Holistic Health Articles and Research Related to Herbal Medicines, Foods and Phytochemicals : Chinese Herbs

Saturday, 9 November 2013

Chinese Herbs – Hai Ma (Hippocampus)

Hai Ma is also known as Sea Horse. The sweet and warm herb has been used in TCM as sex hormone enhancing, anti aging, anti breast cancer agent, etc. and to treat asthma, impotence, unable to conceive, sleepiness and lack of strength, infection of throat, skin diseases, insomnia , etc. as it tonifies the Kidneys, strengthens the Yang, moves Blood, etc., by enhancing the functions of liver and kidney channels.
Ingredients
Depending to the types of sea horse, it can contain the following
1. γ-carotene
2. Astaxanthin
3. Astacene
4. Melanin
5. Acetylcholinesterase
6. Cholinesterase
7. Stearic acid
8. Etc.
Health Benefits
1. Antioxidants
In the determination of the radical scavenging and antioxidant activities of the water extracts of Hippocampus japonicus Kaup and the developed HPLC method applied to quantify hypoxanthine in different H. japonicus, H. kuda and S. acus samples. found that the developed HPLC method is simple and reliable for the quantification of hypoxanthine with a detection limit at 0.002 µg mL(-1), and a high recovery from 96.3% to 102.1%. This method provides a powerful tool for rapid identification and quantification of free radical scavenging compounds in complex marine natural products, according to “Rapid finding and quantification of the major antioxidant in water extracts of three marine drug organisms from China by online HPLC-DAD/MS-DPPH” by Zheng L, Chen J, Zhao H, Shi Q, Yang B, Cheng H, Zang J, Wang X.(1)
2. Antimicrobial peptide
In the examination of the novel gene encoding 55 amino-acid residues identified from the brooding pouch cDNA library of Hippocampus kuda Bleeker, found that the dominant contents are anti-parallel and parallel sheets, which may have β-sheet or β-strand motif. It is inferred that HKPLP participates in the host defense during egg fertilization and embryo development as an antimicrobial peptide in brooding pouch, according to “ Identification, synthesis and characterization of a novel antimicrobial peptide HKPLP derived from Hippocampus kuda Bleeker” by Sun D, Wu S, Jing C, Zhang N, Liang D, Xu A.(2)
3. Immune system
In the identification of a cDNA library of male Chinese seahorse (Hippocampus kuda Bleeker) which was constructed to investigate the molecular profile of seahorse as one of the most famous traditional Chinese medicine materials, and to reveal immunological and physiological mechanisms of seahorse as one of the most primitive vertebrates at molecular level, found that a lectin-complement pathway might exert a more dominant function in the innate immune system of teleost than mammal. Carbohydrate recognition domain (CRD) without a collagen-like region in the lectins of seahorse was likely an ancient characteristic of lectins similar to invertebrates, according to “Molecular profile of the unique species of traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese seahorse (Hippocampus kuda Bleeker)” by Zhang N, Xu B, Mou C, Yang W, Wei J, Lu L, Zhu J, Du J, Wu X, Ye L, Fu Z, Lu Y, Lin J, Sun Z, Su J, Dong M, Xu A.(3)
4. Etc.
Side effects
1. Do not use the herb in newborn, children or if you are pregnant or breast feeding without consulting first with the related field specialist.
2. Not not use the herb in case of yin deficiency with heat
3. Overdoses or prolonged period of using can cause kidney damage
4. Etc.