THE SPICY AND AROMATIC HERBS IN PSYCHIATRY AND NEUROLOGY: SCIENTIFIC REVIEW. PART I.

Purpose: To give the reader a detailed historical overview of the application of spicy and aromatic herbs in the field of psychiatry and neurology, as well as modern data from clinical and preclinical studies on their effectiveness in the therapy of various mental and psychosomatic pathologies, and neurodegenerative diseases. Methodology: As an initial starting point for our work, we took a list of all the spices and aromatic herbs used in culinary of various nations from English Wikipedia, as it is one of the most complete of such lists on the Internet (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spices). We then examined the current evidence base and historical data on the use of each of the listed plants using the PubMed, Google Scholar, Science Direct, Web of Science search engines, and presented our findings in this review. Results: The data we have presented in this review clearly shows that there is a significant therapeutic potential for many spicy and aromatic herbs in both psychiatry and neurology, especially in the treatment of mild anxiety and depressive disorders, mild cognitive impairment, and in the treatment of psychosomatic diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome, migraine, premenstrual tension syndrome, climacteric disorders. The evidence base for use in psychiatry and neurology of different spicy and aromatic herbs is very different in quality. For some spicy and aromatic herbs and biologically active substances extracted from them, only animal data, combined with empirical experience of traditional medicine, exist for the time being, for others - there are preliminary encouraging results of open pilot studies on humans, for others, such as curcumin, safranal - there are positive results from small randomized clinical trials. It is important, however, that the study of the psychotropic and neurotropic potential of spicy and aromatic herbs, judging by the number of publications in recent years (2013-2017), is considered as one of the promising directions for the search for new antidepressants, anxiolytics and anti-dementia drugs. Practical implications: The results that we have presented in this review, give theoretical and practical reasons for the use of extracts from some spicy and aromatic herbs, such as curcumin, safranal, piperine, lavender essential oil, in the treatment of mild forms of anxious and depressive states, mild cognitive impairment, especially in patients who refuse traditional psychopharmacotherapy, or for those who are totally unable to tolerate traditional psychopharmacotherapy or poorly tolerate it