When looking at information about how certain fruits, vegetables, and herbs will kill disease organisms, be aware of the words in vitro. Also be careful about studies that tested isolated phytochemicals (plant chemicals) against disease organisms. Most phytochemicals are very potent, and many play direct roles in the plants immune system, so when tested in a controlled in vitro environment they will almost always kill cancer, bacterium, viruses, etc. This is even more true with isolated phytochemicals that are applied singly against the organism. WHOLE plants, on the other hand, contain a complex array of hundreds and thousands of phytochemicals. Some enhance each others actions, while others are antagonistic, serving to keep a plants tissues from becoming too saturated with certain chemicals. This means that when you eat a plant food you are eating a highly complex array of phytochemicals that will each affect the medicinal efficiency of the next. However, even a whole plant substance tested against isolated pathogens in a laboratory setting (in vitro) will almost always trounce the pathogen due to the sheer power of its phytochemicals, but remember that these tests are also isolating the pathogen from its native environment. A cancer cell removed from the toxic environment of an unhealthy organism will not respond the same as tissue that is still in a toxic body that is being fed processed sugars and featured foods. And we have still not considered the impact of a plant moving through the human digestive tract, followed by the careful scrutiny of our immune and detoxification systems. During digestion our food is reduced to mere molecules, and many substances undergo significant change before they are absorbed. Once absorbed, they are then taken up by the lymph system, which is an important part of our immune system. From the lymph they pass into the blood, but they are not yet dispersed throughout the body; they are carried instead directly to the liver, where toxic chemicals are changed into less-toxic forms. Thus, the array of chemicals leaving the liver can be very different from what went into the mouth. So you see, tests that isolate either a plant substance or a pathogen - or both - is really a stacked deck. These studies have merit by showing us which substances have the *potential* to kill pathogens, and thus which plants or plant substances should move into in vivo (live) testing. But only in vivo testing can really tell us what effect any given plant is likely to have on any given pathogen or disease in the real world.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 04:02:43 +0000
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