RICHARD WALKER / RWALKER@STARBULLETIN.COM
Noni is extracted from the Indian mulberry plant, held by clinical research nurse Faith Inoshita, left. Groups of patients are taking a dehydrated extract of ripe noni in capsules under a study being conducted by Dr. Brian Issell, right, Inoshita and Dr. Carolyn Gotay at the University of Hawaii’s Cancer Research Center.

Noni’s medical worth
being tested

Early results of a study show
promise, but more drug interaction
tests are in the works

A Participant in a Cancer Research Center of Hawaii study to determine if noni will benefit cancer patients thinks an extract from the fruit is helping her.

But while the first phase of the study is encouraging, it is too soon to conclude whether noni is beneficial, said principal investigator Dr. Brian Issell.

Issell is conducting the study — the first looking at effects of noni in humans — to determine if noni does what it is purported to do in worldwide promotion of health products, where it is touted as helping a divergent range of illnesses.

There is no scientific evidence of benefits or adverse effects of noni, extracted from the Indian mulberry plant, Issell said. “We really need to find out if noni helps more than harms people with different illnesses.”

Dolores DeSoto, 70, of Aiea, is one of about 30 patients in the study with advanced cancer for which no standard treatment is available.

Groups of five patients are taking different doses of a dehydrated extract of ripe noni in capsules. Doses are being increased to find one that will provide the most benefit to patients with the least toxicity or side effects, Issell said. The patients began with two capsules twice a day and have escalated to five capsules four times a day.

“Some patients say they’re feeling a little queasy, but we haven’t seen anything to make us concerned that noni is going to harm anyone,” Issell said.

DeSoto is taking three capsules four times a day. “I have nothing to lose,” she said. She was diagnosed with stomach cancer in April 2001, and half of her stomach was removed.

About five months later, another mass was found near her liver. She had a series of chemotherapy and radiation treatments which were not working.

She joined the study, thinking, “If I can help somebody else, that would be great.”

She has had no adverse symptoms, and her doctor says CT scans show her cancer has stabilized, she said. “If it’s growing, it’s just a millimeter.”

He thinks noni is helping, she said, “and I’m beginning to believe in it. But I believe in prayers also.” She said she is back to housework, cooking and “everything I used to do.”

Issell, clinical sciences program director at the University of Hawaii cancer center, is working on the study with researcher Dr. Carolyn Gotay and Faith Inoshita, a clinical research nurse.

“We’re looking for an effect related to the dose,” Issell said. “We’re seeing something, but we don’t know what it is yet.”

If the National Institutes of Health renews his two-year grant when it runs out in July, he said he will continue increasing capsules until patients are taking 32 a day.

This is not unusual with experimental treatments, he said.

Issell said he became interested in measuring how people feel and function with noni because some of his cancer patients said it made them feel better.

The center also gets an “incredible amount” of inquiries about noni, used in traditional healing by native Hawaiians, other Pacific islanders and Asian populations, he said.

Tahitian noni, one of many products marketed as a “healthy beverage,” is a $2 billion industry with no proof that it has any benefits, he said.

Besides studying the tolerance, results and potential toxicities of different doses of noni, the researchers are looking at how it may interact with other drugs patients are taking.

They are analyzing how the plant’s different ingredients are absorbed and excreted, and they are trying to identify all its chemicals. “I thought we’d better do the whole thing because we don’t want to miss something important,” Issell said.

Associate specialist Adrian Franke heads a team, with research associate Laurie Custer, that analyzes blood and urine samples from participants and measures the chemical ingredients.

Their goal is to identify any chemicals that could be used to indicate if an active ingredient is getting into the blood, Issell said. Then they could standardize preparation of noni food supplements, he added.

Inoshita said they are not only looking at anti-tumor properties, but monitoring participants’ quality of life to see whether noni relieves fatigue, pain and other cancer symptoms.

She said the researchers get anecdotal information from people that noni reduces arthritic pain and cholesterol and boosts energy, but these are isolated results.

Issell said a lot of people put ripe noni fruit, which looks like a small breadfruit, in a jar and drink it when it liquefies in three to five days. But fermentation changes the product, resulting in a different chemical profile, he noted.

Issell said noni tastes like rancid cheese. He said a friend liquefies the fruit for a boost on hiking trips, but Issell can hardly stand the smell in the car.

DeSoto said she had heard about noni from people who “drink it for blood pressure or for this or for that. I drank it once way back when. Ooh, no way!”

DeSoto said she has no aftertaste from the capsule, which has an extract from Big Island fruit.

Issell said the extract contains “Everything in the fruit. Nothing is strained off. We have to show purity, no contaminants.”

In the future, he said, the researchers want to identify how patients metabolize drugs differently. Hawaii’s population also offers a unique opportunity to see if different ethnic groups respond to noni in different ways, he said.

Research will begin to test the plant
against cancer and its symptoms

Thursday, June 19, 2001
GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Research physician Dr. Brian Issell displayed the CAT
scans of patients being monitored in a study on the
effects of medications from the noni plant.The Noni plant, used in traditional healing throughout Polynesia, has become one of the most popular complementary treatments worldwide for all kinds of diseases.

Yet, there is no evidence that the plant is useful medically, says Dr. Brian Issell, clinical sciences program director at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii.

He has received a National Institutes of Health grant of $170,000 per year for two years to conduct the first scientific study of Noni in humans.

Noni, extracted from the Indian mulberry plant, has been used for more than 1,000 years in traditional healing practices of native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders and Asian populations.

However, it’s the least known of the five most commonly used complementary medicines, says Nina Etkin, medical anthropologist who heads the University of Hawaii anthropology department.

The others — aloe, garlic, ginseng and lemongrass — are very well characterized chemically and their medical uses are well-documented, she said.

Etkin looked at the plants as part of a study on use of complementary medicines in Hawaii published in 1999 in “Economic Botany.”

She said she became interested when Noni emerged as “a prominent phenomenon” here in the early 1990s. “At one point it was very expensive. People were using Noni for virtually everything — cancers, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, colds, infections and wounds.”

Noni was used sparingly in traditional Hawaiian medicine, and only topically on wounds and skin disorders, never internally, she said. So, she was curious about the plant’s dramatic reputation for medical treatments.

She found that, driven by commercial ventures and advertising, “it really took fire and now is very popular worldwide,” she said. “But, as many of these complementary and alternative medicines, it was virtually untested. Its reputation preceded demonstrated scientific merit.”

Issell said he was prompted to look at Noni because many people say it is helping them. Some studies have shown it has some effect on cancer cells, but it hasn’t been studied scientifically in people, he said.

“We want to see if it works or not, and how good the compounds are,” he said. “We want to make sure it helps people more than harms them.”

He plans to begin research early next month after the Noni capsules arrive. A mainland company is producing them with freeze-dried extract from Hawaii-grown plants, he said.

Cancer patients for whom standard treatments haven’t worked, or who haven’t had any treatments, and meet other criteria will be recruited to take the capsules.

The first phase is to figure out what doses can be tolerated and if there is any evidence that Noni alleviates a patient’s cancer symptoms or causes the cancer to shrink, he said.

Patients will be evaluated regularly, with measurements of the tumors and other things associated with cancer, such as fatigue, depression and general quality of life, he said.

The next stage will be to look at particular cancers and identify any ingredients in Noni that are more powerful as anti-cancer agents, he said. A traditional way of preparing Noni in Hawaii is to seal the fruit in a glass jar with water and leave it in the sun to ferment, making juice to drink.

Issell said: “The smell is worse than the taste. When you taste it, it’s not as bad as you think it would be. It’s a little sour, a little bitterness to it.”

Putting it in capsules is not so much to hide the taste but to be consistent, he said.

He said he’s excited because his Noni research is “just the very first step at looking at a number of botanicals, plant extracts, that have been used in traditional healings of our multicultural population here.”

Issell has been involved in developing other anti-cancer drugs from plants, such as those from the periwinkle plant. “Two very powerful drugs actually cured patients with otherwise incurable cancer,” he said.

For more information about the Noni study, call the clinical trials unit at 1-808-586-2979. For information about complementary and alternative treatments for cancer, call the Cancer Information Service, 1-800-4-CANCER.

© 2001 Honolulu Star-Bulletin
http://starbulletin.com

In this study, the team lead by French scientist Chafique Younos, tested the analgesic and sedative effects of extracts from the Morinda Citrifolia plant. They were aware of the traditional use of the plant as a general analgesic, and set out to determine if those claims were valid. The extract was shown to be non-toxic and did “show a significant, dose-related, central analgesic activity in the treated mice.” This study included various experiments on the treated mice to determine the analgesic effect, if any, from the plant extracts of the Morinda Citrifolia (Noni). The conclusion of these researchers was that the extract did in fact demonstrate analgesic effects consistently in each experiment. The conclusion of this study included a simple statement from the authors: “These findings validate the traditional analgesic properties of this plant ” The above represent only a sample of the research completed on the Morinda Citrifolia plant. The results are conclusive in each case in showing the validity of the traditional use of the Noni.

In this study, a team of Japanese researchers studied the effect of over 500 extracts from tropical plants on the K-ras-NRK cell (a pre cursor to certain types of cancer). The compound, damnacanthal, found in the Morinda Citrifolia (Noni), was found to be an inhibitor of Ras function. The research: Ras cells were seeded into 96 plates and incubated at 33 degrees centigrade for 24 hours. The Noni plant extract was added and the cell morphology was examined every day for five days.

The Ras function was inhibited by the injected plant extract. This same compound has been found to inhibit the Epstein-Barr virus early-antigen activation. The extract from the Morinda Citrifolia was found to be most effective in inhibiting Ras function among the 500 tested extracts.

The fruit juice of Morinda citrifolia (noni) contains a polysaccharide-rich substance (noni-ppt) with antitumour activity in the Lewis lung (LLC) peritoneal carcinomatosis model. Therapeutic administration of noni-ppt significantly enhanced the duration of survival of inbred syngeneic LLC tumour bearing mice. It did not exert significant cytotoxic effects in an adapted culture of LLC cells, LLC1, but could activate peritoneal exudate cells (PEC) to impart profound toxicity when co-cultured with the tumour cells. This suggested the possibility that noni-ppt may suppress tumour growth through activation of the host immune system. Concomitant treatment with the immunosuppressive agent, 2-chloroadenosine (C1-Ade) or cyclosporin (cys-A) diminished its activity, thereby substantiating an immunomodulatory mechanism. Noni-ppt was also capable of stimulating the release of several mediators from murine effector cells, including tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta), IL-10, IL-12 p70, interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) and nitric oxide (NO), but had no effect on IL-2 and suppressed IL-4 release. Improved survival time and curative effects occurred when noni-ppt was combined with sub-optimal doses of the standard chemotherapeutic agents, adriamycin (Adria), cisplatin (CDDP), 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), and vincristine (VCR), suggesting important clinical applications of noni-ppt as a supplemental agent in cancer treatment.

This is a very significant study by a team of researchers from the University of Hawaii led by Annie Hirazumi. Ms. Hirazumi became interested in the study of the Noni fruit because of earlier experiences with its amazing qualities. Her father helped a good friend with the juice of the Noni, and later, Annie administered the pure Noni juice to a pet dog who was dying. The dog recovered miraculously, and Annie set out to find out more about this incredible fruit. The study by Ms. Hirazumi and her colleagues was conducted on live laboratory mice (specifically C57BL/6 mice) specifically identified as very receptive to injected Lewis Lung Carcinoma cells. The mice were injected with active Lewis Lung Carcinoma cells (LLC). Untreated, the mice died from 9-12 days after injection from the tumor growth. A portion of the injected mice were treated with Noni juice in five separate daily treatments. The Noni juice was shown to significantly increase the life span of the treated mice (from 105% 123%) with 9 of the 22 mice surviving for more than 50 days. The experiment was repeated on a different lot of mice with similar results. The Research Team concluded that the Noni juice: seems to act indirectly by enhancing host immune system involving macrophages and/or lymphocytes.

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Environmental Writer

Much information about native Hawaiian medicinal plants is lost, but several important medicinal herbs are still in regular use in the Islands.

One of them is Noni, which has reputed value in a wide range of ills.

“People are crazy about this plant. They use it for diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer,” and many other illnesses, said Isabella Abbott, G.P. Wilder Professor of Botany at the University of Hawaii.

Abbott said she doesn’t hand out medical advice, but gets plenty of calls from people who are looking for medicinal herbs and can’t locate them. Her interest in ethnobotany, the native uses of plants, has given her the reputation of one who knows where to find useful plants.

And normally, she does know, she said.

The plant about which she gets the most calls, perhaps 10 a week, is Noni, known to science as Morinda citrifolia, she said.

Noni is one of the plants believed to have been brought to Hawaii by early Polynesian immigrants. It is an attractive shrub with large, shiny green leaves, but has one characteristic that limits its value to those who would consider growing it in their yards or gardens.

The fruit stinks.

“It smells like something the dog dragged in,” Abbott said. “It’s a beautiful tree. It is. What I would do is pick off the fruit before they’re ripe.

Medicinally, fortunately, the half-ripe fruit is as good or better than the ripe, or few people would even consider it.

Former University of Hawaii researcher R.M. Heinicke, writing in a 1985 issue of the Bulletin of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, said the fruit contains a natural alkaloid, xeronine, as well as a chemical that is converted to xeronine in the digestive tract. Xeronine may have some beneficial medicinal effects in diseases related to a lack of the chemical, he wrote.

Heinicke, while making no guarantees, lists ailments which in some cases might be eased by the use of Noni juice: high blood pressure, menstrual cramps, arthritis, gastric ulcers, sprains, injuries, mental depression, senility, poor digestion, atherosclerosis, blood vessel problems, drug addiction and others. It may even help relieve pain, Heinicke wrote.

Abbott said she is careful not to promote the use of specific herbs for specific diseases.

“When I talk about ethnobotanical plants, I use all kinds of disclaimers,” she said. But she may also add personal experiences.

Her mother, Abbott said, used the ripe fruit juice on cuts and scrapes, to prevent infection. She assumes that such products as Noni juice or aloe sap simply create a barrier to the entry of germs.

Another plant for which Abbott gets occasional calls is the `uhaloa, a fuzzy-leafed shrub.

The `ulaloa, or hi`aloa, Waltheria indica , is used for sore throats. The outer bark is scraped off the roots, and the inner bark collected. It is mixed with water and used for a gargle, in one use.

Some native plants can be difficult to grow, but can be worth the effort, simply for cultural interest, because they are attractive and because they can be useful.

One upcoming source of plenty of information on the subject is “Polynesian Herbal Medicine,” by ethnobotanist W. Arthur Whistler, to be published later this year by the National Tropical Botanical Garden.

The distant ancestors of today’s Polynesians are believed to have migrated to Hawaii from Southeast Asia. Several centuries before the time of Christ these sturdy and brave people set out upon great sea voyages in humble canoes arriving in the area of central Polynesia around the time of Christ, or approximately about 100 AD. Over the next several centuries the distinctive Polynesian culture emerged and was dispersed to all the islands now considered to constitute Polynesia which extends in an arc from New Zealand in the southwest to Hawaii in the northeast. Of the 12 most commonly mentioned plants (8 of which were brought from Southeast Asia) Noni was the second most popular plant mentioned for use in herbal remedies.
When these first settlers began their journey into the unknown they took with them the plants and animals they considered to be essential for their survival in the new lands they sailed toward. Of the plants these settlers brought with them many had applications for clothing, building supplies, containers, dyes, etc., but most were primarily food and medicinal plants. Taro, yam, breadfruit, bananas and sugar cane are five of the Polynesian food plants that have origins in Southeast Asia.
Of the twelve common Polynesian medicinal plants used by the Hawaiians, eight of the most popular plants are believed to have been brought to Hawaii from south and central Polynesia in a canoe voyages about 1,500 years ago. Although about 317 species of plants were believed to be employed by 19th century Hawaiians for herbal medicinal, only a very small number were commonly used for the most frequent health complaints.

According to Dr. Isabella Abbott, of the University of Hawaii, Hawaiians that relied on herbal cures suffered from the same ailments that we, today, consider to be a part of modern every day life (with the notable exception of “headaches”). Before contact with the West (Captain Cook arrived in 1778) the isolated Hawaiians were relatively disease free. Their medical conditions addressed by herbal cures fell in the range of malignancies or tumors, purges or consumption, skin afflictions, respiratory affections (including asthma), indigestion, conditions associated with pregnancy, childbirth and old age, fever and bruises, broken bones, sprains and cuts.
Contact with Captain Cook’s crews introduced gonorrhea, syphilis and tuberculosis, and continued contact in the 1800′s decimated the Hawaiian population with measles, small pox, cholera, mumps, influenza, pneumonia, leprosy and other diseases. The Hawaiian pharmacopoeia could not deal with these diseases, but the Western medicine had no cures for them either at that time. Noni, whose scientific name is Morinda citrifolia , and is also called Indian Mulberry was one of the important plants that were brought to Hawaii by the first Polynesians.
One of the great tragedies of this devastation of the Hawaiian population was the loss of information in many areas of Hawaiian culture, including the area of herbal medicinal knowledge. The Hawaiian tradition required their men and women who held knowledge in all areas of Hawaiian society to chose an apprentice to pass that knowledge on to before they died. This was essential as most of their teachings and traditions were taught verbally. The epidemics brought by contact with the Western world swept through the Hawaiian peoples in a swift and deadly manner that allowed no time for the ancient knowledge of several thousands of years of civilization to be passed on. What little knowledge we have left to us today has come from the efforts of early historians who tried to capture in writing the details of practice and belief of the Hawaiians before the 1820′s, and the efforts of modern researchers to record the common knowledge of the older Hawaiians.

Today, ancient Hawaiian medical knowledge is coming under the scrutiny of renewed interest spurred on by researchers in the fields of ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology. The call has gone out for systematic studies to determine pharmacologically active compounds among the Hawaiian plant medicinal. The need for these studies is underscored by the fact that today, in Western medicine, 60 per cent of written prescriptions are for substances that are naturally occurring in nature. The paucity of studies to date on Hawaiian medicinal herbs means that the “knowledge of the pharmacological properties of the majority of Hawaiian herbs is still incomplete” says Dr. Isabella Abbott of the University of Hawaii.

Dr.’s Tabrah and Eveleth, in a report to the Hawaii Medical Journal, entitled Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Ancient Hawaiian Medicine, stated that the “Hawaiian Kahunas were highly specialized experts with considerable skill in physical diagnosis and pharmacology”. A “Kahuna” was a learned teacher of ancient body of spiritual, medical and philosophical knowledge called the Huna. Huna translates as “That Which is Hidden” and a Kahuna was simply a teacher of the Huna. The Hawaiians readily accepted the Christian teachings of the missionaries because the Huna also stated that there was one God and they considered Jesus to have been a great and powerful Kahuna. The Kahunas of ancient Hawaii, before their own cultural corruption by greedy and blood-thirsty rulers and the subsequent loss of knowledge caused by the arrival of the white man were reputed to be able to perform and self-same miracles attributed to Jesus, including instantaneous healing and revival of the dead. When the people realized that the missionary priests were not able to duplicate the miracles of Jesus, their Kahunas rebelled and went back to the old practices. The missionaries, to protect their efforts at converting the Hawaiians to their Christian beliefs, had laws passed to declare the practice of the Huna illegal and punishable by fines and imprisonment. It was not until the 1960′s that these laws were repealed. In this manner a large body of knowledge was lost, perhaps forever.
The ancient Hawaiian knowledge of medicine was practiced by several different and distinct classes of Kahunas. The Hawaiians recognized two categories of disease. Those caused by forces from without the body, and those caused from forces within. The illnesses from within were treated by the kahuna haha (medical diagnostician), kahuna lapa`au (medical doctor) or the kahuna la`au lapa`au (herbalist).
The Kahuna la`au lapa`au began training at the age of five in the home of his or her mentor. Over a period of approximately 20 years they learned about the medicinal plants, their effect on the body, where they grew and how to prepare and administer them. There are a few Kahuna la`au lapa`aus whom practice today, and their array of medicinal plants still include those plants used by the ancient Hawaiians, with the addition of some modern plants such as Aloe Vera and comfrey.
Noni, whose scientific name is Morinda citrifolia , and is also called Indian Mulberry was one of the important plants that were brought to Hawaii by the first Polynesians. Although, as mentioned before, there are 317 species of plants that were documented by Kaaiakamanu and Akina in 1922 to have been used by pre-20th century Hawaiian herbalists only a very small number were commonly used for known physical conditions of illnesses. Of the 12 most commonly mentioned plants (8 of which were brought from Southeast Asia) Noni was the second most popular plant mentioned for use in herbal remedies. Ethnobotanical studies from Indonesia verify many of the same uses for Noni as those reported by the Hawaiians.

The Hawaiians utilized the whole Noni plant. The roots, stems, bark, leaves, flowers and fruit are all mentioned in various combinations in the almost 40 known and recorded herbal remedies involving Noni. In addition, the roots were used to produce a yellow or red dye for the tapa cloths, and the fruit was eaten during times of famine. There are numerous Polynesian stories of heroes and heroines that survived famine by eating the Noni. There is one tale of Kamapua`a, the pig god who loved Pele the volcano goddess, taunting Pele with the chant, I have seen the woman gathering Noni / Scratching Noni / Pounding Noni. Supposedly, the chant referred to Pele’s eyes which were red, and she became so angry she plunged into battle with him. A Tongan myth tells of the god Maui being restored to life by having the leaves of the Noni placed on his body.
The Noni plant is a small evergreen tree found growing in open coastal regions at sea level and in forest areas up to about 1,300 feet above sea level. The plant is often found growing along lava flows. It’s identifiable by it’s straight trunk, large, bright green and elliptical leaves, white tubular flowers and it’s distinctive, ovid, “grenade-like” yellow fruit. The fruit can grow to 12cm or more and has a lumpy surface covered by polygonal-shaped sections. The seeds, which are triangular shaped and reddish brown, have an air-sac attached at one end which makes the seeds buoyant, (this could explain, in part, the wide distribution of the plant throughout the Hawaiian Islands). The Noni fruit, when mature, has a foul taste and odor. The smell and taste of the fruit pulp is so foul that one researcher pronounced it akin to ‘vomitus’! Although well know and popular in the islands, (the University of Hawaii’s Botany department receives about 10 calls a week from people trying to locate a source of Noni) this characteristic, until now, has been a definite barrier to it’s widespread use on the mainland.
In 1992, Mr. Herbert Moniz, a licensed massage therapist and lifetime resident of Maui, developed a process to dehydrate the Noni fruit into a powder that is smell-less and tasteless when placed in capsules. Mr. Moniz learned about the Noni fruit and it’s believed medicinal value when a family friend recommended it to his wife, Lona, who was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. When Mrs. Moniz’s cancer did not recur, Mr. Moniz developed the process by which the Noni fruit is pulped, the seeded removed and saved for propagation of new plants, and the pulp then dried into powder form.

The medical knowledge and pharmacopoeia of the ancient Hawaiians is now believed to have been fairly complex and specific, and the modern day scientific and medical communities are beginning to study the plants that were used by the Hawaiian kahunas. The importance of these studies is underscored in a quote from a 1987 report in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology: “In the past, the pharmaceutical industry has often relied on tropical plants as sources of new drugs (e.g. quinine, vincristine, tubocurine, reserpine, cocaine and many others). If the industry is to continue to use plants to develop new products, there is an urgent need for the collection of basic ethnobotanical data…”

In a report to the 83rd Annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in May of 1992 (Hirazumi, A., Furusawa, E., Chou, S.C., Okano, C. and Ching, C., University of Hawaii, Dept. of Pharmacology and Dept. of Medicine) the juice of the fruit of the Noni plant was shown to significantly prolong the life of mice with implanted Lewis lung carcinoma. Their conclusion was that it seemed to suppress tumor growth indirectly by stimulating the immune system. The mechanism of stimulation is still unknown and is under further study.
In a paper published in 1949 in the Pacific Science, a quarterly devoted to the biological and physical sciences of the Pacific Region, the fruit of the Noni exhibited moderate antibacterial properties against the bacterias M. pyrogenes, E. coli and Ps. aeruginosa.
Most recently, in an article published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Feb. 9, 1992, Professor of Botany at the University of Hawaii, Isabella Abbott, was quoted as saying “People are crazy about this plant. They use it for diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer and many other illnesses.” Also, former U of H researcher, R.M. Heinicke, states that the fruit of Noni contains a natural alkaloid xeronine, as well as a chemical that is converted to xeronine in the digestive tract. The ailments he believes may possibly be helped by Noni are: high blood pressure, menstrual cramps, arthritis, gastric ulcers, sprains, injuries, mental depression, senility, poor digestion, arteriosclerosis, blood vessel problems, drug addiction and pain. In addition, locally, people have reported success using Noni to treat breast cancer, and eye problems. Dr. Joseph Betz, a research chemist with the F.D.A.’s Division of Natural Products Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition states, “Morinda citrifolia has been tested for a number of biological activities in animal and anti-microbial studies.” He reports that the dried fruit has a smooth muscle stimulatory activity and a histaminergic effect. The root was also reported as possessing analgesic and tranquilizing activity. In the September 30, 1993 issue of Cancer Letters a report out of Keio University and The Institute of Biomedical Sciences in Japan claimed isolation of a new anthraquinone compound from the Noni root called damnacanthal which induced normal morphology and cytoskeletal structure in K-ras-NRK cancer cells.

Todays’ researchers in the emerging fields of ethnobotony and ethnopharmacology are reaching back through time to discover again what the ancient Polynesians knew as they carefully, lovingly placed the young shoots of the valuable Noni plant into their canoes, among the bananas, taro and yams, and set out for horizons unknown. Almost nothing is known now about these early Hawaiians, how they worshiped and what they would talk about amongst themselves as they watched the brilliant tropical sun set, once again, into the vast and lonely ocean that kept them isolated from the rest of the world for almost 2,000 years. They’ve disappeared, the veil of time leaving us only hints of their lives, and the evergreen gift of the Noni.

References

Whistler, W.A. (1985) Traditional and Herbal Medicine in the Cook Islands, Journal of Ethnopharmacology  13, 239-280

Neal, M., (1965) In Gardens of Hawai`i, Bishop Museum Press , Honolulu, Hawaii, 804 pp.

Abbott, I. and Shimazu, C., (1985) The Geographic Origin of the Plants Most Commonly Used for Medicine by Hawaiians, Journal of Ethnopharmacology  14, 213-222

Singh, Y., Ikahihifo, T., Panuve, M., Slatter, C., (1984) Folk Medicine in Tonga. A Study on the Use of Herbal Medicines for Obstetric and Gynacological Conditions and Disorders, Journal of Ethnopharmacology  12, 305-325

Krauss, B., (1993) Plants in Hawaiian Culture, University of Hawaii Press , Honolulu, Hawaii 103, 252pp.

Elliot, S. and Brimacombe, J., (1987) The Medicinal Plants of Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia, Journal of Ethnopharmacology  19, 285, 308.

Levand, O. and Larson, H.O., (1979) Some Chemical Constituents of Morinda citrifolia, Planta Med  36, 186-187.

Bushnell, O.A., Fukuda, M., Makinodan, T., (1950) The Antibacterial Properties of Some Plants Found in Hawaii, Pacific Science  4, 167-183.

Whistler, W. (1992) Tongan Herbal Medicine, Isle Botanica , Honolulu, Hawaii, 89-90 pp.

Hirazumi, A., (1992) Antitumor Activity of Morinda citrifolia on IP Implanted Lewis Lung Carcinoma in Mice, Proceedings, Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research  33, 515.

Abbott, I.A., (1992) La`au Hawai`i: traditional Hawaiian Uses of Plants, Bishop Museum Press , Honolulu, Hawaii, 3, 97-100 pp.

Hiramatsu, T.; Et Al, (1993) Induction of normal phenotypes in ras-transformed cells by damnacanthal from Morinda citrifolia, Cancer Letters 73, 161-166.

Tabrah, F.L. and Eveleth, B.M., (1966) Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Ancient Hawaiian Medicine, Hawaii Medical Journal  25, 223-230.

TenBruggencate,J., (1992) Native Plants Can Heal Your Wounds, Sunday Star Bulletin & Advertiser , Feb. 9, Honolulu, Hawaii. -