A common kitchen and garden herb with extensive histological medicinal use! Ancient herbal medicine books tout the herb as a nervine and carminative agent, infusing it with wine as a cough remedy and in tonics for appetite, apathy, liver and urinary stimulants.
Medieval hospitals burnt the plant for air purification and to ward off contagion. Topical use was recorded for those with “legges blowen with gowte” (Grieve, 1931, p. 682).
Many traditional herbalists associated rosemary with cognitive benefits, writings suggesting it “stengtheneth the memorie and is very medicinable for the head” (Grieve, 1931, p. 682) with recommendation to administer “against weyknessof the braine and coldness thereof” (Grieve, 1931, p. 683). Students in Ancient Greece utilized rosemary as a memory aid and use at funerals as “sacred to remembrance” (Grieve, 1931, p. 682) was symbolically parallel to its medicinal virtues.
Herbalists continue utilising rosemary in treatment for dandruff prevention, diabetes, dementia and as a digestive and nervous system stimulant. Primary use however is for liver and gall bladder stimulation; its choline content having been substantiated in studies with “decongesting the liver and promoting improved liver function and fat metabolism” (Pizzorno & Murray, 2013, p. 466).
Rosmarinus has antimicrobial, anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties, demonstrating efficacy in HIV treatment by decreasing virus replication (Pizzorno et al., 2013, p. 1437) making it a particularly useful herb during the cover pandemic. Rosemary has also been established as an “effective anti-fungal agent” against candidiasis (Pizzorno et al., 2013, p.467).
Rosemary has antioxidant properties, protecting lipids from oxidation and acting as radical scavengers (Loussouarn, Krieger-Liszkay, Svilar, Bily, Birtić, & Havaux, 2017, p. 1381).
Studies confirm a component of rosemary, terpenoid alpha pinene, which is also found in cannabis, suppresses human hepatoma tumour progression, potentially valuable in supplementing chemotherapy treatments (Xu, Li, Yang, Yang, Xie, Lu, Wang, & Chen, 2018).
Other useful constituents of rosemary include 8-cineole, which has proven clinical efficacy as a vasodilator (Lahlou, Figueiredo, Magalhães & Leal-Cardoso, 2002, p. 1125) and is prescribed for asthma control with established “mucolytic and spasmolytic action on the respiratory tract” (Juergens, 2014, Abstract). Borneol or camphor has additional respiratory benefits, stimulating the circulatory system, acting as a relaxant and contributing to muscular relief.
Rosemarinic acid shows potential benefit for treatment of rheumatoid conditions, dramatically reducing arthritic index in mice (Jeehee, Kyung-Hee, Jonghwa,
All in all, an extremely valuable herb that is often overlooked for being “common”!
References:
Pizzorno, J., & Murray, M. (2013). Textbook of natural medicine (4th ed). St Louis, MO: Elsevier.
Loussouarn, M., Krieger-Liszkay, A., Svilar, L., Bily, A., Birtić, S., & Havaux, M. (2017). Carnosic acid and carnosol, two major antioxidants of rosemary, act through different mechanisms. Plant Physiology, 175(3), 1381–1394. https://doi.org/10.
Xu, Q., Li, M., Yang, M., Yang, J., Xie, J., Lu, X., Wang, F., & Chen, W. (2018). α-pinene regulates miR-221 and induces G2/M phase cell cycle arrest in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells. Bioscience Reports, 38(6), BSR20180980. https://doi.org/
Lahlou, S., Figueiredo, A. F., Magalhães, P. J., & Leal-Cardoso, J. H. (2002). Cardiovascular effects of 1,8-cineole, a terpenoid oxide present in many plant essential oils, in normotensive rats. Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 80(12), 1125–1131. https://doi.org/10.
Juergens, U. (2014). Anti-inflammatory properties of the monoterpene 1.8-cineole: current evidence for co-medication in inflammatory airway diseases. (Abstract). Drug Research. 64. DOI: 10.1055/s-0034-1372609
Grieve, M. (1931). A modern herbal (Complete volume).
USA: Stone Basin Books.