Cat's Claw
May 14, 1999
As a fan of talk radio, I've
come to recognize a congenial host slipping in a commercial while
suggesting it's just a tip from his family to mine. Paul Harvey
gets me every time with his oozing sincerity but I'm on to Rush
Limbaugh with his favorite Snapple flavors.
I'm
not taken in by Larry King's familiar voice pitching the apparent
life-saving Garlique. I'd like to believe in its efficacy but
somehow calling garlic Garlique is like passing Monica off as
Monique. Can it really be socially acceptable?
And so it was that I heard two men discussing Cat's Claw with
such heightened enthusiasm, that I thought it was a radio infomercial.
Surely a low voice would soon disclaim the views expressed as
not constituting the station's endorsement of the product. But
no, the conversation continued.
As I listened to these scientists, I was seriously taken with
the exciting tale of travels into the higher elevations of the
Peruvian Rainforest, usually crawling on their bellies to reach
the large woody, climbing vine growing around trees. They would
whittle off a small piece of bark, take it back to the University
laboratory in the United States, study it under a microscope and
Eureka! they found it.
It is Dr. Klaus Keplinger's group in Austria that is the most
knowledgeable of Cat's Claw, having studied this miracle herb
for 15 years. But how did they come upon it? What made them think....?
I find it mindboggling to discover this world class herb grows
in a region featured not too long ago in National Geographic studies
of tree people.
An entire society -- living, loving, working, growing old and
dying -- was uncovered, literally, and observed. Along with the
people, their use of medicinal plants and herbs came to light.
Soon the gentle, loving, indigenous tribes joined in ecologically
harvesting the bark in a way to protect natural resources of the
rainforest and its people. While listing its uses to their people,
they contributed scientific data.
Perhaps to those used to stainless steel and sterile glass laboratories
it was primitive. Yet, here is where the study began and without
this beginning, the finding of a high level of antioxidents would
not have come about. Eureka is right!
I resist the urge to ask how the scientists could possible know
the vine, with cat's claw-like thorns on its stem, would cleanse
the intestinal tract; enchance the action of the white blood cells;
act as an antioxident, anti-inflamatory and anti-contraceptive;
take care of viral infections, inhibit the growth of cancer cells,
control the rate of aging ... I could go on and on.
Along with their degree, a scientist must surely be admonished
to "Keep looking." The inquiring mind is stimulated in high school
science classes. My daughter had a project to find the effect
of something on something. Working for doctors and having access
to samples of hormones -- birth control pills -- Kerry planted
24 spider plant babies and for 30 days gave 12 a pill and 12 nothing.
All 24 grew at the same rate, were logged in each evening, and
proved nothing. No Eureka in that kitchen. She was not a scientist
or she would have said, "Well, let's try an aspirin a day."
I was impressed with both the source and the use of Cat's Claw
-- Una de Gato, in Spanish. However, I didn't have any of the
symptoms the voices on All Things Considered kept enumerating;
well, except for that rate of aging advancing and out of control,
so I thought no more about it.
Instead, I focused on the things I don't know that everyone else
seems to know very well. For instance, what is a free radical?
What is an anti-oxident -- or an oxident, for that matter? Was
I absent the day these words appeared?
I asked John what a free radical was? I asked what an anti-oxident
was? I didn't get it. He said, "Okay, to be very basic, picture
a bunch of floating bubbles. These represent cells. Most of them
are orderly but some of them move around and try to latch on to
other cells, but nobody wants these free radicals. So, they mutate
and before you know it, these mutations are pre-cancerous cells."
I thought I'd change the subject to antioxidents while trying
to visualize mutations of bubbles becoming tumors.
"Antioxidents,"
John said, with a more satisfied grin, "control the free radicals
and keep them in place."
And, Cat's Claw is loaded with anti-oxidents which is why I spent
$27.00 for 60 pills to be taken twice a day.
It's the word "cat" that confused me. I really thought this major
discovery was made in a way not too different from a discovery
of my own. I expected the magic elixir to seep from the tree and
be tapped for the good of mankind -- sort of like maple syrup.
And I expected a cat sharpening her claws to discover it, lick
her whiskers over it and find she had nine lives.
After all, it was through my own cat's claw-sharpening exercise
against my goose-down over-stuffed sofa we discovered we had a
polyester fibre-filled couch, instead. It's not too great an assumption:
one man's sap is another man's fibre fill. Cat's claw? Get it?
Disclaimer: Opinions of John are not to be confused with scientific
fact.
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