While in Berlin, I have been seeking fans. Of mistletoe, that is.

Viscum album is its Latin name, and it is about much more than Christmas. It has been a sacred plant throughout the world since ancient times. There is a long tradition of medicinal and religious use of the plant throughout the ancient world, including the Celts and the Druids, the Greeks and the Romans, the Slavic peoples of western Asia. It was considered a panacea in early Japan, so much so that it is mentioned in myth and poetry.

I first learned about the medicinal use of this remarkable plant several years ago, while traveling through the former Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. I have only recently begun using it in a select group of cancer patients, but we will soon be using this fascinating plant much more routinely. Although many of the studies are published in the German medical literature, it is actually one of the world’s most extensively researched alternative cancer therapies.

So promising is the evidence that the German healthcare system pays for mistletoe for people with cancer. It is available by prescription, and any doctor can prescribe it. There are a number of preparations made from different kinds of mistletoe. Like honey, mistletoe contains different active ingredients when it lives on different trees. These include pine, apple and oak, and practitioners treat different cancers with different varieties of mistletoe.

One of the physicians I spoke to here told me that mistletoe ‘is somewhat of an aristocrat among plants here in Europe’. For one thing, it lives on trees and so never comes in contact with the soil. For another, it grows in a spherical bush that looks like a clump on the treetops, leaving it with no visible beginning or end. Another curiosity is the berries are considered false, because they are actually just projections of the stem.

These may be some of the reasons why early European and Asian tribes took a special interest in mistletoe. Its modern use, particularly its use in treating cancer, can be traced back to Rudolf Steiner, father of Anthroposophical medicine. This system was articulated by Steiner in the early 20th century as part of a holistic approach to living, farming, thinking and healing that has been embraced by millions in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. These folks’ avoidance of vaccination and their agrarian lifestyle has been associated with decreased incidence of asthma, allergies and autism. There is an Anthroposophical hospital in Berlin, and its very existence is an impressive testament to German society’s tolerance of different approaches to life – and medicine.

I won’t go into too much detail about exactly what we know about how mistletoe works. The nuts-and-bolts explanations of its selective toxic effects on cancer cells and its stimulatory effects on the immune system are available on many websites (www.mistel-therapie.de is one of the best). Viscotoxin is an important active ingredient, but lectins, flavonoids, triterpenes and polysaccharides have all variously been studied in other promising anti-cancer botanicals, and mistletoe contains them all.

More interesting to me is the fact that Steiner’s discovery of mistletoe was not based on any scientific data at all. It arrived in a moment of ‘divine inspiration’. This is how most plant medicines were discovered in early societies, particularly in South America and in India. Yogis and sages, wandering monks and shamans were masters of the mind, and they routinely entered altered states of consciousness to get these ‘insights from the Gods’. While this makes no sense to us at all, our western view of mind, matter and reality is based on nothing more than our left-brained prejudice, and we would do well to keep an open mind about such useful ‘coincidences’ as the discovery of mistletoe.

Mistletoe is just one of a number of useful integrative approaches to cancer treatment that have been used throughout Germany for decades. Specialized clinics, most of which are in southern areas surrounding Lake Constance, routinely use IV vitamin C just as we do. I will be going back to Germany to attend and speak at a couple of conferences over the coming months, and I think this will be a good thing for us

Did you enjoy this post? Share it with others.