Barley Leaf Benefits
BARLEY CLAIMS:
Barley Grass history Barley Grass (Hordeum vulgare) was probably the first cereal grain to be cultivated by man. The cultivation of barley was well advanced when writing was developed, and written crop reports have been found in Egypt that date back to 2440 B.C. Barley was a sacred grain to he Egyptians and Greeks. The Chinese were cultivating Barley in 2,000 B.C. Barley was one of the first crops planted in the colony of Virginia in 1611.
Barley Claims In June 2006 FDA finalized a rule that allows foods containing barley to claim that they reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. Specifically, whole grain barley and dry milled barley products such as flakes, grits, flour, and pearled barley, which provide at least 0.75 grams of soluble fiber per serving, may bear the following claim: “Soluble fiber from foods such as barley, as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease. A serving of barley supplies [x] grams of the soluble fiber necessary per day to have this effect.” Scientific evidence indicates that including barley in a healthy diet can help reduce the risk of coronary heart disease by lowering LDL and total cholesterol levels. FDA began allowing the barley claim in December 2005 under an interim final rule, while at the same time accepting public comments on the rule for 75 days. During this time no comments were received that warranted changes to the interim final rule. Barley contains beta glucan.
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Barley and Blood Sugar Response
Comparison of hormone and glucose responses of overweight women to barley and oats. J Am Coll Nutr. 2005. Behall KM, Scholfield DJ, Hallfrisch J. Diet and Human Performance Laboratory, Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center, ARS, USDA, Beltsville, MD To determine the effect of particle size (flour vs. flakes) on glycemic responses after oats and barley (Prowashonupana cultivar), which contain high amounts of soluble fiber, are consumed by overweight women. Ten women, average age 50 years and body mass index 30, consumed glucose (1 g/kg body weight) and four test meals (1 g carbohydrate/kg body weight; 2/3 of the carbohydrate from oat flour, oatmeal, barley flour, or barley flakes and 1/3 from pudding) in a Latin square design after consuming controlled diets for 2 days. Peak glucose and insulin levels after barley were significantly lower than those after glucose or oats. Indexes for insulin resistance (HOMA, MFFM, Cederholm) after the oat and barley meals were not different from indexes after the glucose meal. Glucagon and leptin responses did not significantly differ for the carbohydrates tested. Conclusions: Particle size of the oats or barley had little effect on the glycemic responses. Both oat and barley meals reduced glycemic responses; the high soluble fiber content of this barley appeared to be a factor in the greater reduction observed.
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Barley and Cholesterol
Diets containing barley significantly reduce lipids in mildly hypercholesterolemic men and women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2004. Behall KM, Scholfield DJ, Hallfrisch J. Diet & Human Performance Laboratory, Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center, Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Beltsville, MD,
Barley has high amounts of soluble fiber but is not extensively consumed in the US diet. This study investigated whether consumption of barley would reduce cardiovascular disease risk factors comparably with that of other sources of soluble fiber. Conclusion: The addition of barley to a healthy diet may be effective in lowering total and LDL cholesterol in both men and women.
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Bowel Function
Effects of barley intake on glucose tolerance, lipid metabolism, and bowel function in women. Nutrition. 2003. Department of Environmental Health, School of Medicine, University of Yamanashi, Tamaho, Yamanashi, Japan. The low consumption of grains that are rich sources of dietary fiber may be associated with the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases. This study was conducted to observe the effects of high barley (high-fiber diet) intake on glucose tolerance, lipid metabolism, and bowel function in healthy women. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that barley intake has beneficial effects on lipid metabolism and bowel function and suggests that the intake of a high-fiber food, i.e., barley, should be recommended to prevent chronic diseases.
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Barley Leaf Extract
Effect of young barley leaf extract and adlay on plasma lipids and LDL oxidation in hyperlipidemic smokers. Biol Pharm Bull. 2004. Department of Nutrition, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan. Forty hyperlipidemic patients, smokers and non-smokers, were studied. Subjects received 15 g young barley leaf extract (BL) or 60 g adlay daily for four weeks. The plasma total and LDL-cholesterol (LDL-C) levels were reduced following treatment with either barley leaf extract or adlay. Supplementation with barley leaf extract or adlay can decrease plasma lipids and inhibit LDL oxidation in hyperlipidemic smokers and/or non-smokers.
Germinated Barley Foodstuff
Germinated barley foodstuff prolongs remission in patients with ulcerative colitis. Int J Mol Med. 2004. Department of Endoscopic and Photodynamic Medicine, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Hamamatsu 431-3192, Japan. Germinated barley foodstuff (GBF) is a prebiotic which increases luminal butyrate production by modulating the microfloral distribution. Germinated barley foodstuff has been shown to reduce both clinical activity and mucosal damage in active ulcerative colitis (UC) with mild to moderate activity. However, the efficacy of germinated barley foodstuff in patients with UC during the remission stage is unknown. Conclusion: Germinated barley foodstuff appeared to be effective and safe as a maintenance therapy to taper steroid dose and prolong remission in patients with ulcerative colitis.
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GREEN LEAVES OF BARLEY:
Green Leaves of Barley, by Dr. Mary Ruth Swope, begins by warning “there ‘s a war going on” between orthodox medicine and the advocates of nutrition as a means of health care.
The foreword and first chapter — written by David A. Darbro, M.D. — make a good case for the advantages of preventing and reversing degenerative disease by building a healthy immune system… rather than resorting to the orthodox medical route of pharmaceutical drugs, radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery.
After making a case for nutrition, Drs. Swope and Darbro agree the best way of improving one’s nutritional intake is with the dried powder of green leaves of barley. Swope’s purpose in writing this book is ” to encourage Americans, and people everywhere, to improve their declining health through improving their diet.” The author and nutrition educator writes that she feels ” the best, easiest, quickest, least-expensive single way of improving the nutrient density of your diet is by the daily addition of a serving of green leaves of barley.”
Dr. Swope details an extremely wide range of advantages to adding this nutritional supplement to one’s diet. She explains the medical and scientific reasons why green leaves of barley benefit the body, and her book includes the written testimonies of over 100 people who say this supplement has helped their arthritis, cancer, high blood pressure, hay fever, digestion, cardiovascular problems and more.
A careful reading of this book allows one to not only learn much about the humble barley plant, but also our own bodies, beginning with the cellular level. Swope writes: ” If it could be expected that all scientists in the world agreed on a single fact, I believe they would agree… ‘Life begins, is maintained and ends at the cellular level.’ The health of a single cell holds the key to the health of the whole organism.” Darbro adds, ” Cells made strong through good nutrition will go a long way in giving you an immune system that will resist the illnesses so prevalent in our society.”
In addition to scientific knowledge, the book also has its share of common sense about nutrition. For example: ” What humans (or animals for that matter) regularly consume in terms of their food and drink can be used as a remarkably accurate predictor of their length and quality of life, their reproductibility, their size, vitality, disease patterns, mental problems, productivity and so forth.” And: ” All living, rejuvenating, healing processes are intimately related to the work of nutrients.” These appear to be simple, harmless truths, but by the time you are halfway through Chapter 1, you will see how these two common sense statements lead to medical heresy .
Darbro begins the book by giving the reader a history of the controversy between the American Medical Association and alternative health care. He notes there is irony in the fact that the word ” physician” is derived from the ancient Greek word ” physis,” which was used to describe the body’s tendency to heal itself. The word was coined in the Fourth Century B.C. by Hippocrates, The Father of Medicine, who described the phenomena of physis by saying, ” It is nature that finds the way… though untaught and uninstructed, it does what is proper… to preserve a perfect equilibrium… to reestablish order and harmony.”
Doctors graduating from medical school still take the Hippocratic Oath today. But over 2,000 years after the time of Hippocrates, the medical profession split over the issue of whether disease should be fought by strengthening the physis, or to offer a bolder form of intervention that fights the specific disease being treated.
It was the latter school of thought — allopathy — that won the battle. Darbro refers to this war as a ” fight to the death” in which ” no prisoners are taken… no mercy is shown.” For example, he quotes a pamphlet stating that when the A.M.A. formed in 1849, it began a tradition of ” economic self-interest and the squelching of all intellectual opposition” by barring homeopathic doctors from its ranks and prohibiting its membership from using any homeopathic techniques. And under the heading of ” Big Business Gets Bigger,” Darbro details how pharmaceutical companies became involved, buying some influential medical journals, and advertising in others. With the flow of information to physicians owned or supported by the drug industry, Darbro quotes Dr. Atkins’ Health Revolution as saying doctors that “had once been open to any therapeutic system… (now) assumed the only answer was pharmaceutical.” Another way, cited from Atkins’ book, that medical choice is under corporate control is that funding for grants for new research go more often to study pharmaceuticals and chemotherapy than nutrition.
Dr. Darbro spent 15 years of his medical career as “card-carrying AMA type,” dispensing drugs designed to “maintain disease at an acceptable level” before realizing he needed “to do much less of fighting disease and do much more of promoting wellness.”
Drs. Swope and Darbro agree that in the time of a medical emergency, a hospital is the best place to be. But they note that 70 percent of all deaths in the U.S. are caused by diseases linked to diet, and modern medicine has not been successful in curing these degenerative conditions, such as cancer and heart disease. Swope writes: “The tragedy of degenerative disease is that the conditions which are so often fatal by the time they require attention from a doctor are the very same conditions that are almost entirely preventable through a personal commitment to good nutrition.” To this end, Drs. Swope and Darbro recommend improved eating habits and the addition of dried powder from the juice of green barley leaves.
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Much of the book is dedicated to the scientific and medical reasons as to why this powdered juice from barley leaves is beneficial to the body. The young barley plant is described by Dr. Hagiwara as containing “the most prolific balanced supply of nutrients that exist on earth in a single source.” Entire chapters are used to explain why its alkalinity makes this product the ideal antacid (and the importance of pH in cell functioning); why the body needs the live enzymes contained in green barley; the benefits of chlorophyll found in green barley; the advantages of receiving vitamins in a natural, chelated form; and the other ways in which this supplement helps bolster the immune system.
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Green Leaves of Barley : Nature’s.. can be found through this link at Amazon.
Green Barley Essence (Good Health Series) can be found through this link at Amazon
