Among the main gastronomic stories that top the list of the last decade that spans the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the present, is that of a golden orange fruit with an apricot flavor. Its Latin binomial throughout the world is Hippophae rhamnoides (sandthorn). But it has a wide variety of names depending, of course, on where it is grown and used geographically, as the short list below indicates.
GERMAN Sanddorn (Sandthorn)
FRENCH. Buckthorn
Finbar SWEDISH
HUNGARIAN Homokt Screw
DANISH Tindved
POLISH Rokitnik
RUSSIAN Oblepiha
SPAIN False hawthorn / Olivella spinosa
INDIA Jadu-paudha (magic plant)
TIBET Dhar-bu
As can be seen, it has extensive use in much of Europe and Asia. Its history is somewhat old and goes back several centuries. For our purposes here we will use the name sandthorn by which the fruit is commonly known throughout much of Europe.
An ancient remedy
According to Eastern history, the Chinese were the first culture to use this berry as a remedy. Over a thousand years ago, it was recorded in Yue Wang Yao, after the Tang Dynasty, and in Sibu Yidian, the writing of which was completed in the 8th century.
For the uninitiated in oriental medicine, Sibu Yidian is the classic Tibetan medical book comprising four voluminous volumes and consisting of a total of 158 chapters. Thirty chapters deal with sandthorn medicines. They mention the pharmacological effects on the induction of spitting up phlegm (a gross subject in itself) by opening up inhibited lung energy, dispersing moisture, toning YIN, and strengthening YANG. By doing so, the entire respiratory system benefits and revitalizes. More than sixty entries refer to its ability to strengthen the spleen and stomach, promote blood circulation, and remove old, stagnant blood. There are some 84 recipes with sea buckthorn, which come in the form of seven different preparations: decoction, powder, pill, medicinal extract, tincture, ash and, believe it or not, shortbread!
In the 18th century, Sibu Yidian was translated into Mongolian and from there into various European languages for evaluation and comment. In 1903, Sibu Yidian was published in the Cyrillic alphabet in Saint Petersburg, where it became the favorite subject of study for many Russian scientists. In 1952, Xu Zhonghu, an associate professor at the Sichuan College of Medicine in mainland China, rediscovered sandthorn in Tibet. After this, his school took the lead in the medicinal preparation of the berry, with an academic thesis written by Mr. Xu. It was titled The Preliminary Research on Sea Buckthorn Fruit Juice (yet another name) and was published in 1956. In 1977, the berry was listed in the official Chinese Pharmacopoeia or for the first time.
A cocktail of components
Plant taxonomists are not yet sure whether to call the sandthorn a shrub or a tree, because “the distinction between the two forms … in many cases is not clear.” The dark color ranges from white to black or from brown to gray. A distinct characteristic for which H. rhamnoides is known is its “abundance of spines” 5, or in the more familiar language of berry pickers as the “ouch factor” What makes this the most popular berry in the world right now is its “unique composition” of numerous nutrients that a scientific source has correctly described as a “combined cocktail of components that are generally only found separately” in many other sources. food. 190 for berries, of which 106 are found only in oil.
Based on these facts alone, the hawthorn berry leaves other exotic fruits such as mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana), açai (Euterpe oleraceae), goji (lycium babarum) and noni (Morinda citrifolia) eating dust while opening its own trail of superior nutrition throughout the world. Compared to them, sandthorn berry is the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion in terms of its extremely high nutritional values, beating out the others ‘cold as mackerel’ in the competition’s marketing ring.
Show me yours and I’ll show you mine
The many manufacturers of these other exotic fruit juices have a selfish mindset when it comes to bragging about what their particular flagship ingredients contain. The big fight between all of them is usually over antioxidants, since in “mine is bigger than yours” with respect to the amounts that each one supposedly contains.
Antioxidants are the latest buzzword in nutrition science these days, because they help maintain a balance in the formation of free radicals within the body. Free radicals are necessary to sustain life, strange as it may seem to some, but they can also end up destroying life itself if they get out of control. In fact, we couldn’t exist without these scavenging molecules that lack electrons, which are the by-products of oxygen burning in our cells. But at the same time, as a growing body of scientific research has discovered, they can also cause us to age faster, injure us in many places, and even die, gradually starting at the cellular level and eventually progressing from there to vital organs and master glands. . Think of them as sharks moving madly through cellular seas in each of us, ripping and tearing apart our molecules like sharks in a feeding frenzy when they get out of control. They have been implicated in everything from Alzheimer’s, arthritis, cancer, and cataracts to dandruff, Down syndrome, emphysema, and hangovers, not to mention heart disease, paralysis, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, and strokes.
But the cavalry to the rescue is antioxidants, “one of nature’s fiercest protective systems” (as two Chicago Tribune Science writers so aptly put it years ago). This army of helpful chemicals found in nature breaks down, neutralizes, and detoxifies free radicals. It is because of these many forms of antioxidants that our cells frequently repair themselves. Free radicals are produced when molecules break down and become unbalanced. In chemical terms, they are molecules with unpaired electrons; Simply put, they are confusing particles that have lost their soul mates.
Electrons: electrically charged particles that revolve around all atoms and molecules, normally orbit in pairs. But when the body breaks down an oxygen atom as it produces energy, the reaction removes an electron. That leaves an unpaired electron, in other words, a free radical. The damaged molecule is desperately searching for another electron to live with and recover with.
The only way you can do this is by stealing an electron from somewhere else and thereby unbalancing another molecule. This unpleasant process continues to cause a chain reaction. Eventually, two free radicals fuse and form a stable molecule. But before that happens, countless erratic electrons crash in search of mates, wreaking incredible molecular havoc. In their ‘feeding frenzy’, these molecular sharks explode the fragile balance of cells. They break the intricate process in which messages from genes are transcribed into proteins. Demolish enzymes and other molecules. Food sources for additional free radicals include refrigerated leftovers that contain fats and oils and cheeseburgers and fries.
The obvious solution is to incorporate antioxidant-rich items into your diet on a daily basis. This is where the sandthorn berry comes in. It is intensely rich in antioxidants, particularly carotenoids, fat-soluble pigments found in deep green, yellow, orange fruits and vegetables such as avocados, carrots, grapefruits, lemons, oranges, paprika, pineapples, pumpkins, rose hips, sweet potatoes, strawberries . , tomatoes and watermelon, among others. So far some 600 carotenoids have been identified from natural sources, of which 39 have been isolated from sandthorn fruits. The average carotenoid content per 100 grams of hawthorn berry is 950 milligrams, most of which are found in the fruit’s membranes and its fleshy mesocarp. This is by far more than what is found in some of the exotic fruits mentioned above.
Carotenoids protect cells and tissues from the damaging effects induced by free radicals and singlet oxygen. They provide an improvement in the functions of the immune system, protect against sunburn, inhibit the development of certain types of tumors and prevent the oxidation of “bad” cholesterol from low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and coronary heart disease.
In terms of everything else they do for the human body, antioxidants bring a kind of “mental health” stability to the radicals in schizophrenic trees. And they are most abundant in sandthorn berries. Show me your exotic fruit antioxidants and I’ll gladly show you mine from sandthorn, they are bigger, better and more beautiful by far! Which makes Snadthorn Berry and AlpineV ‘a very good thing for you’!