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. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. Notice Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. 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 PrefaceVIII Section 1 Historical and Cultural Perception [...]... al- Tibbiah was published in 1966 by the Iranian Culture Foundation Fortunately, this book was edited by Professor H Tadjbakhsh and published by Tehran University press in 2006 The third book of Jorjani in medicine is named “Khofi Alaii” (Alaaii’s hidden book), which is an abbreviated medical text and has two parts The first part includes the theoretical aspects of medicine and has two articles The... 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, ... 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... descriptions by Etela’at Institute located in Tehran The forth book of Jorjani namely “Yadegar” (The Keepsake) is an extract text and codified in five parts The first part has 17 chapters, the second includes 30 chapters, the third contains 2 chapters, the forth is comprised of 11 chapters and finally the fifth is inclusive of 3 chapters Yadegar was edited by Professor M Mohaghegh and published by the Institute... Arjani AA Kamel al-Sina'ah al-Tibbiyah (The Perfect Art of the Medicine) (in Arabic) Al-Dassuqi, I, ed Vol 2.,, Saadat Press, 1877; pp 190–191 [11] Ibn Sina HA Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine) (in Arabic) Vol 4 Jamia Hamdard, 1998; pp.195–197 [12] Jorjani SI Zakhireh Khaarazmshahi (Treasure of Khaarazmshah) (in Persian) edited by A.A Saeedi Sirjani,, The lranian Culture Foundation, Tehran,... 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)... emollient balm have also been suggested to be beneficial 5 6 Alternative Medicine In his book entitled "Methods of Treatment", Galen has hypothesized cancer as a disease associated with black bile humor which is very hard to be diagnosed at early stages In order to treat cancer, Galen has proposed that black bile should be removed from the body by means of administering an appropriate purgative, and then... ture Hard qigong is considered as a kind of martial arts Breaking steel rods, splitting bricks by hand, and resisting attacks by assailants with weapons are common representations of hard qigong Soft qigong is mainly for health maintenance purpose [5] As this chapter con‐ cerns the role of qigong as alternative medicine and its relation with cultural beliefs, soft qi‐ gong is the focus of this chapter... 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) . 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. 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. 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