What’s the scientific truth of wolfberry and vacuum flask

What is the scientific truth behind “soaking wolfberries in a thermos cup”?

This time, the 78th Pearl River Science Lecture, co-sponsored by Guangzhou Science and Technology Bureau, Guangdong Science Center, and Yangcheng Evening News, specially invited the professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who has been engaged in optic nerve research for a long time, and the dean of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Central Nervous Regeneration Institute of Jinan University. Su Guohui, decrypt the magical health care and disease prevention effects of Chinese wolfberry.

Original intention: Why can wolfberry improve eyesight?

Chinese wolfberry is no stranger to Chinese people. From a historical point of view, Chinese people also have a deep understanding of the medicinal and health care value of wolfberry. In the “Shen Nong’s Materia Medica”, wolfberry is listed as the “top grade” of Chinese herbal medicine, and it is believed that wolfberry can be “long-served, light body, not old, cold and heat resistant”.

As a neuroscientist, Su Guohui learned that wolfberry has the effect of “clearing the liver and improving eyesight” during the research on the retina and optic nerve. So, he became curious about this, what kind of connotation does “eyesight” have? Can it be studied with modern scientific methods? From then on, he began the research process of wolfberry for more than ten years.

Recommendation: Eat a certain amount of wolfberry every day

Over the past ten years of research, Su Guohui has successively published nearly 40 articles related to wolfberry research. Through researching Su Guohui, he found that the effect of wolfberry is far more than improving eyesight. It has many functions such as neuromodulation, anti-tumor, cell protection and so on. Zheimer’s disease, depression, retinal diseases, etc. all play a preventive and therapeutic role.

Su Guohui explained that wolfberry is rich in nutrients, and there is a polysaccharide structure called wolfberry polysaccharide, which is very beneficial to the human body. In addition to wolfberry polysaccharide, the carotenoid composition in wolfberry is actually 4 times higher than carrot. Therefore, wolfberry has a strong antioxidant capacity. Since many diseases are caused by inflammation, eating wolfberry regularly when the body is healthy can play a role in preventing diseases.

A study found that in Chinese medicinal materials such as Ganoderma lucidum and American ginseng, wolfberry has the most frequency, indicating that wolfberry is the most common and commonly used by Chinese. This also reveals the role and safety of wolfberry from one aspect, which has been known to the public.

He believes that with the advent of an aging society, various senile diseases and chronic diseases will also have a high incidence. As a representative of the same medicine and food, wolfberry will play an important role in preventive medicine.

“You can eat it every day, even I have eaten wolfberry every day for more than ten years, it is very useful for anti-aging.” Professor Su suggested.

Wolfberry can protect the nervous system

In the lecture, Professor Su emphasized the protective effect of wolfberry on the nervous system.

For a long time, he has been trying to combine traditional Chinese medicine theories with modern scientific research methods to study wolfberry, and use modern technology to reveal the mechanism of the Chinese medicine effect of wolfberry.

He also proposed that in the face of diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, glaucoma, and retina, neuroscientists have proposed that it is not necessary to pursue the purpose of curing, but to emphasize delaying the occurrence of the disease. This is also the concept of TCM health preservation, and wolfberry is among them. Plays a very important role.

He explained that the nerve cells in the brain are “smart”. There are many protein structures in the cells, and there will be dialogue between proteins. Science calls this “dialog” “information pathway”, and the health of the information pathway , Directly affects the normality of the brain. In addition, there are many receptors on the surface of cells. The receptors are like human eyes and ears, allowing cells to perceive the external microenvironment. If the microenvironment is healthy, the “information pathways” between cells and between proteins are healthy. If the microenvironment is poor, the information pathway of apoptosis will increase, leading to the occurrence of diseases. Therefore, to protect nerve cells, we must first ensure that good information channels are increased and the production of bad information channels is reduced.

Scientists have discovered that the occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease (Alzheimer’s disease) is related to the accumulation of toxic substances in the brain. There will be senile plaques and nerve fiber enlargement in the brain. At present, three toxic substances have been found to be related to it. , Β-amyloid, glutamic acid and homocysteine.

After animal experiments, it was found that in the cerebral cortex of healthy mice, a large number of cell deaths occurred after adding toxic β-amyloid protein, and if wolfberry polysaccharides were added, the health of the cells would be much better. Similarly, for glutamic acid, homocysteine, lycium barbarum polysaccharides can also reduce the toxicity of these substances and reduce the number of cell deaths, thereby protecting the brain nerve cells.

Professor Su emphasized that experiments have proved that wolfberry can delay the occurrence of neurological diseases.

Depression is related to brain inflammation. Wolfberry eliminates inflammation

In addition to delaying the occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease, wolfberry can also effectively treat depression.

Professor Su said that as a common affective mental disorder, many adolescents now suffer from depression due to heavy learning pressure. The occurrence of depression is related to brain inflammation. In the study, scientists “reformed” experimental mice to become depressed, and thus were not interested in a series of “beautiful things” including sugar water.

Through research, it is found that there are many differences in the brain structure of mice with depression from the healthy brain. For example, the frequency of electricity generation by their nerve cells is much higher than normal. After administering products containing Lycium barbarum polysaccharides to these depressed mice, it was found that the depressive behavior of these mice was gone, and they became like normal mice, unable to resist the temptation of sugar water, and the power generation of their brain nerve cells gradually returned to normal.

Retinal diseases: Lycium barbarum is helpful for the relief of glaucoma and night blindness, and it also has a protective effect on human vision.