Bellis perennis, a common type of daisy, contains chemicals which can lower triglycerides.

Last week, in the Journal of Natural Products, Masayuki Yoshikawa explained how he and his colleagues discovered the fat-fighting chemicals. At Kyoto Pharmaceutical University, they extracted a mixture of molecules from Albanian-grown flowers. When mice drank some of the herbal extract and then chased it with olive oil, a source of vegetable fat, their triglycerides remained pretty low – even though they should have increased substantially.

To narrow down their search for the medicinal substance, the Japanese researchers used high performance liquid chromatography to separate individual chemicals out from the mixture. Next, they used nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry to identify each of the purified compounds. Seven of them were previously undiscovered, but each belongs to a well-known family of substances called saponins. When the scientists tested two of the newly-discovered molecules on mice, both worked like a charm.

In the introduction of his paper, Yoshikawa explained that the plant has been used as a folk remedy for bruises, bleeding, muscular pain, purulent skin diseases, and rheumatism. He also mentioned that it is sometimes included in salads. If its fat-fighting abilities work on humans, we may find ourselves chowing down on plates of the healthy flowers.

Photo: Bill Hails / flickr