African plant a powerful natural anti-inflammatory

African lowland gorillas eat it all the time--and many of those kept in captivity who don't get to eat it develop heart disease. Early African healers used it extensively to treat infections and inflammations. Now modern western scientists have caught on. Aframomum melegueta, a member of the ginger family, has recently been confirmed to dramatically lower inflammation in many situations.

The plant is rare and so very expensive at this time to harvest and process. But hope is that, like aspirin which is a synthetic version of a substance in willow bark, biotechnologists will be able to manufacture a synthetic version of Aframomum and use it to treat inflammatory diseases such as Alzheimers, arthritis, osteoporosis, and to combat the deadly antibiotic-resistant MSRA virus running rampant in hospitals today.

Nature comes to our rescue again.

Don't rush to surgery for herniated disk

The same level of improvement occurred in two years between those who had disk surgery and those who had other treatments, according to the results of a randomized study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

It seems a third of the people who were assigned to have other treatments went ahead and had surgery anyway--which just shows how hopeful we all are that there's a quick fix for our pain or other issues. Any differences in favor of surgery were small and not statistically significant.

Because I know some folks with back problems, I know that the non-surgical stuff is a lot of work--exercise, stretching, massage and so on. And it can be hard to talk insurance companies into paying for that kind of stuff--another reason people rush to surgery. Thanks to the Internet, anyone trying to make this type of decision has a treasure trove of information about non-surgical options.

This is another area where medical ethics can be troubling. Because surgery is profitable and insurance companies pay readily for it, it can be hard for an honest practitioner to suggest alternatives that don't involve personal revenue streams. Focusing on the greater good always shades our choices in life.

Antibiotics ahead of time works--and saves money

A study in Brazil indicates that surgical patients can be given a pre-surgery prophylactic single dose of antibiotics (with nothing further after surgery) and come out just as good as those who receive more extensive--and more expensive--post-surgery treatments.

You know, I've know about this pre-procedure stuff for a while because I've had to do it for dental work for a few years. And of course, being from the old school where you were told in no uncertain terms you had to take a FULL 5 days or 10 days of any antibiotic, I was always nervous about this one-dose thing. However, this study looks pretty strong. Hospitals can save around $2000 on medication for each surgery by using this approach.

Holy mackerel. Let's do more research like this.

Early abuse changes brain chemistry for life

When scientists study human behavior they make sure they link it to chemical substances and actions. Good thing, or we'd still be hanging witches and condemning people-who-don't-belong to mental institutions for life.

This study, done on rhesus monkey moms and babies, demonstrates clearly that abusive moms often produce next-generation abusive moms (about half the time)--which fits the pattern of stats we find with human moms and babies. So when they searched for the chemical connection, the only difference they could identify was that the grew-up-to-be-abusive female monkeys had 10 to 20% lower levels of serotonin in their brains. Studies with rates showed the same pattern. "Low levels of serotonin are associated with anxiety and depression and impulsive aggression in both humans and monkeys."

But the significant part of this is that this is the first study to show that it's maternal behavior that changes brain chemistry first. The hope is that abused kids with lowered levels could be treated early with drugs to boost their serotonin and break the cycle of abuse. May we find a way soon.