Sea Buckthorn (Shaji): Anticancer, Antitussive, Blood-Activating, and Hepatoprotective

Sea buckthorn (Shaji) is the dried ripe fruit of Hippophae rhamnoides of the Elaeagnaceae family, classified among the qi-tonifying Chinese herbs. It is not a traditional Han-Chinese medicine but a medicinal and edible herb commonly used in Tibetan and Mongolian medicine. In China it is used medicinally mainly in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Qinghai, and is now gradually spreading to other regions and peoples; various drinks and health foods made from sea buckthorn also sell well.

In Chinese-medicine textbooks, sea buckthorn's properties are summarized as sweet, sour, and astringent, and warm, entering the spleen, stomach, lung, and heart meridians. It fortifies the spleen and digests food, stops cough and resolves phlegm, and activates blood and disperses stasis.

Chinese medicine holds that sea buckthorn warms and nourishes spleen qi, strengthens the stomach and aids digestion; it can be used to treat stomachache, indigestion, and gastric ulcer, and also to treat subcutaneous bleeding and menstrual irregularities. Modern pharmacological research has confirmed that sea buckthorn oil has an anti-gastric-ulcer effect, giving marked protection against gastric ulcers induced by anhydrous ethanol, aspirin, and acetic acid.

Sea buckthorn has good phlegm-resolving and cough-suppressing effects. For cough and wheezing with much phlegm, one may alone decoct an appropriate amount of sea buckthorn into an extract and take it frequently, or take the modern-processed sea buckthorn puree; the Tibetan medical classic Four Medical Tantras (Sibu Yidian) already records boiling sea buckthorn into an extract to treat cough, wheezing, and much phlegm. One may also use sea buckthorn together with other cough-suppressing and phlegm-resolving herbs such as emblic fruit (Yuganzi), white grape, and licorice, as in the Wuwei Shaji San recorded in the Qinghai Provincial Tibetan Medicine Standard. Inner Mongolia Zhongcaoyao (Inner Mongolia Chinese Herbal Medicine) also records a formula for cough, wheezing, and much phlegm: equal parts of sea buckthorn, licorice, white raisin, gardenia (Zhizi), and saussurea (Guangmuxiang), ground into powder, with a little borneol (Bingpian) added, taken at 1.5-3 g each time with warm water.

Sea buckthorn also has a blood-activating and stasis-resolving effect and can treat blood-stasis amenorrhea, chest bi with cardiac pain, and traumatic stasis swelling. When used as a blood-activating and stasis-resolving herb, it may be combined with notoginseng (Sanqi), salvia (Danshen), or the Four Substances Decoction (Siwu Tang). Modern pharmacological research has confirmed that sea buckthorn flavonoids, by scavenging reactive oxygen free radicals, exert antiarrhythmic, anti-myocardial-ischemic effects, shrink the area of myocardial infarction, relieve angina, and improve cardiac function; this confirms that the traditional Tibetan and Mongolian-medicine use of sea buckthorn to treat chest bi and cardiac pain is very scientific. Sea buckthorn juice also promotes hematopoietic cells, lowers whole-blood viscosity in rats, and prolongs coagulation time in mice, showing that sea buckthorn's blood-activating and stasis-resolving effect also has a scientific basis. Sea buckthorn can also lower serum total cholesterol.

Besides these, sea buckthorn has also been found to boost immunity and have antitumor effects. So in recent years many health products made from sea buckthorn have sold well among cancer patients. Sea buckthorn promotes the transformation of splenic lymphocytes and enhances the phagocytic function of intraperitoneal macrophages against chicken red blood cells. Experimental rats given sea buckthorn oil by oral gavage for two weeks showed raised serum levels of IgG, IgM, and C3. Sea buckthorn seed oil also has an anti-liver-injury effect. Sea buckthorn oil functions much like vitamin E, protecting vascular smooth-muscle cells injured by hyperlipidemic serum; sea buckthorn seed oil also has a preventive effect against radiation sickness.

In animal experiments, sea buckthorn juice has antitumor effects. After mice were inoculated with sarcoma S180 cells, oral sea buckthorn juice at 250 mg/kg for 8 consecutive days significantly lowered tumor weight compared with the control group. Sea buckthorn juice and sea buckthorn oil have marked antitumor effects against transplanted tumors—sarcoma S180, melanoma B16, and lymphocytic leukemia P388. In vitro, sea buckthorn juice can kill S180, P388, L1210, and human gastric cancer SGC-9901 cells. The alcohol extract of sea buckthorn stem bark has a strong killing effect on transplanted mouse liver cancer H22 in vitro, and is also effective by oral administration. Naringin and naringenin from the sea buckthorn seed can selectively inhibit cancer-cell growth and can be used against chemo- and radio-resistant cancers, strongly suppressing human cancer tissue (breast, colon, and liver) without inhibiting normal human tissue (bone marrow, spleen). Sea buckthorn juice can block the synthesis and carcinogenic induction of N-nitroso compounds in rats, and its cancer-preventive effect is superior to an equal amount of ascorbic acid.

Sea buckthorn has very few toxic side effects; the LD50 of sea buckthorn fruit juice extract by oral gavage in mice is 20.4 g/kg. Generally, for adults weighing over 50 kg, the daily dose of sea buckthorn is 3-10 g, a very safe dose.

So sea buckthorn is a relatively ideal anticancer medicine and food; moreover, it is high-yielding and moderately priced, with a far better cost-performance ratio than many expensive tonics.