Noni juice
I suffer from high blood pressure for which I take prescription medicine, which seems to cause joint pains. Recently, I heard of a substance called Noni, which is said to be very effective at lowering blood pressure naturally. What are your views?
Noni juice is a traditional Pacific island remedy now exported amidst much “wonder cure” hype worldwide. The marketing hype does not mean it has no health benefits, it simply means you have to sift through all the many claims made for it to work out whether it contains anything that can help with your particular problem.
The juice is made from the fruits of the Morinda citrifolia plant; an evergreen tree that is also known as Indian mulberry. It bears fruit throughout the year and if you want to see one for yourself, visit the Eden project in Cornwall.
The ripe fruit has a pungent “blue cheese” smell and, although not mentioned in any European pharmacopoeia, there are references to the plant in both ancient Chinese and Ayurvedic medical texts.
Noni exploded onto the natural health scene in the late 1990s via multi-level marketing and direct sales and is now surrounded by so many anecdotal reports and claims, it can be difficult to find the facts.
What we do know is that while traditional healers in that part of the world have used Noni to counter high blood pressure, most of the health claims made for it have revolved around an active compound called xeronine which scientists have not been able to isolate or study.
In the 1950s, two trials showed that Noni did reduce blood pressure in an anaesthetised dog and, more recently, in a small trial on just nine patients, it did the same. You cannot, however, take this as evidence since the trial was not controlled and was too small to be statistically significant. It does contain another agent called scopoletin, which, according to Nigerian research, can help lower blood pressure so there may be something in the claim but we cannot say for sure.
Noni does, however, contain the anti-inflammatory agent, bromelain, which is now widely used to counter arthritic conditions making it, in my opinion, a safer bet for these types of joint problems.