Frankincense and cancer.....

 Oman's Land of Frankincense 

Boswellia sacra produces the highest-quality frankincense.

"The records show that frankincense was produced here as far back as 7,000 BC,"  With a practised flick,  a strip of bark from the trunk of one of the Boswellia sacra trees is cut. Pinpricks of milky-white sap appear on the wood and, very slowly, start to ooze out.


"This is the first cut. But you don't gather this sap,  It releases whatever impurities are in the wood. The farmers return after two or three weeks and make a second, and a third, cut. Then the sap comes out yellow, or bright green, or brown or even black. They take this." 

Frankincense: Could it be a cure for cancer?

BBC News sent their own  Jeremy Howell to visit the country of Oman to ask whether a commodity that was once worth its weight in gold could be reborn as a treatment for cancer.

 Read His story is here.

 

However Jeremy is not the only one exploring the possibilities held in the  Boswellia sacra tree.  

A study published in BMC Complement Altern Med. 2012 Dec 13  stated after extensive research that:

All fractions of frankincense essential oil from Boswellia sacra are capable of suppressing viability and inducing apoptosis of a panel of human pancreatic cancer cell lines. Potency of essential oil-suppressed tumor cell viability may be associated with the greater abundance of high molecular weight compounds in Fractions III and IV. Although chemical component(s) responsible for tumor cell cytotoxicity remains undefined, crude essential oil prepared from hydrodistillation of Boswellia sacra gum resins might be a useful alternative therapeutic agent for treating patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma, an aggressive cancer with poor prognosis.

I will be posting much more on the possibilities and benefits with medical research on frankincense.