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Chinese Herbs during Pregnancy: We chat to the Expert!

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A traditional treatment for thousands of years, Chinese Medicine has long been favoured for its medicinal-like purposes, helping treat everything from infertility and reproductive disorders to common everyday ailments. Wanting to know more about how Chinese Medicine can help during the long (and uncomfortable!) months of pregnancy, we turned to Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner, Mark Chern from Urban Rehabto get his best advice for how to safely useChineseHerbs when youre expecting.

Can I take Chinese herbs when Im pregnant? Is there anything I need to be aware of?Traditionally TCM experts dont usually recommend taking Chinese herbs during pregnancy unless the benefits from using herbs outweigh the possible risks. While herbs are seen as natural and perhaps less harmful than drugs, they may also possess side effects.

Take for example, the use of ginger to combat morning sickness. Despite it having been used empirically for the longest time in history, there is now suggestion that excessive exposure to its aromatic oil gingerol may affect cell reproduction.

The first ten weeks of pregnancy are considered most crucial for the formation and development of the embryo. This is the time when one has to be make important decisions. For example, if there is an infection in the lower reproductive tract, do we use a strong antimicrobial like metronidazole or do we use a herbal equivalent? While metronidazole is not used in early pregnancy for safety reasons, we dont have enough information at present to list all the herbs that are safe for use during pregnancy. All we know is that it is safest to wait till the end of the first trimester to be sure that the baby is well-formed, before dedicating to a course of Chinese herbs.

Are there any Chinese herbs that are safe to take during pregnancy? If so, what are they and how do they help?The most common reason for wanting to use Chinese herbs during the first trimester is to protect the foetus. If a woman has already had one or more previous miscarriages, or is experiencing a threatened miscarriage (that may include pain in the lower abdomen and back, as well as uterine bleeding) then it is natural to ask, Should I protect the foetus?

If you are reassured by the fact that the Chinese have been obsessed with and refining the art of protecting the foetus for more than two thousand years, then making a choice to protect the baby wont be that difficult!

Some of the more common formulas prescribed for protecting the foetus include Foetus Longevity Pill and Calming the Foetus Drink. Some herbs with the specific function of protecting the foetus include Eucommia Bark and Astragalus. Eucommia Bark is often used to treat pain in the lower back. It is especially useful for colder constitutional types, due to its warming and strengthening qualities. Astragalus is a Chinese herb well-known in the West as a valuable adaptogen it is able to improve overall functioning of the body.

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Chinese Herbs during Pregnancy: We chat to the Expert!

Lose Weight in 21 days. Purification at Bennett Acupuncture and Functional Medicine Fountain Valley – Video

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Lose Weight in 21 days. Purification at Bennett Acupuncture and Functional Medicine Fountain Valley
http://www.Bennettacupuncture.com of Fountain Valley, CA. If you #39;re having trouble losing weight then you got to consider our 21 day program. Drop your weigh...

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Lose Weight in 21 days. Purification at Bennett Acupuncture and Functional Medicine Fountain Valley - Video

Penn Medicine researchers show how lost sleep leads to lost neurons

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Mar-2014

Contact: Jessica Mikulski jessica.mikulski@uphs.upenn.edu 215-349-8369 University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

PHILADELPHIA - Most people appreciate that not getting enough sleep impairs cognitive performance. For the chronically sleep-deprived such as shift workers, students, or truckers, a common strategy is simply to catch up on missed slumber on the weekends. According to common wisdom, catch up sleep repays one's "sleep debt," with no lasting effects. But a new Penn Medicine study shows disturbing evidence that chronic sleep loss may be more serious than previously thought and may even lead to irreversible physical damage to and loss of brain cells. The research is published today in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Using a mouse model of chronic sleep loss, Sigrid Veasey, MD, associate professor of Medicine and a member of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the Perelman School of Medicine and collaborators from Peking University, have determined that extended wakefulness is linked to injury to, and loss of, neurons that are essential for alertness and optimal cognition, the locus coeruleus (LC) neurons.

"In general, we've always assumed full recovery of cognition following short- and long-term sleep loss," Veasey says. "But some of the research in humans has shown that attention span and several other aspects of cognition may not normalize even with three days of recovery sleep, raising the question of lasting injury in the brain. We wanted to figure out exactly whether chronic sleep loss injures neurons, whether the injury is reversible, and which neurons are involved."

Mice were examined following periods of normal rest, short wakefulness, or extended wakefulness, modeling a shift worker's typical sleep pattern. The Veasey lab found that in response to short-term sleep loss, LC neurons upregulate the sirtuin type 3 (SirT3) protein, which is important for mitochondrial energy production and redox responses, and protect the neurons from metabolic injury. SirT3 is essential across short-term sleep loss to maintain metabolic homeostasis, but in extended wakefulness, the SirT3 response is missing. After several days of shift worker sleep patterns, LC neurons in the mice began to display reduced SirT3, increased cell death, and the mice lost 25 percent of these neurons.

"This is the first report that sleep loss can actually result in a loss of neurons," Veasey notes. Particularly intriguing is, that the findings suggest that mitochondria in LC neurons respond to sleep loss and can adapt to short-term sleep loss but not to extended wake. This raises the possibility that somehow increasing SirT3 levels in the mitochondria may help rescue neurons or protect them across chronic or extended sleep loss. The study also demonstrates the importance of sleep for restoring metabolic homeostasis in mitochondria in the LC neurons and possibly other important brain areas, to ensure their optimal functioning during waking hours.

Veasey stresses that more work needs to be done to establish whether a similar phenomenon occurs in humans and to determine what durations of wakefulness place individuals at risk of neural injury. "In light of the role for SirT3 in the adaptive response to sleep loss, the extent of neuronal injury may vary across individuals. Specifically, aging, diabetes, high-fat diet and sedentary lifestyle may all reduce SirT3. If cells in individuals, including neurons, have reduced SirT3 prior to sleep loss, these individuals may be set up for greater risk of injury to their nerve cells."

The next step will be putting the SirT3 model to the test. "We can now overexpress SirT3 in LC neurons," explains Veasey. "If we can show that we can protect the cells and wakefulness, then we're launched in the direction of a promising therapeutic target for millions of shift workers."

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Penn Medicine researchers show how lost sleep leads to lost neurons

Stigmata of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (Stanford Medicine 25) – Video

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Stigmata of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (Stanford Medicine 25)
This Stanford Medicine 25 video was created in conjunction with Stanford #39;s AIM lab teaching the examination of the spleen. The Stanford Medicine 25 is a Stan...

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Stigmata of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (Stanford Medicine 25) - Video


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