Cuminum cyminum extract attenuates scopolamine-induced memory loss and stress-induced urinary biochemical changes in rats: a noninvasive biochemical a

Cuminum cyminum Linn. (Apiaceae), cumin, is a popular spice with a long history of medicinal use to treat various symptoms such as diarrhea, flatulence, gynecological, and respiratory diseases.
To date, no scientific investigation was reported regarding memory-enhancing and antistress activity of cumin fruits. The present study deals with the memory-enhancing and antistress activities and further the antioxidant status via lipid peroxidation inhibition.
Antistress activity was evaluated by inducing stress via forced swimming and the urinary vanillylmandelic acid (VMA) and ascorbic acid were estimated as biomarkers. Memory-enhancing activity was studied by conditioned avoidance response using Cook's pole climbing apparatus in normal and scopolamine-induced amnestic rats. Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) assay was used to evaluate the lipid peroxidation.

Daily administration of cumin at doses of 100, 200, and 300 mg/kg body weight 1 h prior to induction of stress inhibited the stress-induced urinary biochemical changes in a dose-dependent manner without altering the levels in normal control groups. The cognition, as determined by the acquisition, retention, and recovery in rats, was observed to be dose-dependent. The extract also produced significant lipid peroxidation inhibition in comparison with known antioxidant ascorbic acid in both rat liver and brain.
This study provides scientific support for the antistress, antioxidant, and memory-enhancing activities of cumin extract and substantiates that its traditional use as a culinary spice in foods is beneficial and scientific in combating stress and related disorders.

Cuminum cyminum Linn. (Apiaceae), cumin, is a popular spice with a long history of medicinal use to treat various symptoms such as diarrhea, flatulence, gynecological, and respiratory diseases.
To date, no scientific investigation was reported regarding memory-enhancing and antistress activity of cumin fruits. The present study deals with the memory-enhancing and antistress activities and further the antioxidant status via lipid peroxidation inhibition.
Antistress activity was evaluated by inducing stress via forced swimming and the urinary vanillylmandelic acid (VMA) and ascorbic acid were estimated as biomarkers. Memory-enhancing activity was studied by conditioned avoidance response using Cook's pole climbing apparatus in normal and scopolamine-induced amnestic rats. Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) assay was used to evaluate the lipid peroxidation.

Daily administration of cumin at doses of 100, 200, and 300 mg/kg body weight 1 h prior to induction of stress inhibited the stress-induced urinary biochemical changes in a dose-dependent manner without altering the levels in normal control groups. The cognition, as determined by the acquisition, retention, and recovery in rats, was observed to be dose-dependent. The extract also produced significant lipid peroxidation inhibition in comparison with known antioxidant ascorbic acid in both rat liver and brain.
This study provides scientific support for the antistress, antioxidant, and memory-enhancing activities of cumin extract and substantiates that its traditional use as a culinary spice in foods is beneficial and scientific in combating stress and related disorders.

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Connect with Winn

Winn's goal is to help "Every Cat, Every Day" and we can only do this with your assistance. Stay in touch with our activities and learn how you can become involved in the future of feline health.

Join over 3,800 other cat lovers on our Facebook page.

Follow us on Twitter and help spread the word!

Subscribe to our email newsletter - we promise, no spam :-)

Winn's goal is to help "Every Cat, Every Day" and we can only do this with your assistance. Stay in touch with our activities and learn how you can become involved in the future of feline health.

Join over 3,800 other cat lovers on our Facebook page.

Follow us on Twitter and help spread the word!

Subscribe to our email newsletter - we promise, no spam :-)

Read More

Give your brain a tea break

The four-year study adds to the literature on tea's long-touted virtues. Moreover, any type of tea will do just fine.

The main finding is that tea slows down brain-cell degeneration and thus keeps the mind sharp into old age, said Professor Ng Tze Pin from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) psychological medicine department.

It was found that catechins, a natural compound in tea, protect brain cells from damaging protein build-up over the years, maintaining the brain's cognitive capability.

Moreover, the caffeine in tea, unlike that in coffee, contains the natural protein theanine, which counters the normal side effects of caffeine such as raised blood pressure, headaches and tiredness.

Brain-cell degeneration, caused by a combination of loss of nerve cells, predisposed genes, small strokes and increased levels of harmful protein build-up, often leads to dementia.

There is still no cure for it. An estimated 24 million people worldwide have some form of dementia, an illness that affects memory, thinking ability and behaviour.

In Singapore, about 5 per cent of those above age 65 and 13 per cent of those above 70 suffer from dementia. About 7,000 new cases are diagnosed every year and the number is expected to rise to 187,000 by 2052.

The NUS team studied the tea-drinking habits of 2,501 Chinese aged 55 and above, from September 2003 to December 2005.

The team members were Prof Ng, Prof Kua Ee Heok, Dr Feng Lei and Dr Niti Mathew, as well as Dr Yap Keng Bee from Alexandra Hospital's geriatric medicine department.

Participants' health, attention span, language use and visual and spatial abilities were assessed. Their tea consumption - how often, how much and what type - was monitored.

About 38 per cent did not drink tea. About 29 per cent drank only one kind of tea. The rest, about 33 per cent, drank a mix of teas.

Two-thirds of the tea drinkers maintained their scores on the same memory tests two years later.

Among the non-tea drinkers, 35 per cent saw a dip in their memory test scores by an average of two points, which signifies cognitive decline.

Age, education, level of physical activity and other drinks were taken into account.

Tea was the distinguishing factor keeping brain cells energised.

Said Prof Ng: 'Tea is cheap, non toxic and widely consumed.'

But tea alone cannot do the job. 'It still means a lifetime of good habits and a balanced diet,' he said.

The four-year study adds to the literature on tea's long-touted virtues. Moreover, any type of tea will do just fine.

The main finding is that tea slows down brain-cell degeneration and thus keeps the mind sharp into old age, said Professor Ng Tze Pin from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) psychological medicine department.

It was found that catechins, a natural compound in tea, protect brain cells from damaging protein build-up over the years, maintaining the brain's cognitive capability.

Moreover, the caffeine in tea, unlike that in coffee, contains the natural protein theanine, which counters the normal side effects of caffeine such as raised blood pressure, headaches and tiredness.

Brain-cell degeneration, caused by a combination of loss of nerve cells, predisposed genes, small strokes and increased levels of harmful protein build-up, often leads to dementia.

There is still no cure for it. An estimated 24 million people worldwide have some form of dementia, an illness that affects memory, thinking ability and behaviour.

In Singapore, about 5 per cent of those above age 65 and 13 per cent of those above 70 suffer from dementia. About 7,000 new cases are diagnosed every year and the number is expected to rise to 187,000 by 2052.

The NUS team studied the tea-drinking habits of 2,501 Chinese aged 55 and above, from September 2003 to December 2005.

The team members were Prof Ng, Prof Kua Ee Heok, Dr Feng Lei and Dr Niti Mathew, as well as Dr Yap Keng Bee from Alexandra Hospital's geriatric medicine department.

Participants' health, attention span, language use and visual and spatial abilities were assessed. Their tea consumption - how often, how much and what type - was monitored.

About 38 per cent did not drink tea. About 29 per cent drank only one kind of tea. The rest, about 33 per cent, drank a mix of teas.

Two-thirds of the tea drinkers maintained their scores on the same memory tests two years later.

Among the non-tea drinkers, 35 per cent saw a dip in their memory test scores by an average of two points, which signifies cognitive decline.

Age, education, level of physical activity and other drinks were taken into account.

Tea was the distinguishing factor keeping brain cells energised.

Said Prof Ng: 'Tea is cheap, non toxic and widely consumed.'

But tea alone cannot do the job. 'It still means a lifetime of good habits and a balanced diet,' he said.

Read More

Ancient Moves for Orthopedic Problems

By JANE E. BRODY

Published: August 1, 2011

With the costs of medical care spiraling out of control and an ever-growing shortage of doctors to treat an aging population, it pays to know about methods of prevention and treatment for orthopedic problems that are low-cost and rely almost entirely on self-care. As certain methods of alternative medicine are shown to have real value, some mainstream doctors who “think outside the box” have begun to incorporate them into their practices.

One of them is Loren Fishman, a physiatrist — a specialist in physical and rehabilitative medicine affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital. Some in the medical profession would consider Dr. Fishman a renegade, but to many of his patients he’s a miracle worker who treats their various orthopedic disorders without the drugs, surgery or endless months of physical therapy most doctors recommend.

Many years ago, I wrote about Dr. Fishman’s nonsurgical treatment of piriformis syndrome, crippling pain in the lower back or leg caused by a muscle spasm in the buttocks that entraps the sciatic nerve. The condition is often misdiagnosed as a back problem, and patients frequently undergo surgery or lengthy physical therapy without relief.

Dr. Fishman developed a simple diagnostic technique for piriformis syndrome and showed that an injection into the muscle to break up the spasm, sometimes followed by yogaexercises or brief physical therapy, relieves the pain in an overwhelming majority of cases.

Nowadays yoga exercises form a centerpiece of his practice. Dr. Fishman, a lifelong devotee of yoga who studied it for three years in India before going to medical school, uses various yoga positions to help prevent, treat, and he says, halt and often reverse conditions like shoulder injuries, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and scoliosis. I rarely devote this column to one doctor’s approach to treatment, and I’m not presenting his approach as a cure-all. But I do think it has value. And he has written several well-illustrated books that can be helpful if used in combination with proper medical diagnosis and guidance.

For many years, yoga teachers and enthusiasts have touted the benefits to the body of this ancient practice, but it is the rare physician who both endorses it and documents its value in clinical tests. Dr. Fishman has done both. Rotator Cuff Relief

This year, Dr. Fishman received a prize at the International Conference on Yoga for Health and Social Transformation for a paper he presented on a surprising yoga remedy for rotator cuff syndrome, a common shoulder injury that causes extreme pain when trying to raise one’s arm to shoulder height and higher. He described a modified form of a yoga headstand that does not require standing on the head and takes only 30 seconds to perform, and presented evidence that it could relieve shoulder pain in most patients, and that adding brief physical therapy could keep the problem from recurring.

Rotator cuff injuries are extremely common, especially among athletes, gym and sports enthusiasts, older people, accident victims and people whose jobs involve repeated overhead motions.

For patients facing surgery to repair a tear in the rotator cuff and many months of rehabilitation, the yoga maneuver can seem almost a miracle. It is especially useful for the elderly, who are often poor candidates for surgery.

Dr. Fishman said he successfully treated a former basketball player, who responded immediately, and a 40-year-old magazine photographer who had torn his rotator cuff while on assignment. The photographer, he said, had been unable to lift his arm high enough to shake someone’s hand.

Instead of an operation that can cost as much as $12,000, followed by four months of physical therapy, with no guarantee of success, Dr. Fishman’s treatment, is an adaptation of a yoga headstand called the triangular forearm support. His version can be done against a wall or using a chair as well as on one’s head. The maneuver, in effect, trains a muscle below the shoulder blade, the subscapularis, to take over the job of the injured muscle, the supraspinatus, that normally raises the arm from below chest height to above the shoulder.

The doctor discovered the benefit of this technique quite accidentally. He had suffered a bad tear in his left shoulder when he swerved to avoid a taxi that had pulled in front of his car. Frustrated by an inability to practice yoga during the month he waited to see a surgeon, one day he attempted a yoga headstand. After righting himself, he discovered he could raise his left arm over his head without pain, even though an M.R.I. showed that the supraspinatus muscle was still torn.

Dr. Fishman, who has since treated more than 700 patients with this technique, said it has helped about 90 percent of them. “It doesn’t work on everyone — not on string musicians, for example, whose shoulder muscles are overtrained,” he said in an interview.

In a report published this spring in Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation (an issue of the journal devoted to therapeutic yoga), he described results in 50 patients with partial or complete tears of the supraspinatus muscle. The initial yoga maneuver was repeated in physical therapy for an average of five sessions and the patients were followed for an average of two and a half years.

The doctor and his co-authors reported that the benefits matched, and in some cases exceeded, those following physical therapy alone or surgery and rehabilitation. All the yoga-treated patients maintained their initial relief for as long as they were studied, up to eight years, and none experienced new tears.

Yoga for Bone Disease

Perhaps more important from a public health standpoint is the research Dr. Fishman is doing on yoga’s benefits to bones. Bone loss is epidemic in our society, and the methods to prevent and treat it are far from ideal. Weight-bearing exercise helps, but not everyone can jog, dance or walk briskly, and repeated pounding on knees and hips can eventually cause joint deterioration.

Strength training, in which muscles pull on bones, is perhaps even more beneficial, and Dr. Fishman has observed that osteoporosis and resulting fractures are rare among regular yoga practitioners.

In a pilot study that began with 187 people with osteoporosis and 30 with its precursor, osteopenia, he found that compliance with the yoga exercises was poor. But the 11 patients who did 10 minutes of yoga daily for two years increased bone density in their hips and spines while seven patients who served as controls continued to lose bone. He noted that yoga’s benefits also decrease the risk of falls, which can result in osteoporotic fractures.

Medical guidance here is important, especially for older people who may have orthopedic issues that require adaptations of the yoga moves.

By JANE E. BRODY

Published: August 1, 2011

With the costs of medical care spiraling out of control and an ever-growing shortage of doctors to treat an aging population, it pays to know about methods of prevention and treatment for orthopedic problems that are low-cost and rely almost entirely on self-care. As certain methods of alternative medicine are shown to have real value, some mainstream doctors who “think outside the box” have begun to incorporate them into their practices.

One of them is Loren Fishman, a physiatrist — a specialist in physical and rehabilitative medicine affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital. Some in the medical profession would consider Dr. Fishman a renegade, but to many of his patients he’s a miracle worker who treats their various orthopedic disorders without the drugs, surgery or endless months of physical therapy most doctors recommend.

Many years ago, I wrote about Dr. Fishman’s nonsurgical treatment of piriformis syndrome, crippling pain in the lower back or leg caused by a muscle spasm in the buttocks that entraps the sciatic nerve. The condition is often misdiagnosed as a back problem, and patients frequently undergo surgery or lengthy physical therapy without relief.

Dr. Fishman developed a simple diagnostic technique for piriformis syndrome and showed that an injection into the muscle to break up the spasm, sometimes followed by yogaexercises or brief physical therapy, relieves the pain in an overwhelming majority of cases.

Nowadays yoga exercises form a centerpiece of his practice. Dr. Fishman, a lifelong devotee of yoga who studied it for three years in India before going to medical school, uses various yoga positions to help prevent, treat, and he says, halt and often reverse conditions like shoulder injuries, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and scoliosis. I rarely devote this column to one doctor’s approach to treatment, and I’m not presenting his approach as a cure-all. But I do think it has value. And he has written several well-illustrated books that can be helpful if used in combination with proper medical diagnosis and guidance.

For many years, yoga teachers and enthusiasts have touted the benefits to the body of this ancient practice, but it is the rare physician who both endorses it and documents its value in clinical tests. Dr. Fishman has done both. Rotator Cuff Relief

This year, Dr. Fishman received a prize at the International Conference on Yoga for Health and Social Transformation for a paper he presented on a surprising yoga remedy for rotator cuff syndrome, a common shoulder injury that causes extreme pain when trying to raise one’s arm to shoulder height and higher. He described a modified form of a yoga headstand that does not require standing on the head and takes only 30 seconds to perform, and presented evidence that it could relieve shoulder pain in most patients, and that adding brief physical therapy could keep the problem from recurring.

Rotator cuff injuries are extremely common, especially among athletes, gym and sports enthusiasts, older people, accident victims and people whose jobs involve repeated overhead motions.

For patients facing surgery to repair a tear in the rotator cuff and many months of rehabilitation, the yoga maneuver can seem almost a miracle. It is especially useful for the elderly, who are often poor candidates for surgery.

Dr. Fishman said he successfully treated a former basketball player, who responded immediately, and a 40-year-old magazine photographer who had torn his rotator cuff while on assignment. The photographer, he said, had been unable to lift his arm high enough to shake someone’s hand.

Instead of an operation that can cost as much as $12,000, followed by four months of physical therapy, with no guarantee of success, Dr. Fishman’s treatment, is an adaptation of a yoga headstand called the triangular forearm support. His version can be done against a wall or using a chair as well as on one’s head. The maneuver, in effect, trains a muscle below the shoulder blade, the subscapularis, to take over the job of the injured muscle, the supraspinatus, that normally raises the arm from below chest height to above the shoulder.

The doctor discovered the benefit of this technique quite accidentally. He had suffered a bad tear in his left shoulder when he swerved to avoid a taxi that had pulled in front of his car. Frustrated by an inability to practice yoga during the month he waited to see a surgeon, one day he attempted a yoga headstand. After righting himself, he discovered he could raise his left arm over his head without pain, even though an M.R.I. showed that the supraspinatus muscle was still torn.

Dr. Fishman, who has since treated more than 700 patients with this technique, said it has helped about 90 percent of them. “It doesn’t work on everyone — not on string musicians, for example, whose shoulder muscles are overtrained,” he said in an interview.

In a report published this spring in Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation (an issue of the journal devoted to therapeutic yoga), he described results in 50 patients with partial or complete tears of the supraspinatus muscle. The initial yoga maneuver was repeated in physical therapy for an average of five sessions and the patients were followed for an average of two and a half years.

The doctor and his co-authors reported that the benefits matched, and in some cases exceeded, those following physical therapy alone or surgery and rehabilitation. All the yoga-treated patients maintained their initial relief for as long as they were studied, up to eight years, and none experienced new tears.

Yoga for Bone Disease

Perhaps more important from a public health standpoint is the research Dr. Fishman is doing on yoga’s benefits to bones. Bone loss is epidemic in our society, and the methods to prevent and treat it are far from ideal. Weight-bearing exercise helps, but not everyone can jog, dance or walk briskly, and repeated pounding on knees and hips can eventually cause joint deterioration.

Strength training, in which muscles pull on bones, is perhaps even more beneficial, and Dr. Fishman has observed that osteoporosis and resulting fractures are rare among regular yoga practitioners.

In a pilot study that began with 187 people with osteoporosis and 30 with its precursor, osteopenia, he found that compliance with the yoga exercises was poor. But the 11 patients who did 10 minutes of yoga daily for two years increased bone density in their hips and spines while seven patients who served as controls continued to lose bone. He noted that yoga’s benefits also decrease the risk of falls, which can result in osteoporotic fractures.

Medical guidance here is important, especially for older people who may have orthopedic issues that require adaptations of the yoga moves.

Read More

Low vitamin D impairs strength recovery after knee surgery

This weekend, scientists from an American medical institution published a study that has practical implications for patients undergoing ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) surgery.

The study, by a group in Utah, may have answered in part the long sought question of why some patients do well after knee surgery (quickly regain strength in their quadriceps) and some do not. Dr. Tyler Barker, of the Orthopedic Specialty Hospital in Murray, Utah, and his colleagues at the University of Utah (where I did a surgical internship back in 1976) discovered that vitamin D levels are associated with muscle strength recovery after knee surgery (anterior cruciate repair). Those with levels above 30 ng/ml recovered much better than those with levels below 30 ng/ml.

Tyler Barker, Thomas B. Martins, Harry R. Hill, Carl R. Kjeldsberg, Roy H. Trawick, Lindell K. Weaver, and Maret G. Traber Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine. published 29 July 2011, 10.1177/2156587211413768
I found it somewhat disappointing that the authors refused to say that vitamin D deficiency should be treated before knee surgery. All they would say was that Americans should fund more studies before any action is taken. Of course this is neither practical or ethical, as physicians are (and always have been) obligated to act on what is known now -- not on what may or may not be discovered in the future. Randomized trials of vitamin D supplemention need to be undertaken to discover what the optimum vitamin D level for knee surgery is. But such trials will take years, while orthopedists need to act, or not, now.

-John J. Cannell, M.D.

This weekend, scientists from an American medical institution published a study that has practical implications for patients undergoing ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) surgery.

The study, by a group in Utah, may have answered in part the long sought question of why some patients do well after knee surgery (quickly regain strength in their quadriceps) and some do not. Dr. Tyler Barker, of the Orthopedic Specialty Hospital in Murray, Utah, and his colleagues at the University of Utah (where I did a surgical internship back in 1976) discovered that vitamin D levels are associated with muscle strength recovery after knee surgery (anterior cruciate repair). Those with levels above 30 ng/ml recovered much better than those with levels below 30 ng/ml.

Tyler Barker, Thomas B. Martins, Harry R. Hill, Carl R. Kjeldsberg, Roy H. Trawick, Lindell K. Weaver, and Maret G. Traber Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine. published 29 July 2011, 10.1177/2156587211413768
I found it somewhat disappointing that the authors refused to say that vitamin D deficiency should be treated before knee surgery. All they would say was that Americans should fund more studies before any action is taken. Of course this is neither practical or ethical, as physicians are (and always have been) obligated to act on what is known now -- not on what may or may not be discovered in the future. Randomized trials of vitamin D supplemention need to be undertaken to discover what the optimum vitamin D level for knee surgery is. But such trials will take years, while orthopedists need to act, or not, now.

-John J. Cannell, M.D.

Read More

2011 Winn/AVMF Veterinary Scholarship Awarded

(Hillsborough, NJ, Aug. 1, 2011)  Winn Feline Foundation and the American Veterinary Medical Foundation (AVMF) join together annually to present two awards designed to promote and encourage feline health studies by both established veterinary research scientists and by those entering this field of study. The “Winnie” and $2500 cash are awarded to a distinguished researcher in feline medicine selected by the AVMF, and a matching cash award from the AVMF is selected by Winn from a large group of student applicants.

Dr. Jessica Balter

The scholarship award this year goes to a newly minted DVM from the Cornell University School of Veterinary Medicine, Jessica Balter. Dr. Balter was president of the student chapter of the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) and coordinated numerous events to educate veterinary students and the community on important aspects of feline medicine. She has been active in trap-neuter-return programs and feral colony care, demonstrating a devotion to the needs of felines in the shelter setting and rescue operations. Her interest in cats dates back to her high school days, when she fostered kittens and worked for her local shelter.  Dr. Balter says, “I hope to build a strong foundation of medical knowledge which I can use to guide me through the unique aspects of shelter medicine while simultaneously advancing the treatment of shelter animals….”   Having lived with many rescued felines, Dr. Balter has gained a deep appreciation of the behavioral needs of cats and a keen appreciation of the need for specialists dedicated to feline medicine. Dr. Balter will be completing a year-long, small animal rotating internship at Brightheart Veterinary Referral and Emergency Center, a specialty hospital on Long Island, NY.   

Winn Feline Foundation and the American Veterinary Medical Foundation are pleased to be associated together in this effort to focus attention on care for “Every Cat, Every Day.”  

(Hillsborough, NJ, Aug. 1, 2011)  Winn Feline Foundation and the American Veterinary Medical Foundation (AVMF) join together annually to present two awards designed to promote and encourage feline health studies by both established veterinary research scientists and by those entering this field of study. The “Winnie” and $2500 cash are awarded to a distinguished researcher in feline medicine selected by the AVMF, and a matching cash award from the AVMF is selected by Winn from a large group of student applicants.

Dr. Jessica Balter

The scholarship award this year goes to a newly minted DVM from the Cornell University School of Veterinary Medicine, Jessica Balter. Dr. Balter was president of the student chapter of the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) and coordinated numerous events to educate veterinary students and the community on important aspects of feline medicine. She has been active in trap-neuter-return programs and feral colony care, demonstrating a devotion to the needs of felines in the shelter setting and rescue operations. Her interest in cats dates back to her high school days, when she fostered kittens and worked for her local shelter.  Dr. Balter says, “I hope to build a strong foundation of medical knowledge which I can use to guide me through the unique aspects of shelter medicine while simultaneously advancing the treatment of shelter animals….”   Having lived with many rescued felines, Dr. Balter has gained a deep appreciation of the behavioral needs of cats and a keen appreciation of the need for specialists dedicated to feline medicine. Dr. Balter will be completing a year-long, small animal rotating internship at Brightheart Veterinary Referral and Emergency Center, a specialty hospital on Long Island, NY.   

Winn Feline Foundation and the American Veterinary Medical Foundation are pleased to be associated together in this effort to focus attention on care for “Every Cat, Every Day.”  

Read More