Safflowers —Why It’s Useful Alone, But Immensely More Therapeutic In A Team Of Herbs.
Wrapping mummies and healing humans are all in a day’s work for this multipurpose crop.
In his magisterial history of human societies, “Guns, Germs and Steel”, Jared Diamond explains how the Fertile Crescent became the cradle of civilisation because more domesticable plants and animals were found here than in any other part of the world. Somewhere around 11,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers who roamed this region covering modern Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, made the momentous shift from collecting wild edible plants to cultivating crops. This marked the dawn of agriculture and the beginning of the ascent of human civilisations.
Safflower was a minor crop in this age. It wasn’t an edible crop like barley or wheat, but its bright red or yellow flowers likely attracted early humans for their coloring potential. Ancient Egyptians used it to color their cotton and silk, including the wrappings around mummies. Rolls of linen dyed red from safflowers were found in the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamun.
Soon humans in the Fertile Crescent and ancient China began unlocking the full potential of Carthamus tinctorius. The safflower plant itself, with its sharp-needled leaves, proved useful as a fence crop to keep cattle from straying. Its seeds yielded oils high in linoleic acids, an essential fatty acid for humans that can only be obtained from diet. The bright red and yellow dyes extracted from the petals of safflowers for cosmetics and textiles were arguably used in some of humankind’s first inventions to beautify and adorn individuals.
The Chinese were among the earliest to use safflowers or hóng huā (红花) for medicine. For over 2,000 years, humans used concoctions steeped with safflower florets and various other medicinal plants to enhance their health. One well-known folk remedy for pain relief in China that contains safflower is called diē dǎ jiǔ (跌打酒), which is a liniment made from various herbs steeped in rice wine and aged for several months in earthen jars. Usually made by healers in the kungfu communities, every healer played with ingredients and proportions to create uniquely different but still recognizable versions of the concoction. This is similar to how wines from different vineyards can taste very different despite using similar raw ingredients.
Anecdotal field evidence observed by Chinese communities about safflowers’ potential to improve musculoskeletal health has since been supported in modern labs. For instance, anti-inflammatory properties in hydroxysafflor yellow A (HSYA), a chemical compound that is particularly abundant in safflowers, have been established in multiple studies. Antioxidant properties of the florets have also been shown to protect osteoblasts (cells that form new bone) from oxidative stress. And by reducing cell damage caused by free radicals, antioxidants in safflowers improve our immune system’s functions.
The wisdom of teams
As many of you know, herbs usually work in concert with other herbs rather than act as solo players in traditional Chinese medicine. The assumption is that a team of herbs produces better results because of synergy. Contrast this with the “one drug, one target, one disease” approach of conventional pharmaceutical drug development for most of the 20th century. Nevertheless, even in the West, the experience from treating certain chronic diseases such as AIDS, cancer and cardiovascular diseases, where the single drug approach has been less effective, has shifted this treatment paradigm towards combination therapies.
Proving synergy in traditional herbal formulations is difficult. But science is catching up with advances in analytical chemistry and molecular biology methods. One interesting study, published in 2020 in the journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy involving the combination of safflowers with notoginsengs found grounds for such a synergy.
When blood flow to your heart is reduced, your heart receives less oxygen and its ability to pump blood becomes impaired. This condition is called myocardial ischemia (MI), which is exacerbated by oxidative stress on our cell metabolism. Cue the high levels of antioxidants found in safflowers’ flavonoids, which have been identified as playing a major role in the herb’s cardioprotective benefits. However, what if we combined safflowers with another herb?
Formulas for cardiovascular health in traditional Chinese medicine typically combine safflowers with notoginseng, so the study attempted to examine the synergistic benefits of this dual-herb combination. Notoginseng is China’s most important herb with a market size of over US$1.4 billion. It contains high levels of saponins, a chemical compound that is typically found in plants and said to be the herb’s main cardioprotective ingredient. Ancient healers probably thought the combination made sense because notoginseng was used to improve blood circulation.
The study found that saponins from notoginseng were better at reversing pro-inflammatory signals than flavonoids from safflowers, while the latter was better at reducing oxidative stress than the former. However, their combined interaction produced a far greater anti-MI effect than their standalone effects. Using a metabolomics strategy to analyze system-wide effects, the researchers were able to observe real synergy in the notoginseng-safflower combination. In other words, the sum was greater than the parts.
Safflowers feature in many other traditional Chinese medicine combinations concerned with our body’s metabolism or the conversion of our body’s fuel, that is food and drink, into energy. Metabolic risk factors such as high fasting blood sugar levels, obesity, high blood pressure or high triglyceride levels, interfere with the complex biochemical processes involved in energy conversion in our cells, potentially leading to heart diseases, stroke and diabetes.
Research into combination herb treatments is still nascent but interest is growing. The combination of safflowers, Salvia miltiorrhiza (Red sage or danshen 丹參) and some other herbs was studied as a more comprehensive alternative to single chemical drugs that fail to address the complex nature of metabolic syndromes. An animal study found that the red sage and safflower pair showed stronger anti-myocardial ischemic effects than single herbs.
Combining different herbs to produce a stronger or better therapeutic effect is not new. The Chinese have perhaps taken this further than any other civilization. More recent scientific studies are showing that combination treatments work better even if the science of isolating how the synergy works is complex and not fully worked out. In all of this, one scarlet herb has played an outsized role throughout history.
Originally published on painfixbody.com
