 In terms of antioxidant power, I couldn't imagine anything ever beating out cloves, but then, silly as a goose, berry comes along. But then, in a whole nother league, trifala. Trifala is the most commonly used herbal formulation in all of Ayurvedic medicine. Tri means three, phala and Sanskrit means fruits. It's just a combination of three fruits. Indian gooseberries, amla, bibotaki fruit, and haritaki fruit. There's not some drug, not some extract, but just three types of whole fruits dried and crushed into powder. What can it do? Well, antioxidant-wise, one little pinch between your fingertips, which would cost a fraction of a penny, has as much antioxidant power as about a cup of blueberries, or in the big leagues here. Seems to be able to do all the same amla tricks, preferentially wiping out breast cancer cells in vitro, leaving normal breast cells relatively alone. Pancreatic cancer, too. By the time this concentration of trifala was reached, 90% of the pancreatic cancer cells were dead. As you can see, only 10% cancer cell survival. If trifala were less toxic to normal pancreatic cells, we'd expect to see something like this. And if it were completely non-toxic to normal cells, we'd expect maybe this. But what they actually found was this. It actually kind of went out of its way to protect the good cells, while killing off the bad. Quoting from a review recently, all these reports suggest the effectiveness of trifala as a non-toxic selective anti-neoplastic, anti-cancer agent, meaning non-toxic to normal cells at doses toxic to tumor cells. That's what we want. So what's not to like? In 2011, an analysis detection of toxic heavy metals and pesticide residue in herbal plants, which are commonly used in herbal formulations. Uh-oh. We started recognizing it as a problem about a decade ago, and the CDC started noticing cases of lead poisoning associated with Ayurvedic medications. Fatal infant brain disease, paralysis, deafness. So researchers in Boston went to every Indian market within 20 miles and picked up every Ayurvedic herbal medicine product they could find. One in five contained lead, mercury, and or arsenic. And not just a little bit. They found out that those suffering Ayurvedic lead poisoning had higher lead levels than those suffering lead-paint removal poisoning. And it's not just Boston. A national survey a few years ago found that women using Ayurvedic herbs had lead levels 24% higher than non-users. As spelled out in an editorial in the Indian Journal of Medical Sciences, Ayurvedic lead poisoning is an under-recognized international problem.