Contents

#### **Preface XI**


Chapter 6 **Energy Medicine 105** Christina L. Ross


Preface

tive medicine (chapter 12).

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 overthe-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‐


## Preface

Chapter 7 **Propolis: Alternative Medicine for the Treatment of Oral**

Chapter 8 **Functional Evaluation of Sasa Makino et Shibata Leaf Extract as**

Hiroshi Sakagami, Tomohiko Matsuta, Toshikazu Yasui, Oguchi Katsuji, Madoka Kitajima, Tomoko Sugiura, Hiroshi Oizumi and

Shintaro Ishikawa, Kazuhito Asano and Tadashi Hisamitsu

**Wang et Tang as a Therapeutic Drug on the Human**

**Perspective of Effects of Sijunzi Decoction on Mitochondrial**

**Microbial Diseases 133** Vagner Rodrigues Santos

**Group III OTC Drug 171**

**Section 4 Action Mechanism and Future Direction 201**

Chapter 9 **Promotion of Blood Fluidity Using Electroacupuncture**

Chapter 10 **Enormous Potential for Development Liriope platyphylla**

Chapter 11 **Investigation on the Mechanism of Qi-Invigoration from a**

Takaaki Oizumi

**VI** Contents

**Stimulation 203**

**Chronic Disease 221** Dae Youn Hwang

**Energy Metabolism 247**

Chapter 12 **Network Pharmacology and Traditional Chinese**

Qihe Xu, Fan Qu and Olavi Pelkonen

Xing-Tai Li

**Medicine 277**

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 overthe-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**

**Section 1**

**Historical and Cultural Perception**

Division of Pharmacology Department of Diagnostic and Therapeutic Sciences Meikai University School of Dentistry, Japan **Historical and Cultural Perception**

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

**Hiroshi Sakagami**

Division of Pharmacology

Department of Diagnostic and Therapeutic Sciences

Meikai University School of Dentistry, Japan

interest in advances in alternative medicines.

VIII Preface

**Chapter 1**

**Cancer and Its Treatment in**

**Main Ancient Books of Islamic Iranian**

Amirhossein Sahebkar, Nilufar Tayarani-Najaran, Zahra Tayarani-Najaran and Seyed Ahmad Emami

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/55249

**1. Introduction**

statistics is available [1].

world.

**Traditional Medicine (7th to 14th Century AD)**

Islamic medicine is a holistic and comprehensive medical school that has an antecedent over 12 centuries. By using the scientific knowledge of ancient Iran, ancient Greece, and archaic civilizations such as India and China, and adding useful and wise Islamic teach‐ ings to them, Islamic medicine has turned into a strong and permanent medical school. Islamic medicine has, for many centuries, been used for diagnosing and treating diseases of large populations that live in vast geographic areas. Some of the physicians of this school are famous worldwide and have contributed valuable services to the scientific

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 traditional procedures of herbal extracts on which no reliable

In this writing, we will discuss cancer and the ways to diagnose and treat it in the view of a few of the most famous physicians before the Mongolian attack who used Islamic medicine. The time course discussed is between the eighth and fourteenth centuries. The interesting point

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2012 Sahebkar et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2012 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

is that all of the physicians mentioned in this writing are Iranian:
