Scientists Put Mugwort to the Test

If the word mugwort sounds like something you’d expect to find bubbling in a witch’s cauldron, I can’t blame you.

The name certainly doesn’t sound very inviting.

But behind that strange name is an herb people have been using for centuries. And now researchers are looking at mugwort for an entirely different reason: its potential effects on cancer cells.

A study published this month caught my attention because researchers didn’t simply test mugwort on cancer cells. They combined an extract of the herb with cisplatin, a powerful chemotherapy drug used to treat lung cancer and several other cancers.

What happened was intriguing.

The two worked better together against human lung cancer cells in the laboratory than either did alone.

And to me, that raises a much bigger question.

What if some of the most interesting advances in cancer research won’t come from choosing between natural and conventional medicine, but from learning how the two might work together?

What Exactly Is Mugwort?

Mugwort, or Artemisia vulgaris, is hardly a new discovery.

It’s a leafy perennial plant that has been used in traditional medicine across different cultures for generations. Researchers note historical uses for digestive complaints, inflammation, infections, and other conditions. It has even acquired the nickname “mother of herbs.”

Modern scientists, of course, aren’t interested in folklore alone.

When researchers analyze mugwort, they find a surprisingly complicated collection of naturally occurring compounds, including flavonoids, phenolic acids, coumarins, and terpenoids.

Those compounds and their biological activity are part of what has made Artemisia plants an interesting subject for researchers.

But this latest study took things in a particularly interesting direction.

What Happened When Mugwort Met Chemotherapy?

In that new study published in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, researchers from Cairo University and their colleagues put mugwort to the test against A549 cells, a widely studied human non-small cell lung cancer cell line.

They also tested cisplatin.

Then they combined them.

That’s where things got interesting.

The researchers found that mugwort and cisplatin acted synergistically against the cancer cells. In plain English, their combined effect was greater than researchers would expect from simply adding together what each one accomplished separately.

One number particularly stood out to me.

When mugwort was combined with cisplatin, the concentration of cisplatin needed to achieve a 50% effect against the cancer cells fell by approximately 39 percent in the laboratory experiment.

Think about why researchers might be interested in that.

Cisplatin has been an important cancer drug for decades, but anyone familiar with chemotherapy knows that powerful treatments can come with powerful side effects.

Could a natural compound someday help make a conventional treatment more effective, potentially allowing doctors to accomplish more with less?

How Were the Cancer Cells Dying?

The scientists went a step further.

They wanted to understand not only whether the cancer cells were dying, but how.

One process they examined was apoptosis.

That complicated word describes something quite simple: programmed cell death. Our cells have built-in mechanisms that can essentially tell a damaged or unwanted cell when it’s time to shut itself down.

Cancer cells are remarkably good at escaping those instructions.

In this study, the combination of mugwort and cisplatin increased signs of apoptosis compared with either treatment alone. The researchers also found evidence involving another cellular process known as autophagy.

Researchers weren’t merely seeing fewer living cancer cells. They were beginning to identify biological changes that might help explain why the combination behaved differently.

What About Healthy Cells?

Naturally, I had another question.

What happened to normal cells?

The researchers tested the treatments against normal human skin fibroblast cells as well.

Mugwort alone showed relatively low toxicity toward those cells under the experimental conditions. Even at the highest concentration tested, cell viability remained at approximately 73 percent. The researchers also reported that the combination showed greater toxicity toward the lung cancer cells than toward the normal cells they tested.

That’s encouraging laboratory data.

Why This Research Matters to Me

Anyone familiar with my story knows that my own cancer journey took me far outside the conventional path. After an experimental treatment program left me fighting for my life over 40 years ago, I eventually sneaked out of the hospital at 2:00 in the morning and began searching for another way. I’ve lived to tell the full story in my book, I Used to Have Cancer.

So when I see researchers taking a serious look at something from nature, I pay attention. And in this case, it was something I knew firsthand.

Mugwort Tea

Years ago when I first began fighting cancer, I drank mugwort tea two or three times a day as part of my own parasite-cleansing regimen.

I’ve learned over the years not to dismiss something simply because it’s old-fashioned, unconventional, or came from nature instead of a laboratory. Mugwort has been used for centuries, and now modern science is giving us some very interesting reasons to take another look.

And who knows? Maybe that strange little herb with the name that sounds like it belongs in a witches’ brew still has a few secrets left to reveal.

Interested in learning more about medicinal teas?

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