Leaves of Ginkgo biloba have been used as traditional herbal medicine for hundreds of years in China. Currently, its application in vascular protection is garnering much attention.
Ginkgo biloba Extract (GBE) was commonly used as a dietary supplement and has been shown to act as an antioxidant and free radical scavenger, a membrane stabilizer, an inhibitor of the platelet-activating factor, a vasodilator, and a regulator of metabolism. Currently, there exist a growing number of clinical studies about GBE in the application of cardiovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease (PVD) and diabetic vascular complications. (1)
*free radical scavenger - are compounds that remove undesired free radicals generated as a result of impaired or disrupted mitochondrial respiratory reaction.
*membrane stabilizer - used for pain management, both acute and chronic.
*inhibitor of the platelet - used to prevent two conditions: thrombotic cerebrovascular and thrombotic cardiovascular disease.
*vasodilator - commonly used to treat high blood pressure (hypertension) and heart conditions.
*regulator of metabolism - is a physiological mechanism by which the body takes in nutrients and delivers energy as required.
Above are some of the health benefits Ginkgo biloba Extract can provide.
Ginkgo biloba in Japan today . . .
73 YEARS LATER, THE "A-BOMB" GINKGO TREES STILL GROW IN HIROSHIMA
On August 6, 1945, an Allied plane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, creating a fireball 1,200 feet in diameter. Disaster rained down upon the city, killing an estimated 150,000 people and leveling both the biological and man-made landscape. Little was left standing, but somehow the ginkgo trees were able to weather one of the most destructive moments in human history.
Those trees, now dubbed “A-bombed trees,” or hibakujumoku, are still in Hiroshima today, monuments to both humanity’s capacity for destruction and nature’s ability to withstand us at our worst. But while these roughly 170 ginkgo trees are now famous for surviving the Hiroshima blast, ginkgos as a species have persisted through a 200-million-year history of close calls that laid the foundation for its ability to withstand the A-bomb attack, explains Sir Peter Crane, Ph.D., director of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
“A lot of trees are resilient, but ginkgo seems particularly so,” Crane tells Inverse. “But the thing you have to remember is that there’s a huge paradox at the heart of this ginkgo story, and that is it very nearly went extinct.” (2)
photo credit: inverse.com
In 1923, a catastrophic earthquake struck just south of Tokyo with a magnitude of 7.9, setting the city ablaze. Only about 10,000 of the ginkgos that had made their way to Japan 500 years earlier were left standing in the city. But within months, people started to notice something odd. While all the other trees died, the ginkgos had slowly begun to grow again. The bark and outer rings of the trees were scorched, but the living cells within had clung to life.
“The Japanese noted that the ginkgos survived disproportionately from other trees,” Crane says. “The living tissues of the trees were not completely damaged by the fire; the same way they weren’t damaged by the Hiroshima bomb. After the great Kanto fire when they started to replant, they focused on the gingko because they knew it was particularly resistant to fire.”
A replanting effort began, wholly focused on the strange persistence of the ginkgo. Roughly 16,000 new gingko trees were planted across the country by the Japanese government, and a handful of them made their way to Hiroshima, where their will to live was tested once again just over 20 years later.
In the autumn of 1945, the trees would still have been recovering from the enormous shock of the A-bomb. But by then the roots of the ginkgo, deep in the earth, were steadily collecting essential nutrients despite the lasting radiation from the bomb. This durability is another part of the ginkgo’s survival toolkit says Deanna Curtis, curator of Woody Plants and landscape manager at the New York Botanical Garden.
“I would think that the location of the tree and exactly where the tree’s roots were going would have to have played a role in this tree’s survival,” Curtis tells Inverse. “Ginkgo are considered tolerant of a variety of stressful soil conditions, which lead to their use as a common street tree.”
The ginkgo trees that are currently marked at Hiroshima all stand within 2,200 meters of the center of the blast. They would have been exposed to massive amounts of radiation — even strange black rain, dark with ash and other particulates that fell in the days following the explosion. But even after being exposed to what were perhaps the most stressful soil conditions in the history of the planet, the trees survived.
In the spring, the ginkgos bloomed again and continued to do so every spring after that. Today, each tree has a name and is marked by a plaque. They’re now natural memorials, reminders that evolution has equipped life to survive even the greatest catastrophes wrought by humans.
“That’s what caught people’s imaginations,” Crane concludes. “You have this incredible scene of devastation, and it would take months for people to come to grips with it. Just as they had gone through the winter, out pop these new leaves from trees that everyone thought were dead. That’s the power of the ginkgo story.” (3)
Ginkgo trees are often present at shinto shrines. Appreciated for their robustness, they serve as shinboku (sacred trees where the local spirits dwell) and are adulated by everyone, especially in Tokyo, where they are a symbol of the city.
sources:
1 bentham science publishers
Comments