Cancer Fighting Kisses & A Walk Through Hell- Mistletoe
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Rooted where this week we’re talking about a creepy little weed known for kisses and kills- mistletoe!
While there are many different varieties of mistletoe native to different regions, most of them are very similar, so today we’re gonna focus MOSTLY generally in terms of science, but specifically on European mistletoe for folklore and pop culture.
Viscum album, or european mistletoe is Part of the sandalwood or Santalaceae family. Much like it’s famous family members, mistletoe is an obligate hemiparasitic plant. In non-botany terms, this means that they tap into a host plant for most of their food and weather needs, but they are able to also produce a little bit of their own…kind of like that friend that works a few hours a week at a pretentious coffee shop, and spends the rest of their time couch surfing and complaining about the kind of milk you buy for their lattes.
As you might have guessed, mistletoe isn’t something you’re going to stumble upon in most nurseries BUT you might find them on a walk in the woods! To spot them, you’ll want to look up, as most mistletoe tends to settle into a spot where it gets plenty of light in the middle canopy. You'll be looking for a vine-y plant with dark green oblong leaves and little red or white berries. You’ll know it when you see it, because it looks ever-so-slightly out of place, but NOT like poison ivy.
As far as growth goes, mistletoe seeds are actually dispersed into the air where they then settle into nearby nooks and crannies in trees. When seeds start, they are actually entirely self reliant, but As they grow, they develop what is known as haustorium, which you can think of as sort of fangs- but is really a kind of super specific root structure that grows under the bark of trees and burrows in until it reaches the conductive tissue and starts sucking up it’s supper.
Once they get established, these guys grow up to get as much light and free snacks as they can. While most of them stay nestled towards the middle of the tree, some of these guys are so prolific that they can choke out the entire canopy of a tree- making for an interesting ID puzzle for naturalists.
While its something we often think about this time of year, historically speaking Mistletoe was often forgotten and overlooked. Going back to nordic folklore, mistletoe was such a minor player that freya completely forgot about it. According to legend, when Baldur was born, freya went across the land making all the flora and fauna swear they would never do harm to her son- in her mind securing her son’s immortality for all time. However, as fate would have it, she skipped right over mistletoe, potentially forgetting all about it, or maybe just figuring it wouldn’t be able to do much damage. For years, that really didn’t matter, but eventually Baldur made an enemy in Loki, who found out that mistletoe hadn’t sworn an oath and decided to use that to his advantage. He fashioned an arrow out of mistletoe, striking and killing Baldur, and royally pissing off freya. Eventually they were able to mend their relationship and find peace, leading mistletoe to become a symbol of forgiveness
Weirdly enough, this story is also one of the origin stories what brought us the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe, with the british working class kind of latching on to the whole token of peace thing, then weaponizing that by lightly hazing everyone to accept that turning down a kiss under mistletoe was akin to turning away peace…..so kind of like how pirates agreed to gaslight everyone into believing in dragons, but longer lasting and maybe a little more problematic.
The other theory is that mistletoe was often used in Roman and Greek weddings, especially during saturnalia celebrations.
And speaking of Roman traditions, Mistletoe also played a pretty significant role in the story of Aeneas- a man looking to find a safe place to call home for his community after troy got ripped to shreds. According to legend, aeneas visits apollo to seek help getting to the underworld to consult with his father. Apollo sends him on an absolute goosechase, explaining he will need to find and bury a well loved musician, then collect a golden bough from the forest near the grave (a bough of mistletoe, as it happened) and then take that to the queen of the underworld.
Knowing it would be difficult, venus gave our guy 2 doves to help him spot the bough, which he managed to find and snip just before the funeral, allowing him to hitch a ride with charon across the Stygian river. Once agross, they slide a piece of drugged up cake to cerberus the three headed dog, then slip past the layers of the underworld for everyone from the super wicked to the morally just okay. And once they get through that as unscathed as people really can, they get to the green rolling pastures where pretty good people- like daddy dearest- are. After they have a little chat, aeneas gets a glimpse of when the future will look like (spolier alert, its the literal roman empire) and he goes on his merry little way.
In medicine, mistletoe used to be used in all kinds of things- a cold, flu, cough, worms- you name it, if you were sick in the winter, you would have probably been given some kind of mistletoe tincture.
In modern times we lean a lot less on mistletoe for our every-day ailments, but it still sometimes used in cancer treatment as both an alternative to and in addition with chemotherapy
More common in the EU, where patients with x cancers are typically prescribed mistletoe extract as an additional layer of treatment alongside chemo. In the US we don’t really see that as much, we tend to see more of a one or the other scenario, with mistletoe extract being seen very much as an alternative and crunchy option
While mistletoe extract has been widely studied, the results are a bit mixed when it comes to its effectiveness. While some patients and cancers respond well to mistletoe, with cancer cell death increasing rapidly, others see little to know improvement, and from what I can tell, we still don't really know what makes it that way.
What we DO know is that mistletoe works in a way that is pretty similar to chemo, causing rapid cell death. It also stimulates the immune response and helps to prevent calls from moving or spreading throughout the body.
This is because mistletoe contains the active chemicals lectins and viscotoxins, which can help to specifically stimulate the maturation of dendritic cells. Dendritic cells can kind of be seen as the ring leaders of your immune response, as they are the cells that communicate and orchestrate how the immune system reacts. Tumor cells actually work specifically to target these cells and suppress them. Making it easier for them to slip through undetected, and even harder to get rid of.
In essence, mistletoe extract works to give effective direction to the immune system so that it can more effectively target cancer cells and kill them.
Interestingly, studies have also found that the holistic mistletoe extract vs isolated compounds seems to be the most effective.
Of course- most of us are familiar with mistletoe as a holiday decoration, and this ios mostly because it is an evergreen that has berries that retain their color through the winter, making it a very visible symbol of life and abundance in the dark and dreary days of winter. Next time you see it, take a second to say hello, give someone a consensual smooch if you feel so called, and take a moment to be glad you’re not traipsing through hell.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistletoe
https://fwbg.org/newsletter-2/before-stealing-a-kiss-learn-the-mythology-and-history-of-mistletoe/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Bough_(mythology)
https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/dendritic-cell
https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/mistletoe/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/biology-mistletoe-180976601/
https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs/mistletoe-european
