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Camu camu (Mycaria dubia) is a bush that grows in black water rivers, especially in those abandoned courses called "cochas", ecosystems of great social and economic importance for the Amazonian jungle of Peru. The fruit contains powerful phytochemicals with health benefits, including the amino acids serine, valine, and leucine, and more Vitamin C than any other known plant in the world. The camu-camu fruit is approximately 2 centimeters in diameter and has a purplish red skin with a yellow pulp. Camu camu fruit contains 30 to 60 times more Vitamin C than an orange. It has astringent, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, emollient and nutritional properties, and also contains important levels of beta carotene, calcium, iron, niacin, phosphorus, riboflavin and thiamin.
Allicin is an oily, yellow liquid which gives garlic its characteristic odor which is due to the SO group. It also has a range of medical properties. Allicin is synthesised from alliin when garlic is crushed or bruised. The reaction is catalyzed by an enzyme, alliinase, and as a result quite complex. Allicin is a very reactive compound.
Being a strongly oxidizing compound, it protects garlic from attack by bacteria and insects by disabling the enzymes that are found in the substrate necessary for infections to occur. It does so by attacking the SH groups found on their active sites. This is also the case for proteinases and alcohol dehydrogenases, enzymes that promote invasion and infection of bacteria in the human body. It is therefore believed that allicin is a good natural cure-all.
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