Editor's Weekly Ramblings 7

Friday 18th April 2003

Note - The following is not meant to replace the advice of your Doctor. Ginkgo Biloba - Bearer of Hope?

Ginkgo Biloba is one of the world's favourite supplements. In Germany it has now been approved to treat cerebral insufficiency in the elderly, and is one of the top ten over the counter sellers also in France, the US and the UK. Every year between 1.5 million and 2 million kilograms of ginkgo leaves are harvested for medicinal purposes worldwide. A third of this is used in Germany, where a company called Schwabe manufactures and markets a gingko product under the name of Tebonin. Tebonin is the leading herbal medicine product in Europe with annual sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ginkgo Biloba is extracted from the leaves of the Maidenhair Tree, something of a biological curiosity in itself, as it is widely reported to be one of the oldest existing plant species, with fossils being found that date back 250 million years. The name 'maidenhair' comes from the similarity in the shape of the leaves to that of the maidenhair fern. It is known as the 'Bearer of Hope' for the people of Hiroshima in Japan, where a Maidenhair Tree that was situated less than a kilometre from the nuclear explosion in 1945 survived intact, seemingly unharmed and unaffected by the blast. After the war the temple that had been destroyed was rebuilt around the tree (view a picture here).

Ginkgo Biloba's use as a medicine can first be documented back to around 2800BC when it is mentioned in the work of the pioneer of Chinese medicine Emperor Shen Nung. In his book, entitled pen tsao ching (The Classic of Herbs), he described the properties of 365 herbs, including Ginkgo Biloba as a treatement for asthma. It is likely to have been used, possibly for thousands of years, prior to this; but this seems to be the first proper documentation to show it was being used in China as a medical treatment. However, it was not until relatively recently, in the 1950's that Dr. Willmar Schwabe of Schwabe, in what was then West Germany, worked on establishing the optimal balance of the components of the Ginkgo leaf to constitute an effective extract.