What is a Medicinal Ferment
Modernizing Traditional Plant Medicine for the 21st Century Precision Fermenter
Hello friends. In my ongoing efforts to design new and improved fermentation practices for the hobbyist and professional alike I want to demystify medicinal plants as inputs for your recipes. Our community needs to set up some standards that meet or exceed what the standards WHO has set for the future of traditional medicine plants. Let’s go over some of the most controversial points swirling around traditional medicinal plant uses in our modern day because there are actual dangers to be avoided when designing your recipes with these standards in mind.
“WHO has set out a strategy for traditional medicines with four objectives: to integrate them as policy into national healthcare systems; to provide knowledge and guidance on their safety, efficacy, and quality; to increase their availability and affordability; and to promote their rational, therapeutically sound usage.” [1]
Policy:
As the fermenter you are responsible for your product and its very possible to kill yourself, and others, at worst or cause permanent damage for lack of knowledge and good practice. We have to follow established guidelines because the permits and licensing are worth it by a mile. If we meet these standards trust in our product is socially achieved and it’s always good “policy” to follow all state and federal regulations if you ever intend to share your products because that social contract does not include you keeping secrets from your potential customers. The win for our medicinal fermentation movement and its agenda points is “to integrate them as policy into national healthcare systems” [1] so obeying existing law is the foundation of that critically needed institutional trust.
Knowledge and Guidance:
For lack of knowledge many things have gone astray. When we identify a plant medicine for fermentation, we must be extremely rigorous in selection because the transformation occurring during transformation cannot be attributed to intuition or the phase of the moon. We need facts that that inform us beyond any reasonable doubt that our target is historically safe, chemically safe, and post fermentation safe so it can meet those “policy” hurtles.
The best way to approach these regulations is with actual science specific to the biotransformation of our target molecules during fermentation. Referencing these resources can really help save time and provide existing tools to pick up for your design. Its very good that Lactic Acid Bacteria are Generally Recognized As Safe but third party vetted results go that extra mile for trust. When we combine our G.R.A.S. bacteria with known safe plant polyphenols we can access one of many fully explained and tested pathways to a medicinal ferment. As long as we stick to the script laid out behind us we can confidently take a step forward.
For example from: Contributions of exopolysaccharides from lactic acid bacteria as biotechnological tools in food, pharmaceutical, and medical applications we read “Exopolysaccharides (EPS) are important bioproducts produced by some genera of lactic acid bacteria. EPS are famous for their shelf-life improving properties, techno-functional enhancing abilities in food and dairy industries, besides their beneficial health effects. Furthermore, exopolysaccharides have many prospective and well-established contributions in the field of drugs and diagnostic industry.” [2]
You will notice this function chart only refers to wheat and dairy products ignoring vegetables, fruit, and herbs entirely. If the ubiquity of yogurt, which is just one of a dozen medicinal ferment chassis, is to ever be challenged we need overwhelming evidence of safety in our fermented products.
Availability and Affordability:
Let’s not forget that food poverty is really malnutrition and that lack of available fitness cannot but unburdened by the historic specter of food waste in western nations. We live in a flawed world and we can’t be expected to squeeze more from nothing so its important to understand how fermentation divides the loaf, so to speak, and offers an opportunity to recycle food waste at a commercial scale.
Above you saw how exopolysaccharides open the door wide to industrial dairy development of medicinal ferments. Waste products like fruit peels account for a large volume of lost potential when designing vegetable based medicinal ferments that accelerate recovery from extended periods of malnutrition or regular development. Utilizing these wasted resources is also a good policy because it adds to the basket of value the rural farmer can count on to boost the overall value of existing crops while decarbonizing from animals.
Rational, Therapeutically Sound Usage:
One of the handicaps medicinal plants face is that , as of 2007, “clinical trials had demonstrated potentially useful activity in nearly 16% of herbal extracts;” that “there was limited in vitro or in vivo evidence for roughly half the extracts; there was only phytochemical evidence for around 20%; 0.5% were allergenic or toxic; and some 12% had basically never been studied scientifically” [3] That is a ton of wiggle room for large corporate interests to avoid promoting plants as any kind of medicine at all. It is also a playground for supplement grifters to further muddy the water for people seeking legitimate medicinal plants.
Characterizing the benefits of exopolysaccharides has been resoundingly achieved for said wheat and dairy interests and we should not feel badly using their accomplishment in the furtherance of our goals legitimizing medicinal ferments. Production methods from their industry are not secrets technically but when and if applied to “roughly half the extracts” with ”limited in vitro or in vivo evidence” [3] could potentially unlock a larger percentage of that untapped market and would be a huge step forward for our movement.
Much work can be done to apply known methods to extract more heteropolysaccharides from wasted fruit peels. [4] LABs polymerize the sugar-nucleotide precursors from traditional medicinal plants into useful fitness molecules efficiently from vegetable. “Recently, the presence of an enzyme in strains of Lactobacillus reuteri that can produce α glucan EPSs using starch and maltodextrins, rather than sucrose, as a glucose donor has been identified. The enzyme is a cell-associated transglycosylating (GH70) 4,6-α-glucanotransferase that synthesizes α-glucan polymers containing a significantly increased proportion of α-(1→6) linkages compared to the substrate starch molecules. In L. reuteri 121, the gene encoding this enzyme is located adjacent to the glycansucrase gene that encodes reuteran HoPS production from sucrose.” [4]
Imaginary use case:
I mentioned above wasted fruit peels. A variety of industries could apply what I’m about to illustrate as a medicinal ferment product that meets or exceeds the above WHO guidance. Firstly, lets identify mangos as our target fruit for this model. India produces the most so we could say that if we can identify this market, it will be used to lift rural farmers up by revaluing the mango to include the skin as weight. That’s definingly a good Policy with proper health regulations applied.
Secondly, we want to use good science to achieve our Knowledge and Guidance hurtles. The “Protection of Lactic Acid Bacteria Fermented-Mango Peel against Neuronal Damage Induced by Amyloid-Beta” [5] gives us clear instructions on how to extract an incredibly important precursor for Alzheimer’s drugs which could in turn add even more value to a once thrown away mango peel. Thirdly, Availability and Affordability are clear and present in the economy right now today. Huge volumes of fruit peel waste could be revalued for the farmer and value added for manufactures. This is a truly ideal situation of mutual benefit for the entire economy. Finally, the Rational, Therapeutically Sound Usage of the target molecules have already been studied in depth and it’s time to open the market to Precision Medicinal Fermentation Corporations to manufacture large amounts of fitness products in a safe and regulated way.
[1] WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2014-2023
[2] Contributions of exopolysaccharides from lactic acid bacteria as biotechnological tools in food, pharmaceutical, and medical applications
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0141813021001410?via%3Dihub
[3] Phytotherapeutics: an evaluation of the potential of 1000 plants
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2710.2009.01096.x
[4] Lactic Acid Bacteria Exopolysaccharides in Foods and Beverages: Isolation, Properties, Characterization, and Health Benefits
[5] The Protection of Lactic Acid Bacteria Fermented-Mango Peel against Neuronal Damage Induced by Amyloid-Beta
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34201400/