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Cup of mint tea is an effective painkiller |
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Written by Jessica Smith
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Sunday, 06 December 2009 |
A cup of Brazilian mint tea has pain relieving qualities to match those of commercially available analgesics, a study suggests.
Hyptis
crenata has been prescribed by Brazilian healers for millennia to treat
ailments from headaches and stomach pain to fever and flu.
Working on mice, a Newcastle University team has proved scientifically that the ancient medicine men were right.
The study is published in the journal Acta Horticulturae.
In
order to mimic the traditional treatment as closely as possible, the
Newcastle team carried out a survey in Brazil to find out how the
medicine is typically prepared and how much should be consumed.
The
most common method was to produce a decoction. This involves boiling
the dried leaves in water for 30 minutes and allowing the liquid to
cool before drinking it as a tea.
The team found that when the
mint was given at a dose similar to that prescribed by traditional
healers, the medicine was as effective at relieving pain as a synthetic
aspirin-style drug called Indometacin.
They plan to launch clinical trials to find out how effective the mint is as a pain relief for people.
Lead
researcher Graciela Rocha said: "Since humans first walked the Earth we
have looked to plants to provide a cure for our ailments - in fact it
is estimated more than 50,000 plants are used worldwide for medicinal
purposes.
"Besides traditional use, more than half of all prescription drugs are based on a molecule that occurs naturally in a plant.
"What
we have done is to take a plant that is widely used to safely treat
pain and scientifically proven that it works as well as some synthetic
drugs.
"Now the next step is to find out how and why the plant works."
Graciela is Brazilian and remembers being given the tea as a cure for every childhood illness.
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