The History of OPC

     In 1534 French explorer Jacques Cartier was exploring North America with about 100 soldiers. They were somewhere around the Hudson Bay area when they got "snowed in," and had to set up camp to wait for the spring thaw. Having nothing but the hardtack in their backpacks to eat, the men soon began showing signs of malnutrition, such as swollen gums, severe fatigue and open sores. Cartier, seeing the deterioration of the men, began to feel desperate. And he had a Native American, who had been found wandering through the area, brought to the camp and asked if he knew of anything that could help. The Native had Cartier follow him deep into the forest.

    After much searching, the Native settled upon what looked like a pine tree. He took the needles from the limbs, and the bark from the trunk. He placed all of this in a pile,
and told Cartier to take them, boil them in water and drink it like a tea. Upon returning to the camp, Cartier shared with the men what the Indian told him. The French soldiers were generally non-responsive, and pretty much said, "I don't think so."

    Cartier was finally able to get a few volunteers to drink the tea. Their Native benefactor stayed to help, and treated the men's wounds with a suave made of the crushed pine bark and water. Within a week it was obvious to everyone that the volunteers were beginning to look much better. The rest of the men began to likewise drink the tea. Those who were not "too far gone" made a miraculous recovery. When the soldiers returned to Europe they wrote their story about the miraculous power of the pine bark. And for hundreds of years Europeans would look at each other and say, "Hmmm? Wonder what was in the pine bark?"

Then, in the 1940's, a professor of science from the University of Bordeaux, Jacques Masquelier,  read the story. Dr. Masquelier decided to study the pine bark. He found a compound he believed was responsible for the benefits described. He called the compound, oligomeric proanthocyanidins, or "OPC." Since then many scientists have concluded that OPC's are the world's strongest antioxidants. Aside from pine bark, OPC's have been found in at least 14 other plants. The largest source of OPC's was found in grape seeds. They have also been found in the skins of the peanut, beer yeast, red wine extract and the goose berry. Pine bark extract is the most clinically studied, with more than 200 clinical studies to date. The Swiss Research Lab, Horphag, has a research website displaying the voluminous studies on pine bark extract: www.pycnogenol.com.

Horphag Laboratories harvest pine bark from the French Maritime Pine Trees along the Atlantic shoreline of Europe. They are the world's largest producer of pine bark extract, and Market America is their largest customer. Market America utilizes pine bark extract in a number of products, but their number one product, OPC-3, utilizes 3 sources of OPC's: pine bark extract, grape seed extract and red wine extract. Of the more than 2500 products sold by Market America, OPC-3 makes up almost 20% of  their sales. Steven Lamm, M.D. of NYU school of medicine once stated that he has read thousands of articles on antioxidants; that OPC-3 is the world's greatest antioxidant cocktail available today; that he doesn't know why every person on Earth doesn’t take a shot of OPC-3 every day.