Therapeutic mechanism of Yīn-Chén-Hāo decoction in hepatic diseases

This review summarizes the biological activities of YCHD and its medical applications. The main active compounds of YCHD are chlorogenic acid, rhein, geniposide, emodin, and scoparone. The pharmacological actions of YCHD include inhibition of hepatic steatosis, apoptosis, necrosis, anti-inflammation, and immune regulation. YCHD could be developed as a new therapeutic strategy for the treatment of hepatic diseases.

By Jpbrigand (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Antibacterial and Antioxidant Activities of Essential Oils for use in Food Safety

Essential oils are natural antimicrobials that have the potential to provide a safer alternative to synthetic antimicrobials currently used in the food industry. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of essential oils from white wormwood, rose-scented geranium and bay laurel against Salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli O157:H7 on fresh produce and to examine consumer acceptability of fresh produce treated with these essential oils.

Friedrich Haag [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Massage as Medicine

For more than a decade, Bill Cook has gotten a weekly massage. He isn’t a professional athlete. He didn’t receive a lifetime gift certificate to a spa. Nor is the procedure a mere indulgence, he says – it’s medicinal.

Photo by Shutterstock 291691319. Image of a close portrait of a young woman during a Reiki session sourced from Shutterstock. Available here.

Text from How to Make Dandelion Pesto (An Amazing Spring Tonic!)

Young dandelion leaves are a wonderful spring tonic as they offer lots of nutrition with a bit of bitter flavor. When your body detects bitterness, it helps stimulate lots of different stages of digestion, from increased saliva, which breaks down carbohydrates, to HCL in the stomach, to bile production and release, which helps to break down fats, to a variety of digestive enzymes. Many people are beginning to realize that the lack of bitter foods and drinks in our diet is an underlying cause for many of the rampant digestive issues we see today.

By UpstateNYer (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The effect of pre-treatment with transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation on the quality of recovery after ambulatory breast surgery: a prospective RCT

Further, postoperative pain scores and the incidence of side-effects were all lower in the transcutaneous electric acupoint stimulation group. In conclusion, transcutaneous electric acupoint stimulation can significantly improve the quality of recovery and decrease the incidence of anaesthesia-related side-effects for patients undergoing ambulatory surgery.

Unsplash. (n.d.). [Mujer en traje médico azul de pie junto a mujer en túnica blanca]. Unsplash. Available here.

Acupuncture Painkilling Relief for Shingles


Acupuncture relieves pain due to shingles, reduces the need for painkillers, speeds the healing of herpes zoster lesions, and reduces the incidence of postherpetic neuralgia (PHN). Tianjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine researchers combined acupuncture with standard drug therapy. Patients receiving both drug therapy and acupuncture in a combined treatment protocol had superior patient outcomes compared with patients using only drug therapy.

Image by Mariegriffiths at the English language Wikipedia. Licensed under GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Lonely People Report More Severe Cold Symptoms, Study Finds

A study published Thursday in Health Psychology found that among people who fell ill after being exposed to a cold virus, those who were lonely were more likely to report severe runny nose, sneezing, sore throat and other symptoms. That adds to the evidence linking loneliness to more serious health problems including heart disease and early death.

Arief Rahman Saan (Ezagren) [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons

Loneliness Predicts Self-Reported Cold Symptoms After a Viral Challenge

Loneliness is a well-established risk factor for poor physical health. Much less is known about
how loneliness affects patient-reported outcomes (PROs), such as somatic symptoms, which are increasingly important for guiding symptom management and assessing quality of patient care.

See page for author [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Finding Pad Thai

Its full name, kway teow pad Thai, hints at its possible Chinese origins; kway teow, in Chinese, refers to rice noodles. It is likely that some early version of the dish came to Thailand with settlers crossing from southern China, who brought their own recipe for fried rice noodles...The cooked meats and vegetables in pad Thai resemble dishes prepared by the Cantonese and Tae Chiew (Chao Zhou in Mandarin) from China’s eastern Guangdong province. Nevertheless, the flavors and textures are pure Thai.

By Andy Mitchell from Glasgow, UK (Pad Thai with Prawn) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
 

Chunky Soup: The Sumotori Diet

When faced with the image of a sumotori (a sumo wrestler or rikishi),1 most food-minded people are likely to ask, “What do they eat to look like that?” I asked this question as a high-school exchange student in Japan a decade ago and have been exploring it ever since.

Tōshūsai Sharaku. Ukiyo-e print of the seven-year-old sumo wrestler Daidōzan Bungorō, 1794. Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Available here.

Cupping

The earliest use of cupping that is recorded is from the famous Taoist alchemist and herbalist, Ge Hong (281–341 A.D.).  The method was described in his book A Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies, in which the cups were actually animal horns, used for draining pustules.  As a result of using horns, cupping has been known as jiaofa, or the horn technique.  In a Tang Dynasty book, Necessities of a Frontier Official, cupping was prescribed for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis (or a similar disorder).  More recently, Zhao Xuemin, during the Qing Dynasty, wrote Supplement to Outline of Materia Medica, including an entire chapter on “fire jar qi” (huoquan qi).  In it, he emphasized the value of this treatment, using cups made of bamboo or pottery, in alleviating headache of wind-cold type, bi syndrome of wind origin, dizziness, and abdominal pain.

Image sourced from ITM Online. Available here.

Bleeding Peripheral Points: An Acupuncture Technique

The Lingshu (Spiritual Pivot) and its companion volume, the Suwen (Simple Questions), written around 100 B.C., established the fundamentals of traditional Chinese medical ideas and acupuncture therapy (3, 4). Originally, there was a set of 9 acupuncture needles, which included the triangular lance, sword-like flat needles, and fairly large needles (see Figure 1). In the Lingshu (3) these ancient needles are numbered and the needle designs and qualities are associated with what the numbers represent. Regarding the fourth needle, which has a tubular body and lance-like tip, the text states: "This can be used to drain fevers, to draw blood, and to exhaust chronic diseases." The seventh needle is described as being hair fine (corresponding in form to the most common of the current needles); it is said to "control fever and chills and painful rheumatism in the luo channels." In modern practice, using the lance as a means to treat chronic diseases has been marginalized (except to treat acute flare-ups of chronic ailments), while the applications of the hair-fine needle has been greatly expanded beyond malarial fevers and muscle and joint pain.

Image sourced from ITM Online. Available here.

Treating Beyond Pain

More often than not, when a patient presents to the office, it is for a pain complaint. Headache, neck pain, low back pain, sciatica, carpal tunnel. . . The pain is often the focus of the patient's mindset, and they don't often have any thought of what comes after the pain.

Photo by Shutterstock 160707833. Image of infrared radiation hardening sourced from Shutterstock. Available here.

Breaking the Stigma — A Physician’s Perspective on Self-Care and Recovery

My name is Adam. I am a human being, a husband, a father, a pediatric palliative care physician, and an associate residency director. I have a history of depression and suicidal ideation and am a recovering alcoholic...Yet mine is a story of recovery: I am a survivor of an ongoing national epidemic of neglect of physicians’ mental health.

Coadministration of the fungal immunomodulatory protein FIP-Fve and a tumour-associated antigen enhanced antitumour immunity

Fve is a fungal protein isolated from the golden needle mushroom Flammulina velutipes and has previously been reported to trigger immunological responses in both mouse and human lymphocytes. In this study, we evaluated the potential application of Fve as an adjuvant for tumour immunotherapy and examined the underlying mechanism(s).

By Rob Hille (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Bai-Hu-Jia-Ren-Shen-Tang Decoction Reduces Fatty Liver by Activating AMP-Activated Protein Kinase In Vitro and In Vivo

Obesity and associated conditions, such as type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), are currently a worldwide health problem. In Asian traditional medicine, Bai-Hu-Jia-Ren-Shen-Tang (BHJRST) is widely used in diabetes patients to reduce thirst. However, whether it has a therapeutic effect on T2DM or NAFLD is not known. The aim of this study was to examine whether BHJRST had a lipid-lowering effect using a HuS-E/2 cell model of fatty liver induced by palmitate and in a db/db mouse model of dyslipidemia.

By Clément Bardot (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Oily fish, coffee and walnuts: Dietary treatment for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

Rates of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) are increasing worldwide in tandem with the metabolic syndrome, with the progressive form of disease, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) likely to become the most common cause of end stage liver disease in the not too distant future. Lifestyle modification and weight loss remain the main focus of management in NAFLD and NASH, however, there has been growing interest in the benefit of specific foods and dietary components on disease progression, with some foods showing protective properties.

By Ewan Munro from London, UK (Salmon with Lime & Garlic Butter  Uploaded by tm) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons