Rosemary

Enlarge Image Image Gallery In Latin, rosemary means ‘dew of the sea.’ Modern research shows that it contains antioxidants. D. Kane

A FTER YEARS OF BEING KNOWN in the United States as little more than a culinary flavoring, rosemary is gaining respect for its potential to heal.

Recent research into rosemary’s chemical makeup shows that the herb contains antioxidants, which inhibit the action of free radicals—unstable molecules believed to cause many diseases, including cancer.

So far, studies of rosemary’s healing effects have been conducted only in test tubes and on animals, although human ­trials are planned. But animal studies show that rosemary’s antioxidants prevent cancer-causing compounds from binding to DNA.

Jim Duke, Ph.D., Herbs for Health editorial advisory board member and author of The Green Pharmacy (Rodale, 1997), says that these studies, along with additional ­evidence, point to the ability of rosemary’s antioxidants to prevent and suppress Alzheimer’s disease.

“Alzheimer’s has been blamed on oxidative and inflammatory processes and on the breakdown or deficiency of choline and acetylcholine in the brain,” Duke says. “Rosemary contains more than a dozen antioxidants and a half-dozen compounds reported to prevent the breakdown of acetylcholine.”

Further, Duke and other researchers say that rosemary is at least as effective as the Alzheimer’s drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but that rosemary is gentler on the body.

“I’d bet my head of hair that rosemary shampoo, rosemary tea, or rosemary bathwater would have activities parallel to tacrine or huperzine [two FDA-approved Alzheimer’s treatments] at retarding the progression of Alzheimer’s,” Duke says.

Duke and others in the scientific community assert that the results of the scientific tests to date, combined with rosemary’s use in traditional medical practices, provide enough evidence to support using rosemary as an antioxidant.

In fact, at Hauser Laboratories, Inc., in Boulder, Colorado, workers currently are extracting large volumes of the herb to make a rosemary supplement to be sold nationwide.

Rod Lenoble, Hauser’s scientific affairs manager, says that despite a lack of human trials involving rosemary, there exists an “overwhelming body of research to ­support rosemary’s effectiveness.” He cites the fact that in Mediterranean countries, where rosemary is a common cooking ingredient, rates of cancer and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s are among the lowest worldwide.