Elderberries Could Help Minimise Flu Symptoms:
[...] a recent study by a group of Chemical and Biomlolecular Engineering researchers from the University of Sydney's Faculty of Engineering and IT has determined exactly how a popular ancient remedy, the elderberry fruit, can help the fight against influenza.
Conducted by Professor Fariba Deghani, Dr Golnoosh Torabian and Dr Peter Valtchev as part of the ARC Training Centre for the Australian Food Processing Industry that was established in the Faculty of Engineering and IT, the study showed that compounds from elderberries can directly inhibit the virus's entry and replication in human cells, and can help strengthen a person's immune response to the virus.
Although elderberry's flu-fighting properties have long been observed, the group performed a comprehensive examination of the mechanism by which phytochemicals from elderberries combat influenza infections.
"What our study has shown is that the common elderberry has a potent direct antiviral effect against the flu virus," said Dr Golnoosh Torabian.
"It inhibits the early stages of an infection by blocking key viral proteins responsible for both the viral attachment and entry into the host cells."
[...] The phytochemicals from the elderberry juice were shown to be effective at stopping the virus infecting the cells, however to the surprise of the researchers they were even more effective at inhibiting viral propagation at later stages of the influenza cycle when the cells had already been infected with the virus.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jff.2019.01.031 Golnoosh Torabian, Peter Valtchev, Qayyum Adil, Fariba Dehghani; Journal of Functional Foods Volume 54, March 2019, Pages 353-360. "Anti-influenza activity of elderberry (Sambucus nigra)"
Entry on Wikipedia cautions:
The dark blue/purple berries can be eaten when fully ripe but are mildly poisonous in their unripe state. All green parts of the plant are poisonous, containing cyanogenic glycosides...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 26 2019, @01:56PM (6 children)
I've got elderberry "cold relieving cough drops" in the house, we've had 'em for years... not sure if they work any better than a regular sugar-drop, but apparently somebody has paid for some science to show that they do...
Call me when the dozen non-cherry-picked studies repeat the results without serious contradictions.
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 26 2019, @02:14PM (2 children)
Good question, "funded by who?".
As a kid, we always had elderberry jam. Don't ask me if it made a difference in who got the flu. We just ate it because Mama made it, and it had lots of sugar in it. Pretty good stuff, actually.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 26 2019, @03:59PM (1 child)
Elderberry "trees" are a pioneer species around here, meaning: if you clear a field and then leave it alone, there's a good chance that in 10-20 years it will be covered by a thicket of elderberry, started by bird droppings.
Traditionally, elderberries were "poor people's fruit" - commonly available, but kind of a pain to harvest all the little berries, and you had to be careful to be sure they were all ripe. Back when poor people had more resources, they would make elderberry wine from the fruit they gathered in woods that they may or may not have owned, but either way had access to go collect the fruit.
I think elderberry trees native range runs all up and down the east coast of the US.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 26 2019, @06:01PM
There's another issue with elderberry trees/bushes, the quality and taste of the fruit is seriously variable from plant to plant.
My late grandmother had a rather large elderberry tree (30ft +) in the garden at the rear of her property, the berries were excellent, made great jam, made even better wine (Tokay yeast, fermented out to approx 14% alcohol, close on a decade in the bottle, excellent doesn't even begin to describe the stuff), a large number of the ones on the hillside surrounding this area, the fruit is not as good (usually more bitter). The good thing is that elderberries are seriously easy to propagate from cuttings, all the elderberries in my front garden have been grown from cuttings from the tree that was in my grandmother's garden (my shithead cousins who inherited the property when my uncle died cut the thing down and removed the stump...) and it's a serious fight between myself and the Blackbirds for the berries..
The elderberries in the garden at the back of my property are almost as good, but have a slightly different taste, propagated from cuttings from a bush I found growing near a local loch, I say I found it, I just noticed that the birds were favouring the berries from this bush over heavily laden others nearby....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 26 2019, @03:26PM
I buy elderberry tea, it works well but it smells like foot rot. Add sugar and it tastes like grape juice.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 26 2019, @07:25PM (1 child)
According to the paper: PharmaCare Laboratories in Australia funded this study. According to their homepage:
They have an extensive list of brands too: https://www.pharmacare.com.au/our-brands/ [pharmacare.com.au]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 26 2019, @11:24PM
This is probably so they can introduce a new Elderberry product or line of products and put big stickers on it that say "CLINICALLY PROVEN TO HELP FIGHT FLU!" to reel in the suckers who don't understand that you can just keep funding studies until they find what the funder is looking for.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 26 2019, @02:11PM (4 children)
Your mother was a hampster, and your father smelt of elderberries!
(Score: 4, Funny) by Alfred on Friday April 26 2019, @03:22PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday April 26 2019, @04:05PM
Next we test if flu can be delayed by people farting in the general direction of the sick.
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(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday April 26 2019, @06:07PM
Elsewhere [soylentnews.org], there's a comment linking elderberries to poor people. I wonder if that had anything to do with the origin of this insult.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 26 2019, @11:15PM
I thought it was a made-up fruit. What's next, Soylent bars? ... oh, wait.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Alfred on Friday April 26 2019, @02:23PM (13 children)
1) Aspirin was derived from mint which was know as a pain reliever. Now it's mass synthesized plant chemicals.
2) Marijuana duuuude
3) Penicillin
I'm sure there are a ton more since the SOP for a long time was to find plants with cool effects and find was to make mass quantities.
But modern medicine wishes to forget its natural roots and insist that only pharmaceutical chem plants can make useful compounds. Or so it seems to me since I am middle of the road on the chemical/natural spectrum. Obviously big pharma makes some useful stuff, less obvious is that natural remedies are good too. Take essential oils (I can hear you groan). Like the big pharma products they are good for somethings in some cases and are useful in their place. Remember that mint/asprin thing? They can be used to alleviate headache symptoms but certainly not replace vaccines. On both sides you have ignorant drug reps and ignorant oilers that think their product will fix everything always which is not true.
One thing going for the oils over big pharma is that they aren't gonna give you cancer like some of the drugs out there.
(Score: 5, Informative) by istartedi on Friday April 26 2019, @04:16PM
Aspirin came from willow bark, not mint.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday April 26 2019, @04:17PM (9 children)
There are many, many pharmaceuticals which carry advisories about various herbals (and sometimes foods). Almost every drug which affects brain neurotransmitters, for example, are incompatible with St. John's Wort lest one develop serotonin syndrome (muscle twitches, headache, sweating, agitation, chills, hypertension and tachycardia, and in severe cases fever, seizure, arrhythmia and death is possible). It also affects digoxin, coumadin, benzodiazepines, and oral contraceptives.
The primary difference between the apothecary and the pharmacist is pharma has an economy (and knowledge) of scale, and concentration of the substances involved. ("This might work/usually works," versus, "we know that in 85% of 10,000 people studied this will have the intended effect at dosages between X and Y.") Plus it is pretty hard to sue an apothecary for malpractice because of lack of licensure and standards, but having that licensure, standards, and malpractice accountability is why most places require someone dispensing substances to have them.
I wouldn't be so sure that essential oils wouldn't trigger a cancer. Any substance might potentially induce the right kind of cells (or brain chemistry triggers which will do the same) to multiply out of control. Big time? Maybe not, but possible.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Friday April 26 2019, @07:01PM (8 children)
At the same time, I wouldn't be so sure the pills from the pharmacy won't induce cancer [healthline.com].
The reason St. John's wort can't be combined with SSRIs and similar is that it would be double dosing, just like taking two different SSRIs from the pharmacy together.
Pharmaceutical companies hate herbal medicines because they cut into their rapacious profits, the FDA hates them because they're not allowed to license and approve them. People take them because they either can't afford the pharmacy or the doctor needed to prescribe manufactured drugs.
Better dose control and more rigorous (sometimes) safety studies from manufactured drugs are a benefit, but only if people can afford them.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 29 2019, @04:35PM (7 children)
Except that St. John's Wort also affects beta blockers (because of the serotonin-beta link), dopamine, norepinephrine and GABA, too. A huge chunk of the mood spectrum drugs, too. (Not just SSRIs.... Serotonin syndrome happens with more than just messing around with serotonin proper). You have the essence with thinking it is double dosing but the physiokinetics and pharmacokinetics are just a tad more complex than that.
No, the FDA does not hate nonprescription supplements, and the pharma industry typically doesn't mind when prescription drugs are downgraded to OTC status. If they were you'd see a wholly different level of warfare being conducted on the OTC/supplement market.
The reality is that supplements stay supplements because they generally just aren't that harmful to health collectively, where prescribed medications can become so very quickly if they aren't regulated. (And, again very generally, that which isn't that harmful often isn't that effective either in comparison). And smart providers will differentiate persons who can continue to live with their conditions while trying multiple things long enough to give nonprescription drugs (or taking nothing and working on one's mind) and those who actually need a prescription or won't wait - the prescription game for mood stabilization is usually a long process anyway given how long most of them take to act and then see if that's the ticket or if a different neurotransmitter has to be tried. But most folks who finally brave up and see a physician have been suffering for awhile and may not want to hear "Go get this thing that you don't need a prescription for and try that for awhile" - they want reassurance from the white coat that they're getting something "better" by getting a slip of paper (or an e-transmission).
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 29 2019, @06:38PM (6 children)
I have never heard of an effect on beta blockers (which actually block adrenergic beta receptors). You seem to have confused it with the effects of serotonin on beta cells in the pancreas (unrelated to the receptors).
Many SSRIs have effects on GABA and/or dopamine as well. The devil is always in the details, but that is true of the FDA approved pharmaceuticals as well.
I never claimed that pharmaceutical companies object to THEIR drugs gaining OTC status, they often lobby for it since it will increase sales.
The FDA frequently rattles it's sabre towards supplements over issues that are far less common that problems with OTC medications they have approved. They are primarily limited by not having much authority over supplements. That doesn't stop them from grumbling over the labeling to the extent of allowing no claims whatsoever about their effects even when the medical community is in agreement that a claim is valid.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 29 2019, @08:16PM (5 children)
No, actually my confusion was linking the two directly. St. John's wort, however, is a caution for patients on beta blocker use (for example... [summitmedicalgroup.com]). There used to be thought about a potential link between beta blocker use and depression also, but it reads like to me that it's always been sketchy. Dunno if that was where my brain was going or not.
I wasn't picking a bone that you were talking about neurotransmitters in general, just noting that serotonin syndrome can get kicked up for reasons other than serotonin directly and would be why St. John's wort is cautioned (as I said) for the whole range of dop/nor/ser effects (although there might be some exceptions).
Yes, the FDA requires that people making medical claims about a product had better get the FDA's blessing on it. Power dynamics aside, it also has the quite beneficial advantage of cold-cocking a lot of snake oil (in the nostrum sense) sales. That was the reason it came to be in the first place as I'm sure you know, so it is unsurprising that they take that mandate seriously. There a big stretch between that and having a grudge against unregulated supplements. I think that advantage works better for society, your mileage may vary.
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 29 2019, @11:12PM (4 children)
I looked at the interactions up on webMD, and they're not really surprising. Many foods and drugs alter the rate that other drugs are cleared from your system to an extent that the interaction must be considered in dosing. There are some such interactions with St. John's wort that should be considered.
I haven't seen much on beta blockers and depression. I have seen speculation that beta blockers might be beneficial for anxiety and PTSD, but I don't know if it was ever proven.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday April 30 2019, @04:25PM (1 child)
I did just a wee bit of Googling for scholarly articles to stimulate my memory about Beta blockers and inducement of depression and the results were pretty mixed, some case studies documenting beta-induced depression, some quantitative studies which were inconclusive. Here's" rel="url2html-18742">https://www.mdedge.com/psychiatry/article/63893/depression/do-beta-blockers-cause-depression">Here's [soylentnews.org] an article which notes some early speculation about beta blockers and brain norephinephrine receptors but it doesn't actually cite them. I don't think that's what my brain was thinking about but I still don't know. For anxiety and PTSD and just on an armchair quarterback level I'd think that results would be mixed, lowering heart rate and competing for norephinephrine binding should lower stress if paradoxic reactions are notwithstanding. But sometimes changing the balance of something might be more stress inducing than the opposite.... Better the devil one knows than the angel one doesn't. So I could see it if the results were positive yet equivocal.
Thanks for the correction, though!
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday April 30 2019, @07:01PM
The PTSD angle is that panic attacks are in part an abreaction to the sensations of adrenaline release. Beta blockers are known to blunt the reaction to adrenaline (it's why some snipers take propranolol to steady their aim).
Given that the subjective experience of depression is difficult to quantify and impossible to measure objectively, I suppose that same blunting effect in someone who is already borderline depressed might feel like a worsening.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday April 30 2019, @04:41PM (1 child)
Take 2! [mdedge.com] Not my day today...
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday April 30 2019, @06:45PM
That's MUCH more on topic :-)
The study seems to find no significant effect of beta blockers on depression. Were there any such connection, if anything, adding St. Johns wort to a beta blocker might actually help.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Friday April 26 2019, @05:42PM
We can't have this information getting out, as big Pharma will lose a lot of money if people realize there are natural, effective remedies to many illnesses that don't involve paying lots of money to be stuck by a needle.
I expect lawmakers everywhere to start outlawing Elderberries since they may reduce Pharma profits. After all, if just anyone can take control of their own health, then there's a crisis brewing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 26 2019, @07:54PM
You're throwing a broad net with the tag "modern medicine." Of course, if you weight the pool by dollars spent on "education" then, sure, big pharma's message is the dominant one. If you listen to human beings, you'll find that there are a few who haven't been bought and paid for by drug reps, and even some of those who have been educated by the modern system still acknowledge the usefulness of natural remedies.
The major difficulty with natural remedies is controlling for natural variation, and that's where the chem plants do better - sometimes. As an M.D., it's nice to be able to prescribe a certain # of mg/kg and be reasonably sure of a predictable response. Of course, with "feel better" meds like Elderberry, you just take "enough" and hope you didn't get a weak batch.
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(Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Friday April 26 2019, @03:23PM (1 child)
Finally my stock in elderberry bellies will go up!
Hallelujah!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 29 2019, @04:44PM
I'll buy!!! Money I have! I have nothing to lose except for in the worst case I produce something that won't minimize flu symptoms but may make me not care about them [honest-food.net] at only a small risk of death from respiratory compromise!
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