What Are The Cistanche Good For?

Contact: Audrey Hu audrey.hu@wecistanche.com

Cistanche is a Chinese medicinal herb with a medicinal and food dual-purpose. It has been regarded as a delicacy and known as the panacea. It has also been recognized and prescribed by famous doctors, its efficacy is obvious. The ancient medical book "Shen Nong's Materia Medica" praised the efficacy of Cistanche as below: "Shen Nong's Materia Medica" shows a sweet taste, mild. nourish inner organs, boost spirits and enhance physiology, improve fertility. It’s good for women's diseases. It helps to fit the body if takes on a long-term base.

According to modern medical research, Cistanche contains two main important effective substances which are the echinacoside and acteoside. It also contains rich alkaloids, crystalline neutral substances, amino acids, trace elements, vitamins, and other nutrients, which are beneficial to the human body. These tonic nutritious substances work perfectly on human health.

Chinese medicine believes that Cistanche has many functions such as protecting the liver and kidney, moistening the intestines, and anti-aging. In recent years, it has been widely used in clinical prescriptions, Chinese patent medicines, and health products.

The main effects of Cistanche are summarized as follows:

1. Improve Immunity. The total Cistanche glycosides, cistanche polysaccharides, and acteoside can significantly reduce the content of MDA in liver and brain tissues, significantly increase telomerase activity in heart and brain tissues. it effectively enhances the function of peritoneal macrophages in spring phages, lymphocyte proliferation, and peripheral The blood IL-2 content is significantly increased, thus enhancing the body's immune function.

2. Improve kidney function, Enhance Physiology. Used for men with weak kidney function, deficiency of blood, impotence, premature ejaculation, hematuria, penile cold and heat, pain in waist and knees, weakness of muscles and bones; for women with insufficient kidney function, blood collapse, leucorrhea, infertility, etc.

3. Protect the liver from excessive drinking and reduce hangovers. The total Cistanche glycosides can reduce cell apoptosis and necrosis, increase cell survival rate, and realize the protection of primary liver cells. At the same time, it can accelerate the liver's catabolism of alcohol, help the liver detoxification function, and have a good alleviation effect on liver diseases caused by excessive drinking.

4. Moistening intestines and reducing constipation problems. The galactitol and oligosaccharides in cistanche can significantly promote bowel movements, increase intestinal osmotic pressure, inhibit water absorption in the large intestine, and have a laxative effect. Experiments have shown that cistanche, which is rich in echinacoside, can also improve colitis induced by sodium dextran sulfate. It is suitable for middle-aged and elderly patients who has physical deficiency constipation, postpartum constipation, postoperative constipation, habitual constipation, etc.

5. Replenish the Marrow and Agility. Used for neurasthenia, insomnia, forgetfulness, and senile dementia.

6. Skin Whitening and Nourish Beauty. The echinacoside and acteoside in Cistanche have antioxidant effects, it reduces melanin deposits in the body, regulate the endocrine, nourishes the lungs, and keep the skin fair and tender.

7. Enhance Sleeping Quality. It is especially effective for insomnia caused by heart-kidney incompatibility.

8. Boosts Bone Growth. The echinacoside in cistanche has a significant enhancement effect on bone density, bone mechanical properties, bone fiber structure, bone tissue morphology, and other indicators of the osteoporosis model rats established by the removal of the ovary. It promotes cell proliferation and increases ALP significantly. The activity and the content of collagen, increase the mineralization level of osteocalcin and bone cells, thus promoting bone regeneration.

9. Anti-inflammatory Effect. The echinacoside from cistanche extract has a good improvement effect on mice with dextran sodium sulfate-induced colitis. Its Phenylethanol glycosides have a protective effect on inflammatory cells caused by nitric oxide. Thus the cistanche extract has anti-inflammatory effects.

10. Anti-tumor. Cistanche’s petroleum ether content extract has cell cycle inhibitory activity on mouse breast cancer tsFT210 cells, this indicates that cistanche has anti-tumor effects.

11. Anti-radiation. Cistanche glycosides can significantly promote the SOD activity in red blood cells and boost the recovery of nucleic acid content in spleen cells for mice injured by 60Co radiation. It reduces the MDA content in liver cells, and significantly reduce peripheral blood leukocytes and bone marrow for mice with Nucleated cells after radiation injury, reticulocytes, spleen colonies (CFUS), reduce the activity of selenium glutathione peroxidase (Se-gsh-Px) in bone marrow cells, and spleen cells, increase MDA content. So the total glycosides from Cistanche have an anti-radiation effect.

12. Anti-allergy. Acteoside from cistanche inhibits the release of histamine, TNF-α, interleukin-4 (IL-4), and β-peroxidase produced by the human basophil cell line (KU812). Based on this experiment's results, the cistanche may have anti-allergy effects.

13. Inhibit prostate hyperplasia. The apoptotic rate of rat prostate cells treated with acteoside from cistanche was significantly higher than the rest in the model group. The indicators showed that acteoside significantly improved the ultrastructure and promoted cell apoptosis, thus inhibiting benign prostatic hyperplasia.

14. Vasodilation Effects. The scientific research showed that echinacoside has endothelium-dependent vasodilation effects on mouse aortic rings, and phenethyl alcohol glycosides also have vasodilation effects.

15. Sedative Effect. The extract of Cistanche can prolong the sleep time of rats and reduce spontaneous movement which includes horizontal movement, walking time, and total movement distance. This indicates that the cistanche extract has a sedative effect.

16. Nourish Internal Organs. Anti-aging, prolong life.

17. Cistanche is a non-toxic Chinese Medicine. Traditionally used as food. It had also been used as a medicinal herb in history.