The effect of topical arnica on muscle pain

Adkison JD, Bauer DW, Chang T.

Source

Clinical Pharmacist Faculty, Memorial Family Medicine Residency Program, Sugar Land, TX, USA. Julie.adkison@memorialhermann.org

BACKGROUND:

The herb Arnica montana, in topical formulations, has been reputed to decrease bruising and muscle pain. This claim has been inadequately and incompletely addressed.

OBJECTIVE:

To determine whether topical A. montana cream could decrease subjective leg pain following calf raises. Secondary outcomes were effects on ankle range of motion and muscle tenderness.

METHODS:

A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted in 53 subjects. Active range of motion was measured in both ankles, and then a series of calf-raises were completed according to a standardized protocol. Each participant received 2 tubes of cream, 1 with active arnica and 1 with placebo. The creams were applied to the lower legs immediately after the exercise, and again at 24 and 48 hours postexercise according to the “RIGHT” or “LEFT” labels. At 48 hours postexercise, subjects had their ankle range of motion and muscle tenderness measured. Subjects used the analog scale to rate pain in each leg at baseline, 24 hours, 48 hours, and 72 hours.

RESULTS:

No significant differences in pain scores were seen before exercise (arnica: 0.07 vs placebo: 0.09, p = 0.32). Pain scores on legs treated with arnica were higher than scores on those receiving placebo 24 hours after exercise (3.04 vs 2.36, respectively; p < 0.005). Pain scores on day 3 (arnica: 3.44 vs placebo: 3.20, p = 0.66) and day 4 (arnica: 2.36 vs placebo: 2.31, p = 0.62) were not significantly different. There was no difference in muscle tenderness (arnica: 1.05 vs placebo: 1.05, p = 1.0). Ankle range of motion did not differ significantly on either day 1 (arnica: 64.70 degrees vs placebo: 66.15, p = 0.352 or day 3 (arnica: 63.32 degrees vs placebo: 65.94, p = 0.058).

CONCLUSIONS:

Rather than decreasing leg pain, arnica was found to increase leg pain 24 hours after eccentric calf exercises. This effect did not extend to the 48-hour measurement.

via The effect of topical arnica on muscle pain. [Ann Pharmacother. 2010] – PubMed – NCBI.

I’ve got some very sore calves from hiking 3.5 hours with a 38 lb pack with a 1500 ft elevation gain this past Sunday. My alternative therapist gave me some arnica and I’ve been using it, but my muscles are still sore.  After reading the above, I’m wondering if arnica made it worse. Or is this another cover up of a safe and effective healing herb?

Big Chem, Big Harm?

NEW research is demonstrating that some common chemicals all around us may be even more harmful than previously thought. It seems that they may damage us in ways that are transmitted generation after generation, imperiling not only us but also our descendants.

Yet following the script of Big Tobacco a generation ago, Big Chem has, so far, blocked any serious regulation of these endocrine disruptors, so called because they play havoc with hormones in the body’s endocrine system.

One of the most common and alarming is bisphenol-A, better known as BPA. The failure to regulate it means that it is unavoidable. BPA is found in everything from plastics to canned food to A.T.M. receipts. More than 90 percent of Americans have it in their urine.

Even before the latest research showing multigeneration effects, studies had linked BPA to breast cancer and diabetes, as well as to hyperactivity, aggression and depression in children.

Maybe it seems surprising to read a newspaper column about chemical safety because this isn’t an issue in the presidential campaign or even firmly on the national agenda. It’s not the kind of thing that we in the news media cover much.

Yet the evidence is growing that these are significant threats of a kind that Washington continually fails to protect Americans from. The challenge is that they involve complex science and considerable uncertainty, and the chemical companies — like the tobacco companies before them — create financial incentives to encourage politicians to sit on the fence. So nothing happens.

Yet although industry has, so far, been able to block broad national curbs on BPA, new findings on transgenerational effects may finally put a dent in Big Chem’s lobbying efforts.

One good sign: In late July, a Senate committee, for the first, time passed the Safe Chemicals Act, landmark legislation sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, that would begin to regulate the safety of chemicals.

Evidence of transgenerational effects of endocrine disruptors has been growing for a half-dozen years, but it mostly involved higher doses than humans would typically encounter.

Now Endocrinology, a peer-reviewed journal, has published a study measuring the impact of low doses of BPA. The study is devastating for the chemical industry.

Pregnant mice were exposed to BPA at dosages analogous to those humans typically receive. The offspring were less sociable than control mice (using metrics often used to assess an aspect of autism in humans), and various effects were also evident for the next three generations of mice.

The BPA seemed to interfere with the way the animals processed hormones like oxytocin and vasopressin, which affect trust and warm feelings. And while mice are not humans, research on mouse behavior is a standard way to evaluate new drugs or to measure the impact of chemicals. “It’s scary,” said Jennifer T. Wolstenholme, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia and the lead author of the report. She said that the researchers found behaviors in BPA-exposed mice and their descendants that may parallel autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit disorder in humans. …

via Big Chem, Big Harm? – NYTimes.com.

Cannabis more damaging to under-18s, study suggests

Cannabis is not harmless, particularly for adolescents, the researchers say Link to this video

Adolescents who are regular users of cannabis are at risk of permanent damage to their intelligence, attention span and memory, according to the results of research covering nearly four decades.

The long-term study which followed a group of over 1,000 people from birth to the age of 38 has produced the first convincing evidence, say scientists, that cannabis has a different and more damaging effect on young brains than on those of adults.

Around 5% of the group used cannabis at least once a week in adolescence or were considered dependent on it. Between the age of 13 and 38, when all members of the group were given a range of psychological tests, the IQ of those who had been habitual cannabis users in their youth had dropped by eight points on average.

Giving up cannabis made little difference – what mattered was the age at which young people began to use it. Those who started after the age of 18 did not have the same IQ decline.

“This work took an amazing scientific effort,” said Professor Terrie Moffitt of King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, one of the authors.

“We followed almost 1,000 participants, we tested their mental abilities as kids before they ever tried cannabis, and we tested them again 25 years later after some participants became chronic users.

“Participants were frank about their substance abuse habits because they trust our confidentiality guarantee, and 96% of the original participants stuck with the study from 1972 to today.

“It’s such a special study that I’m fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains.”

The research, on people in Dunedin, New Zealand, was carried out by researchers from King’s College and Duke University, North Carolina in the United States and published online by PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

“Marijuana is not harmless, particularly for adolescents,” said Madeline Meier from Duke, one of the researchers. While eight IQ points on a scale where the mean is 100 may not sound a lot, she said, a drop from 100 to 92 represents a move from the 50th to the 29th percentile. Higher IQs correlate with higher education and income, better health and a longer life.  …

via Cannabis more damaging to under-18s, study suggests | Science | The Guardian.

Color panorama of Mars

a 14,494-pixel-wide panorama of Curiosity’s landing site on Mars.

via Daily Grail Frontpage | TDG – Science, Magick, Myth and History.

This color panorama shows a 360-degree view of the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity rover, including the highest part of Mount Sharp visible to the rover. That part of Mount Sharp is approximately 12 miles (20 kilometers) away from the rover.

The images were obtained by the rover’s 34-millimeter Mast Camera. The mosaic, which stretches about 29,000 pixels across by 7,000 pixels high, includes 130 images taken on Aug. 8 and an additional 10 images taken on Aug. 18. These images were shot before the camera was fully characterized.

Scientists enhanced the color in one version to show the Martian scene as it would appear under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analyzing the terrain. A raw version is also available.

JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more about NASA’s Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl, http://www.nasa.gov/mars, and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.

Click to zoom in. How do we know they aren’t enhancing the photos in the other direction? Perhaps Mars does looks like earth, until they doctor the images.

Learning During Sleep

Israeli scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that people can learn new information while they are sleeping, rather than simply strengthening memories already made.

Anat Arzi from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel played tones to sleeping volunteers before wafting smells of deodorant, shampoo, rotten fish, or dead animals past their noses. The smells triggered a sniffing reflex and the pleasant ones drew stronger sniffs. Then, when Arzi played the tones alone, the volunteers still sniffed, and more strongly to tones that had been paired with nice odors.

This conditioned response lasted through the night and into the next morning when the volunteers woke up. Although they still sniffed when they heard the tones, none of them were aware of what they had learned.

“This work is transformative in that it shows that humans can acquire information not only without awareness but also in a non-conscious state,” says Kimberly Fenn, a psychologist from Michigan State University, who was not involved in the study.

“There’s a kind of dogma that says the brain encodes new information when it’s awake, and consolidates memory while asleep,” explained Jan Born, a sleep researcher from the University of Lübeck. “This paper shows that the contrast between these two modes of activity isn’t that sharp.”

Decades of research has already shown that the brain actively processes information while we sleep, and we can strengthen existing information with the right triggers, such as odors present at the time of initial learning. But its ability to learn while snoozing has been less clear.

Several groups have tested for advanced forms of learning during sleep, like picking up the links between pairs of words. All such experiments have failed. The only positive results came from studies showing that a very basic form of learning known as classical conditioning can occur in sleeping rats and infants, which begin to associate two stimuli—say, a tone and a puff of air—if they are presented together.

By contrast, Arzi’s experiments used a different technique called “trace conditioning,” where the tone and the smells are separated by more than a second. “This is considered a more advanced type of learning, and unlike classical conditioning, it depends on the hippocampus,” she said. “This is the type of learning associated with more complicated cognitive tasks, and therefore finding it in sleep is potentially important and novel.”

via Learning During Sleep | The Scientist.

Source Of Loud Boom In Foothills A Mystery

People from all over El Dorado County say they’re hearing loud booms several times a week, but there are many theories on what is causing them.

“I thought it was thunder,” said one person.

“It’s definitely not thunder; too consistent. I thought it was just mining,” said another person.

“I always considered them to be sonic booms from flying aircrafts for years,” said Loring Brunius, owner of Sierra Rock Diamond Quarry.

People who live near Pleasant Valley say their days have been interrupted by loud booms, shaking the floor beneath them.

“You can feel it in the ground, no question about it. But no one’s been able to figure out why,” said Pleasant Valley resident Peter O’Grady. “I tend to hear somewhere between four to six of these things during the weekdays usually between 11 p.m. and 2 p.m.

“Boom, boom, boom, boom just like that,” said Lorren Gonzales, who lives near Pleasant Valley.

And the rolling foothills of El Dorado County make it difficult for them to even tell where it’s coming from.

We asked the owner of Sierra Rock Diamond Quarry what he knew about it. He says they havent blasted since last year. And any miners or quarry owners would need government permission before they can set off any explosives.

“It’s a federally mandated system, and enforced,” said Brunius.

Some think the booms are from nearby wineries using propane cannons to scare away birds.

“We’ve never done it and I don’t know of any other winery that does,” said Carrie Bendick, a winemaker at Holly’s Hill Winery.

According to USGS, there aren’t enough seismic stations to pinpoint the exact location. Meanwhile, some say the booms have been around so long and happen so often they barely notice them anymore. Still, others want to solve the mystery.

“I would like to know what it is, yeah. And I’d like to know when it’s going to stop too,” said O’Grady.

CBS13 spoke to Fallon Naval Air Station that said any supersonic flight operations they do are only allowed over Dixie Valley, which is hundreds of miles away.

Some think illegal mining could be the source of the sounds, but Brunius doubts that theory. He said if that was the case, the culprit would have been caught by now.

via Source Of Loud Boom In Foothills A Mystery « CBS Sacramento.

 

Man With World’s Deepest Voice Hits Notes That Only Elephants Can Hear

The man who holds the Guinness record for the world’s lowest voice can hit notes so low that only animals as big as elephants are able to hear them.American singer Tim Storms who also has the world’s widest vocal range can reach notes as low as G-7 (0.189Hz), an incredible eight octaves below the lowest G on the piano.

In fact the note is so low that even Storms himself cannot hear it.

“I can feel them though,” he told CNN. “I kind of hear them in my head as far as the sound my vocal chords are making but, as far as the frequencies, it’s something more or less that I feel.”

Storms was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and raised in Waterloo, Indiana. He began his singing career in Christian music shortly after graduating.

While being raised in Waterloo, Indiana, Storms’ musical affinity appeared at a young age. Just four days after graduating from high school he began his career in Christian music and has since appeared in a number of singing groups.

After an accidental meeting with an ear, nose and throat specialist at a concert, the singer learned of the biology behind his record breaking voice.

“He said that my vocal chords were about twice as long as normal – than he’s used to seeing anyway – and the arytenoid muscles around my vocal chords, they had a lot more movement to them,” Storms said.

Storm’s voice has won him fame, awards and an international singing career. He was recently selected by an international talent search for a new choral piece called “Tranquility” that requires a singer who could hit a low E, the deepest note ever written for a choral composition.

Storm’s incredible voice also made him a hot commodity in the Hollywood voice over business, where industry executives eagerly track down people with low voices to add drama to film trailers.

While Storms has held the record for the lowest voice for over ten years, he may soon break even his current record.

“I just keep getting lower the older I get,” Storms told CNN.

via Man With World’s Deepest Voice Hits Notes That Only Elephants Can Hear : Science/Tech : Medical Daily.

Neil Armstrong on the moon, the only known photo of his face during moonwalk

 

Charles Apple – OK, Neil Armstrong is dead. Clearly, that’s a page-one story for most of you.

Here’s one thing I do not want to see on page one tomorrow: Arguably the most famous picture taken in the history of mankind.

This is the only picture we know about in which you can see Neil Armstrong’s face while he’s on the moon.

One reason I don’t want to see it: That’s not Neil. That’s Buzz Aldrin.

The second reason I don’t want to see it: Because NASA manipulated that photo before it was released to the public, back in 1969.

Evidently, Neil shoots pictures the same way my wife does: He cuts off people’s heads. Here’s the actual, unedited frame of that picture, which NASA calls AS11-40-5903 …

NASA retouchers added black sky to the top of the picture. That might not seem like a big deal to you — especially when you’re on deadline tonight — but, believe me, it is. Many newspapers have ethical guidelines in place that specifically warn against using handout pictures that were manipulated by the source.

In fact, now that you know this picture was manipulated by the source, I’d urge you to have it removed from your photo archives. Permanently. … Armstrong and Aldrin only walked on the moon for about two-and-a-half hours that night in 1969. Most of the time, Armstrong carried the primary camera. Aldrin carried a camera but was assigned to shoot specific, technical things.

The result: Lots of pictures of Aldrin. But hardly any of Neil.

Read more about that picture and its history straight from NASA itself here.

via Keep in mind as you put together your Neil Armstrong packages tonight… « Charles Apple « copydesk.org.

Man Pulling Off Bigfoot Hoax Killed

You knew it was bound to happen.

Randy Lee Tenley, 44, of Kalispell, Montana, reportedly was wearing a Ghillie suit, dressed as a Bigfoot, and trying to create a Bigfoot sighting on U.S. Highway 93. Yes, he was attempting to pull off a hoax.

Instead, he ended up dead, struck by two automobiles, on Sunday evening, August 26, 2012, south of Kalispell.

Tenley was first struck by a vehicle driven by a 15 year old Somers girl in the southbound, right lane. She could not get out of the way fast enough to avoid hitting Tenley.

Then Tenley was struck again by a vehicle driven by a 17 year old Somers girl who hit his body in the road.

Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Jim Schneider told the media: “The mechanics of the crash, everything of that nature, you know that stuff doesn’t change. It’s still a crash involving vehicles and a pedestrian. So we’re still doing the same investigation, but once we started speaking to parties, then someone involved in it, trying to ascertain exactly what brought that gentleman out to Highway 93…I would not guess that would motivate anybody to be out on Highway 93.”

Schneider says that they are awaiting toxicology results to determine if alcohol may have been a factor in Tenley’s behavior.

Schneider says friends of the victim said Tenley was wearing a military-style camouflage ghillie suit in hopes of creating a Bigfoot hoax. …

More:  Cryptomundo » Man Pulling Off Bigfoot Hoax Killed: Updated.

LAPD officers beat a Deutsche Bank executive?

Deutsche Bank executive alleges abuse by LAPD officers

(Chelsea Lauren, Getty Images / August 28, 2012) By sunrise, the bank executive was laid up in the hospital, his face swollen.
That much, everyone agrees on.

But nearly everything else that happened that May night to Brian C. Mulligan, a managing director and vice chairman at Deutsche Bank, remains in dispute.

The officers said they had to use force to subdue a snarling, thrashing man who arched his back, waved his arms, stiffened his fingers like claws and charged them on a residential street, according to a police report viewed by The Times.

One of Mulligan’s attorneys, J. Michael Flanagan, offered a more bizarre version of events: that the officers dragged Mulligan to a down-market motel and threatened to kill him if he left. When they discovered that Mulligan had escaped, his attorney said, the officers beat him so badly that he suffered 15 fractures to his nose and needed dozens of stitches.

Mulligan has filed a claim with the city, a precursor to a lawsuit, that lists at least $50 million in damages. Since the confrontation, Mulligan’s nasal passages “no longer operate correctly,” and he’s struggled to work and maintain relationships with his family, the claim said. No charges have been filed against Mulligan, though a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, which handles misdemeanor crimes, said the incident was under review.

Mulligan is a longtime Hollywood money man and deal maker who has served as co-chairman of Universal Pictures, chief financial officer of Seagram, Universal’s former owner, and chairman of News Corp.‘s Fox Television.

Mulligan, 53, joined Deutsche Bank in 2009. He lives in upscale La Cañada Flintridge, less than 10 miles from the grittier Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park.

On the night of May 15, Flanagan said in an interview, Mulligan drove to a dispensary on the border of Highland Park and Eagle Rock to buy medical marijuana products, which help him sleep. He said law enforcement officers — he was uncertain from what agency — detained him, walked him to a run-down apartment complex and told him to go to the fourth floor, his attorney said.

While making his way through the building, Mulligan panicked, his attorney said. He ran to the street, spotted some law enforcement officers and sprinted in the opposite direction. Mulligan thought he’d be safe if he reached Occidental College, less than a mile away, Flanagan said. “He was running for his life,” the attorney said.

About 10:20 p.m., LAPD Officers James Nichols and John Miller responded to a report of a white male trying to break into a car outside a Jack in the Box, the police report said. Soon a second call came in reporting a similar break-in attempt — and a similar-looking suspect — not far away.

The officers came across Mulligan near an entrance to Occidental. Dressed in a pink shirt and tan pants, he matched the description of the would-be burglar, according to the report. His attorney said Mulligan never tried to pry open car doors. He was drenched in sweat and walked with an “unsteady gait,” the police report said. Yet he passed several sobriety tests.

According to the report, Mulligan told police that he’d ingested marijuana and, in recent days, “white lightning,” a nickname for powerful drugs known as bath salts. He said he hadn’t slept in four days, was going through a divorce and felt depressed, the report said. Mulligan also said he was being chased, according to the report, which nonetheless described him as calm, lucid and cooperative. Mulligan denies saying any of this or being under the influence of any drug that night, his attorney said.

The officers drove Mulligan to his Toyota Prius, which they searched; Mulligan’s attorney said he had not given them permission. They found his Irish passport and enough cash that they called in a supervisor, said the report, which did not specify an amount. Mulligan’s claim pegged the cash at about $5,000, a sum he said he normally carried for business travel. Then police took Mulligan — whose cellphone and passport remained in his car, his attorneys said — to the nearby Highland Park Motel, a low-rent building across from homes with barred windows.

From here, the two sides’ accounts diverge wildly.

The officers said Mulligan, complaining of exhaustion, had asked to be dropped there. Mulligan, according to his claim, said he was taken there against his will and told “he could not leave, under threat of death.”

At the front desk, Flanagan said, the officers took away Mulligan’s car keys and forced him to pay the roughly $40 room bill. They also gave him back the cash they’d found in his car, said another Mulligan attorney, Valerie Wass.

Then one officer escorted Mulligan to Room 208, which he said did not have a telephone. He eventually cajoled a clerk into returning his keys, his attorney said, and ran away from the motel. This week, a motel employee said he could not recall the incident.

About 1 a.m., the same uniformed officers responded to a traffic call not far from the motel. Miller said he spotted Mulligan trying to open the passenger-side door of an occupied silver van, the report said. The van sped off. The officers yelled at him to get off the sidewalk. They said Mulligan responded with expletives. (Flanagan disputed their account, saying it was unlikely the officers saw much from where they said they were parked, about 100 yards away.)

The officers soon gave chase, the report said. “At that point,” Mulligan’s claim said, “he was in such great fear that he believed the LAPD officers were not truly LAPD officers but may be impostors bent on robbing or killing.”

The officers caught up with Mulligan. “He took up a fighting stance — a karate-style stance,” said Los Angeles police Lt. Andrew Neiman, a department spokesman, in an interview, “and then charged at them.” Mulligan tried to tackle Nichols, the police report said, and Nichols took Mulligan to the ground. Neiman said the officers used reasonable force. …

LOS ANGELES TIMES – TOP NEWS | AUGUST 27, 2012
http://pulse.me/s/cHrk3

Crazy story. The LAPD nasal passage therapists against the 9/11 attack insiders? (See “put options” on United Airlines days before the 9/11 attacks, which, according to ex-LAPD officer Mike Ruppert who investigated 9/11 as a crime, showed foreknowledge by at least one Deutsche Bank executive. )

Deutsche Bank (where many of the alleged 9/11 hijackers handled their banking transactions – for example Mohammed Atta) traded massive put options purchases on United Airlines Company UAL through the Chicago Board Option Exchange (CBOE) – “to the embarrassment of investigators”, as British newspaper The Independent reported.

On September 12, the chairman of the board of Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, Mayo A Shattuck III, suddenly and quietly renounced his post, although he still had a three-year contract with an annual salary of several million US dollars. One could perceive that as somehow strange.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NC21Dj05.html