Categories
Herbs & Plants

Agrimonia parviflora.

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Botanical Name : Agrimonia parviflora.
Family: Rosaceae
Genus: Agrimonia
Species:A. parviflora
Kingdom:Plantae
Order: Rosales

Common Names :  Small Flowered Agrimony, Harvestlice Agrimony, and Harvestlice

Habitat : Agrimonia parviflora is native to Eastern N. America – Connecticut and New York to Florida, west to Texas and Nebraska. It grows on the damp thickets and the edges of low woods, growing in clumps. Moist or dry soils.

Description:
Agrimonia parviflora is a wildflower plant. It is 2½–5′ tall. The stout central stem is unbranched, terete, and light green, reddish green, or brownish green; it is covered with long hairs that are white or light brown. Along each stem, there are widely spreading alternate leaves. These leaves are odd-pinnate and up to 2′ long and ½’ across; each leaf has 9-17 primary leaflets and smaller secondary leaflets. The secondary leaflets are located between pairs of primary leaflets. Individual primary leaflets are 2-3″ long and about one-third as much across; they are narrowly lanceolate, narrowly oblanceolate, or elliptic with wedge-shaped bottoms and acute tips. Leaflet margins are coarsely dentate. The upper surface of each leaflet is yellowish green and hairless, while the lower surface is short-pubescent. Secondary leaflets are similar to the primary leaflets, but they are much smaller in size (less than 1″ long). Both the petiole and rachis of each compound leaf are pubescent; quite often, they have sparse long hairs. At the base of each leaf, there is a pair of large stipules that are fan-shaped and either coarsely dentate or cleft with pointed lobes.

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The central stem terminates in a long spike-like raceme about ¾–2½’ long. Robust plants also produce secondary racemes from the axils of the upper leaves that are shorter than the terminal raceme. These racemes are usually more or less erect, although longer racemes sometimes bend sideways to become nearly horizontal with the ground. The central stalk of the raceme is light green, terete, and short-pubescent. Numerous small flowers about ¼” across occur along the length of the raceme on short stalks about 1/8″ long. Individual flowers consist of a tubular green calyx, 5 yellow petals, about 10 stamens, and a central pistil. The tubular calyx is turbinate in shape and 10-ribbed. The blooming period occurs from mid- to late summer and lasts about 1-2 months. Afterwards, the flowers are replaced by 1-2 seeded fruits about ¼” across. These small fruits have numerous hooked prickles along the upper rims of their persistent calyxes. Immature fruits are green, while mature fruits are brown. The root system is fibrous and rhizomatous. Clonal colonies of plants are often produced.
Cultivation:
Succeeds in most soils, preferring a calcareous soil. Prefers a sunny position. Plants self-sow when growing in a suitable position.

Propagation:
Seed – can be sown in spring or autumn, either in pots in a cold frame or in situ. It usually germinates in 2 – 6 weeks at 13°c, though germination rates can be low, especially if the seed has been stored. A period of cold stratification helps but is not essential. When grown in pots, prick out the seedlings when they are large enough to handle and plant them out in late spring or early summer. Division in autumn.   Very easy, the divisions can be planted straight out into their permanent positions.

Medicinal Uses:
A tea made from the whole plant is astringent. It is used in the treatment diarrhoea, bleeding, wounds, inflammation of the gall bladder, urinary incontinence etc. It is gargled as a treatment for mouth ulcers and sore throats. An infusion of the seedpods is used to treat diarrhoea and fevers. An infusion of the root is used as a blood tonic and is given to children to satisfy their hunger. The powdered root has been used to treat pox.
Disclaimer : The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplement, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider.

Resources:
http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/wetland/plants/sw_agrimony.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrimonia_parviflora
http://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Agrimonia+parviflora

Categories
News on Health & Science

New Norms to Ease Back Pain

An association of doctors has pencilled India’s first formal guidelines for pain diagnosis and treatment amid concern that Indian patients are either under-treated or over-treated for acute and chronic pain.

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The Indian Society for the Study of Pain (ISSP) will release its pain management protocols for low back pain next week, to be followed later by protocols for other conditions, from headaches and neck and joint pain to pain related to cancer or trauma.

Limited surveys suggest that one in five patients in India with chronic pain do not find relief despite being under medical treatment, specialists in the ISSP said.

“We believe there is under-treatment, over-treatment, direct over-the-counter purchase of medicines by patients, and erratic treatment,” said Parmanand Jain, ISSP president and professor of anaesthesia at the Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai. “We’re hoping these pain management algorithms will improve this situation.”

The protocols, developed primarily for the medical community, will provide a well- defined sequence of diagnostic investigations and the line of treatment for specific conditions associated with acute or chronic pain.

Pain specialists are hoping the protocols will also help keep patients away from diagnostic procedures such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, and even surgery, when they are not required.

Patients with low back pain are usually given mild painkillers and advised rest. If the pain doesn’t go away or gets worse and MRI scans show degenerative changes in the vertebral discs, it doesn’t mean surgery is required.

“Three out of four persons without any back pain may also show changes in MRI scans. So, the changes (in those with pain) may not be causing the pain at all,” said K. Jawahar Choudhury, senior pain management consultant at Apollo Hospital, Delhi.

As for over-treatment, many pain specialists believe the long-term abuse of painkillers is contributing significantly to the country’s burden of kidney disease.

But ISSP members concede that doctors in India are sometimes compelled to prescribe inappropriate treatment to cancer patients because morphine, a key pain-killer, isn’t easily available. The drug is distributed only through licensed clinics.

“We’ve been telling the narcotics control bureau to expand the distribution of morphine,” said Geeta Joshi, anaesthesiology professor at the Regional Cancer Centre, Ahmedabad. India’s per head consumption of morphine is 0.6mg, whereas the world and US figures are 5.93mg and 76mg, respectively.


Source
: The Telegraph ( Kolkata, India)

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Categories
Healthy Tips

Ginger Reduces Pain After Exercise

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Ginger may reduce the pain associated with muscle injury after exercising. This could offer athletes a natural pain reliever.

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Both raw and heat-treated ginger reduced pain associated with muscle injury by about 24 percent.

According to NutraIngredients:
“The rhizome of the ginger plant (Zingiber officinale) is a rich source of antioxidants, including gingerols, shogaols, zingerones and other ketone derivatives … ginger’s pain reducing effects are biologically plausible with both in vitro and in vivo animal studies showing an effect of gingerols, shogaols, and zingerones on inflammatory compounds.”

Resources:
NutraIngredients June 3, 2010
The Journal of Pain April 23, 2010; [Epub ahead of print]

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Categories
News on Health & Science

Brazilian Mint Tea Good for Pain Relief

An herb called Brazilian mint treats pain as effectively as some synthetic drugs, English researchers report.
……………..Brazilian Mint Tea
Traditional healers in Brazil have long used the herb Hyptis crenata to treat a range of health problems, including headaches, stomach pain, fever and flu. This study is the first to scientifically prove the pain-relieving properties of Brazilian mint.
In experiments with mice, the Newcastle University researchers found that Brazilian mint tea (the traditional way of administering the medicine) was as effective at relieving pain as a synthetic aspirin-style drug called Indomethacin.

The study came out on  Nov. 24 at a conference in India in advance of publication in an upcoming issue of the journal Acta Horticulturae.

“What we have done is to take a plant that is widely used to safely treat pain and scientifically proven that it works as well as some synthetic drugs. Now the next step is to find out how and why the plant works,”…….. study leader Graciela Rocha said in a university news release.

She and her colleagues plan to launch clinical trials to assess Brazilian mint’s pain relief qualities in people.

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Source: Newcastle University, news release, Nov. 24, 2009

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Categories
Featured Meditation

Meditate Your Pain Away

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Zen meditation – a centuries-old practice that helps people gain mental, physical and emotional balance – can keep pain at bay

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Universite de Montreal researchers.

According to a Psychosomatic Medicine study, Zen meditators have lower pain sensitivity both in and out of a meditative state compared to non-meditators. Along with Pierre Rainville, a professor and researcher at the Université de Montréal, Joshua A. Grant, a doctoral student in the Department of Physiology co-authored the paper.

The main aim of the study was to examine whether trained meditators perceived pain differently than non-meditators. “While previous studies have shown that teaching chronic pain patients to meditate is beneficial, very few studies have looked at pain processing in healthy, highly trained meditators. This study was a first step in determining how or why meditation might influence pain perception,” says Grant.

To reach the conclusion, the scientists recruited 13 Zen meditators with a minimum of 1,000 hours of practice to undergo a pain test and contrasted their reaction with 13 non-meditators. Subjects included 10 women and 16 men between the ages of 22 to 56.

The administered pain test was simple: A thermal heat source, a computer controlled heating plate, was pressed against the calves of subjects intermittently at varying temperatures. Heat levels began at 43 degrees Celsius and went to a maximum of 53 degrees Celsius depending on each participant’s sensitivity. While quite a few of the meditators tolerated the maximum temperature, all control subjects were well below 53 degrees Celsius.

Grant and Rainville noticed a marked difference in how their two test groups reacted to pain testing – Zen meditators had much lower pain sensitivity (even without meditating) compared to non-meditators. During the meditation-like conditions it appeared meditators further reduced their pain partly through slower breathing: 12 breaths per minute versus an average of 15 breaths for non-meditators.

“Slower breathing certainly coincided with reduced pain and may influence pain by keeping the body in a relaxed state. While previous studies have found that the emotional aspects of pain are influenced by meditation, we found that the sensation itself, as well as the emotional response, is different in meditators,” Grant said.

The ultimate result was that Zen meditators experienced an 18 per cent reduction in pain intensity.

Source:The Times Of India

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