Herbal Medicine in Peru

by Rob McCaleb

Good news from a new article in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine: knowledge of local medicinal plants is still fairly strong even in a native community only 4 km from a city center and bisected by a highway. The majority of the population still relies exclusively on medicinal plants for self-medication.

In the community of Bajo Quimiriki, despite the vicinity to the city of Pichanaki, traditional plant knowledge has still a great importance in the daily life: 402 medicinal plants were indicated by the informants for the treatment of 155 different ailments and diseases.

Scientists interviewed Asháninka community members who recognized 402 medicinal plants and knew their uses. 84% were wild plants and 63% were collected from the forest. There were only 2% exotics. Knowledge of the plants was significantly correlated with age and gender, with women significantly outscoring men.

Women described a medicinal application in a higher number of [plants]: they scored a total of 310 record of use versus 206 total records of use by men.

Of the 72 plants that researchers had pre-marked, women described one or more medicinal use of 49.5%, while men did so in 26.6%. Unfortunately, the Asháninka language is vanishing, and most younger community members know only the Spanish names of their traditional plants.

The children of the community spend most of the day at school, where they are taught in Spanish. This decreases their chances to learn about the uses of the medicinal plants from the older people.

Among the most interesting discoveries is that plant use by the Peruvian native population correlated well with that of the Malinké of Mali, in West Africa. There is always a stronger likelihood that a benefit is real when widely dispersed populations use the same plant for similar conditions.

Ayurstate

Outside Magazine Cries “Snake Oil” on Omega 3s – Huh?

by Rob McCaleb

This just in via Facebook.

Outside Magazine sez

“Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars on fish oil supplements every year, but studies have never been able to prove their effectiveness.”

I would not recommend seeking health advice from Outside. Sorry, guys.

What the author misses here is that intervention trials for preventive medicine are essentially impossible. We can’t get 1,000 humans to eat Purina Human Chow and live in a controlled environment for decades. Our long lifespan and “confounding variables” make this kind of trial unrealistic.

Further, there’s not enough money in supplements to have drug-like evidence. Try to find such evidence for any food, for example intervention trials that prove orange juice is good for you.

In nearly 100 years of regulation by the FDA, the only over-the-counter drugs approved for the prevention of any disease are fluoride toothpaste, sunscreen, aspirin for blood thinning, and anti-ulcer drugs for preventing indigestion.

Now take a look at the link below. Omega 3 proves more effective than aspirin as an anti-inflammatory. Heart disease, cancer, arthritis, liver disease and many other conditions are now known to be related to whole-body inflammation. The research cited below tested specifically for inflammatory compounds (cytokines) in the blood.

“Aspirin alone had no effect on any factor versus baseline, but EPA+DHA, with and without aspirin, significantly reduced concentrations of 8 of 9 factors. Although EPA+DHA plus aspirin reduced concentrations of a subset of the factors compared to baseline, neither aspirin alone nor the combination significantly reduced the level of any analyte more robustly than EPA+DHA alone.”

AyurGold

Ultrasound May Detect Heart Disease Earlier in Arthritis Patients

HealthDay

WEDNESDAY, June 6 (HealthDay News) — A special type of ultrasound can detect heart disease early in people with rheumatoid arthritis, according to a new study.

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis are at increased risk for heart disease, and it is important to be able to spot the disease at an early stage and begin treatment before it progresses to the point where a patient is at danger for a heart attack or heart failure, the researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., explained.

Diagnostic methods commonly used by doctors, however, often underestimate the degree of heart danger in these patients.

“The challenge we’ve had in our studies — and other people have had as well — is identifying patients with rheumatoid arthritis early enough so we can intervene, before the symptoms become clinically apparent,” senior researcher Dr. Sherine Gabriel, a rheumatologist and epidemiologist, said in a Mayo news release.

In this study, the research team used a type of ultrasound called speckle-tracking echocardiography to assess heart function in 100 rheumatoid arthritis patients and 50 people without rheumatoid arthritis or heart disease.

The arthritis patients had heart impairment that wasn’t seen in the healthy people, and this impairment had a unique pattern that could be used to identify heart disease before patients have clinical signs.

The study was presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the European League Against Rheumatism, in Berlin.

A recently published Mayo Clinic study found that two widely used heart disease risk-assessment methods — the Framingham and Reynolds risk scores — often underestimate the heart danger in many rheumatoid arthritis patients, according to the news release.

This ultrasound test could help improve early detection of heart problems in these patients, Gabriel said.

Because the new study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Arthmender