Edible Pain Relief

Vegetarian Times, May, 1999 by Karen Dale Dustman

Pop a few soybeans and cherries, and call me in the morning? It's hardly the sort of advice you'd expect to hear from your doctor. But a pair of promising new reports underscore the link between pain relief and the foods we eat.

Tart cherries have long been believed to ease the discomfort of arthritis and gout. And a recent study of the fruit's medicinal power (Journal of Natural Products, February 1999) now confers clinical credibility. Researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) found that tart cherries contain a substance called anthocyanin, which not only gives the fruit its color but may offer more potent pain relief than aspirin--and prove as effective an antioxidant as vitamins C and E. Twenty cherries appear to provide enough anthocyanin (12 to 25 milligrams [mgs]) to inhibit the formation of cyclooxygenase-1 and -2, the enzymes that cause painful inflammation and the same ones targeted by aspirin and ibuprofen.

Human studies are still in the planning stages, but lead researcher Muraleedharan G. Nair, Ph.D., professor of horticulture and national food safety and toxicology at MSU, says his findings offer a significant glimmer of hope for pain sufferers. "These preliminary results suggest that daily consumption of tart cherries--or maybe someday a pill containing their active ingredient--has the potential to reduce the pain," he says.

However, when it comes to pain relief, cherries may have to share the spotlight with the humble soybean. Pain researchers at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital stumbled upon a surprising soy/pain connection when they were conducting a routine replication of an Israeli trial. The original study had shown that rats with sciatic nerve damage exhibited hypersensitivity to mild touch and temperature stimuli.(*) But to the researchers' surprise, the rats in the follow-up study demonstrated no such overreaction. Further analysis revealed that the only factor not precisely replicated was the type of food the rats were fed. The American researchers chalked up the mysterious pain-protective "x" factor to the rodents' soybean-based food.

"It appears that the diet the rats take in immediately prior to the injury plays a pivotal role" in preventing the development of abnormal neurological pain, explains researcher James N. Campbell, M.D. Further isolated study of this soy connection is currently under way, and Campbell and his long-distance colleagues at Jerusalem's Hadassah University hope to eventually isolate the protective element at work. For now, however, the implications for humans remain unknown.

"We're fairly confident that there is an important dietary effect for rats, though ultimately we'll want see how it shakes out in human clinical trials," says Campbell. "The promise of this research is that it could lead to the discovery of better drugs to control pain." But Campbell adds that the research could also shed new light on the diet's influence on pain and perhaps even help us minimize post-surgical pain by making better food choices before surgery.

(*) References to animal testing do not reflect the editorial views of this magazine.