This document discusses current trends in natural health products and research on natural products from garlic and perilla. It provides background on the history of using natural products for medicine beginning with Hippocrates prescribing garlic. Developments are discussed such as the discovery of antibiotics from microorganisms in the 1970s and shift to laboratory drug discovery in the 1980s. The presentation will cover organic chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology and synthetic analogs related to natural product research and development. Studies on garlic are summarized showing that consuming garlic may help lower blood glucose, cholesterol, and triglycerides.