DAAN Chinese Herbs and Acupuncture

For decades a “snake oil salesman” meant someone selling something that didn’t work. But researchers studying some traditional Chinese remedies have discovered that snake oil might actually be good for you:

“For centuries snake oil has been a folk remedy in Chinese medicine, used primarily to treat joint pain such as arthritis and bursitis. Its introduction to the U.S. most likely occurred with the arrival of Chinese laborers who came to build the Transcontinental Railroad in the mid 1800s. They may have offered snake oil to fellow workers as relief for suffering long days of physical toil.

Richard Kunin, a California psychiatrist with a background in neurophysiology research, became intrigued with the idea of snake oil in the 1980s. He had been following early research on the importance of omega-3 fatty acids for health and it dawned on him that the much maligned snake oil might be a particularly rich source. Omega-3’s proliferate in cold-blooded creatures that live primarily in cooler environments because the fats don’t harden in chilly water like omega-6 fatty acids do (hence, the high level of omega-3’s in cold-water fish such as salmon). “Snakes and fish share one thing, they’re both cold-blooded animals,” Kunin says.

Kunin visited San Francisco’s Chinatown to buy such snake oil and analyze it. He also acquired two live rattlesnakes and extracted their fat sacks. According to his 1989 analysis published in the Western Journal of Medicine, Chinese water-snake oil contains 20 percent eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), one of the two types of omega-3 fatty acids most readily used by our bodies. In comparison, the rattlesnakes had only 8.5 percent EPA. And salmon, one of the most popular food sources of omega-3’s, contains a maximum of 18 percent EPA, lower than that of snake oil.

Research since the 1980s has demonstrated the necessity—and efficacy—of omega-3 fatty acids. These acids not only reduce inflammation, such as arthritis pain, but also improve cognitive function and reduce blood pressure, cholesterol and even depression. “Because of their chemical structure, omega-3’s behave very differently in cell membranes than any other fat,” says Susan Allport, author of The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do To Replace Them. “They’re much more dynamic, they move around much more, so they allow a lot to happen in the cell membranes. And that’s where enzymes do their work. So these fats allow enzymes to work.”

Recently in Japan, a group of scientists at the Japanese National Food Research Institute led by Nobuya Shirai turned their attention to snake oil as well. In 2002, in Fisheries Science, they evaluated the composition of oil from the Erabu sea snake—the source of snake oil in traditional Chinese medicine. They analyzed such snakes caught in both the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea and determined that the amount of beneficial omega-3s in sea snakes does not vary depending on their capture location.

In a series of later papers, the most recent published in the Annals of Nutrition & Metabolism in July 2007, Shirai and his team evaluated the effects of Erabu sea-snake oil on a number of outcomes in mice, including maze-learning ability and swimming endurance. In both cases, snake oil significantly improved the ability of the mice in comparison with those fed lard.”

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