An history of the development and uses of Wild Mexican Yam
A long tradition in herbal medicine
Leading herbal practitioners recommend the use of Wild Mexican Yam as a cornerstone in the treatment of menopausal symptoms and many other health conditions:
According to herbalist Rosemary Gladstar in Herbal Healing for Women, Wild Mexican Yam "is the most widely used herb in the world today." Over 200 million prescriptions that contain its derivatives are sold each year. Wild Mexican Yam is the plant that actually led to the viable development of markets for HRT and the birth control
pill.
"Wild Yam restores libido so successfully in most women that I would not advise you to use it unless you have a sexual partner", Healing Herbs; Lesley Kenton 2000
"Wild Yam balances hormones, regulates menstrual cycle, relieves spasms, (helps with) irregular periods, ovarian and uterine pains, cleanses liver, reduces cholesterol in the blood, soothing effect on intestines, used in treatment of IBS", Traditional uses of Herbal Remedies; Dr Helena Benson, Hale Clinic, Harley Street
Daniel Mowrey reported in the Scientific Validation of Herbal Medicine that throughout the 18th and 19th centuries Wild Yam was used to treat menstrual cramps and problems related to childbirth. As far back as 25BC the Mexican Wild Yam was mentioned in the Chinese Pen Tsao Ching as a highly valued herb.
The British Herbal Pharmacopoeia recognises Wild Yam root as a spasmolytic, mild diaphoretic, anti-inflammatory, anti-rheumatic and cholagogue and for use in the treatment of intestinal colic, diverticulitis, rheumatoid arthritis, muscular rheumatism, cramps, intermittent claudication (leg clots), cholecystitis, dysmenorrhea, and ovarian and uterine pain.
In 1992 National Geographic magazine reported on a remote island people who ate vast quantities of tuber very similar to Wild Mexican Yam: "the libido rate of these people is extraordinarily high, yet their population rate is surprisingly low".
"Perhaps this is the quintessential story that demonstrates the love-making and the contraceptive propensities of progesterone. Should you eat Mexican Yams instead of applying the cream? They are not especially edible, and, because of nutrient-depleted soil and nutrient-depleting marketing delays (the time it takes to get food like Mexican Yams from the garden to your table), my advice is to consider the transdermal cream" HRT Yes or No?; Dr Betty Kamen
Hormone extraction and manufacture
Scientists are now working with over 110 species of Wild Yams and have identified and isolated numerous chemical compounds all with different and remarkable actions and activities. Many, like disogenin, have a key role in "precursor" chemistry.
Leading researcher James Jamieson believes that these precursors (natural co-factor enzymes or co-enzymes) are the link that can be lost when synthesising pharmaceutical drugs, thus causing the active component of pure drugs to be less effective than the original natural remedies and increasing the potential for unpleasant side effects.
Hormones are the chemical messengers in the body that control many functions but especially those concerned with sexual development, reproduction and growth.
Cholesterol, the building block of all hormones in the body, was first isolated in the 1700's.
The first major research was by German scientists who were investigating the substance in the urine of pregnant women which induced heat in mice and rats. This research led to the isolation and identification of the specific female hormone that they named estrone.
Further research soon extracted the male hormone testosterone from animal sources but the process was very complex
.
The race was on to synthesise hormones in the laboratory. Soon DHEA - a precursor to testosterone - was synthesised: first from cholesterol but then from a plant sterol found in many different oils such as soy.
In the late 1920's, the University of Chicago Professor of Physiologic Chemistry, Fred C. Koch led a team that extracted a reasonably pure form of the male hormone from extracts of bull testes.
Testosterone was soon recognised as a sex hormone that had muscle building properties and ever since body builders, weight lifters and athletes have used anabolic steroids to gain strength, weight and muscle mass. The side effects, cancer, leukaemia, kidney disease, sterility and violent mood swings make this a dangerous practice and the uncontrolled use of these substances has been made illegal.
Wild Mexican Yam as a Source of Nature Identical and Synthetic Progesterone
The key breakthrough came in 1943 when Professor Russell Marker of the University of Pennsylvania travelled to Mexico. He knew that certain plant substances were used by "medicine men" throughout Central and South America and China and that certain Yams were being used for birth control and to treat female problems, so he theorised that there were some hormonal properties in a specific local species of Wild Yam.
The Mexican Barbasco Yam has vine-like leaves and black 'potato' tubers which grow underground. They were grown wild in mountainous regions. Marker learned how the locals prepared and used the yams.
The turning point came when he presented a bag of a powdered white substance to one of the leading pharmaceutical companies and claimed it contained progesterone which he had extracted from the Barbasco Yam. He valued that initial sample at just $800.
At that time, progesterone and oestrogen were derived only through expensive chemical extraction methods from animal urine - at a cost of approximately $3,000 a kilo. Marker's product was tested and found to be pure progesterone.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Marker story is that he did not patent his process and it has always remained in the public domain. It is for this reason alone that nature identical progesterone was shunned by the pharmaceutical industry that found it much more profitable to develop synthetic variations of progesterone that could be protected by patent and sold for enormous profits.
Following Marker's discovery, yams created a booming synthetic steroid industry in Mexico. By 1951 Fortune Magazine claimed that the synthetic steroid industry had created "the biggest technological boom ever heard south of the border".
Over the next 20 to 30 years, the value of the Barbasco Yam increased dramatically and the steroid hormone business exploded as the yams provided an easier, much less expensive way to manufacture hormones for birth control and hormone therapies for menopausal women and those who have undergone hysterectomies.
The 'key' to the progesterone 'lock'
The ability of disogenin to influence the plasma concentrations of gonadotrophic hormones (Follicle Stimulating Hormone, FSH and Luteinising Hormone, LH) has been demonstrated in post-menopausal women using diosgenin extract in transdermal cream (Jimenez, 2002)
This ability of plant compounds to mimic other compounds is well known. For example, Black Cohosh mimics oestrogen, willow bark (the source of commercial salicylic acid) is nature's aspirin and St John's Wort is nature's Prozac.
While there are other sources of plant steroids - such as soybeans, agave and yucca - Wild Mexican Yam is the best, and most concentrated, source of diosgenin.
The ability of plant oestrogens (phyto-ostrogens) to provide relieve from menopausal symptoms is being further demonstrated by research in the US and England into soy. Just like the Central American Indians women who found relief in Yam, the Japanese language has no word for 'hot flushes'!
Anti-inflammatory / anti-arthritic action
Yams and Osteoporosis
Synthetic or natural?
Dr John Lee has carried out extensive research with nature identical progesterone. He says that the reason synthetic progesterone causes side effects is because "it is not progesterone. Pharmaceutical companies alter the molecular structure so it (synthetic progesterone) no longer fits into the biochemical machinery of the body". The progesterone taken from the Wild Mexican Yam, on the other hand, is nearly identical to what the body produces.
The effects of natural and synthetic hormones differ greatly. Synthetic progestins can inhibit ovulation and suppress the body's production of its own natural progesterone.
Progestins are used in oral contraceptives and in HRT products commonly prescribed to menopausal women. Women with a hormonal imbalance may be prescribed synthetic progestins which may aggravate the symptoms rather than eliminate them and many women become irritable, ill-tempered and emotionally unstable.
In spite of the known side effects and risks, doctors today also prescribe synthetic progesterone for women with menstrual problems, osteoporosis and menopausal symptoms. Many women claim to feel much better by substituting natural progesterone for synthetic progesterone.
Natural progesterone also alleviates many of the symptoms of PMS.
The issue of natural versus synthetic hormones is also important to women taking oestrogen. A study in Sweden showed an increase in breast cancer among women using high doses of the synthetic oestrogen ethinyl estradiol - a substance used in lower doses in oral contraceptives in the U.S. By contrast, the doses of natural oestrogen used post-menopausally are 10 to 20 times lower than the synthetic oestrogen in the pill.
It is a matter of debate as to why physicians will put adolescent girls on birth control pills with high levels of synthetic oestrogens, but are reluctant to give women with pre-menopausal symptoms the low doses of natural oestrogens they need.
For more information on the use of Wild Mexican Yam in herbal medicine and for a full bibliography
click here
What the papers say about Wild Mexican Yam
Here is a list of some articles that to be found on the internet. When you
follow these links you can always find the reference to Mexican Yam by clicking
Edit then Find (on this page) on your tool bar and then typing "wild
yam". This will take you directly to the relevant paragraph. It is always
worth checking some of the more popular sites such as www.dailymail.co.uk
and www.ivillage.co.uk and doing your own searches on these sites.
Living without HRT (Daily Mail feature)
Availability of Extract of Wild Mexican Yam
We now know that the Mexican Wild Yam contains diosgenin, which is a sapogenin chemical very similar to cholesterol, progesterone and DHEA - the precursor to testosterone.
Diosgenin provides about 50% of the raw material for the manufacture of cortisone, progesterone, and many other steroid hormones and is a multi-billion dollar industry. Until recently, Wild Mexican Yam was the sole source of the diosgenin used in making the contraceptive pill.
In 1936, Japanese researchers realised that diosgenin extracted from the Yam was remarkably similar to some of the adrenal hormones and to the precursor molecule, cholesterol.
We know now that the raw material in the yam is loaded with precursor phytogenins, including diosgenin, which today is easily converted by enzymes to manufacture progesterone and many other hormones.
Hormones are 'keys' that open 'locks' in specialist cells throughout the body. Diosgenin is remarkably similar to progesterone and attaches to the progesterone receptors to produce a progesterone-like effect. The effect does not occur if the receptor is already 'unlocked' with natural or synthetic progesterone.
Animal and human studies have demonstrated diosgenins to have beneficial effects on cholesterol blood levels and hypertension. Research shows that dioscorea induces a short-lived decrease in blood pressure and an increase in coronary flow when injected intravenously into rabbits. The saponins of yams, fed orally to rabbits, prevented large increases in blood cholesterol levels. The beneficial therapeutic effect of dioscorea saponins on patients with atherosclerosis combined with hypertension has been confirmed in clinical practice. (Lewis).
Yams have long been used to make cortisone, a very common anti-inflammatory agent used to treat everything from rashes to joint inflammation.
Clinical studies with post-menopausal women, aged 38 to 83, carried out by Dr John Lee have shown that using a cream with natural hormone compounds extracted from Wild Yams actually increased bone density levels by as much as 25%. Unlike synthetic oestrogen, yam-based compounds actually restore bone density. These results are being echoed with hormone-free extract of yam creams. There have been no noted side effects with natural Wild Mexican Yam.
The ability of topical creams based on extract of Wild Mexican Yam to actually increase bone density has been noted by several practitioners in the UK.
Although many physicians believe that there is no significant difference between synthetic and natural progesterone, others disagree. New York City obstetrician Dr. Neils Lauerson, MD, author of PMS: Premenstrual Syndrome and You, says that some synthetic progesterones can have a masculinising effect on a woman while others cause fluid retention. Nature identical progesterone from Wild Mexican Yam does not cause masculinisation and is known to reduce sodium and fluid retention.
Alternatives to HRT (Daily Mail feature)
Menopause tips from around the world (Daily Mail feature)
Help with mood swings (Daily Mail feature)
The best health tip you ever had (Daily Mail feature)
Wild Mexican Yam and natural breast enhancement (Daily Mail feature)
Wild Mexican Yam and osteoporosis (Daily Mail feature)
Vaginal dryness (Guardian feature)
Over 50, not over sex! "Slap on the yam cream!" (Guardian feature)
Alleviating night sweats (Guardian feature)
Lack of libido? (Guardian feature)
Weight gain and wild yam (Daily Mail feature)
Kate Winslet's experience (Guardian feature)
Natural options for HRT (WNAS article)
Natural remedies for PMS and Menopause (GMTV article)
Fabulous at 50 - Cosmetics for the over 50s (This Morning TV feature)
Extract of Wild Mexican Yam has become a popular herbal treatment and is available in many forms including capsules, creams and gels. The active constituents pass easily and quickly through the skin and therefore topical application in cream form is most often recommended.
The use of Wild Mexican Yam extract in recommended amounts is safe but to be extra sure pregnant women should avoid it.
To find where you can buy Wild Mexican Yam search the UK internet using phrases such as "wild mexican yam" or "perfect woman yam" or "wild yam supplements for women"
(c) Wild Mexican Yam Information Service 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005. 2006, 2007, 2008