Pyc a Little, Talk a Little The Polypill now has a natural counterpart. Remember the Polypill? It's the pharmaceutical (still in the development stage) designed to prevent some of the symptoms associated with heart disease. In the e-Alert "With a Capital T, That Rhymes with P" (6/30/03), I told you about the planned contents for the Polypill: a statin drug to lower cholesterol, three different drugs (including an ACE inhibitor) to control blood pressure, a low dose of aspirin, and folic acid to reduce homocysteine levels. The Polypill developers envision a super pill that would be prescribed to everyone over the age of 55. That's right: everyone - even if you don't have high blood pressure, high LDL cholesterol, or any other indications of heart problems. For those who avoid taking drugs except when absolutely necessary, this one-size-fits-all concept is ludicrous. What makes it truly scary is that it was touted in the British Medical Journal as one of the most important developments in the past 50 years. But now the Polypill has competition from an all-natural source that's worlds safer than a bubbling cauldron of expensive drugs. Pycnogenol is a pine bark extract harvested from a coastal forest in southwest France. A natural antioxidant, Pycnogenol contains a variety of polyphenols that have been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects that may provide a wide range of protection to the cardiovascular system. A review of Pycnogenol research appears in the premier issue of the new journal Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine. Ronald Watson, Ph.D., (a research professor at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center) makes the case that Pycnogenol, "has the potential to counteract all important cardiovascular risk factors simultaneously." That's a pretty tall claim - just as tall as the Polypill claims. The difference is that, while the Polypill's benefits are only theory, Pycnogenol trials have already shown that supplements of the extract may improve blood circulation, relax artery constriction and reduce platelet activity - all with a minimum of side effects. Some of the research on Pycnogenol has been conducted by Dr. Watson himself. In a 1999 trial reported in Thrombosis Research, Dr. Watson's Arizona Prevention Center team tested the effects of Pycnogenol against aspirin with a group of 38 cigarette smokers. Smokers were used in the study because smoking increases the dangerous aggregation of blood platelets, providing the researchers with a way to assess how aggregation might be affected. Subjects were given either 500 mg of aspirin, or 125 mg of Pycnogenol. After taking their doses, subjects smoked in order to increase the clumping of blood platelets. Within two hours, blood was drawn from each subject to evaluate platelet aggregation. With both Pycnogenol and aspirin, platelet aggregation was significantly reduced. The primary difference between the two agents was bleeding. Aspirin increased bleeding while Pycnogenol did not. Pycnogenol isn't new to HSI members. In the July 1998 Members Alert, we compared Pycnogenol's powerful antioxidant qualities to two of the antioxidant all-stars: glutathione and coenzyme Q10. And in May 2002, William Campbell Douglass, M.D., told Daily Dose readers how Pycnogenol might compete with aspirin as the "wonder drug" of the century. In that Daily Dose, Dr. Douglass described a study of 30 subjects who were given Pycnogenol, while 10 were given placebo. When compared with the placebo group, those in the Pycnogenol group had significant reduction in venous pressure, capillary leakage and blood vessel inflammation. Researchers concluded that Pycnogenol should be recommended for the prevention and treatment of chronic venous insufficiency. This research also reported no danger of side effects or changes in blood biochemistry. As I've expressed in previous e-Alerts, be suspicious of any treatments - natural or pharmaceutical - that claim to be cure-alls or insist one-size-fits-all. So while the reports on Pycnogenol are clearly promising, more testing needs to be done before we can regard it as an across-the-board preventive for heart disease. In the meantime, I'd be very interested in hearing from any HSI members who have tried Pycnogenol. And I'll also continue to keep an eye out for further Pycnogenol studies, which I'm sure we'll see many of in the coming years. To Your Good Health, Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute Sources:
Pycnogenol and Cardiovascular Health" Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2003, openmindjournals.com
"Pycnogenol Could Act as 'Polypill'" NutraIngredients.com, 12/8/03, nutraingredients.com
"UA Researcher Suggests Natural Supplement Pycnogenol May Help Prevent Cause of Many Heart Attacks, Strokes" The University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, 5/26/98, ahsc.Arizona.edu
"Inhibition of Smoking-Induced Platelet Aggregation by Aspirin and Pycnogenol" Thrombosis Research, Vol. 95, No. 4, 1999, sciencedirect.com | 
