What Does Kaempferol Do, Anyway?

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝In the this or that article, you said kampeferol was a famously good flavonol on a par with quercetin, does it do the same thing or does it do something different, and is it worth supplementing?❞

So, this will be in reference to a This-or-That from last week:

Cantaloupe vs Cucumber – Which is Healthier?

Let’s break down your question into parts:

• Is it comparable to quercetin?
• Does it have special properties of its own?
• Is it worth supplementing?

Is it comparable to quercetin?

They are both flavonols, and potent ones at that. Similarities include that they’re found in many of the same plants, and that (like most if not all polyphenols) they have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits, which in turn usually translate to anti-aging and anticancer benefits too.

You can read more about quercetin here: Fight Inflammation & Protect Your Brain, With Quercetin

You can read more about polyphenols in general here: 21 Most Beneficial Polyphenols & What Foods Have Them ← quercetin and kaempferol are #1 and #2 on this list, respectively

Does it have special properties of its own?

Yes it does!

❝Epidemiological studies have shown an inverse relationship between kaempferol intake and cancer.

Kaempferol may help by augmenting the body’s antioxidant defense against free radicals, which promote the development of cancer.

At the molecular level, kaempferol has been reported to modulate a number of key elements in cellular signal transduction pathways linked to apoptosis, angiogenesis, inflammation, and metastasis.

Significantly, kaempferol inhibits cancer cell growth and angiognesis and induces cancer cell apoptosis, but on the other hand, kaempferol appears to preserve normal cell viability, in some cases exerting a protective effect.❞

Read in full: A review of the dietary flavonoid, kaempferol on human health and cancer chemoprevention

It is also particularly good for the gut:

❝Most recently, an increasing number of studies have demonstrated the significance of kaempferol in the regulation of intestinal function and the mitigation of intestinal inflammation❞

Read in full: A Critical Review of Kaempferol in Intestinal Health and Diseases

This also means it is particularly efficacious against food allergies:

❝we screened food ingredients with the expectation of finding dietary compounds that exert beneficial effects on intestinal immune tolerance and identified kaempferol, a flavonoid, as the compound that most effectively increased Aldh1a2 mRNA levels❞

(that’s good)

Read in full: Kaempferol Exerts Anti-Inflammatory Effects by Accelerating Treg Development via Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor-Mediated and PU.1/IRF4-Dependent Transactivation of the Aldh1a2/Raldh2 Gene in Dendritic Cells

That one’s a bit scientifically denser than we usually try to find when citing sources here, so here’s a pop-science article about the same thing, which explains in more words than we have room to here:

Flavonoid kaempferol could offer natural relief for food allergies ← much lighter reading, but still very informative

Kaempferol (like quercetin, granted) is also a potent neuroprotective agent, not least of all because its anti-inflammatory powers extend to reducing neuroinflammation (not everything does, because not everything we ingest can pass the blood-brain barrier to affect what goes on in the brain):

Kaempferol, a potential neuroprotective agent in neurodegenerative diseases: From chemistry to medicine

…and more:

❝it may be used to treat numerous acute and chronic inflammation-induced diseases, including intervertebral disc degeneration and colitis, as well as post-menopausal bone loss and acute lung injury. In addition, it has beneficial effects against cancer, liver injury, obesity and diabetes, inhibits vascular endothelial inflammation, protects the cranial nerve and heart function, and may be used for treating fibroproliferative disorders, including hypertrophic scar.❞

Read in full: Recent progress regarding kaempferol for the treatment of various diseases

Is it worth supplementing?

If you eat a lot of leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, and/or citrus fruits, and/or drink tea (true teas from tea plants, not miscellaneous herbal infusions), then you probably get a good dose of kaempferol already.

However, if you want to supplement, hawthorn berry is not a bad one to go with, like this example product on Amazon 😎

We wrote about this before, here: Hawthorn For The Heart (& More)

As for teas, if you’re wondering about the merits of black, white, green or red, check out:

Black, White, Green, Red: Which Kind Of Tea Is Best For The Health, According To Science? ← this covers many factors

Enjoy!