Plant extracts and compounds, displaced by medicines, can be brought back into contemporary usage for manifestations of aging, such as obesity, hypertension, insulin resistance, and prostate cancer. Dietary interventions and herbal supplements are surprisingly effective for many of these illnesses. Such traditional components of folk medicine as oregano oil and garlic are as effective as commonly used antibiotics in reducing some infections. But it is difficult to get the modern medical establishment to take these “alternative” medicinals seriously, or to support basic research into understanding the biological effectiveness of plants or plant compounds pejoratively labeled “folk medicine”.