Medicinal proprieties and toxicology of therapeutic herbal tea: a review

Abstract

Herbal teas or tisanes, like all foods of plant origin, start to take an important consideration in new product development in the recent years. This based on the increased awareness of their health benefits. It’s widely known that large number of medicinal plants of are exist world-wide, research in product development of herb teas is limited. However, herbal teas can exhibit also serious negative. Therefore, consumption must be set under some sort of medical control. Other issue is the quality control of herbal teas which govern the decision of the acceptance or rejection of the raw materials and finished products. Quality control methods of herbal teas is not limited to traditional macroscopic and microscopic analysis of the plant but should include new analytical methods such as high performance liquid chromatography, gas chromatography (HPLC), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and many other new analytical tools for qualitative and quantitative analysis of the plant compounds. The latter facilitated the study of herbal teas as well as benefits and risks of on the consumer health. The present review aims at shedding light on the positive and negative effects of herbal teas with particular references to those in the Algerian market.