Study Shows How Pickled Capers Can Benefit the Heart and Brain
A new research presents that a compound found in pickled capers is activating passages essential for the brain and heart’s activity.
For centuries now, people have been practicing the so-called traditional or folk medicine. According to research, the Western world commonly considers them as "alternative medicines."
Until now, it is a mainstay in health care practices in most nations. Much traditional medication depends on the use of plants, which have been the base of medical cures for thousands of years already.
At times, researchers evaluate this traditional knowledge, carefully understand it in contemporary scientific terms, as well as interpret it Western treatment.
For instance, Aspirin is made of willow plants, and has played a vital role in the field of medicine since the Egyptian era "long before people understood its mechanism of action."
Pickled Capers for the Brain and Heart
New research presents that a compound found in pickled capers is activating passages essential for the brain and heart's activity.
Such research findings could possibly result in the devising of new medications for epilepsy and arrhythmia.
Furthermore, separate research from the University of California presents a somewhat, similar story for capers which individuals all over the world eat and use as well as a traditional medication.
The study authors noted that people have been consuming capers for over 10,000 years. Discoveries in soil deposits, according to reports, "In Syria and late Stone Age cave dwellings" in present-day's Israel and Greece showed this to be true.
The olden cookbook of the Romans also called "Apicius" mentioned capers. Essentially, people have continued to include them in traditional medicine specifically to fight cancer and diabetes, among others.
More so, capers contain anti-inflammatory properties, and they have potential gastrointestinal and circulatory benefits, as well.
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How Capers Function in the Human Body
The team of scientists behind the present research has now presented how capers are functioning on the body. Such function, as earlier mention, also includes "activating potassium channel" that is vital for the activity of the heart and brain.
In addition, the said group of researchers began observing capers based on a result of plant extracts. These extracts screened are also known as KCNQ channels.
KCNQ plays various vital roles in the human body. Such roles involve regulation of the heartbeat, muscle contraction and the "gastrointestinal tract" function.
Meanwhile, their "dysfunction" is linked to certain illnesses which would include arrhythmia, diabetes and epilepsy.
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Why do the Capers Need to be Pickled?
Reports indicated that researchers used an extract coming from pickled capers, which is the most typical form in the United States.
Eventually, they found that one-percent extract was able to stimulate the channels. Consequently, the pickling process leads to the formation of what the researchers called "quercetin," a compound that stimulates the KCNQ channels.
More studies with the said compound found that it is binding to a portion of the channel accountable for detecting electrical activity.
Such binding results in the opening of the channels when they were supposed to close, which, according to the said reports, may trigger the capers' healing properties.
Even though capers are known as the "richest natural source of quercetin," the researchers noted that other compounds that are derived from plants like the one present in cilantro are more potential activators of the KCNQ channels.
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Jul 28, 2020 07:20 AM EDT
