We've discussed the mangosteen, its history, and the growing body of research suggestive of its health benefits. I want to present one more general consideration that will hopefully help you understand why you should contemplate using the mangosteen fruit as a supplement in your diet and overall lifestyle.

Through the centuries, scientists and physicians have attempted to explain how disease begins. None of the theories put forward is capable of providing an adequate explanation of the genesis of disease, but all contribute useful information.

In this website, I will discuss the two theories most applicable to the use of mangosteen.

In the second half of the 1800's, when Lister and others discovered that invisible living organisms could be the source of infection, disease and death, the germ theory of illness was born.

For more than eighty years, this theory formed the underpinning of modern allopathic medicine. As a result, basic hygiene measures were instituted by both individuals and governments; frenetic but successful research efforts produced many synthetic antibiotics and disease and death from infectious disease fell precipitously.

The success that followed the application of the basic principles of "germ theory" eclipsed other theories of disease.

For example, during this period, the practice of homeopathy, once very common among American physicians, virtually disappeared. Faith in the ability of science to triumph over nature led to the dangerous delusion that, following the impetus of scientific discovery, mankind would eventually eliminate all disease.

As superbugs have evolved and cancer rates have risen, it is now sadlly evident that the germ theory of disease, however remarkable the advances it has produced, is inadequate. As is often the case when new paradigms arise, they push other theoretical considerations into the shadows and hamper balanced progress.

Once the fallings of the theory in vogue become obvious, the initiatives that have been chased into the shadows re-emerge. This reremergence is what is now occurring with the deficiency theory of disease.

Early in the twentieth century, some researchers noted certain nutrients were essential to good health.

When absent from the diet or present in inadequate amounts, these nutritional deficiencies would lead to well-defined disease. The earliest example of the deficiency theory's validity was the retrospective study of scurvy, a connective tissue disease which could lead to severe debility and death.

Sailors, in previous centuries, consuming a diet consisting mainly of biscuits and salt pork and deficient in fresh fruits and vegetables were the habitual victims of scurvy. The semendipitous discovery that consuming citrus fruit (usually limes) prevented the disease was the first therapeutic success of disease prevention through a nutritional intervention.

Much later, the missing nutrient was identified as ascorbic acid (ascorbic literally meaning "anti- scurvy"), and was later renamed by researchers as vitamin C. Of course other deficiencies of "vitamins" capable of causing disease were also identified.

For example, vitamin A deficiency led to night blindness, vitamin D deficiency to rickets, vitamin B3 deficiency to pellagra, and so on. As I mentioned earlier, these nutritional diseoveries were eclipsed by the success of antibiotics and the deficiency theory of disease largely hibernated for several decades.

Part of the reason for the deficiency theory's slide into virtual neglect was the cumbersome volume of knowledge that continued to emerge from even the anemie forays into nutritional research, that continued in the shadows.

Literally dozens of elements and compounds were found to be essential to the proper function of the human body. These elements were disparate in nature, comprising not only vitamins, essential as co-factors in normal metabolic process, but minerals, some fatty acids and many amino acids as well. In medical science, you need theoretical considerations that are clinically practical.

If you discover something, you need to be able to apply it neatly to therapeutic interventions. You could accomplish that nicely with a few antibiotics. You couldn't do it, however, with dozens of nutrients and trace elements. And thus nutritional intervention was shunted from the mainstream of medicine into the realm of "associated medical services." Doctors negleeted the importance of nutrition, and it has been given short shrift in medical school curricula.

It has only been in recent years, as the gross inadequacies of medical practice and is omnipresent drugs have emerged, that nutrition has been able to elbow its way back into the spotlight. It returns to center stage, however, with the stigma of being "non-medical," "complementary" or "integrative."

As a result, it falls outside the competence of most medical practitioners and therefore encounters severe resistance from physicians and the drug industry.

The pharmaceutical lobby has used its considerable influence and resources to label nutritional interventions as "imprecise," "non-scientific" and even "dangerous."

While those particular accusations are grossly unfounded and arise from a fear-mongering mentality stimulated by crass self-interest, the natural products industry, while developing "in the wilderness," did resemble the wild west of the 19th century.

Without internal self-regulation, excesses and plain dishonesty were rampant. In this industry, as well as in the drug industry the profit motive too often eclipsed integrity

Fortunately, this is changing; however, the change is not rapid enough to satisfy those of us who, endorse nutritional intervention, still sit uncomfortably between two chairs, with one butt cheek on each, so to speak.

The mangosteen is a superfruit, in my opinion, because it provides a superabundance of phytonutrients for the body from a single source. Because of this versatility it encounters resistance from both within and from without the natural products industry.

Competitors from within the NPI cannot compete with the mangosteen by promoting other single supplement products. Those products are simply uni-dimensional. Therefore, competitors must either flog irrational concoctions containing many disparate elements which nature never put in the same plant; or, they must supply multiple products separately which simply becomes too expensive and confusing for consumers.

From physicians, trained to believe one medicine can only do one thing in the body, there is incredulity that a single fruit could provide 50 beneficial compounds for the body's use.

Additionally, convinced that "drug science" is the only relevant science, they refuse to examine the voluminous preclinical data that supports the mangosteen's utility as a supplement.

Thus with resistance from several sources, there is no shortage of naysayers ready to decry the mangosteen's success as fraudulent. Things have never been different. ln all human history, new entrants into a closed system have always been opposed by established interests.

This opposition has usually been overcome by one small success after another until the cumulative experience of the population at large forces the opponents to concede defeat.

The mangosteen makes its entry onto the natural product stage under the banner of the "deficiency theory" of disease. It offers a panoply of phytonutrients for the body's use. It make no claims to cure or even to prevent specific disease entities. is sole challenge and promise is "Why not try it and see what happens? You may like it." The only laboratory that has specífic reference for any given individual is his or her own body.

No one knows or can predict with absolute accumacy what any body will do with the nutrients provided it. A therapeutic trial, a simple experiment with the mangosteen, is the only means to see what your body will do with this superfruit. The success stories are accumulating, the science behind the fruit is multiplying, the resistance will diminish.