I harvest a good amount of apple mint, Mentha suaveolens. So called because it has a more subtle mint scent than spearmint and it is slightly fruity. It grows robustly in and around an organic garden, where it has disrespected barriers of all kinds and has run amok. But that's ok with me. We think of mint as jelly, gum, and all sorts of scented personal care products, but it's much more than that. It is active against M. luteous, B. subtilis, E. coli, C. albicans, HSV-1, and P. aeruginosa. These microorganisms are particularly dangerous to immunocompromised people. This kind of information becomes more important as our present antibiotics lose their effectiveness.
The most important phenolic compounds in Mentha species are flavonoids. Mints are characterized by the presence of specific lipophilic flavonoids. Phenolic compounds of mints are found to poses a wide range of pharmacological activity: antioxidant, antiulcer, cytoprotective, heptoprotective, cholagogue, chemopreventive, anti-inflammatory, antidiabetogenic.1
This study 2 examines the inhibitory effect of apple mint essential oil on α-amylase and α-glucosidase activities. This is an important finding for scientists developing new diabetes treatments.