Traditional Medicine - A Gold Mine in the Treatment of Cancer

Abstract

The prevalence of non-communicable diseases has been on the rise in the last 2 decades. Amongst which, cancer bags the top spot for being unforgivingly ruthless and is the leading cause of the incessant rise in fatalities globally. The failure of current therapeutic approaches is subject to multiple factors. One of them is their inability to effectively contain or kill cancerous cells that persist. Their unbiased nature, due to which they kill healthy as well as cancerous cells, is one of the biggest drawbacks of the currently available therapeutic options. Recent advances have made targeted therapy a possibility but its high cost renders it an unviable option for a large portion of the affected population. The above mentioned drawbacks of the currently used treatments push our attention towards finding better alternatives to effectively deal with this pestilent disease. Herbal drugs offer tremendous hope and are a potential gold mine that could provide effective treatment options to deal with cancer. In this review, we shed light on a few encouraging herbs like Withania somnifera, Astragalus membranaceus, Zingiber officinale, Thea sinensis, Panax ginseng, Hypericum perforatum, Allium cepa and Allium sativum that hold the potential to provide effective alternative therapeutic interventions for the prevention and management of cancer.