I have been using Essential Oils instead of synthetic medicines and I've been amazed at how these oils are blessing my life.
Have you ever smelled Frankincense?
I hadn't until I got my own bottle from DoTerra. When I first smelled it I though: "humm, interesting... pleasant..." It was a smell I had never encountered before. Today it is one of my favorite oils. It has so many uses (maybe I'll go over this on another entry). And this was a cool article I found with information about Frankincense and cancer.
Frankincense: Could it be a cure for
cancer?
From the Middle East Business Report on
BBC World News by Jeremy Howell
The gift given by the wise men to the
baby Jesus probably came across the deserts from Oman. The BBC's Jeremy
Howell visits the country to ask whether a commodity that was once worth
its weight in gold could be reborn as a treatment for cancer.
Oman's
Land of Frankincense is an 11-hour drive southwards from the capital,
Muscat. Most of the journey is through Arabia's Empty Quarter -
hundreds of kilometres of flat, dun-coloured desert. Just when you are
starting to think this is the only scenery you will ever see again, the
Dhofar mountains appear in the distance. On the other side are
green valleys, with cows grazing in them. The Dhofar region catches the
tail-end of India's summer monsoons, and they make this the most verdant
place on the Arabian peninsula.
Warm winters and showery summers are the perfect conditions for the
Boswellia sacra tree to produce the sap called frankincense. These trees
grow wild in Dhofar. A tour guide, Mohammed Al-Shahri took me to Wadi
Dawkah, a valley 20 km inland from the main city of Salalah, to see a
forest of them.
"The
records show that frankincense was produced here as far back as 7,000
BC," he says. He produces an army knife. He used to be a member of the
Sultan's Special Forces. With a practised flick, he cuts a strip of bark
from the trunk of one of the Boswellia sacra trees. Pinpricks of
milky-white sap appear on the wood and, very slowly, start to ooze out.
"This is the first cut. But you don't gather this sap," he says. "It
releases whatever impurities are in the wood. The farmers return after
two or three weeks and make a second, and a third, cut. Then the sap
comes out yellow, or bright green, or brown or even black. They take
this."
Shortly
afterwards, a frankincense farmer arrives in a pick-up truck. He is
white-bearded, wearing a brown thobe and the traditional Omani,
paisley-patterned turban. He is 67-year-old Salem Mohammed from
the Gidad family. Most of the Boswellia sacra trees grow on public land,
but custom dictates that each forest is given to one of the local
families to farm, and Wadi Dawkah is his turf.
Camel train
He
has an old, black, iron chisel with which he gouges out clumps of dried
frankincense. "We learnt about frankincense from our forefathers
and they learnt it from theirs" he says. "The practice has been passed
down through the generations. We exported the frankincense, and that's
how the families in Dhofar made their livings." And what an export
trade it was. Frankincense was sent by camel train to Egypt, and from
there to Europe. It was shipped from the ancient port of Sumharan to
Persia, India and China. Religions adopted frankincense as a burnt
offering.
That is why, according to Matthew's Gospel in the Bible, the Wise Men
brought it as a gift to the infant Jesus. Gold: for a king.
Frankincense: for God. Myrrh: to embalm Jesus' body after death.
The Roman Empire coveted the frankincense trade. In the first century
BCE, Augustus Caesar sent 10,000 troops to invade what the Romans called
Arabia Felix to find the source of frankincense and to control its
production. The legions, marching from Yemen, were driven back by the
heat and the aridity of the desert. They never found their Eldorado.
Oman's
frankincense trade went into decline three centuries ago, when Portugal
fought Oman for dominance of the sea routes in the Indian and the
Pacific Oceans. Nowadays, hardly any Omani frankincense is
exported. Partly, this is because bulk buyers, such as the Roman
Catholic Church, buy cheaper Somalian varieties. Partly, it is because
Omanis now produce so little. "Years ago, 20 families farmed
frankincense in this area," says Salem Mohammed Gidad. "But the younger
generation can get well-paid jobs in the government and the oil
companies, with pensions. Now, only three people still produce
frankincense around here. The trade is really, really tiny!"
Cancer hope
But immunologist Mahmoud Suhail is hoping to open a new chapter in
the history of frankincense. Scientists have observed that there is some
agent within frankincense which stops cancer spreading, and which
induces cancerous cells to close themselves down. He is trying to find
out what this is. "Cancer starts when the DNA code within the cell's
nucleus becomes corrupted," he says. "It seems frankincense has a re-set
function. It can tell the cell what the right DNA code should be.
"Frankincense separates the 'brain' of the cancerous cell - the nucleus
- from the 'body' - the cytoplasm, and closes down the nucleus to stop
it reproducing corrupted DNA codes."
Working with frankincense could revolutionize the treatment of
cancer. Currently, with chemotherapy, doctors blast the area around a
tumor to kill the cancer, but that also kills healthy cells, and
weakens the patient. Treatment with frankincense could eradicate the
cancerous cells alone and let the others live. The task now is to
isolate the agent within frankincense which, apparently, works this
wonder. Some ingredients of frankincense are allergenic, so you cannot
give a patient the whole thing.
Dr Suhail (who is originally from Iraq) has teamed up with medical
scientists from the University of Oklahoma for the task. In his
laboratory in Salalah, he extracts the essential oil from locally
produced frankincense. Then, he separates the oil into its constituent
agents, such as Boswellic acid. "There are 17 active agents in
frankincense essential oil," says Dr Suhail. "We are using a process of
elimination. We have cancer sufferers - for example, a horse in South
Africa - and we are giving them tiny doses of each agent until we find
the one which works." "Some scientists think Boswellic acid is the
key ingredient. But I think this is wrong. Many other essential oils -
like oil from sandalwood - contain Boswellic acid, but they don't have
this effect on cancer cells. So we are starting afresh."
The trials will take months to conduct and whatever results come out
of them will take longer still to be verified. But this is a blink of
the eye in the history of frankincense. Nine thousand years ago,
Omanis gathered it and burnt it for its curative and cleansing
properties. It could be a key to the medical science of tomorrow.
FRANKINCENSE FACTS
·
Boswellia sacra grows in Oman, Yemen and Somalia
·
Other Boswellia species grow in Africa and India
·
The tree may have been named after John Boswell, the uncle of Samuel
Johnson's biographer
·
In ancient Egypt frankincense was thought to be sweat of the gods
Properties
Analgesic
Antidepressant
Antifungal
Anti-inflammatory
Antiseptic
Astringent
Diuretic
Sedative
Wellness Uses
Calm and Stress
Relief
Cold and Flu Season
Emergency Salve
Immune Strengthener
Skin Care
Common
Health Concerns
Asthma
Brochitis
Dermatitis
Indigestion
Skin Disorders
Sore Throat
Stomach Ache
information taken from: http://www.everythingessential.me/Oils/Frankincense.html
