WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2013
health
HOW TO EASE ACHES WITHOUT A PILL Sore from your last run and can’t quite kick the pain? A recent study says reflexology may be a natural remedy for relief. Reflexology—pressure applied to specific points on the hands, feet or ears—can reduce pain by 40% and might be as effective as drugs, suggests a new study from the University of Portsmouth in England.
SCIATICA
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BATTLING KALA AZAR
It may feel like a mild tingling, dull ache, or burning sensation. In some cases, the pain is severe enough to make a person unable to move. If you have these symptoms then be sure you have injured your sciatic nerve. Dr Ravinder Reddy, MD Star Homeopathy, tells us more about this problem.
That tingling ache What is Sciatica
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ciatica or Lumbar radiculopathy is a set of symptoms including pain that may be caused by general compression or irritation of one of five spinal nerve roots that give rise to sciatic nerve or by compression or irritation of the left or right or both sciatic nerves.
Scope of Homeopathy
Symptoms
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ymptoms include lower back ache, pain in the buttocks, numbness or weakness in various parts of the leg and foot. Other symptoms include tingling sensation and difficulty in moving or controlling the leg.
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Diagnosis
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ciatica is typically diagnosed by physical examination and the history of the symptoms. Imaging tests such as CT and MRI can help with the diagnosis of lumbar disc herniation.
Management
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hen the cause of sciatica is due to a lumbar disc herniation, most cases resolve spontaneously over weeks to months. Simple physical exercises may sometimes be helpful.
omeopathy has good medicines for this kind of neurological problems but homeopathic treatment focuses in the patient as a person, as well as his pathological condition. The medicines are selected after a full individualizing examination and case analysis, which includes the medical history of the patient, physical and mental constitution.
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ith drug resistance threatening the battle against kala azar, which afflicts 350 million in 88 countries, a group of Indian scientists has taken a giant step to develop a potential therapy by using tiny molecules present in the body. Around 65 per cent patients in India have stopped responding to sodium stibogluconate — the drug of choice for the lifethreatening visceral leishmaniasis or kala azar, says Neeloo Singh, senior principal scientist, Central Drug Research Institute Lucknow. Provisional figures by the union health ministry show that kala azar claimed 11 lives and afflicted 7,776 people this year till July. Upping the ante against drug resistance, researchers at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology have pioneered a new strategy to increase the cholesterol level in blood, that in turn significantly slashes the parasite’s numbers. It involves channelising some small molecules that are the direct products of genes. “When we administered the micro RNA (micro Ribonucleic Acid — the small molecules) in excess it increased the cholesterol and at the same time induced clearance of the parasite. It emerged as the potential molecule in combination with other drugs,” Suvendra Nath Bhattacharyya of the Molecular and Human Genetics Division of the IICB told IANS. These micro RNAs (or miRNA) are important for regulating key metabolic processes, including cholesterol metabolism in the liver, and are composed of 22 units of organic molecules called nucleotides. In the body, these mini machines regulate expression of genes and help control production of functional products like proteins. What was of interest to scientists was that the Leishmania parasite (that infects the liver and multiplies in the spleen) brings down the miRNA levels by “targeting an enzyme called dicer that is responsible for the production of these micro regulators”. When the parasite brings down the microRNA, this in turn lowers cholesterol — a condition that is favourable for the parasite to thrive,” Bhattacharyya said. IANS