Mangosteen fruit

Credit: engineeredlifestyles.org

Garcinia mangostana or commonly known as Mangosteen are traditionally used as medicine for treatment of skin infections, wounds and diarrhea. Mangosteen (G. mangostana) has begun to be used as a botanical dietary supplement in the United States, because of their potent antioxidant potential. The major secondary metabolites of mangosteen have been found to be prenylated xanthone derivatives; some members of this compound class isolated from this plant possess antifungal, antimicrobial, antioxidant, and cytotoxic activities.

This exotic superfruit contains high amount of polyphenols known as xanthones. There are 40 different types of xanthones in the mangosteen that contributes to antioxidant effects. The main xanthones are beta-, gamma-, alpha-mangostin and garcinone. Xanthones are powerful antioxidant that goes throughout your body destroying free radicals that cause inflammation and disease. It is also found to exhibit properties such as anti-cancer, anti-allergy, antibacterial and antiviral.

ORAC Assay

National Institute on Aging in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) developed a test to measure the level of antioxidant protection capacity of different foods and supplements, which is ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) test. The higher the ORAC value of food the more antioxidant power it contains. However, the maximum number of ORAC units the body seems to be able to handle in a given day is about 3000 to 5000 units. The excess is excreted by the kidneys. Therefore, there are no health benefits to numbers over 3,000-5,000 ORAC unit per day.

Normally, most of the serving sizes are based on 100 gram (milliliter) portions, for example, ground cloves may have 314,446 as ORAC score and sounds like a great deal, but you’re unlikely to be able to consume 100 g of ground cloves daily.

ORAC Value of Fruits
Source: Buchanan, M., (2010). You Can Prevent and Reverse Cancer. Xlibris Corporation, 146.

[Source: http://furleybioextracts.com.my]