It is called malunggay in the Philippines ormoringa in English. Considered to be “nature’s most nutritious food,” it is in fact so well-respected in terms of its health benefits that its tree has earned the name the “Elixir Tree.” It has so many vitamins, minerals and nutrients that it can treat at least 300 different diseases and disorders of the body (source: steadyhealth. com).

Research shows that malunggay leaves contain seven times the vitamin C found in oranges, four times the Vitamin A found in carrots (said to prevent blindness), four times the calcium found in milk, three times the potassium found in bananas and two times the protein found in yogurt (source: http://affleap. com/blog/the-potentials-of-moringa-the-miracle-plant/). Best of all, the moringa or malunggay leaf has no proven bad effects and is therefore considered safe, organic, and suitable for people from any age group.

It is now also being promoted as a very good supplement for women who are pregnant as a natural way to increase breast milk. It also prevents mastitis, an inflammation of the breast caused by the blocking of milk ducts while the mother is lactating, because it acts against the bacteria staphylococcus aureus that causes the inflammation. (source: Moringa—The Breastfeeding Supplement at http://www.free-press-release.com/news/ 200805/1210154844.html)

Once the mother has given birth, it is also recommended that malunggay be made part of the menu for infants and toddlers. The Tree of Life by Church World Services advises, “For children aged 1-3, a 100g serving of fresh cooked leaves would provide all their daily requirements of calcium, about 75 percent of their iron and half their protein needs, as well as important amounts of potassium, B vitamins, copper and all the essential amino acids. As little as 20 grams of leaves would provide children with all the vitamins A and C they need.” (source: steadyhealth. com)

Not just infants, but the aged as well, would benefit from malunggay. It is said to help reduce ulcers, tumors, and pain from arthritis; help control blood pressure, relieve skin and sleep problems and work as an energy booster.

Other benefits: It increases the body’s immune system and promotes the cell structure of the body. It provides nourishment to the eyes and the brain. It promotes metabolism, natural serum cholesterol, and proper digestion. It promotes the normal functioning of the liver, kidney and circulatory system. It acts as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. It supports the normal sugar levels of the body and gives a feeling of general wellness. It promotes energy. And – ladies listen up – it lowers the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines and beautifies the skin. (source: http://leafpower.wordpress. com/moringa-benefits/)

There is also currently a study that shows how moringa may work as an immune stimulant and thus help people diagnosed with AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) or are HIV-positive.

Some articles on moringa have gone as far as saying that “moringa aleifera has great potential in combating extreme poverty and hunger” because it is easy to grow. Within six months of planting a seed or a piece of trunk, one can already cut leaves from the tree to eat. These can be cooked, dried, or ground over a screen for several days into a fine powder that can be added to almost anything as a nutrient supplement. The seeds also have the potential for producing biofuel, cooking oil, personal care products, cosmetics, aromatherapy perfume, industrial oil and lubricants.

There are stores now that offer various malunggay products. Chimara in Greenbelt 3 offers malunggay soup; malunggay peanuts, which are beautifully caramelized; malunggay popcorn, which tastes almost like their other flavored popcorn products; and malunggay cookies that come in fun choco-peppermint and oatmeal flavors. They look like ordinary cookies but they have these itty-bitty malunggay leaves in them. Cute! I would not purchase these cookies for the flavor, mind you, but as a healthier option I would greatly consider it. (The popcorn I would go for any day.)

Another interesting store is Echo Store in Serendra where you can buy take-home malunggay goodies, such as malunggay bihon that tastes just like ordinary pancit but with the benefits of malunggay.

So next time you go shopping, go healthy and go malunggay. Bow.

A Common Tree With Rare Power

Scientifically speaking, Moringa sounds like magic. It can rebuild weak bones, enrich anemic blood and enable a malnourished mother to nurse her starving baby. Ounce for ounce, it has the calcium of four glasses of milk, the Vitamin C of seven oranges and the potassium of three bananas.

Sounds like your Power Bar, you say? Well, consider this: A dash of Moringa can make dirty water drinkable. Doctors use it to treat diabetes in West Africa and high blood pressure in India. Not only can it staunch a skin infection, Moringa makes an efficient fuel, fertilizer and livestock feed.

Memo to Popeye: Moringa has triple the iron of spinach and more impressive attributes than olive oil. And it's not only good for you, it's delicious. You can cook Moringa in Moringa oil and top it with Moringa sauce and still taste a spectrum of flavors.

And it's cheap enough to grow on trees. Which is what Moringa oleifera is: A tree, with a gnarly trunk and tousled head of foliage that make it look like a cypress that just rolled out of bed. It is a common tree that thrives in both the desert and the living room and produces leaves, pods, seeds and flowers that each do uncommon things.

• The National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society and the Andrew Mellon Foundation are financing a scientist's hair-raising attempts to collect the world's 13 Moringa species.
• Both Moringa and the common carrot are diamonds in the roughage department, but Moringa has quadruple the beta carotene, which is good for the eyes and effective against cancer. The Bethesda, Md.-based International Eye Foundation is using Moringa in Malawi because it's loaded with Vitamin A, the lack of which causes 70% of childhood blindness.
• Wichita, Kan.-based Trees for Life, which has been planting food-bearing trees in impoverished places since 1984, is running Moringa cultivation programs in India after convincing a town of 40,000 to make the tree a structured part of the local diet.
• Britain's University of Leicester is studying the coagulating properties of the seeds in those tasty Moringa pods, which researchers believe work better than the common water purifier aluminum sulfate, which can be toxic. The school weaned a Malawi village off imported alum by building a simpler Moringa-based system.
• Hospitalized for prostate surgery in December, former United Nations ambassador and ex-Atlanta mayor Andrew Young told people not to send flowers, but buy Moringa seedlings for the malnourished. Young is the new president of theNational Council of Churches.

Moringa oleifera: A Review of the Medical Evidence for Its Nutritional, Therapeutic, and Prophylactic Properties. Part 1. Jed W. Fahey, Sc.D.  PEER REVIEWED Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences, Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Cancer Chemoprotection Center, 725 N. Wolfe Street, 406 WBSB, Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21205-2185 Email: jfahey@jhmi.edu Trees for Life Journal 2005, 1:5 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.tfljournal.org/article.php/20051201124931586 Received: September 15, 2005; Accepted: November 20, 2005;Published: December 1, 2005 Copyright: ©2005 Jed W. Fahey This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Moringa appears to be a nutritional and medicinal cornucopia. The author, a Western-trained nutritional biochemist who has studied some of Moringa’s phytochemicals for almost a decade, gives a brief commentary and extensive references, and presents a table introducing some of the tree’s most intriguing features. This is the first article in a series, and will be followed by more detailed analysis of some of the strongest claims made regarding this edible plant. Abstract Moringa oleifera, or the horseradish tree, is a pan-tropical species that is known by such regional names as benzolive, drumstick tree, kelor, marango, mlonge, mulangay, nébéday, saijhan, and sajna. Over the past two decades, many reports have appeared in mainstream scientific journals describing its nutritional and medicinal properties. Its utility as a non-food product has also been extensively described, but will not be discussed herein, (e.g. lumber, charcoal, fencing, water clarification, lubricating oil). As with many reports of the nutritional or medicinal value of a natural product, there are an alarming number of purveyors of “healthful” food who are now promoting M. oleifera as a panacea. While much of this recent enthusiasm indeed appears to be justified, it is critical to separate rigorous scientific evidence from anecdote. Those who charge a premium for products containing Moringa spp. must be held to a high standard. Those who promote the cultivation and use of Moringa spp. in regions where hope is in short supply must be provided with the best available evidence, so as not to raise false hopes and to encourage the most fruitful use of scarce research capital. It is the purpose of this series of brief reviews to: (a) critically evaluate the published scientific evidence on M. oleifera, (b) highlight claims from the traditional and tribal medicinal lore and from non-peer reviewed sources that would benefit from further, rigorous scientific evaluation, and (c) suggest directions for future clinical research that could be carried out by local investigators in developing regions. This is the first of four planned papers on the nutritional, therapeutic, and prophylactic properties of Moringa oleifera. In this introductory paper, the scientific evidence for health effects are summarized in tabular format, and the strength of evidence is discussed in very general terms. A second paper will address a select few uses of Moringa in greater detail than they can be dealt with in the context of this paper. A third paper will probe the phytochemical components of Moringa in more depth. A fourth paper will lay out a number of suggested research projects that can be initiated at a very small scale and with very limited resources, in geographic regions which are suitable for Moringa cultivation and utilization. In advance of this fourth paper in the series, the author solicits suggestions and will gladly acknowledge contributions that are incorporated into the final manuscript. It is the intent and hope of the journal’s editors that such a network of small-scale, locally executed investigations might be successfully woven into a greater fabric which will have enhanced scientific power over similar small studies conducted and reported in isolation. Such an approach will have the added benefit that statistically sound planning, peer review, and multi-center coordination brings to a scientific investigation. The following paper is intended to be useful for both scientific and lay audiences. Since various terms used herein are likely not familiar to the lay reader, nor are many of the references readily available to either scientific or lay audiences, we encourage active on-line dialog between readers and both the author and the journal staff. Both will attempt to answer questions and to direct readers to the experts in an open and public manner. Introduction Moringa oleifera is the most widely cultivated species of a monogeneric family, the Moringaceae, that is native to the sub-Himalayan tracts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. This rapidly-growing tree (also known as the horseradish tree, drumstick tree, benzolive tree, kelor, marango, mlonge, moonga, mulangay, nébéday, saijhan, sajna or Ben oil tree), was utilized by the ancient Romans, Greeks and Egyptians; it is now widely cultivated and has become naturalized in many locations in the tropics. It is a perennial softwood tree with timber of low quality, but which for centuries has been advocated for traditional medicinal and industrial uses. It is already an important crop inIndia, Ethiopia, the Philippines and the Sudan, and is being grown in West, East and South Africa, tropical Asia, Latin America, theCaribbean, Florida and the Pacific Islands. All parts of the Moringa tree are edible and have long been consumed by humans. According to Fuglie (47) the many uses for Moringa include: alley cropping (biomass production), animal forage (leaves and treated seed-cake), biogas (from leaves), domestic cleaning agent (crushed leaves), blue dye (wood), fencing (living trees), fertilizer (seed-cake), foliar nutrient (juice expressed from the leaves), green manure (from leaves), gum (from tree trunks), honey- and sugar cane juice-clarifier (powdered seeds), honey (flower nectar), medicine (all plant parts), ornamental plantings, biopesticide (soil incorporation of leaves to prevent seedling damping off), pulp (wood), rope (bark), tannin for tanning hides (bark and gum), water purification (powdered seeds). Moringa seed oil (yield 30-40% by weight), also known as Ben oil, is a sweet non-sticking, non-drying oil that resists rancidity. It has been used in salads, for fine machine lubrication, and in the manufacture of perfume and hair care products (158). In the West, one of the best known uses for Moringa is the use of powdered seeds to flocculate contaminants and purify drinking water (11,50,113), but the seeds are also eaten green, roasted, powdered and steeped for tea or used in curries (50). This tree has in recent times been advocated as an outstanding indigenous source of highly digestible protein, Ca, Fe, Vitamin C, and carotenoids suitable for utilization in many of the so-called “developing” regions of the world where undernourishment is a major concern. Nutrition Moringa trees have been used to combat malnutrition, especially among infants and nursing mothers. Three non-governmental organizations in particular—Trees for Life, Church World Service and Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization—have advocated Moringa as “natural nutrition for the tropics.” Leaves can be eaten fresh, cooked, or stored as dried powder for many months without refrigeration, and reportedly without loss of nutritional value. Moringa is especially promising as a food source in the tropics because the tree is in full leaf at the end of the dry season when other foods are typically scarce. A large number of reports on the nutritional qualities of Moringa now exist in both the scientific and the popular literature. Any readers who are familiar with Moringa will recognize the oft-reproduced characterization made many years ago by the Trees for Life organization, that “ounce-for-ounce, Moringa leaves contain more Vitamin A than carrots, more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach, more Vitamin C than oranges, and more potassium than bananas,” and that the protein quality of Moringa leaves rivals that of milk and eggs. These readers will also recognize the oral histories recorded by Lowell Fuglie in Senegaland throughout West Africa, who reports (and has extensively documented on video) countless instances of lifesaving nutritional rescue that are attributed to Moringa (47,48). In fact, the nutritional properties of Moringa are now so well known that there seems to be little doubt of the substantial health benefit to be realized by consumption of Moringa leaf powder in situations where starvation is imminent. Nonetheless, the outcomes of well controlled and well documented clinical studies are still clearly of great value. In many cultures throughout the tropics, differentiation between food and medicinal uses of plants (e.g. bark, fruit, leaves, nuts, seeds, tubers, roots, flowers), is very difficult since plant uses span both categories and this is deeply ingrained in the traditions and the fabric of the community (85). Thus, Table 1 in this review captures both nutritional and medicinal references as they relate to Moringa, whilst avoiding most of the better known agro-forestry and water purification applications of this plant. The interested reader is also directed to the very comprehensive reviews of the nutritional attributes of Moringa prepared by the NGOs mentioned earlier (in particular, see references 47,123,157). Phytochemistry Phytochemicals are, in the strictest sense of the word, chemicals produced by plants. Commonly, though, the word refers to only those chemicals which may have an impact on health, or on flavor, texture, smell, or color of the plants, but are not required by humans as essential nutrients. An examination of the phytochemicals of Moringa species affords the opportunity to examine a range of fairly unique compounds. In particular, this plant family is rich in compounds containing the simple sugar, rhamnose, and it is rich in a fairly unique group of compounds called glucosinolates and isothiocyanates (10,38). For example, specific components of Moringa preparations that have been reported to have hypotensive, anticancer, and antibacterial activity include 4-(4'-O-acetyl-a-L-rhamnopyranosyloxy)benzyl isothiocyanate [1], 4-(a-L-rhamnopyranosyloxy)benzyl isothiocyanate [2], niazimicin [3], pterygospermin [4], benzyl isothiocyanate [5], and 4-(a-L-rhamnopyranosyloxy)benzyl glucosinolate [6]. While these compounds are relatively unique to the Moringa family, it is also rich in a number of vitamins and minerals as well as other more commonly recognized phytochemicals such as the carotenoids (including b-carotene or pro-vitamin A). These attributes are all discussed extensively byLowell Fuglie (47) and others, and will be the subject of a future review in this series. (Click to enlarge) Figure 1. Structures of selected phytochemicals from Moringa spp.: 4-(4'-O-acetyl-a-L-rhamnopyranosyloxy)benzyl isothiocyanate [1], 4-(-L-rhamnopyranosyloxy)benzyl isothiocyanate [2], niazimicin [3], pterygospermin [4], benzyl isothiocyanate [5], and 4-(a-L-rhamnopyranosyloxy)benzyl glucosinolate [6]. Disease Treatment and Prevention The benefits for the treatment or prevention of disease or infection that may accrue from either dietary or topical administration of Moringa preparations (e.g. extracts, decoctions, poultices, creams, oils, emollients, salves, powders, porridges) are not quite so well known (116). Although the oral history here is also voluminous, it has been subject to much less intense scientific scrutiny, and it is useful to review the claims that have been made and to assess the quality of evidence available for the more well-documented claims. The readers of this review are encouraged to examine two recent papers that do an excellent job of contrasting the dilemma of balancing evidence from complementary and alternative medicine (e.g. traditional medicine, tribal lore, oral histories and anecdotes) with the burden of proof required in order to make sound scientific judgments on the efficacy of these traditional cures (138,154). Clearly much more research is justified, but just as clearly this will be a very fruitful field of endeavor for both basic and applied researchers over the next decade. Widespread claims of the medicinal effectiveness of various Moringa tree preparations have encouraged the author and his colleagues at The Johns Hopkins University to further investigate some of these possibilities. A plethora of traditional medicine references attest to its curative power, and scientific validation of these popular uses is developing to support at least some of the claims. Moringa preparations have been cited in the scientific literature as having antibiotic, antitrypanosomal, hypotensive, antispasmodic, antiulcer, anti-inflammatory, hypocholesterolemic, and hypoglycemic activities, as well as having considerable efficacy in water purification by flocculation, sedimentation, antibiosis and even reduction of Schistosome cercariae titer (seeTable 1). Unfortunately, many of these reports of efficacy in human beings are not supported by placebo controlled, randomized clinical trials, nor have they been published in high visibility journals. For example, on the surface a report published almost 25 years ago (141) appears to establish Moringa as a powerful cure for urinary tract infection, but it provides the reader with no source of comparison (no control subjects). Thus, to the extent to which this is antithetical to Western medicine, Moringa has not yet been and will not be embraced by Western-trained medical practitioners for either its medicinal or nutritional properties. In many cases, published in-vitro (cultured cells) and in-vivo(animal) trials do provide a degree of mechanistic support for some of the claims that have sprung from the traditional medicine lore. For example, numerous studies now point to the elevation of a variety of detoxication and antioxidant enzymes and biomarkers as a result of treatment with Moringa or with phytochemicals isolated from Moringa (39,40,76,131). I shall briefly introduce antibiosis and cancer prevention as just two examples of areas of Moringa research for which the existing scientific evidence appears to be particularly strong. Antibiotic Activity. This is clearly the area in which the preponderance of evidence—both classical scientific and extensive anecdotal evidence—is overwhelming. The scientific evidence has now been available for over 50 years, although much of it is completely unknown to western scientists. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s a team from the University of Bombay (BR Das), Travancore University (PA Kurup), and the Department of Biochemistry at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore (PLN Rao), identified a compound they called pterygospermin [4] a compound which they reported readily dissociated into two molecules of benzyl isothiocyanate [5](23,24,25,26,77,78,79,80,81,108). Benzyl isothiocyanate was already understood at that time to have antimicrobial properties. This group not only identified pterygospermin, but performed extensive and elegant characterization of its mode of antimicrobial action in the mid 1950’s. (They identified the tree from which they isolated this substance as “Moringa pterygosperma,” now regarded as an archaic designation for “M. oleifera.”) Although others were to show that pterygospermin and extracts of the Moringa plants from which it was isolated were antibacterial against a variety of microbes, the identity of pterygospermin has since been challenged (34) as an artifact of isolation or structural determination. Subsequent elegant and very thorough work, published in 1964 as a PhD thesis by Bennie Badgett (a student of the well known chemist Martin Ettlinger), identified a number of glyosylated derivatives of benzyl isothiocyanate [5] (e.g. compounds containing the 6-carbon simple sugar, rhamnose) (8). The identity of these compounds was not available in the refereed scientific literature until “re-discovered” 15 years later by Kjaer and co-workers (73). Seminal reports on the antibiotic activity of the primary rhamnosylated compound then followed, from U Eilert and colleagues in Braunschweig, Germany (33,34). They re-isolated and confirmed the identity of 4-(a-L-rhamnopyranosyloxy)benzyl glucosinolate [6] and its cognate isothiocyanate [2] and verified the activity of the latter compound against a wide range of bacteria and fungi. Extensive field reports and ecological studies (see Table 1) forming part of a rich traditional medicine history, claim efficacy of leaf, seed, root, bark, and flowers against a variety of dermal and internal infections. Unfortunately, many of the reports of antibiotic efficacy in humans are not supported by placebo controlled, randomized clinical trials. Again, in keeping with Western medical prejudices, practitioners may not be expected to embrace Moringa for its antibiotic properties. In this case, however, the in-vitro (bacterial cultures) and observational studies provide a very plausible mechanistic underpinning for the plethora of efficacy claims that have accumulated over the years (see Table 1). Aware of the reported antibiotic activity of [2], [5], and other isothiocyanates and plants containing them, we undertook to determine whether some of them were also active as antibiotics against Helicobacter pylori. This bacterium was not discovered until the mid-1980’s, a discovery for which the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine was just awarded. H. pylori is an omnipresent pathogen of human beings in medically underserved areas of the world, and amongst the poorest of poor populations worldwide. It is a major cause of gastritis, and of gastric and duodenal ulcers, and it is a major risk factor for gastric cancer (having been classified as a carcinogen by the W.H.O. in 1993). Cultures of H. pylori, it turned out, were extraordinarily susceptible to [2], and to a number of other isothiocyanates (37,60). These compounds had antibiotic activity against H. pylori at concentrations up to 1000-fold lower than those which had been used in earlier studies against a wide range of bacteria and fungi. The extension of this finding to human H. pylori infection is now being pursued in the clinic, and the prototypical isothiocyanate has already demonstrated some efficacy in pilot studies (49,168). Cancer Prevention. Since Moringa species have long been recognized by folk medicine practitioners as having value in tumor therapy (61), we examined compounds [1] and [2] for their cancer preventive potential (39). Recently, [1] and the related compound [3] were shown to be potent inhibitors of phorbol ester (TPA)-induced Epstein-Barr virus early antigen activation in lymphoblastoid (Burkitt’s lymphoma) cells (57,104). In one of these studies, [3] also inhibited tumor promotion in a mouse two-stage DMBA-TPA tumor model (104). In an even more recent study, Bharali and colleagues have examined skin tumor prevention following ingestion of drumstick (Moringa seedpod) extracts (12). In this mouse model, which included appropriate positive and negative controls, a dramatic reduction in skin papillomas was demonstrated. Thus, traditional practice has long suggested that cancer prevention and therapy may be achievable with native plants. Modern practitioners have used crude extracts and isolated bioactive compounds. The proof required by modern medicine has not been realized because neither the prevention of cancer nor the modification of relevant biomarkers of the protected state has been adequately demonstrated in human subjects. Does this mean that it doesn’t work? No. It may well work, but more rigorous study is required in order to achieve a level of proof required for full biomedical endorsement of Moringa as, in this case, a cancer preventative plant. Acknowledgements I thank Dr. Mark Olson for his encouragement and collaboration early in my research involvement with Moringa (joint publications are still pending). I gratefully acknowledge the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Foundation for providing unrestricted research funds that facilitated preparation of this review and work on Moringa in my laboratory; funding was also provided by the American Institute for Cancer Research and the NCI (Grant # R01 CA93780). TABLE 1. REPORTED NUTRITIONAL, THERAPEUTIC & PROPHYLACTIC USES OF MORINGA OLEIFERA Traditional Use Condition/Effecta Plant Partb Referencesc ANT Antimicrobial / Biocidal LFSPRBGO 8, 13, 19, 24, 27, 31, 34, 64, 68, 100, 104, 114, 115, 126, 140, 151, 160, 161, 162 Bacterial LFS 25, 26, 55, 63, 77-81, 149 Urinary Tract Infection L 141 Typhoid G 47 Infection LF 47 Syphilis G 47 Dental Caries/Toothache RBG 47 Fungal/ Mycoses O 111 Thrush 88, 111 Viral Common cold FRB 47 Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) L 104 Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV-1) L 84 HIV-AIDS L 1, 124 Warts S 47 Parasites Dranunculiasis (guinea-worm) 36 Helminths LFP 47 Schistosomes S 113 Trypanosomes LR 95 Other / Not Attributed to a Specific Pathogen Skin (Dermal) O S 15 Hepatic L 6 Fever LRGS 47 Earache G 47 External Sores/Ulcers LFRB 15 Bronchitis L 47 Throat Infection F 47 Water treatment (general) S 11, 50, 75, 86, 169 AST Asthma RG 47 CAN Cancer Therapy / Protection LFPBS 12, 17, 28, 39, 45, 59, 61, 64, 104, 115 Anti-tumor LFSB 45, 48, 57, 61, 87 Prostate L 47, 48 Radioprotective L 132 Skin P 12 CIRCirculatory/Endocrine Disorders LFSPR 56, 93 Anti-anemic L 47, 125 Anti-hypertensive LP 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 53, 83, 137 Cardiotonic R 47 Diabetes/hypoglycemia LP 6, 45, 71, 87, 101, 167 Diuretic LFRG 6, 14, 62 Hypocholestemia L 52, 94 Thyroid L 153 Tonic F 47 Hepatorenal LR 93, 120 DET Detoxification BO 76, 135, 166 Antipyretic 148 Purgative O 47 Snakebite B 47 Scorpion-bite B 47 DIG Digestive Disorders LSRBG 53 For TRTMNT of: Colitis LB 47 Diarrhea LR 47, 62, 64 Digestif B 47 Dysentery LG 47 Flatulence R 47 Ulcer / Gastritis LS 3, 115, 136 INF Inflammation LFSPRG 14, 28, 35, 45, 62, 64, 68, 110, 131, 160, 161 Rheumatism LFSPRG 28 Joint Pain P 47 Edema R 47 Arthritis S 47 IMM Immunity SO 69 Immune-stimulant S 69 Lupus O 28 NER Nervous Disorders LFRBGO 58, 59, 62, 96 Anti-spasmodic SR 14, 53 Epilepsy RB 47 Hysteria FRBO 47 Headache LRBG 47 NUT Nuritional LSBO 6, 7, 18, 22, 28, 30, 31, 32, 46, 47, 48, 51, 65, 66, 67, 70, 92, 102, 112, 116, 133, 163 Antinutritional factors B 88, 89, 90, 110, 127, 128, 139, 156, 164, 165 Antioxidant LO 110, 147 Carotenoids L 29, 105, 152 Energy LSO 85 Goitrogen S 2 Iron deficiency LS 16 Oil quality O 5, 98, 110, 158, 159 Protein LS 47 Vitamin/Mineral deficiency LS 7, 9, 54, 56, 85, 119 REP Reproductive Health LFPRBGO 44, 53, 64, 121, 122 Abortifacient FRBG 106, 107, 155 Aphrodisiac RB 47 Birth Control B 45, 53, 142-146 Lactation Enhancer L 47 Prostate function O 47 SKI Skin Disorders LRSG 160, 161 Antiseptic L 47 Astringent R 47 Pyodermia S 15 Rubefacient RG 47 Vesicant R 47 GEN General Disorders/Conditions LFSPRBO 4, 6, 8, 20, 21, 45, 48, 64, 66, 67, 68, 73, 74, 82, 91, 92, 99, 102, 103, 109, 116, 117, 118, 123, 125, 128, 129, 130, 134, 150, 163 Bladder OS 47 Catarrh LF 47 Gout RO 47 Hepatamegaly R 47 Lactation L 47 Low.Back/Kidney Pain R 47 Scurvy LSRBO 47 Splenomegaly R 47 “Tonic” LFPSO 47 a It is very difficult in some cases to separate the effects of severe nutritional deficiencies (e.g. Vitamin C) from sequelae (e.g. scurvy) which transcend categorization by organ systems or classification into single disease states. b Plant parts are designated by their first letters (in bold): Leaves Flowers Seeds Pods (drumsticks) Roots Bark Gum Oil (from seeds) c Many of the original citations have been collected by Lowell J. Fuglie, [and can be found in his excellent treatise entitled The Miracle Tree, (47)] and by Manuel Palada (116), Julia Morton (102), and Trees For Life (157). Most other compendiums in recent publications or on commercial websites appear to be highly derivative of these seminal works.