Holistic Psychopharmacology and Promiscuous Plants and Principles of Ayurveda

Abstract

Consistent neglect of complex psychobiological processes involved in human health and diseases often leads to phar-macological discrepancies between preclinical and therapeutic observations. Numerous other pharmacological para-doxes arise from common practices of using dosing schedules in preclinical studies not identical to those in clinical studies. An Ayurveda centered holistic psychopharmacological strategy evolving from our efforts to identify plants po-tentially useful for preventing and combating illnesses and diseases could be a more rapid, rational, economically feasi-ble, and realistic one for resolving such discrepancies and paradoxes. In this article, some observations made recently to experimentally very this conviction with the use of some well known medicinal plants are summarized and discussed in short. In addition, usefulness of the strategy for identifying edibles potentially useful for health care purposes, or for more objectively understanding " Ayurvedic biology " is pointed out.