Medicinal applications of Costus speciosus and Costus igneus: An analysis for health benefits

Lifestyle diseases, chronic diseases and diabetes have thrown other challenges in the modern-day’s global health landscape, presenting hitherto unprecedented challenges to the public health systems worldwide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cardiovascular illness accounts for nearly 17.9 million deaths annually, followed by cancers (9.3 million), chronic respiratory diseases (4.1 million) and diabetes (2.0 million including kidney disease caused by diabetes). The high level of dependency on synthetic drugs to manage these diseases worsens the health effects of various ailments to heart diseases, diabetes and others. The treatment of diabetes requires certain synthetically produced insulin and oral hypoglycaemic, which have various side effects, and their efficacy is not generalized. Further, the discovery of antibiotic resistance is a major threat to the world’s health as most synthetic antibiotics are normally becoming ineffective against the resistant bacterial strains, thus raising failure and mortality rates from infections that antibiotics supposedly controlled. Of course, the application of these pharmacological treatments has been critical in various ailment and life span. Nonetheless, the continued use of these therapies has additional side effects including toxicity, drug resistance and other iatrogenic factors. The increase in the understanding of other health issues that are present across the globe especially the so-called lifestyle diseases like diabetes, has brought about interest in natural remedies including the use of plants as used in traditional medical systems. Two such species can be helped to address these problems, namely Costus speciosus and Costus igneus. These plants have been used in the tribal, ayurveda and some other terrella medicine systems as they proved to contain features that have therapeutic values. Crepe ginger scientifically known as Costus speciosus, has active ingredients that include diosgenin and saponins that might play a crucial role in controlling blood sugar, possess anti-inflammation and antioxidant properties. Similarly, Costus igneus is usually referred to as insulin plant owing to the fact that, it can decrease blood sugar levels can act as a natural cure to the undesirable condition of diabetes. Various health benefits and pharmacological properties of these plants is highlighted in the current review. This review would also help to alleviate the crisis of synthetic medicines, promote the meaningful use of natural medicaments, and enhance the global health condition.

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