In article , "J&S Bouchard"
wrote:

"Tracey" wrote in message
...
Whilst walking the dog this weekend, we came across loads of bilberry
bushes, smothered in ripe berries so I picked a few. Well, they
have gone down a treat. I've had a quick look on the net and bilberries.
Amongst other things they slow
brain ageing and maintain healthy vision. I've been spending quite a bit
buying blueberries for my boys (there's no wild bushes round here, have to
buy them from the supermarket who charge £2 for tiniest punnet), so I'm
going to stock up on these little freebies!

Tracey

Great!
I never heard of bilberries.

Bilberry is the common name of Vaccinium myrtillus, sometimes called
Creeping Blueberry. Some people call American huckleberries bilberries,
but generally it is the European shrub that carries this name.

The myth that bilberries improve vision & make it easier to see in the
night is just that, a myth -- the usual story is that RAF pilots ate
bilberry jam before heading out on night sorties, & for that reason
bilberry extracts or powders are sold as an herbal remedy for poor vision
& sight-related
diseases. The myth that it slows down aging is based on discoveries about
natural antioxidants, but the science is never as exaggerated as the
herbal community's re-inventions of smaller truths. I will focus on the
easily
debunked vision myth, as it is really quite fascinating how these often
moronic superstitions about herbs come about.

Bilberries like other vaccininiums & most edible plants include isoflavins
& other chemicals that make fresh fruits so healthful overall, but no
controlled study has ever shown special significance for vision, though
the profitability of keeping this myth alive means herb vendors will
encourage the gullible & the superstitious to believe it forever.

Alternative Medicine Review is predisposed to give positive reviews to
herbs. Yet even this journal could not but publish in April 2000 the
findings of Lt. Eric Muth, PhD, a double-blind study entitled "The effect
of bilberry nutritional supplementation on night visual acuity and
contrast sensitivity." This is by far the best study yet designed, & it
discovered that there was no basis for the belief. This was a Navy-funded
study, & they had hoped to discover they could improve the night vision of
naval flyers by giving them bilberry, but there
was simply no such effect. Three poorly modeled studies done in the 1960s
in France had left open some faint hope of value, but alas a study with
better controls closed even the slightest statistical possibility.

Other alternative medicine journals & especially pop-books have published
EDITORIALS and ASSERTIONS alleging values in treating cataracts,
diabetes, aging, & so on, but these were just herbal quacks passing on
beliefs without science to back them up. However, vitamin C acts as an
antioxidant, bilberries, oranges, & suchlike have quite a lot of vitamin
C, & there is a theory, unproven, that this antioxidant action of a diet
with plenty of fruit helps keep cataracts from forming, & has other
positive health effects. This effect has little to do with bilberries per
se, which alone could not provide enough vitamin C to have the particular
effect, though concentrated extracts MIGHT contain beneficial antioxidant
compounds, same as could be said of any other extract rich in vitamins. A
Tufts University study (itself not published in a peer review journal, but
only in a Tufts University newsletter, so of only moderate value as
evidence) showed that high daily doses of vitamin C lowered the incident
of cataracts in women. This seems to be the basis of the herb vendors'
wilder claims for bilberry extract per se, building on old RAF pilot
folklore, & recommending bilberry extract for macular degeneration &
cataracts.

But the study of the effect of vitamin C had nothing whatsoever to do with
bilberries. A study specifically with bilberry extracts does exist,
quite a good one, but it does not get cited by herb-promotoers. "The
Age-Related Eye Disease Study" sponsored by the National Eye Institute
looked specifically at bilberry extracts in treatment of cataracts, &
found bilberry to be worthless. But that hasn't slowed downs the vendor
claims, nor has it put the kabosh on the gullibility of herbal
hypochondriacs.

Most vendors when backed into a corner or forced to legally prove their
claims will admit it is only a "traditional folk remedy" (meaning they
cater to superstitions of people who think folklore is the better part of
science), but the cornered companies don't personally recommend their
products be taken for any medicinal purposes, but only as food
supplements. Yet they so encourage a belief in bilberry as a "treatment"
for macular degeneration & cataracts that they really should be blitzed
with civil suits from people who failed to get actual medical treatment &
so hastened their road to blindness by relying on non-medical
pamphleteering, vendor promotions, & the medical advice of otherwise
unemployable check-out tellers at a misnomered healthfood stores. Being
moronic enough to believe bilberries make it possible to see in the dark
is a fairly harmless delusion, but believing it will help with actual eye
diseases that could be treated with actual medical care means that this kind
of superstitious tommyrot blinds people & destroys their quality of life.
Vendors who pander to this level of delusion in order to get rich while
injuring peoples' health should be thrown in jail.

Donald J. Brown in HERBAL PRESCRIPTIOSN FOR BETTER HEALTH claimed
"evidence" for Bilberries which improved the night-vision of rabbits, but
no such double-blind rabbit study exists in any peer-reviewed scientific
journal. Brown is cheating by relying on an animal study of atherosclerosis,
an arterial disease, which nowhere states that rabbits had improved night
vision. Brown pretends to be a doctor, but he is not an M.D., nor even a
pharmacologist. He's a self-styled naturopathic "phytotherapist," which
amounts to his being an herbal quack, whose research is used by businesses
but never published in peer-reviewed journals of actual science. He used
to be a teacher at the pseudo-scientific Bastyr University which promotes
among other laughable falsities HOMEOPATHY which is Theosophy- &
Alchemy-based "science" that contradicts the basic physics of the known
universe & has no basis in reality. And Brown is no more a medical doctor
than was "Colonel Sanders" a colonel in the armed forces.

MISTER Brown's popular book so mixes up the absurd with the vaguely
possible that it is ultimately a worthless book that makes little effort
to distinguish the proven from the disproven, though useful for helping
herbal hypochondriacs from gobbling down stuff that is outright toxic
& deadly. As founder & president of Natural Products Research Consultants,
Inc., the focus is on PRODUCTS, & his purpose is to promote profitable
herbal products, not to educate the public to the 10% reality & help avoid
the 90% crackpottism & superstition.

A typical promo-essay for bilberry extracts will cite the RAF urban legend,
then allude to actual chemical components of the fruit, then speak of
"theories" about the usefulness in treating macular degeneration,
cataracts, & improving night-vision, all the while never literally claiming
value of any kind, to protect themselves from being
sued or imprisoned. Yet by the overwhelming INSINUATION that it is useful
leaves the victimized customer with the the definite impression that
herbal powders & extracts have just been recommended for something
specific, so
I believe the vendors should in fact be sued or imprisoned for endangering
peoples' health.

Many "pop" authors cite an old Italian study by Fiorni G. Biancacci et al,
which is not available in English. The various pop authors
merely cite each others' citations, & there is never any real data
provided, as any data that actually exists tends to prove the opposite of
the claims being made. The only synopsis of this article I could find in
English suggested that it had evocative or suggestive findings that
bilberry extracts (but not bilberries per se) MIGHT help heal capillaries
in the eyes, but this possibility could not be substantiated by a later
Israeli study that concluded there was no such effect. Eric Muth's
research, conducted with a desire to find in the affirmative, found there
was no effect on the eyes, & that should have put this all to rest -- &
does put it to rest for anyone interested in real evidence over mythology.

The legend of magical value of bilberries & super-vision in darkness began
in World War II when RAF pilots purportedly received bilberry jam as a
regular part of their rations & which the pilots came to regard as a
vision-enhancing potion that improved their night-targetting of German
targets. Or downed pilots would seek out bilberry bushes so they
could see to travel by night when trying to return from behind enemy
lines. Or so the story goes; there is not much good evidence that RAF
pilots ever believed such a thing, but it wouldn't be out of the question,
because RAF pilots were notoriously superstitious. Most of them had
good luck charms of one kind or another & lost their nerve if their lucky
charms were lost. They credulously told ghost stories & angel-stories to
each other, such as the RAF tale of being led through a fogbank to safety,
or aided during aereal combat with Germans, by British phantom bi-planes
arriving from out of the clouds to help WWII pilots, afterward vanishing,
these
having been the ghosts of ace pilots from the First world war. RAF pilots
may indeed have begun telling each other that bilberries increased their
night-vision, & they may have believed in bilberries the same way they
believed in
phantom biplanes.

POSSIBLY this was part of the RAF mythology, but not probably. One herbal
quack (Robert Biddleman) claimed to have actually interviewed elderly RAF
pilots about this, but Biddleman alas kept no proof, documentation, or
names that he has ever been able to share. By contrast, Thomas Dobie, MD,
PhD, who was a RAF pilot in WWII, & director of the
National Biodynamics Laboratory at the University of New Orleans,
when asked about this myth said he remembered eating Bilberries in
Scotland as a child, but could recall no special significance to RAF
pilots.

Col. Mark Well, PhD, who wrote a book on RAF pilots, likewise said
that in all his years as an historian deeply devoted to the topic of wartime
air pilots, he never came across any reference whatsoever to bilberries.
WebMD.com contacted experts at the RAF Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the RAF
Centre of Aviation Medicine, & the Bomber Command Historical Society, &
not one of them had ever heard of this bit of mythology. The only person
WebMD.com could find who had any recollection of anything even slightly
related to this was David Holmes of Raleigh, N.C., who remembered his
grandfather (who flew with the RAF) mentioning that after the introduction
of radar, RAF bombing became more accurately targetted, but to confuse the
enemy, the story was leaked that it "was something in the pilots' diet"
that improved their targetting -- that something, however, was carrots,
not bilberries, & the story was concocted merely to keep the Germans from
knowing the real reason for improved accuracy.

Virtually all interest & allegations about the usefulness of bilberry for
vision stems from the legend that RAF pilots used it. Even if they had
used it, this is hardly evidence of anything, given the superstitious
nature of RAF pilots -- as well to use the superstitions of baseball
players as proof that the supernatural is real. But it begins to look like
the foundation of the belief in bilberry vision-enhancing was itself a
fairy tale, & no RAF pilots ever actually believed in that particular
fantasy!

The modern market for bilberry ectract to correct near-sightedness &
improve night-vision is not a harmless fraud. Since concentrated bilberry
extract can inhibit clotting & worsen bleeding disorders, it can be
dangerous (the fresh fruit lacks this danger). And anyone with a treatable
eye disorder who fell for this mythology instead of visiting an eye doctor
could go blind as punishment for being so damned stupid.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com