Categories
Herbs & Plants

Brunfelsia uniflora

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Botanical Name : Brunfelsia uniflora
Family: Solanaceae
Genus: Brunfelsia
Kingdom: Plantae
Order: Solanales

Common Name: Manaca

Habitat : Brunfelsia uniflora  is native to
•SOUTHERN AMERICA :-
Caribbean: Trinidad and Tobago – Trinidad
Northern South America: Guyana; Venezuela – Bolivar, Carabobo, Guarico, Nueva Esparta
Brazil: Brazil – Bahia, Ceara, Espirito Santo, Goias, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Norte, Rio de Janeiro, Roraima, Sao Paulo
Western South America: Bolivia – Cochabamba, Santa Cruz
Southern South America: Argentina – Jujuy, Salta

Typical habitat is light woodland and thickets.

Description:
Brunfelsia uniflora is a neotropical shrubs and small trees.The leaves are alternate and simple, with shapes generally elliptic to ovate. The flowers are large and tubular, with five broad petals.  Species in cultivation include Brunfelsia americana (“lady of the night”) and Brunfelsia pauciflora. Linnaeus named the genus for early German herbalist Otto Brunfels (1488–1534). The cultivated plant is commonly called “yesterday, today, and tomorrow” due to its color changes

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Medicinal Uses:
Brunfelsia uniflora is  used by native healers both medicinally and as hallucinogens.  Internally used as an alterative, and of the greatest value for the treatment of arthritis.  It eases pain and restores mobility quickly. In Peru, indigenous peoples apply a decoction of leaves externally for arthritis and rheumatism; they also employ a root decoction for chills. The root of manacá is said to stimulate the lymphatic system. It has long been used for syphilis, earning the name vegetable mercury. Though the aerial parts of the plant have active compounds, the root has been used primarily.

Two of the constituents,  manaceine and manacine are thought to be responsible for stimulating the lymphatic system, while aesculetin has demonstrated analgesic, antihepatotoxic, antimutagenic, and anti-inflammatory activities in laboratory tests.

Disclaimer : The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplements, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunfelsia
http://www.herbnet.com/Herb%20Uses_LMN.htm
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Brunfelsia_uniflora

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Categories
Health Quaries

How Much Sunshine is needed to Make Enough Vitamin D?

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Vitamin D deficiency is quite common, and a growing list of diseases and conditions are being linked with it. Regular sun exposure, without sunscreen, causes your skin to produce vitamin D naturally. But how much sun do you need?

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You’ve probably seen some vague guidelines, recommending “a few minutes every day.” But these recommendations are far too general to be useful. The amount of sun you need to meet your vitamin D requirements varies hugely, depending on your location, your skin type, the time of year, the time of day, and even the atmospheric conditions.

The Vitamin D/UV Calculator
Scientists at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research have devised a calculator that will take all those factors into consideration and estimate how many minutes of exposure you need for your skin to produce 25 mcg (the equivalent of 1,000 International Units) of vitamin D.

It’s not the most user-friendly interface and it is very easy to enter the wrong information. But once you get past the technicalities, it’s very interesting to see how much the answers change when you vary the input.

It is also not written for US cities so you can go to this page to find out latitude and longitude of many cites and enter the numbers manually. The easiest way may be to simply google “altitude of [your town]”. Remember to convert it to kilometers. One kilometer is about 3300 feet.

If your latitude is 39 S, enter -39. If your longitude is 76 W, enter -76.
You’ll also need to enter the time of day you are going out in the sun, expressed as UTC (Greenwich Mean Time). Here is a converter that will convert local time into UTC. The calculator uses a 24 hour clock, so hours from 1 PM to midnight are expressed as 13 to 24.

The calculator also wants to know the thickness of the ozone layer. I suggest just setting this one to medium.

Be sure to click the radio button next to the entries. They are often not automatically selected when you fill in the values.

Keep in mind that the exposure times given are considered enough to maintain healthy vitamin D status. If you are starting out with a vitamin D deficiency, you might need more.

Resources:

Nutrition Data August 10, 2009

CNN October 4, 2009

Times Online October 10, 2009

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Categories
Featured

The Way to a Man’s Heart is Through His Left Ear

If you’re thinking of asking your beloved to marry you, make sure that you utter your declaration of love into his or her left ear. New research suggests that declarations of love, jokes, or words of anger are best remembered when they are heard through the left ear. Instructions, directions and non-emotional messages, on the other hand, have more impact on the right side.

It has to do with how your brain processes information. Although the left and right hemispheres of the brain are similar structures, they have specialized functions. The left side is more logic-based and dominant, while the right is the more imaginative side.

Since the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, and vice-versa the left ear has been shown in some research to be the route to the emotional side of the brain, and the right ear to the non-emotional, logical side.

The right eye has also been shown to be best for processing colors, and the right foot is the most vulnerable to tickling. The left cheek is the more favorable one to kiss, and the left side is the favored one for holding babies. Support for the idea comes from a number of psychological and brain scanning studies, and from research based on patients with brain injuries.

Test a Friend :-

Watch the direction of a friend’s gaze when you ask him or her these questions

1. Name a county that borders Cornwall.

2. Name three synonyms for “walking”.

3. What direction does the Queen face on a two pence piece?

4. Name three synonyms for “intelligence”.

Most people will look to the right when thinking about language-related questions (the even- numbered questions) and look to the left when thinking about the spatial questions (the odd- numbered questions). These eye movements are thought to be a consequence of the two sides of our brains processing different information.

Sources:The Times Online

Categories
News on Health & Science

Wounded? Try honey

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Anti-bacterial properties could make the nectar an effective treatment for sores that refuse to mend.
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With the rise in cases of diabetes, more and more people will suffer from foot ulcers that do not heal and may end up needing amputation because treatment of chronic wounds is so difficult.

But now, an alternative treatment based on a remedy used since antiquity is getting increased attention — smearing wounds with honey.

Manuka Honey, a medicinal honey harvested from beekeepers in New Zealand, is now being marketed for application on wounds. In June, Health Canada approved it under the brand name Medihoney for use as a wound dressing and an anti-microbial. In July, the US Food and Drug Administration cleared it for use in wounds and burns.

The effects of treating wounds with honey have been noted mostly in anecdotal reports and case histories, making it hard for scientists to know whether the remedy compares favourably with standard wound dressings such as hydrogels, silver-impregnated gauzes or topical antibiotics. But in recent years, larger studies have shown promising results, and more are underway.

“In the last few years, a lot of good science has been done in the area,” says Shona Blair, a microbiologist at the University of Sydney, Australia, who studies the anti-bacterial properties of honey.

Chronic wounds are a growing medical problem. Each year, an estimated 100,000 diabetics will lose a limb through amputation, mostly as a result of non-healing wounds.

Acute wounds are usually treated by keeping them moist and sterile, which promotes the innate wound-healing ability of the body. But in patients with underlying conditions such as diabetes, a small crack in the skin often fails to heal and can develop into a chronic wound.

Such a wound runs a great risk of becoming infected, which in turn reduces the chance of healing — a vicious cycle that can lead to severe infection, even down to the bone. Chronic wounds are at times treated surgically, by removing dead skin to promote healing. Patients are also treated with off-loading orthotic shoes to prevent applying pressure on the wound, but these are cumbersome and rarely efficiently used.

The honey treatment involves putting it on bandages and applying it to wounds. Because there is a concern among some physicians that untreated honey may carry a risk of botulism — a rare but fatal disease caused by contamination — companies such as Comvita, which markets Medihoney, irradiate the product to sterilise it.

There are several possible ways that honey helps wounds heal, researchers say.

Honey, rich in sugars, provides a hyperosmotic environment — meaning it will suck the water out of bacteria, killing them.

Honey is antibacterial in other ways too. During its creation, worker bees add an enzyme — glucose oxidase — to the nectar they’ve collected. When the honey is applied to a wound, it is exposed to oxygen in the air, and the glucose oxidase produces hydrogen peroxide — bleach — killing the bacteria.

Honey, Blair adds, seems to be active against troublesome antibiotic-resistant strains such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — an important thing, because chronic wounds are often colonised by such bacteria. She’s tested various Australian and New Zealand honeys against bacterial strains obtained from hospitals and found that even the strains most resistant to antibiotics failed to grow and were killed in the presence of honey.

Peter Molan, a New Zealand biochemist at the University of Waikato, has reported that Manuka honey, named after a New Zealand tree, can stop bacterial growth even when diluted up to 56 times. And in studies in piglets and rats he’s found that honey has anti-inflammatory properties, stimulating skin to grow into a wound, advancing its closure.

Patient case histories also provide evidence that honey can help wounds heal. In 2001, Dr Jennifer Eddy, associate professor at the department of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin, US, was treating a patient with an extreme case of diabetic foot ulcer. It had refused to heal despite treatment with conventional remedies: surgical debridement (or removal of dead tissue), antibiotics, hydrogel dressings and use of an off-loading orthotic.

The foot was infected down to the bone. With the threat of amputation looming, Eddy treated the patient’s wound with honey, smearing it on the bandage and applying it to the wound.

The wound healed, the leg was salvaged, and in 2005 Eddy published the case report in the Journal of Family Practice. There are more than 200 similar case reports in the medical literature, according to a 2006 review, for a wide variety of chronic wounds — diabetic foot ulcers, ulcers due to insufficient venous or arterial blood flow, bed sores, burns, wounds containing antibiotic-resistant bacteria and ones caused by weakened immunity.

Anecdotes are one thing, but the medical gold standard is a clinical trial. And that is a problem for honey, Eddy says. Last year, while at a conference, she discussed with a colleague the possibility of conducting a trial on honey. “He told me, ‘There’s no money in honey’,” she says.

Eddy did manage to obtain funds for a randomised, clinical trial comparing store-bought honey against standard treatments for intractable foot ulcers. Since March, seven patients have been recruited; the goal is to recruit 40. Results are expected in about two years, Eddy says.

A three-year-long study at the University of Bonn, Germany, reported good healing rates in the use of honey as a dressing for wounds in 15 children with cancer, a population prone to non-healing ulcers because of weakened immunity after radiation and chemotherapy.

Preliminary results of another clinical trial comparing honey with hydrogel dressings in 100 patients with chronic leg ulcers were presented in May at a wound meeting in Scotland. The honey-dressing group healed faster and had less infection than the standard treatment group.

Other studies are underway: One, at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, will compare a honey-based anti-bacterial wound gel product to standard treatment in about 80 children with burns. A smaller pilot study will look at honey treatment in head and neck cancer patients undergoing radiation.

Some specialists are not too optimistic about the benefits of honey in wound management. “It’s good with butter and bread — I don’t think honey on Band-Aid is the answer,” says Dr Adrian Barbul, chair of surgery at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore and professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University.

But Dr Arne Simon, director of paediatric oncology at the Children’s Hospital of Bonn University and first author of the study on children with cancer, says that although more clinical studies are needed, the data for the children, at least, looked good. Specialists, he says, should consider standardised honey when faced with other wounds that just don’t want to heal.

Click to read the usefulness of honey 

Source:The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

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