Professor Geoff Abbott hunts for herbal remedies used by indigenous peoples that may contain life-saving chemicals that will revolutionise treatments for serious disorders.
Professor Geoff Abbott is a botanical Indiana Jones. He leads expeditions into Earth ’s wild places to find medicinal treasures – herbal remedies used by indigenous peoples that may contain life-saving chemicals that will revolutionise treatments for serious disorders.
Herbal treatments have often been dismissed by sceptics as having no more scientific underpinning than witchcraft and spell-weaving. These electrical switches are called ion channels. They sit in the outer membranes of protein cells found throughout the human body and determine the strength of the electrical charges inside them. The level of this charge, in turn, determines how the proteins operate.
Similarly, if ion-channel switches go awry, becoming overactive or underactive, they can cause a range of illnesses such as epilepsy, high blood pressure and even, it seems, drug addiction.Professor Abbott’s work shows that chemicals in common herbs can repair ion switches’ that are malfunctioning for whatever reason – whether genetic faults, injury, illness or poisoning.
At least 10,000 adults and 500 children in the UK have some form of it, according to the charity Ataxia UK. ‘They may also have suffered it from taking hallucinogenic plants revered in indigenous medicine and shamanism, but which can cause ataxia if overdosed.’ Why would this work? One theory, says Professor Abbott, is that the acid frees up memory formation in cocaine addicts whose memory is otherwise hard-wired to obsessionally crave the drug.
Professor Abbott says: ‘Thyme has been used historically as a fungicide, but no one knew how it might work. Then we discovered a small molecule in it that blocks an ion channel in candida fungal infections . Candida fungi only have one of these ion channels, so it is very important to them to stay alive.’
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