 One of the reasons fruits and vegetables may be so good for us are the antioxidant compounds they contain given the role that oxidant-free radicals are thought to play in aging and disease. So if you're making a salad, for example, using spinach or arugula or red leaf lettuce, may offer twice the antioxidants of butterhead lettuce. And then choosing purple cabbage over green or red onions over white, you can help boost the antioxidant power of your salad. But fresh herbs are so powerful even a little bit could double or quadruple the antioxidant power of the entire meal. Here's the total antioxidants in a simple salad, lettuce and tomato. And then here's that same salad with just a tablespoon of lemon balm leaves, or could be a half of a tablespoon of oregano or mint. And here's marjoram, country time, or sage. Effectively quadrupling the antioxidant content of the salad and making it yummier at the same time. And that's not to mention maybe a little fresh garlic or ginger in the dressing? Herbs are so antioxidant-risk that researchers decide to see if they might be able to reduce the DNA-damaging effects of radiation with them. Radioactive iodine is sometimes given to people with overactive thyroid glands or thyroid cancer to destroy part of the gland or mop up any remaining tumor cells after surgery. For days after the isotope injection, patients become so radioactive that they are advised not to kiss anyone or to sleep close to anyone, including your pets. If you breathe on a phone, make sure to wipe it off. Don't splatter radioactive urine. Don't go near your kids and basically stay away from others as much as possible. The treatment can be very effective, but all that radiation exposure appears to increase the risk of developing new cancers later on. So to prevent the DNA damage associated with this treatment, researchers test the ability of oregano to protect chromosomes of human blood cells in vitro from exposure to radioactive iodine. At baseline, about 100 of our blood cells show evidence of chromosomal damage. Add some radioactive iodine, though, and it's more like one in eight. But then add, in addition to the radiation, increasing amounts of oregano extract, and chromosome damage was reduced by as much as 70%. They conclude that oregano extract significantly protects against DNA damage induced by the radioactive iodine in white blood cells. But this was all done outside the body, and they justified by saying, look, it wouldn't be particularly ethical to irradiate people for experimental research, but look, millions of people have been irradiated for treatment, so they could have used them, or at least just had people eat the oregano instead, and then just irradiate their blood in vitro to model the amount of oregano compounds that would actually make it into the bloodstream. Other in vitro studies on oregano similarly kind of unsatisfying in a comparison of the effects of various spice extracts, bay leaves, fennel, lavender, oregano, paprika, parsley, rosemary, and thyme. Oregano beat out all but bay leaves in its ability to suppress cervical cancer cell growth in vitro, while leaving normal cells alone, and they've got pretty pictures of oregano killing off cervical cancer cells, but people tend to use oregano orally, so the relevance of these results are not clear. Similarly, the closely related herb marjoram can suppress the growth of individual breast cancer cells in a petri dish, and even, effectively, whole human breast tumors grown in chicken eggs. I've never seen that before. The only clinical trial I could find on oregano family herbs, the only randomized controlled study on actual people, was this study on the effect of marjoram T on the hormonal profile of women with polycystic ovary syndrome. P-Cos, the most common cause of fertility problems in women, affecting about one in eight young women, is characterized by excessive male hormones, resulting in excess body or facial hair, menstrual irregularities, and cysts in one's ovaries on ultrasound. Heavenly traditional medicine practitioners reported marjoram T was beneficial, but had never been put to the test until now, two cups a day versus a placebo T for one month, and there did seem to be beneficial effects on the hormonal profiles, and so that would seem to offer credence to the claims of the traditional medicine practitioners, but the study didn't last long enough to confirm that actual symptoms improve as well. That's what we care about. Is there anything that's been shown to help? Well, reducing one's intake of dietary glyco toxins may help prevent and treat the disease, which I'll cover next.