The Following is an excellent article by Dr. Mowry

  

~ABOUT THE AUTHOR~

Dr. Mowry is known primarily for his efforts to bring scientific data about herbal medicine to the attention of the American public. Toward this end he has published the books entitled the Scientific Validation of Herbal Medicine, and Guaranteed Potency Herbs: Next Generation Herbal Medicine, which have become standard texts in the field.

 

Dr. Mowry is Director of the Mountainwest Institute of Herbal Sciences, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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Pau D'arco {Teehebo}
Ancient Herb, Modern Miracle

 

This pamphlet attempts to explain the meaning behind the stack of research that has been published concerning the anti-cancer, antiviral and other properties of the South American herb known as Lapacho. While a much larger volume could be written about the empirical data that has been collected around the world on the almost unbelievable properties of this plant, my chief concern is with the experimental, medical and clinical data that bears a more certain scientific aura.

One of the last great, but largely untapped, reserves of natural resources on the face of the earth is South America. The herbal medicines that abound on this continent have been largely denied to the rest of the world; the inaccessibility of the great forests, combined with a general lack of interest, has kept the secrets of the region shrouded in darkness. Africa is a continent of light by contrast.

Efforts to increase the availability of South American herbal remedies have been extremely arduous and difficult. Only with great effort are we able to bring together all the resource necessary to successfully identify, harvest and export such plant materials. Much material coming into the U.S. from its southern neighbors has been falsely identified, or adulterated, or harvested incorrectly. Rare is the importer who even knows what to look for.

Nowhere have these difficulties been more apparent than in the marketing of lapacho. Lapacho (Tabebuia avellandedae, & T.impetiginosa) comes from the rain forests and mountains of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. We have known about this plant for almost 100 years, yet efforts to import medicinally active lapacho have failed more than they have succeeded. 

 

In spite of the difficulties, the interest remains extremely high, because this plant holds great promise for the effective treatment of cancers such as leukemia, candida and other troublesome infections, debilitating diseases (including arthritis), as well as a host of other complaints.

Anyone familiar with the recurring ginseng and goldenseal fiascoes will appreciate the similar state of affairs that exists in the business of lapacho. In fact the chances of obtaining good quality ginseng and goldenseal in American health food stores are greater than the odds of obtaining good quality lapacho. A vast majority of commercial lapacho is void of significant activity. 

 

The reason is primarily lack of quality control at every stage of the enterprise; gatherers, unaware as to which parts of the plant contain the active material, harvest all parts of the plant; curers, unaware of the traditional lapacho curing practices, make assumptions that are more often wrong than right; shippers pay little attention to protecting the material from the hazards of transportation; manufacturers,  unaware of what constitutes really good lapacho (having never bothered to go to South America and have a look), don't have any idea how to set up quality control or standardization practices that guarantee activity.

 

Description

Lapacho is an evergreen tree, with rosy colored flowers, belonging to the Bignonia family. Nearly 100 species of lapacho trees are known, but only a few of these yield high quality material, and it takes extremely skilled gatherers to tell the difference. (Half or more of the battle involved in bringing high quality lapacho to the marketplace is finding and retaining qualified gatherers.) 

 

The medicinal part of the tree is the bark, specifically the inner lining of the bark, called thephloem (pronounced floam). The use of whole bark,containing the dead wood, naturally dilutes the activity of the material. Lapacho is also known by the Portuguese name of Pau D'Arco, and by tribal names such as Taheebo and Ipe Roxo.    

 

Some texts distinguish between Lapacho Colorado (red lapacho-ipe roxo) (scarlet flowers) and Lapacho morado (purple pacho) which grows in cooler climates such as high in the Andes, and high places in Paraguay. Recent evidence suggests that these two varieties of lapacho possess superior medicinal properties, with a slight bow going to the purple as the best of all.

Constituents

Most of the chemical analyses of lapacho have been performed on the heartwood of the tree, rather than on the phloem, or inner lining of the bark, which is used medicinally. It is unclear why this has occurred. One reason may be that the heartwood contains enough quantities of a couple of important constituents, mainly lapachol and tabebuin, to satisfy current research interests. 

 

Once the therapeutic activity of those constituents has been thoroughly investigated, perhaps researchers will turn their attention to the phloem. Until then, it is probably safe to assume that the living bark contains a similar set of active constituents as the heartwood plus some others that make it more effective and would account for the living bark's greater popularity as a folk medicine. 

 

Traditionally, as anyone who chooses to examine the herbal literature of the world can verify, it is the living bark of a plant, especially a tree or shrub, that is used medicinally--not the heartwood. The reason is simple: the nutrients and representative families of chemical substances used to sustain the life of the tree are found in greatest concentration in the cambium layer and phloem of the living bark.

 

The life processes of a mature tree are carried out in the thin corridor lying between the outer bark and the inner heartwood.

Pull the bark off a tree and you will notice moist, very thin layers of tissue that seem to shred when picked at with the hands. This is the cambium layer. Its purpose is to create new tree tissues, such as phloem, through cell division. The newest, youngest phloem cells are just outside the cambium. As new phloem is added, older cells are crushed and pressed into the bark.

 

Younger, newer cells added to the inside of the cambium layer are called xylem. Newer xylem is called sapwood; older xylem is crushed and pressed into the heart of the tree.

 

It is therefore known as heartwood. The actively conducting tissues of a tree are the thin layers of fresh xylem and phloem on each side of the cambium. The outer bark and heartwood are essentially, inactive materials that only serve to provide strength to the tree. Indiscriminate combining of older, less active layers of bark and tree with the younger, living tissues results in a dramatic dilution of active principle and medicinal value. 

 

Yet it is a common practice. Lapachol is just one of a number of plant substances known as napthaquinones (N-factors) that occur in lapacho. Anthraquinones, or A-factors, comprise another important class of compounds. 

 

The N-factors are not common except in herbal tonics. Seldom do both N- and A-factors occur in the same species. Several of the remarkable properties of lapacho may be due to a probable synergy between A- and N- factors.Quercitin, xloidone and other flavonoids are also present in lapacho; these undoubtedly contribute to the plant's effectiveness in the treatment of tumors and infections.

 

Folklore

The native Indians of Brazil, northern Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and other South American countries have used lapacho for medicinal purposes for thousands of years; there are indications that its use may actually ante-date the Incas. 

 

Before the such as arthritis and prostatitis, and circulation disturbances., Other conditions have reportedly been cured with lapacho including lupus, diabetes, Hodgkins disease, osteomyelitis, Parkinson's disease, and psoriasis.

 

It is used to relieve pain, kill germs, increase the flow of urine, and even as an antidote to poisons. Its use in many ways parallels that of the immuno-stimulants echinacea on this continent and ginseng in Asia, except that its action appears to  exceed them both in terms of its potential as a cancer treatment. 

 

The Guarani, Tupi and other tribes called the lapacho tree "Tajy," meaning "to have strength and vigor,or simply: "The Divine Tree". Modern Guarani Indians prefer the purple lapacho, but also use the red lapacho. And they use only the inner lining of the bark. The use of lapacho may not be limited to tropical countries.

 

A Yugoslavian scientist, Voislav Todorovic, claims that he has found evidence that the plant was used by the Vikings and the Russians. He also claims that a Russian chemist (in the late 1800's) manufactured a toothpaste that contained lapacho that was supposed to have been extremely effective in preventing tooth decay.

 

Early Scientific Work

Research on lapacho has been going on for a long time. E. Paterno isolated the active constituent, lapachol, in 1884. Inn 1896, S.C. Hooker established the chemical structure of lapachol, and L.F. Fieser synthesized the substance in 1927! So it would be a mistake to call lapacho a modern discovery.

 

As early as 1873, physicians were aware of the healing action of lapacho. Dr. Joaquin Almeida Pinto wrote during that year, "Pau D'Arco: Medicinal Properties: prescribed as a fever-reducer; the bark is used against ulcers; also used for venereal and rheumatic disorders and especially useful for skin disorders, especially eczema, herpes and the mange." 

 

Another early physician, Dr. Walter Accorsi, reported that lapacho, "eliminated the pains caused by the disease (cancer) and multiplies the body's production of red corpuscles."

 

However, the science of lapacho began properly with the work of Theodoro Meyer in Argentina who tried for decades with little success to convince the medical world of the value of lapacho for infections and cancer. Data from his laboratory are astounding in terms of the success rate observed when applying the herb in dozens of different kinds of cancer. 

 

Much of Meyer's work was primitive by modern research standards; most of it lacked adequate controls and statistical evaluation. 

 

But the sheer bulk of it is good evidence for the efficacy of lapacho. The Meyer era ended at his death in 1972, with the scientific world left still largely unconvinced of the usefulness of lapacho as a modern medicinal agent. Perhaps the most important thing Meyer accomplished, from a scientific point of view, was to bring lapacho to the attention of the rest of world, to extract the plant from the jungles of the Amazon, and announce, "Here is a folk remedy with great promise for all mankind."

 

Independent of Meyer, a physician in Brazil, about 1960, after hearing a tale of its miraculous curative powers, used lapacho to treat his brother who was lying in a Santo Andre, Brazil hospital, dying of cancer. His brother recovered, and the physician, Dr. Orlando dei Santi, began to use the herb to treat other cancer patients at the hospital. 

 

Other physicians joined the team, and after a few months, several case histories of cures were recorded. In the typical case, pain disappeared rapidly and sometimes complete remission was achieved in as little as four weeks.

 

Because of the work at the Municipal Hospital of Santo Andre, lapacho has become a standard form of treatment for some kinds of cancer and for all kinds of infections in medical establishments throughout Brazil. 

 

It should be noted that after the first reports of "miraculous" herbal cures appeared in Brazil, the national government ordered a blackout of any more public statements by doctors involved in the research. The silence was finally broken by Alec De Montmorency, who in 1981 published a lengthy review of the ongoing clinical work in Brazil. This report succeeded in stimulating worldwide interest in the plant.

 

In 1968, Dr. Prats Ruiz of Concepcion, Argentina, successfully treated three cases of leukemia in his private clinic. Some of these results were widely published and also helped to establish the popularity of lapacho among the "civilized" inhabitants of South 

 

American countries.

American physicians, of course, tend to look disparagingly upon the clinical evidence from backward areas of South America, preferring instead sanitized evidence from their own brightly lit laboratories. The weight of the South American clinical evidence has not been sufficient to cause widespread acceptance of the treatment outside South America, but it has stimulated research interest abroad. Pharmaceutical companies regularly screen lapacho for the presence of substances that could be the basis for new drug applications. 

 

As we shall see, however, no isolated component of lapacho comes anywhere close to being equal to the combined activity of all constituents, or, in other words, to the whole herb.

 

TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK...