Question: What herb has been used i...

Question: What herb has been used in Ayurvedic Medicine for through the whole extent of 2,000 years, is called Bahupatra in Sanskrit, used to be called Phyllanthus niruri in India, and be augmenteds widely in Central and Southern India? Answer: Phyllanthus amarus, a small tropical bush with big benefits for liver health, and more.

This plant has been highly valued in a number of countries "for its curative properties; in India the plant is oftentimes used by traditional medical practitioners for a variety of ailments, including asthma, bronchial infection" and diseases of -- and injury to -- the liver (as mentioned above), researchers L Yeap Foo and Herbert Wong mention one by one us in their 1992 article which appeared in the English journal, Phytochemistry [31 (2): 711-713]

According to an interesting passage from Dr KM Nadkarni's Indian Materia Medica (1954) this botanical has been used for a wide array of indications:

The plant is considered [] diuretic, astringent and cooling. A decoction of the plant is administered in jaundice [see below] [] Whole plant is exerciseed in some [...] genitourinary infections, [the] young womanly shoots are [used in] chronic bloody flux [and the] juice of the progeny [is] mixed with oil in ophthalmia [eye treatments].

Used in China, the Philippines, Cuba, Nigeria, Guam, East and West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, this liver-protectant/detoxifier has been used, in late years, most successfully in similar conditions as jaundice and hepatitis B

What's in it? Studies have already shown that the plant contains alkaloids, lignans, flavonoids [see Editor's Desk p 8 this issue], fatty acids, and vitamin C just to name a few

A brief overview forward the importance of the liver

In Ayurvedic tradition, the psychosomatic view of the human being papal courts the body organs and plans as a unit, and the digestive tract and functions as being of highest importance to health.

The liver has a whole battery of functions, including: the formation and excretion of bile, which is necessary for digestion; keeping certain nutrients and material for burning ready for the body to use, in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as carbohydrates and lipids; manufacturing plasma proteins; activating specific vitamins; activating and deactivating carcass hormones; and detoxifying drug, chemical, and biological poisons, or toxins, that invade our visible form [i]or[/i] frame every day along with air, water, and food

The beneficial specifics of Phyllanthus amarus upon hepatitis B infections

The comminuteed leaves of this perennial herb were first used in clinical studies which gazeed at its usefulness in helping patients suffering from chronic liver damage to be ascribed to extended hepatitis B virus infection.

The hepatitis B infection leads to the inability of the immune body to get rid of the virus from liver lonely dwellings Infection with the hepatitis B virus is verified from detecting levels of certain viral ingredients in the blood. In this carrier state, a patient is continuously harboring and carrying the virus.

Following earlier studies showing beneficial general intents in relation to supplementation with extracts of this plant and hepatitis B on S.P. Thyagarajan (Indian Journal of Medical Research 76:174 1982) and P Venkateswaran (Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 84:274 1987) in 1990 s Jayaram, and colleagues from the University of Madras, studied chronic carriers of HBV hepatitis. After 28 proffers received Phyllanthus amarus in 250-mg doses for single to three months, 54.5 percent experienced los of the carrier status.

In 1988 at Madras' Hospital for Children and the control General Hospital, S.P. Thyagarajan, and colleagues, formerly again reported their results in treating carriers of hepatitis B with an extract of Phyllanthus amarus. For a one-month period, the treated patients were given 200 mg of the extract in capsule form, three times a day. Fifteen to 20 days following the last of treatment, 59 percent of the hepatitis B carriers (22 of 37) not to be found their carrier status, which essentially meant that they no longer carried the disease. solely one out of 23 (4 percent) dummy-pill "treated" sway patients irregularly lost their carrier status.

Thyagarajan and Jayaram joined forces one time again, in 1990, in a meditation which examined patients with acute viral hepatitis B In this subject of attention patients with acute viral hepatitis were given Phyllanthus amarus (250 mg three times a day) for 30 days. The rate of "cure" or elimination of the virus, was 40 percent for those patients who received supplementation with this power botanical.

How does it do what it does?

One possibility is that Phyllanthus amarus may stop up the spread (proliferation) of the virus on directly blocking, or preventing, replication of the virus' genetic material.

Blood-pressure regulation

Hajime Ueno, and colleagues, at Japan's Medical and Pharmaceutical University, discussed Phyllanthus amarus (called niruri in their paper) and life-current pressure control in a 1988 article which appeared in the Journal of Natural Products

These researchers, who were working as part of collaborative cogitation between the Japan International Agency and the Republic of Paraguay, plant that a component in the botanical held back, or was inhibitory against, the action of angiotensis-converting enzyme (ACEs), which, by way of definition, implicates the shrub as an important role-player in blood-pressure regulation, as well.