Chocolate, Aids, Ageing and Stress; the Kingdom of Plants comes to our rescue yet again.

From its origins in South America, cocoa is the sweet tooth that could save your life. Studies have confirmed cocoa powder and cocoa butter has significantly high levels of phenols, which are known anti-oxidants. Phenols are present in all plants, but have been found in higher concentrations in wine, fruit, tea, vegetables and cocoa (Theobroma cacao).

One of the things phenols do as an anti-oxidant is to inhibit the oxidation of LDL cholesterol within the body, and this is how cocoa was tested in 1996 by Andrew Waterhouse and colleagues at the University of California. What Andrew found was that one 43 gram milk chocolate bar had the same benefit as 150 Millilitres of red wine. Of the types of cocoa, cocoa powder was the highest in phenols followed by cooking chocolate and then milk chocolate. Whilst there are definite benefits to cocoa, a candy bar a day is no substitute for a good green veggie like spinach, but it does mean that you can feel less guilty it.

"More than 25 percent of our common medicines contain at least some compounds obtained from plants. In the United States, about 10 percent of our major drugs have plant extracts as their active ingredient. In less developed countries the World Health Organization estimates that 75 to 80 percent of the people rely on plant-based medicines for primary health care." -Doel Soejarto

Often called The Beetroot Queen, South Africa’s Health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has come under widespread criticism for her controversial Aids health policies. These policies greatly delayed the rollout of a much needed national anti-retroviral medical scheme in favour of research into nutrition and local medicinal plants. Whilst this delay has had a negative impact, it does seem that some of these plants may indeed hold a new direction for anti-retroviral treatments. Sutherlandia Frutescens (subs. microphylla) indigenous to South Africa is such a plant.

Sutherlandia in South Africa goes by many names including; Cancer bush, Unwele, Motlepelo and Kankerbos, has been used for countless generations of traditional healers for a variety of major ailments. In allopathic medicine it has been under serious scrutiny since 2000 by a number of researchers from Universities around the world. Key focus has been placed on its apparent properties of weight gain, increased appetite, and as an immune booster.

"Improvements in CD4 counts (a measure of immunity) and decreases in the viral load in AIDS patients taking Sutherlandia have been reported by clinicians in South Africa and Australia," -Dr Nigel Gericke

Nigel together with the famed traditional healer Credo Mutwa formed Phyto Nova in 1988. The main intention in the creation of Phyto Nova was to investigate and pharmacologically verify the healing properties of local traditional medicinal plants. Credo Mutwa was critical to this intention with his close ties with the nationwide Traditional Healers Association combined with his own vast plant use knowledge.

Phyto Nova now trades as Thebe Natural Medicines and is instrumental in the upcoming clinical trials of Sutherlandia as an anti-retroviral treatment. The trials will begin next month, Sept 2007, at Edenvale hospital in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. It will consist of 124 HIV patients with early stage HIV infections and will run for an 18 month period. If Sutherlandia proves successful in these trails a large scale roll out is anticipated. A two week treatment presently costs R16.99 or 2.37US$ and it is hoped that this trial will put affordable local anti-retroviral treatment directly into the hands of all whom need it.

South Africa’s Health minister may have come under fire for her preference to nutritional and traditional medicine programmes, but it does seem like Australia has taken a green leaf from her book recently.

"We will promote the objectives of 'wellness' and disease prevention and develop a range of measures from foods and diets to early-stage diagnosis and improved management of disease to assist healthcare professionals and individuals to reduce the incidence and severity of ill-health," -Professor Richard Head, Preventative Health Flagship (P-Health).

The Australian Ministry for Health and Ageing has launched an initiative P-Health, to find new ways to detect and prevent the big four risks in advancing age, namely heart disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and bowl cancer.

"The goal is to extend that part of Australians' lives that are active and healthy by tackling the major conditions which afflict us as we age" -Professor Richard Head

With an estimated population of 4 million over 65’s by 2020, Australia is seeking to offset the deterioration in health and quality of life through the use of many areas of science brought into a common framework.

"It is the creative convergence of sciences like physiology, biology, nutrition, food science, maths, information technology and social sciences to assist in prevention"-Professor Richard Head

The Australian government is confident that such a widespread holistic framework will catalyse new and innovative uses of; diagnosis, disease management, specific nutrition, existing bio resources and traditional knowledge, in conjunction with new technologies like genomics and proteomics, nanotechnology and biotechnology, and data mining, will significantly improve quality of elderly life and increase the average life span in the process.

Talking of genomics, a humble plant, Thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) has been tortured countless times (if you are a fan of Peter Tompkins) or experimentally stressed by Filip Rolland, of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Flanders, Belgium. Filip discovered that plants do indeed become stressed just like humans, and Peter Tompkins previously postulated in 1973, and they measurably react to this experience by altering their genetic structure to cope with it.

Kinases are found in both plants and humans and are primarily known as transmitters and controllers of complex processes within cells. By studying Thale cress Filip revealed that of the 518 known Protein Kinases, KN10 and KN11 actively sensed stressful conditions e.g. no water, and responded to this stress by causing specific genetic repression or/and expression, and in so doing regulated the metabolism of the plant to cope with the stress e.g. less water leads to slower metabolism leads to slower photosynthetic processes and higher uptake of stored energy. Thus Thale cress is effectively aware of its environment and can dynamically plan survival strategies for a range of particular stress conditions.

What makes Filip’s plant research work relatable to the human condition is our sharing of the Kinases, and the underlying implications of a newly discovered system of detection and precise genetic control, present at the cellular level. If further researched Kinases could pave the way to a more comprehensive understanding of the vital role these types of proteins play in the all of the major diseases including ageing.