2. WHAT IS HERBAL COSMETICS?
Herbal cosmetics are the preparations
consisting of one or more herbs or processed
herb(s) in specified quantities to provide
specific cosmetic benefits.
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Quality Issues: Adulteration, misidentification of plant, faulty
collection and preparation, incorrect formulation process are the main
problems that reduces the effectiveness of herbal preparation and can
be considered as key factors affecting quality and purity of herbal
medicines.
4. Admixture :Refers to addition of one article to another through
accident, ignorance or carelessness.Eg: Stem portions are mixed
along with leaf in drugs like –Bala; Dhattura; Clove is mixed along
with leaves and petioles.Non-removal of undesirable parts or
structures e.g. cork should be removed from ginger rhizome.
Proper drying conditions should be adhered. Improper drying may
lead to unintentional adulteration e.g. if digitalis leaves are dried
above 65 °C decomposition of glycosides by enzymatic hydrolysis.
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6. Processing And Harvesting Issues: Indiscriminate harvesting, poor
agriculture and propagation method, poor pre and post harvest practices,
lack of processing techniques leads to the substandard quality of herbal
drugs.
Deterioration happens especially during storage, leading to the loss of
the active ingredients, production of metabolites with no activity and, in
extreme cases, the production of toxic metabolites. Physical factors such
as air (oxygen), humidity, light, and temperature can bring about
deterioration directly or indirectly.
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Quality Control Related Issues: Standardization, poor
quality control procedure and lack of Good
Manufacturing Practices (GMP) are the main hurdle to
maintain the quality of herbal drugs.
Lack of awareness regarding the guideline among
growers and manufacturers, lack of implementation and
regulation of the guideline are also frequent in small
and medium scale industries.
9. Administrative Issues: Lack of regulation and controlling authority
in herbal sector, lack of proper monitoring and controlling are absolute
need for the quality of drugs.
Infrastructure Related Issue: Lack of processing technique, trained
personal, sophisticated instrument, utilization of modern techniques,
facility to fabricate instrument locally are the major problems.
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10. Pharmacovigilance: Proper pharmacovigilance in herbal sector is the need of
time to find the toxicological data and adverse drug reaction of herbal drugs.
Adverse reactions, contraindications, interactions with other drug, food and
existing orthodox pharmaceuticals need to be monitor properly.
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11. Clinical Trial: Since the safety continues to be a foremost issue with the
use of herbal remedies therefore, clinical trials are necessary to understand
the safety and efficacy of these drugs before introduced them in global
market.
Irrational Use: It is generally believed that herbal products don't have any
side effects, interaction, but unfortunately is not true.Thus, irrational
practice of these drugs can lead to various problems which can hinder the
promotion of such drugs.
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12. R&D: Research and development on dosage, processing, techniques are the
key need for any drug, but in herbal sector it is quite less compare to
allopathic medicine.
Although in recent years, the trend is changing. Research to understand the
mode of action and pharmacokinetics phenomenon, improvement/creation of
monographs and reference standards for marker-based analysis are necessary
of time.
Decisive gap in current Ethnopharmacological and modern medicinal plant
research is another problem for sustainable, socio-culturally equitable and safe
supply of herbal medicines.
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13. Collection Of Raw Material:
Raw materials obtained from different place with varying climate
cannot be treated as same as there arises difference in herbal potency.
Collection of raw plant materials is the first step of performing there
search and also the first difficulty to confront. It is the first important
step which can lead to the wrong result at the end . This is because
location and time of collection of medicinal plants have high impact on
the bioassay screening results.
It is difficult to prepare reproducible plant extracts or preparations
because the chemical compositions in the plants are affected by many
factors, including the climate and soil.
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14. Other Issues: Unethical practice of herbal medicine, lack of qualified
physician, exposure of unreliable and misleading information, lack of
sufficient fund, absence of focused marketing and branding, lack of
knowledge sharing also hold back the global promotion of herbal
medicine. Lack of protection of biodiversity and protecting the traditional
medicinal plants are also a big challenge.
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