Chionanthus Virginicus (White Fringetree)

Chionanthus virginicus or white fringetree is a plant that is endemic to the eastern United States, but more concentrated in the southeast. It also occurs in other parts, like the northeastern part of the U.S., but is not originally native to that area. It's fascinating how plants can be introduced to certain areas, and thrive. It's almost like their just like humans in having a presence all over the planet (imagine that). Of course, plants as a species will even have their extremes, like it is likely you would never see this plant occurring naturally in a desert region, nor would this plant planted in the desert wild likely survive. This doesn't mean you won't see it in the desert, but if you do, it is likely an ornamental plant that is being meticulously cared by someone.

Apparently, this plant has some pretty interesting antioxidant properties. The main way it is prepared is by powdering the root or stem bark, and using it as medicine. There's likely other ways to prepare it, but the main ways I found were through powdering bark.

In my reading, I learned a little more detail about antioxidants and why they're important. So basically, in living organisms, there is a balance between a cell degrading itself naturally and other components nourishing cells. Put plainly, in our bodies there is a pronounced balance between "life" giving processes and those that cause "death." But not as clear cut and black and white as it may seem, "life" and "death" are more on a spectrum of processes than defined one way or the other. What does this have to do with antioxidants?

Well, there's a lot of crap that your body can be exposed to, through diet, lifestyle, the air we breathe etc. Some of these things we're exposed to contain oxidizing agents that can have detrimental processes to cells in our body. Too much of a bad thing can really hurt you (but also too much of a good thing can also hurt you). Oxidizing means that it oxidizes parts of cells in your body, degrading them basically. An easy way to visualize oxidation is to think of iron oxide, which is rust, eating away at some old truck that has been rained on too many times. The truck is being oxidized, the same thing happening in your body, except a bit different than the truck rusting because we don't exactly "rust" in the same way the old truck would.

I'll spare you the complexities of all the different types of antioxidants and oxidizing agents but bottom line it there is a lot of each. Antioxidants work to clean up and tone the body's cells to keep processes efficient. So if we just keep consuming a ton of antioxidants, we're good right? Not exactly...

Science, and especially medical science is a work in progress. Interestingly, but not exactly surprisingly if you ask me, synthetic pharmaceuticals usually fare worse than a whole plant approach. Isolation and the synthesizing of chemicals and active compounds is a very heated debate, but the way things are looking, scientists are beginning to pay more attention to whole plants as opposed to just their active chemicals. Think of it like a human body. It's far more interesting to study how a hip joint is impacted and impacts the whole body versus separating that joint and studying it in isolation. If we just study that joint detached from the rest of the body, we never fully understand how a bad hip joint can be a precursor to all sorts of bone issues over time. If you just remove the hip joint and study that, you don't fully understand how it can impact the whole body, like load bearing, spinal complications over time, affecting someone's gait, etc. In another example, imagine if we good study living breathing gigantic dinosaurs instead of just extrapolating data and hypotheses from their fossils.

Well, same goes with plants. If you dice it up and select only a small potion, and study that, then it's harder to recognize what the whole plant is like and how the compounds in the plant interact with each other. So what, who cares you might be thinking? Let's go back to synthetic products for a bit. When you take a synthetic antioxidant, or a synthetic medicine for that matter, usually scientists have isolated active compounds for specific purposes. While the intentions are noble, and some synthetic products can be beneficial, usually these synthetic products do not perform as well as their whole plant or plant based counterparts. Don't tell the pharmaceutical companies that, although they already know and are actively engaged in misinforming the masses about things like a healthy diet and eating lots of plants. I mean, if modern medicine was primarily plant based, then even the poorest could afford it, and what money hungry pharmaceutical company wants that? Watching out for our best interests my ass...

Back to antioxidants. These things basically remove certain other things from the body to help improve cell processes. It's a complicated world, so it's kinda funny how people just hear something has antioxidants and automatically assume it's good for them, or at least that they can just consume that one item and they'll be "healthy" (the same thing happens with all these vitamin C products with people thinking you won't get sick if you just take them). Wrong! There's more than one kind of antioxidant, and they all can do different things to the body. Antioxidants are basically just removing things from the body that can react easily with important cell processes (i.e. oxidizing them), and therefore these oxidants can have detrimental effects. Things like too much reactive oxygen in the body, or too much iron/metals can promote chemical processes that aren't so great for healthy cells. Cell death occurs when basically the balance of anti-oxidation and oxidation isn't met anymore, specifically within the processes of cell mitochondria. This is why antioxidant consumption is still not going to prevent you from dying from old age, sorry.

But wait, there's more. When you're using synthetic compounds as medicine, such as synthetic antioxidants, then much of the time, the drug is much less complex than what would be found in the plant. That means that it can be too targeted, and this is a huge problem of modern medicine. It's why you have to take a pill to counteract the effects of another pill only to stay sick. Don't get me wrong, modern medicine is amazing with trauma and urgent care, but when it comes to daily life and preventative habits, it doesn't fare as well.

Back to white fringetree, the supposed plant star of this blog post. Well, this plant has some wonderful antioxidant properties, and as a medicine, it has hepatic (related to the liver, and liver processes) benefits. It has some pretty powerful antioxidant properties, and can remove a whole array of crap from the body to promote better liver function. However, one of the antioxidants it contains also has a strong metal chelating property. Huh? Chelating in simple terms means that it helps clean the body of metals, since chelating agents will bond to metals in the body and thus clean them out. However, too much a good thing can be detrimental. If you're consuming lots of white fringetree to help your liver, well, you're also consuming a pretty powerful metal chelating agent. This means that although it may be helping your liver in the short run, it might also be extracting too much iron and other important metals from your system. Too little iron in your system means you'll be anemic, too few metals also means that important cell processes cannot take place because your body won't have the proper materials for these important reactions. Moral of the story? Balance and diversity are key.

I'm going to refer back to the "it has antioxidants so that means it's healthy" statement meant earlier. I wish the message was more "produce and plants in general contain a vast diversity or antioxidants and good for you stuff, so diversity of diet is still one of the most important factors of health." Many people read "it's good for the liver" and automatically want to use only that. They'll binge drink and take a cup of herbal preparation of white fringetree root bark and say "all better," yet continue their fatty diets and shitty lifestyle. Sorry folks, that's not how plants, or a healthy life, work. Thinking that one plant, or even just a few plants will allow you to live a crappy lazy lifestyle and you'll "get away with it" is very misguided. It's how our modern medicine culture has raised us and lead us to believe that popping pills and quick medicine fixes are all we need to cure disease.

Sorry to say that although white fringetree has some good liver stimulating qualities, and outperforms synthetic antioxidants, it's not going to be a substitute for an active lifestyle, good social interactions, and a diverse and mainly plant based diet. So while this plant can be used to promote liver function, it's still not going to save you from liver cancer when you drink yourself to oblivion. Still, it has some pretty white flowers, and the root bark can likely be used in conjunction with an already healthy lifestyle that promotes liver function. The "rule" is simple. Eat lots of plants with lots of different colors, get out and about and be active in nature, drink plenty of clean water, have meaningful social interactions, and cut down on stress that does not grow you as a person (such as work stress, not working out stress). Don't forget how incredibly crucial sleep is. Then the white fringetree can stay as a pretty ornamental large shrub plant, and be used sparingly every so often.



References:

The Biota of North America Program
http://bonap.net/MapGallery/County/Chionanthus%20virginicus.png
http://www.bonap.org/MapKey.html

Bocsi, T. et al. "Plants’ native distributions do not reflect climatic tolerance." Diversity and Distributions, vol. 22, 2016, pp. 1-10. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, DOI: 10.1111/ddi.12432.

Global Biodiversity Information Facility
https://www.gbif.org

Gülçin, I. et al. "Antioxidant activity of lignans from fringe tree (Chionanthus viginicus L.)." Eur Food Res Technol, vol. 223, 2006, pp. 759-767. DOI 10.1007/s00217-006-0265-5.