The internet is amazing. It has the power to deliver information to us that we weren’t even looking for! Yesterday, I wanted to write a post for this blog, but didn’t have something specific in mind,so I decided to set up a more regular research system.

I went into Blog Catalog, where I have a listing, and searched under Home Remedies. Then, I started methodically subscribing to the RSS feeds from blogs I liked, so that, when I’m looking for inspiration for a post, or when I want to find posts I’d like to comment on, I can find recent posts centralized in my Google Reader.

While I was looking at various home remedies blogs, I noticed an ad for an EBook about Homemade Medicines.

I went to the sales page for the book and found that the author is a naturopath in Florida, with many years of clinic experience, testing home remedies among other things. His sales letter was full of interesting data, one of which was that  “6 cherries has the same effect as 1 aspirin.”  I thought, “Wow, I’ll have to check into that to find out why!”

Then, early this morning, my husband woke me to say he had been experiencing a sharp pain deep in his arm, and he was unable to sleep. I applied some deep tissue massage oil , but that didn’t seem to do it, or not right away.

On a whim, I told him what I had read about the cherries. He ate 12 dried cherries, then went to sleep without pain, slept for hours, and woke up without pain.

Whoa, I thought! That was amazing. I’d better research this further. Here’s what I found:

Arthritis Treatment and Relief.com: “Twenty cherries provide 25 milligrams of anthocyanins, which help to shut down the enzymes that cause tissue inflammation in the first place, so cherries can prevent and treat many kinds of pain,” says Muraleedharan Nair, the lead researcher on the cherry project at Michigan State University.

The Center for Plant Products and Technologies: “For example, we have isolated and characterized several compounds, some of them are novel, from Montmorency and BalatonTM tart cherries. Some of these compounds have shown excellent anti-inflammatory activity in cyclooxygenase enzymes, COX-1 and COX-2, inhibitory assays and antioxidant activity as determined by the inhibition of lipid oxidation.”

It’s interesting to note that the data on all these websites seems to come from the studies at Michigan State University. It is always satisfying to find the source!