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you have to drink at least three cups per day green tea to show beneficial effects. i'd be pretty safe from drinking 10-40 cups per day, unless i wanted to live and work in the bathroom :S

someone asked once what does the mj do for your ms and i think it just makes all this not so real. their is palliative care for people suffering with cancer so mj is palliative care for some who choose it with ms. ms that has the person not the other way around.

Hey Robbie,
I am pretty sure I'll use mj if I need it. So far, I don't.
I know some use it for spasticity and pain. For you, it has become palliative. (I had to look the word up) I can see why you do it. I can't say that I won't do the same.
Geez Robbie. This whole thing sucks, doesn't it?
Terry

I have been taking Kalawalla for 9 months now for multiple sclerosis and I am very pleased indeed with the results. The worst of my symptoms such as intermittent nystagmus “double vision” pins and needles, muscle spasms and urinary frequency have not occurred for at least six months now.

Thanks for the info Tanya!
Do you mean, that the symptoms you mentioned disappeared from the time you took Kawalla and are now gone for 6 month?
How long did you have the symptoms before they gone away?

--Frank

Wanted to see if there are any recent studies-
More indicative for use in skin care and sun protection

Photoprotective activity of polypodium leucotomos-

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/ab ... alCode=ppp

Not much research in MS-
The Multiple Sclerosis Trust has a factsheet on kalawalla [1] and this reports:

"Kalawalla is the brand name of an herbal supplement derived from a type of fern native to Central and South America. Polypodium leucotomas is the active ingredient of Kalawalla and has been the subject of a limited number of studies unrelated to multiple sclerosis.

Unsupported claims about the remedial effects of Kalawalla in the treatment of MS suggest that the substance works by regulating the immune system. The anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of polypodium leucotomos are implicated in the effect it is claimed to have upon the processes at work in MS.

However, such claims need to be treated with caution as there is no research evidence supporting the use of Kalawalla in MS. Where polypodium leucotomos has been the subject of research studies, the focus has been on the photoprotective properties of the substance and its usage in the treatment of various skin complaints such as psoriasis.

As with all herbal supplements, the risks and benefits associated with their use in MS have not been fully evaluated."

http://www.clinicalanswers.nhs.uk/index ... stion=8313

AC

pegs wrote:Do you know if tea actually has flouride or is it from our water?

This abstract might answer your question. More are available from this search on PubMed.

Fluoride content in tea and its relationship with tea quality.
J Agric Food Chem. 2004 Jul 14;52(14):4472-6.

• The tea plant is known as a fluorine accumulator. Fluoride (F) content in fresh leaves collected from 14 plantations in China was investigated. The F increased with maturity, and the F variation was remarkable in the tender shoots. Furthermore, significant negative relationships were observed between F content and the content of the quality parameters total polyphenols and amino acids. These substances are rich in young leaves and poor in mature ones. With regard to quality of tea products, the relationship with F content was studied using 12 brands of tea products in four categories: green tea, oolong tea, black tea, and jasmine tea collected from six provinces. The F level increased with the decline in quality and showed good correlation with the quality grades. The results suggest that the F content could be used as a quality indicator for tea evaluation.

NHE

Thank you NHE!
I did a search and your response was more clear than what I researched....I was really shocked to find out about all our plants and food sources that contain flouride....but with the reading I did ..I was under the impression for some reason that the herbal teas were not included..( and if I were thinking clearly..I guess I should have gathered that if our vegies are affected...why would herbal teas not???)..so ....well I even emailed my daughter this report going back to 1994 by our government stating the high incidence of (basicly flouride posioning) sorry I forget the proper term and all the young children losing teeth to this.....and yet they are still putting flouride in our drinking water....and yes my concern is reactionary because my husband drinks 1 gallon of tea a day....it may be why he is declining so rapidly since he stopped outside construction work..... again...thank you for your help!

I like the sounds of this, it cuts IL-6 production through oral administration...still only in mice so far though...


Plant Flavonoid In Celery And Green Peppers Found To Reduce Inflammatory Response In The Brain

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2008) — Researchers at the University of Illinois report that a plant compound found in abundance in celery and green peppers can disrupt a key component of the inflammatory response in the brain. The findings have implications for research on aging and diseases such as Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis.

Inflammation can be a blessing or a blight. It is a critical part of the body's immune response that in normal circumstances reduces injury and promotes healing. When it goes awry, however, the inflammatory response can lead to serious physical and mental problems.

Inflammation plays a key role in many neurodegenerative diseases and also is implicated in the cognitive and behavioral impairments seen in aging.

The new study looked at luteolin (LOO-tee-OH-lin), a plant flavonoid known to impede the inflammatory response in several types of cells outside the central nervous system. The purpose of the study was to determine if luteolin could also reduce inflammation the brain, said animal sciences professor and principal investigator Rodney Johnson.

"One of the questions we were interested in is whether something like luteolin, or other bioactive food components, can be used to mitigate age-associated inflammation and therefore improve cognitive function and avoid some of the cognitive deficits that occur in aging," Johnson said.

The researchers first studied the effect of luteolin on microglia. These brain cells are a key component of the immune defense. When infection occurs anywhere in the body, microglia respond by producing inflammatory cytokines, chemical messengers that act in the brain to orchestrate a whole-body response that helps fight the invading microorganism.

This response is associated with many of the most obvious symptoms of illness: sleepiness, loss of appetite, fever and lethargy, and sometimes a temporary diminishment of learning and memory. Neuroinflammation can also lead some neurons to self-destruct, with potentially disastrous consequences if it goes too far.

Graduate research assistant Saebyeol Jang studied the inflammatory response in microglial cells. She spurred inflammation by exposing the cells to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a component of the cell wall of many common bacteria.

Those cells that were also exposed to luteolin showed a significantly diminished inflammatory response. Jang showed that luteolin was shutting down production of a key cytokine in the inflammatory pathway, interleukin-6 (IL-6). The effects of luteolin exposure were dramatic, resulting in as much as a 90 percent drop in IL-6 production in the LPS-treated cells.

"This was just about as potent an inhibition as anything we had seen previously," Johnson said.

But how was luteolin inhibiting production of IL-6?

Jang began by looking at a class of proteins involved in intracellular signaling, called transcription factors, which bind to specific "promoter" regions on DNA and increase their transcription into RNA and translation into proteins.

Using electromobility shift assays, which measure the binding of transcription factors to DNA promoters, Jang eventually determined that luteolin inhibited IL-6 production by preventing activator protein-1 (AP-1) from binding the IL-6 promoter.

AP-1 is in turn activated by JNK, an upstream protein kinase. Jang found that luteolin inhibited JNK phosphorylation in microglial cell culture. The failure of the JNK to activate the AP-1 transcription factor prevented it from binding to the promoter region on the IL-6 gene and transcription came to a halt.

To see if luteolin might have a similar effect in vivo, the researchers gave mice luteolin-laced drinking water for 21 days before injecting the mice with LPS.

Those mice that were fed luteolin had significantly lower levels of IL-6 in their blood plasma four hours after injection with the LPS. Luteolin also decreased LPS-induced transcription of IL-6 in the hippocampus, a brain region that is critical to spatial learning and memory.

The findings indicate a possible role for luteolin or other bioactive compounds in treating neuroinflammation, Johnson said.

"It might be possible to use flavonoids to inhibit JNK and mitigate inflammatory reactions in the brain," he said. "Inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-6 are very well known to inhibit certain types of learning and memory that are under the control of the hippocampus, and the hippocampus is also very vulnerable to the insults of aging," he said. "If you had the potential to decrease the production of inflammatory cytokines in the brain you could potentially limit the cognitive deficits that result."

The study appeared recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 094115.htm

I tried a product a few months back called "LutiMax". It has 100mg Luteolin. I didn't finish the pack because I wasn't noticing anything. Now I am going to have to try finishing off the rest. They are BIG sublingual pills, that don't taste that great either.

If only celery didn't taste so vile!

I'll have to investigate green peppers and other potential sources in diet.

what are your feelings regarding rutabaga and spinach?

Unfortunately, a not-so-great-result has also been published:

Biochem Pharmacol. 2005 Jul 15;70(2):220-8.
Oral flavonoids delay recovery from experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis in SJL mice.

Verbeek R, van Tol EA, van Noort JM.

Business Unit Biomedical Research, TNO Quality of Life, P.O. Box 2215, 2301 CE Leiden, The Netherlands.

Flavonoids are food components that appear to have potential beneficial health effects. There is a range of in vitro studies supporting the anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of flavonoids. Previously, we demonstrated that in vitro flavonoids, including luteolin and apigenin, inhibit proliferation and IFN-gamma production by murine and human autoimmune T cells. In the present study, we examined the effects of oral flavonoids as well as of curcumin on autoimmune T cell reactivity in mice and on the course of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), a model for multiple sclerosis. Continuous oral administration of flavonoids significantly affected antigen-specific proliferation and IFN-gamma production by lymph node-derived T cells following immunization with an EAE-inducing peptide. Both luteolin and apigenin suppress proliferative responses as they did in vitro, whereas IFN-gamma production on the other hand was enhanced. Other flavonoids exerted differential effects on proliferation and IFN-gamma production. The effects of flavonoids and curcumin on EAE were assessed using either passive transfer of autoimmune T cells or active disease induction. In passive EAE, flavonoids led to delayed recovery of clinical symptoms rather than to any reduction in disease. In active EAE, the effects were less pronounced but also, in this case, the flavonoid hesperitin delayed recovery. Oral curcumin had overall mild but beneficial effects. Our results indicate that oral flavonoids fail to beneficially influence the course of EAE in mice but, instead, suppress recovery from acute inflammatory damage.

It seems that currently only curcumin has beneficial effects on MS althoug large doses required especially as it's bioavailability is very low, Life Extension has a new form Bio-curcumin that is absorbed 7-8 times better at least this is what they claim.

Curcumin:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q73 ... lltext.pdf
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q6r ... lltext.pdf
http://www.springerlink.com/content/n6k ... lltext.pdf

I have been asked before for the increeased bioavailability of curcumin when taken with choline (especially phosphatidilecholine), that's why:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/410 ... lltext.pdf