Essiac Articles

The Controversy of Red Clover
The Red Clover herb is not used in the Essiac formula

By Xania Livia

Notice to the reader:  The Canadian Competition Bureau, The Canadian Natural Health Products Directorate, and The United States Food and Drug Administration. Please be advised, even though this article mentions the word “Cancer” in conjunction to the medicinal use of Red clover, Praxea.com is not endorsing the use of any herbal product to be used in the treatment, mitigation, or prevention of a disease, disorder or abnormal physical sate or it’s symptoms, nor restoring or correcting organic functions, nor maintaining or promoting health or modifying organic function in humans.  This article in for educational purposes only

  Red clover has the traditional use of healing the nervous system, used as a blood purifier, for lung conditions and cancer.  Today there are false Essiac formulas on the market, illegally being promoted as “cancer health products” which use the herb Red clover in their recipe.  Half truths of information on the research data for Red clover are making there way on the internet and are misleading the consumer.

  Today the herb is being researched for the prevention and treatment of cancer. Research material on the internet found conflicting data either supporting the use of Red clover for the treatment of certain cancers while other data found Red Clover to actually increase cancer.

  So which data was telling the truth?  Investigations found that a few companies, who were promoting the use of Red clover, had used partial information from research material, leaving out crucial information from the whole research experiment.

  To say that genistein, an enzyme inhibitor, found in Red Clover may offer anticancer properties is not a completely true statement. In truth, genistein in higher levels than what Red Clover contains is being researched to inhibit the blood supply to cancerous tumors, which then prevents the cancer cell from duplicating as they starve off and die.

  An excellent explanation from the web site hystersisters.com provides a simplified version of the research material on the experimental use of Red clover:

  Start -  “Here's where the situation gets murkier, in part because almost all the [Red clover] data comes from test tubes, where they can use isolated and extremely high levels of the isoflavones [natural plant estrogen] levels that you could never reach in your body. It seems as though low levels of the isoflavones, including the genistein and biochanin A found in Red clover, caused one kind of breast cancer cell to grow, while at super high levels, the same isoflavones caused the same breast cancer cells to stop growing.

  In real life, however, these isoflavones would never show up all by themselves. Studies where these chemicals were used in combination with other estrogens tell a different story. Low levels of genistein and estradiol (your body's estrogen) together seemed to stop breast cancer cells from growing. In another study, when the isoflavones were added to environmental estrogens (from plastics and fertilizers, etc.), they stopped cancer cell growth. A mixture of all the isoflavones worked the best. That result fit with a study of bladder cancer cells in (Vitro) the test tube, which showed that all the isoflavones worked together to stop cell growth. These isoflavones may also fight pancreatic cancer in women (but not in men), stomach cancer, and colon cancer.

  The picture may be confusing because isoflavones may increase growth in estrogen-receptor cancer cells and decrease growth in progesterone receptor cells. Or it may be that the isoflavones are effective against cancer because they are antioxidants and not because they imitate hormones. Or, on the down side, it may be that isoflavones can cause DNA strands to break, aside from what they are doing in the receptors.” – end.