Understanding how OPCs work

Although they don’t act like drugs, OPCs have multiple modes of action that support the body to increase its ability to “adapt under a variety of perturbations”. OPCs must be regarded as bioactives rather than just antioxidants. As bioactives OPCs assist the body in the activity we call “homeostasis”.
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Without a doubt, antioxidants such as OPCs play a major role in reducing the risk of developing degenerative diseases. The question asked by many people is: do they cure degenerative diseases the way one expects common drugs to cure diseases? In a 2013 issue of the scientific journal Cell, Dutch scientists Aalt Bast and Guido Haenen of Maastricht University prvide a balanced and thoughtful answer. “Clear pharmacological responses,” they wrote, “should not be expected from antioxidants.” This is because “drugs act on a specific target, such as an enzyme, a receptor, or a transporter. The preferable action of a drug is specific, that is, it acts on a unique target and induces a strong effect.” […] “This is in contrast to food and food-derived compounds such as food supplements. These compounds have a multitude of actions. Their action is certainly not specific and their effects on human health are difficult to determine.” 

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This answer should definitely not disappoint us, because, although they don’t act like drugs, biologically active foodstuffs have multiple modes of action that support the body to increase its ability to “adapt under a variety of perturbations”. For this reason, Bast and Haenen suggested “to upgrade the term for antioxidants with this [diverse] mode of action to bioactives rather than just antioxidants”. This takes OPCs from antioxidants to the broader sphere of “bioactives” that assist the body in the activity we call “homeostasis”. In the textbooks homeostasis is defined as: “... maintenance of static or constant conditions in the internal environment” ([i]), ”... the tendency of biological systems to maintain relatively constant conditions in the internal environment while continually interacting with and adjusting to changes originating within or outside the system” ([ii]), ”... the ability or tendency of an organism or a cell to maintain internal equilibrium by adjusting its physiological processes” ([iii]).

The authors of these definitions drew insight from the works of the early pioneers who laid the foundations for the field of science we now know as “physiology”. Of these scientists, the one who coined and first defined the term “homeostasis” was the American physiologist Walter B. Cannon. In 1932, in the first edition of his book The Wisdom of the Body, Cannon coined and explained homeostasis as follows: “The constant conditions which are maintained in the body might be termed equilibria. That word, however, has come to have fairly exact meaning as applied to relatively simple physico-chemical states, in closed systems, where known forces are balanced. The coordinated physiological processes which maintain most of the steady states in the organism are so complex and so peculiar to living beings – involving, as they may, the brain and nerves, the heart, lungs, kidneys and spleen, all working cooperatively – that I have suggested a special designation for these states, homeostasis. The word does not imply something set and immobile, a stagnation. It means a condition – a condition which may vary, but which is relatively constant.” (the emphasis is mine)

Homeostasis is a dynamic activity the purpose of which is the maintenance of the constancy of living systems and optimizing their condition so that they can effectively meet and overcome challenges that threaten this constancy. This fits extremely well with the modern definition of health: “the ability of the organism to dynamically adapt to changes and challenges.” Quite remarkably, Cannon ended his description of homeostasis by drawing our attention to the prominent role played in it by the circulatory system. “We have reviewed the evidence that the freedom and independence of our existence, in the presence of profoundly disturbing conditions either in the outer world or in our own organization, are dependent on the existence and constancy of a fluid matrix in which our living body parts reside.”

According to Cannon, “the cells of our bodies, ..., are shut away from any chances to obtain directly food, water and oxygen from the distant larger environment, or to discharge into it the waste materials that result from activity. These conveniences for getting supplies and eliminating debris have been provided by the development of moving streams within the body itself – the blood and lymph streams. They work together to carry food, water and oxygen away from the moist surfaces of the body and to deliver these necessities to the cells situated even in the remotest nooks of our organism. From these cells in turn they bring back to the moist surfaces, in the lungs and kidneys, the useless waste of cellular activity which must be discharged.” Given OPCs’ well documented essential role in 1) maintaining, supporting and restoring what Cannon referred to as the body’s “fluid matrix,” and 2) exerting significant antioxidant effects on diverse bodily structures and functions, one may safely conclude that OPCs are essential bioactives that contribute to homeostasis and health by exerting multiple modes of action. 

In their Cell article, Bast and Haenen use the term “pleiotropic” to describe these multiple modes of action. The term pleiotropic comes from the Greek pleion, meaning “more”, and tropos, meaning “turn”. A pleiotropic bioactive can take many turns in the multitude of criss-cross biochemical pathways that keep our bodies alive and help homeostasis maintain each individual body to keep up its own constancy. In the new pleiotropic research model, that aims at exploring manifold modes of action of bioactives, researchers try to pick up as many subtle signals as possible to see how the body responds to an “intervention,” All results are then brought together in an Index so that an overall conclusion can be drawn. Bast and Haenen refer to a pleiotropic study in which a Vascular Health Index was used “to integrate multiple effects of food supplement intervention on vascular health. The index was calculated by adding the change for 23 separate biomarkers. The significant increase in this integrated biomarker pointed to a beneficial effect of the food supplement on cardiovascular health.”

The study was performed by the Department of Toxicology of Maastricht University in 2013. The research team led by Dr. Antje Weseler faced a particular challenge. Not only was it looking for weak and subtle signals, it was also looking for such signals in healthy people. Obviously, it is more difficult to produce measurable beneficial effects in organisms that are functioning “at constancy and in equilibrium,” than in organisms whose constancy is upset or seriously challenged. The food supplement used in the aforementioned multiple effects study was Masquelier’s OPCs. Integrating all the measured effects into a global Vascular Health Index revealed a significant improvement of overall vascular health compared to the inert placebo. In other words, the researchers succeeded in unveiling the pleiotropic vascular health benefit of an 8 weeks supplementation with Masqueliuer’s OPCs.

Now, let’s return to Walter Cannon who described the human body’s robust resilience and capacity to survive as follows: “When we consider the extreme instability of our bodily structure, its readiness for disturbance by the slightest application of external forces and the rapid onset of its decomposition as soon as favoring circumstances are withdrawn, its persistence through many decades seems almost miraculous. The wonder increases when we realize that the system is open, engaging in free exchange with the outer world, and that the structure itself is not permanent but is being continuously broken down by the wear and tear of action, and is continuously built up again by processes of repair.” That Masquelier’s OPCs play a key role in these processes of repair under a variety of perturbations can be best explained by the fact that they do not act like drugs but as pleiotropic bioactives.

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[i] Medical Physiology (Guyton & Hall; 10th Edition, 2000).
[ii] Encyclopedia & Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing & Allied Health (Miller-Keane; 6th Edition, 1997).
[iii] American Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language (4th Edition, 2000).