Licorice – Liquorice

Recently a neurologist I saw told me about adaptogens that can be used to regulate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis or HPA axis. The term adaptogen is used by herbalists to refer to a natural herb product that is proposed to increase the body’s resistance to stress, trauma, anxiety and fatigue. One such adaptogen is licorice. I am sure many of you have had licorice before and likely think of red Twizzlers. Some of you may not like the taste of it that much. This is because it does not contain sugar as in most candies. However, recently I have been eating licorice that is better and tastes better than Twizzlers. I found some australian licorice at World Market. Licorice has a lot of medicinal uses and if you are depressed eating some each day might help you feel better. To learn … Read more

Distributed Computing

For a class I am currently taking, I am working on a project with a team of other students on distributed computing. For those who do not know what it is I feel that it is a worthwhile endeavor to consider getting involved with. It is a way of connecting thousands of computers and making them work together on a research project. You can volunteer your computer to work for medical projects like cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research. It requires basically no effort on your part and does not even affect the performance of your computer. All you do is download a software program, install it, and the application runs in the background. How this works is that usually you only use about 10% of your computer processor cycles at … Read more

Narcotics

What is a Narcotic? A narcotic is an addictive drug that reduces pain, induces sleep and may alter mood or behaviour. In US legal context, narcotic refers to opium, opium derivatives, and their semi-synthetic or fully synthetic substitutes as well as cocaine and coca leaves, which although classified as “narcotics” in the U.S. Drug effects depend heavily on the dose, route of administration, previous exposure to the drug, and the expectation of the user. Aside from their clinical use in the treatment of pain, coughing and acute diarrhea, narcotics produce a general sense of well-being known as euphoria by reducing tension, anxiety, and aggression. Narcotic use is associated with a variety of effects including drowsiness, itching, sleeplessness, inability to concentrate, apathy, lessened physical activity, constriction of the pupils, dilation of the subcutaneous blood vessels causing flushing of the face and … Read more

Pharmacology

What is Pharmacology? Pharmacology is the study of how substances interact with living organisms to produce a change in function. If substances have medicinal properties, they are considered pharmaceuticals. The field encompasses drug composition and properties, interactions, toxicology, therapy, and medical applications and antipathogenic capabilities. Development of medication is a vital concern to medicine, but also has strong economical and political implications. To protect the consumer and prevent abuse, many governments regulate the manufacture, sale, and administration of medication. In the United States, the main body that regulates pharmaceuticals is the Food and Drug Administration. (FDA) For more information about the topic Pharmacology, read the full article at Wikipedia.org.

Achieving Publicity

If anyone suffers from a chronic illness they know that in order to help achieve better treatment options for patients and a cure for the disease it needs to achieve publicity. The following are some ways to help better make others know about certain illnesses and conditions so that additional research and knowledge can be attained. 1) Post links as soon as anything is published and share these links with others. I recommended looking at the “Share This” link on the bottom of this post to see some ideas of social networks to share with. 2) Write to doctors with columns in the papers. If you don’t hear back, write another letter. The practice is to write a 150-word ‘synopsis’ of the article you want to write – a bit about the condition, and with experiences you’ve (ie. doctors who … Read more