Mangosteen (Pericarp) is one of the twenty two ingredients contained in SenSatiaFruit.

The Mangosteen fruit (Garcinia mangostana L.) is is believed to have originated from the Sunda Islands and is grown in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, India and several other countries.

The inhabitants of Southeast Asia were preparing Mangosteen folk medicines long before the first Europeans arrived in the early 1700s.

The dark, purple rind was often dried and ground, then used to ward off infections both internal and external. Poultices of the fruit were used to treat parasitic skin infections. An extract from the pulp of the fruit was used to control fever.

Every element of the fruit, from rind to pulp to seed, was prized by these people.

Mangosteen is packed full of xanthones, polysaccharides, catechins, polyphenols, minerals and vitamins. 

Today Mangosteen is available to the world, and most of the scientific research on this fruit involves about a half dozen of the two dozen known xanthones in this fruit.

Pharmaceutical drug companies would love to isolate, synthesize and then patent these substances.

Then they could charge consumers their normal 50,000% markup on the resulting drugs.

Xanthones are a class of polyphenolic compounds that commonly occur in plants and have been shown to have extensive biological and pharmacological activities. Recently, the pharmacological properties of xanthones in the cardiovascular system have attracted great interest.

Some of the most important xanthones found in Mangosteen include:

Alpha-mangostin
Beta-mangostin
Gamma-mangostin
Garcinone
Garcinone A
Garcinone C
Garcinone D
Mangostanol
Gartanin

Known Benefits of Xanthones

Scientific research has made it abundantly clear that no other fruit compares in its health benefits to mangosteen, due to its xanthones and other nutritional properties.

Helping to fight cancer is just one of the many properties that different xanthones perform. For instance, one study performed in Japan showed that the xanthone alpha-mangostin had apparent properties that suppressed the development of tumors. Another, performed in China, found the xanthone garcinone E to show significant anticancer effects in terms of liver, lung, and gastric cancer cells.

In addition, some xanthones have shown significant antimicrobial effects in terms of fighting MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus), which is a bacterial strain known for its tenacious resistance to pharmacologic antibiotics. One scientific study also showed that alpha-mangostin, beta-mangostin, and garcinone B to have pronounced inhibition effects on a strain of tuberculosis.

As if that isn't enough, xanthones have also been scientifically proven to help lower LDL, the bad cholesterol, by protecting the LDL from coming into contact with free radicals, thus leaving it unable to oxidize and attach to arterial walls and cause atherosclerosis.

Want to research Mangosteen further?

There are 1,700,000 references to Mangosteen on Google as of December 2006

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