Ayurveda Initiative For Global Health

Karanj करंज  Millettia pinnata (or synonym Pongamia pinnata) "is a species of tree in the pea family, Fabaceae, native in tropical and temperate Asia including parts of Indian subcontinent, China, Japan, Malaysia, Australia and Pacific islands."  It provides shade in summer.  It also has medicinal properties. Part of an abstract of an article: "Several different classes of flavonoid derivatives, such as flavones, flavans, and chalcones, and several types of compounds including terpenes, steroid, and fatty acids have been isolated from all parts of this plant. The pharmacological studies revealed that various types of preparations, extracts, and single compounds of this species exhibited a broad spectrum of biological activities such as antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and anti-diabetic activities."  Pawan kumar Gupta 

Quinone- containing medicinal plants             Most of us are familiar with the ubiquitous plastoquinones, ubiquinones and tocopherols and vitamin K. But Quinones, the aromatic diketones, form the largest class of natural colouring matters and of the total 800 and more compounds known, about 50% occur in higher plants and of the rest, a large percentage are known form fungi. A number of quinones from higher plants are widely used in medicine.    Quinones may be benzo, naphtho or anthraquinones depending on the mono-, bi- or tri-cyclic ring systems they possess.  a. Benzoquinones               These compounds possess an aromatic ring with or without an aliphatic side chain. A few of them are medicinally important, e.g., embelin. The physiologically active representatives of this group are Plastoquinones are believed to act as redox carriers in photosynthesis; ubiquinones ...

Names of plant chemicals decluttered. (Images: Chaulmoogric and Hydnocarpic acids, Chaulmoogra) Similar to the names of the plants which are based on the name of a person, story or character, the trivial/non-scientific names of phytochemicals (plant chemicals) also are based on a source plant or some other feature. The technical (Scientific-IUPAC name)names are too cumbersome to remember and therefore trivial names are given to them. For example a flavone is technically “2-phenylchromen-4-one (2-phenyl-1-benzopyran-4-one)” and cholesterol is “(3S,8S,9S,10R,13R,14S,17R)-10,13-dimethyl-17-[(2R)-6-methylheptan-2-yl]-2,3,4,7,8,9,11,12,14,15,16,17-dodecahydro-1H-cyclopenta[a]phenanthren-3-ol” which are impossible to remember for an experienced chemist also. Therefore there are few easy ways to name and remember the common names of every compound. 1. Names based on the source plant. a. Oleic acid is a fatty acid obtained from Olea plant (Olive) and therefore ba...

Cigarettes- Another easy source of Pathogenic bacteria and viruses We shun cigarettes due to the toxic interactions of the thousands of chemicals in cigarettes. But the recent data which is much frighteningly says that in tact Cigarettes harbor hundreds of harmful bacteria and fungi. Hundreds of bacterial species are present in each cigarette, and additional testing is likely to increase that number significantly. The bacteria of medical significance to humans, identified in all of the tested cigarettes, include Acinetobacter (associated with lung and blood infections); Bacillus (some varieties associated with food borne illnesses and anthrax); Burkholderia (some forms responsible for respiratory infections); Clostridium(associated with foodborne illnesses and lung infections); Klebsiella (associated with a variety of lung, blood and other infections); Pseudomonas aeruginosa (an organism that causes 10 percent of all hospital-acquired infections in t...

 Food as medicines All the protein you eat will not get converted to body proteins. The proteins which we ingest in our diet will get hydrolysed in our digestive tract, and the amino acids released will be absorbed and taken to cells of various parts of our body where new proteins are synthesized. Our body can synthesize 11 amino acids only and we must get the rest ,10, from our diet. These 10 amino acids which should be “essential” components of food are known as essential amino acids. They are so important in protein synthesis (protein makes up to 50% of dry matter of protoplasm) that in absence of any of these 10 amino acids, no new protein is synthesized and the amino acids get deaminated to carboxylic acids and used as energy sources.  They are the following : M – Methionine I – Isoleucine L – Leucine L – Lysine P – Phenyl alanine A – Arginine T – Tryptophan H – Histidine. T – Threonine V – Valine You can remember them by the acronym“Millpath T...