Ethnobotanical Records of Medicinal Plants of Turkey Effective on Stress Management Complied with the Literature Survey in Their Chemical Content and Activities

Abstract

The increase of challenges in people's lives, daily problems as well as traumatic events could lead them to experience stress. Because of the side effects of current drugs, the recent medications are not sufficient to cure stress-related diseases; new approaches are needed in order to find more effective medications with fewer side-effects. Ethnobotanical and ethnomedical research is increasingly recognized as a viable source of data and plausible pharmacological action of many plants. The review presents ethnobotanical information of the plants that have been used against stress-related diseases among local people of Turkey. In addition, a survey of the current literature on the topic aims to find new natural resources that will contribute to the development of drugs and bring them to the literature by scanning the scientific articles on the isolation and structure determination of the secondary metabolites of these medicinal plants, which have been already in use among the public for stress-related disorders for centuries. This research is not only the first step in the research of promising new compounds against stress but it is also a presentation of data on medicinal plants of Turkey: Their medicinal parts, method of preparation, usage patterns and, if recorded, their dosages.