unique social... (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited 26 Alternative Medicine The motivations for seeking alternative medicine for therapy are many, and they are never sim‐ ple As treatment decision is closely related to the cultural beliefs about illnesses and diseases, hence Kleinman (1980)... Although there is no accurate statistics as to the proportion of traditional medicine to Western medicine in Iran, it is estimated that medicinal herbs constitute around 10% of the Iranian drug market Although this figure is low at the first look, there are two issues that need to be considered: First, the trend toward alternative medicine is increasing in Iran, and second, the reported statistics is exclusive... of cancer and its complications Cancer and Its Treatment in Main Ancient Books of Islamic Iranian Traditional Medicine (7th to 14th Century AD) http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/55249 Figure 2 Figurative list of medicinal plants mentioned in this chapter Reproduced from Wikipedia 21 22 Alternative Medicine Acknowledgements The authors are thankful to Mr Mohammad Naseri for his kind assistance in the preparation... Traditional Medicine (7th to 14th Century AD) http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/55249 [6] Tadjbakhsh H History of Veterinary Medicine and Medicine of Iran (in Persian) Vol 2 Tehran University Publications, 2001; pp 284 –295, 301–312, 317–332 [7] Tadjbakhsh H History of Human and Veterinary Medicine in Iran.Fondation Mer‐ ieux, 2003; pp 127–135, 139, 145–156, 162–174 [8] Razi MZ Al-Hawi fi al-Tibb (Continens)... Book in Medicine) , al-Tashrih (Anatomy), al-Vasayah (Testament), and Resaleh Judiyah Avicenna’s masterpiece is the book of “alQanun fi al-Tibb” (The Canon of Medicine) (Figure 1) which is the mother book of medi‐ cine in the eastern and western worlds [2-7] Canon comprises 5 major books each divided into some arts, tuitions, sentences and chapters The first book of Canon discusses the concept of medicine, ... parts and it has been summarized many times The book has been translated into European, Hebrew and Persian languages and it has been reprinted frequently 13 14 Alternative Medicine Figure 1 Cover image of main ancient Islamic Iranian traditional medicine books discussed in the present article From left to right: al-Hawi fi al-Tibb, Hidayat-al-Muta'allimin fi al-Tibbe, Kamel al-Sina'ah al-Tibbiyah (upper... herbal medicine for the treatment of cancer or halting its progression (Table 1) It is greatly recom‐ mended that further research be undertaken to explore the contents of modern scientific literature on the ant-cancer properties of medicinal plants mentioned in the major books of Islamic traditional medicine (Figure 2) Cancer and Its Treatment in Main Ancient Books of Islamic Iranian Traditional Medicine. .. lower cinnabar field [6] 27 28 Alternative Medicine As there are different traditions of qigong practice, therefore the way of practice is varied There is no single method of practice However, health maintenance is the ultimate goal for all qigong traditions Its practice emphasizes on the balance of qi, or the cosmic force within body, to achieve health In traditional Chinese medicine concept, the balance . ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE Edited by Hiroshi Sakagami Alternative Medicine http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/46204 Edited. into the study of alternative medicine. Furthermore, most of the medical universities in U.S. incorporate the lectures of alternative medicine. Recently