Medicinal

Enhanced seaweed, cultivated using the novel research method. Credit: Doron AshkenaziScientists from Tel Aviv University and the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research Institute (IOLR) have made significant strides in improving seaweed’s capacity to produce healthy natural materials.Their recent research has been centered around boosting the production of bioactive compounds in seaweed that provide human health benefits. These include antioxidants, whose concentration in the seaweed has been increased twofold;…

You might know the Cordyceps mushroom as the "zombie fungus" – for good reason. Its name is derived from Greek and Latin, meaning "club head," and many nature documentaries have focused on its chilling ability to infect certain insects, most famously ants, and literally hijack their bodies. Cordyceps has evolved alongside these ants and made them a staggeringly complex and macabre part of its reproductive cycle.Most of us wouldn't typically think of fungi as particularly smart, but Cordyceps is an excellent window into…

DAVOS, SWITZERLAND—Uldarico Matapí Yucuna, 63, is often called the last shaman of the Matapi, an Indigenous group of fewer than 70 people living along the Mirití-Paraná River in the Colombian Amazon rainforest. His father was a shaman and taught him ancestral knowledge, including how to use plants to treat all kinds of maladies. But Uldarico rejects the title because instead of living with his people, for the past 30 years he has been in Bogotá documenting in writing what is left…

Why did people think cannibalism was good for their health? The answer offers a glimpse into the zaniest crannies of European history, at a time when Europeans were obsessed with Egyptian mummies.  Driven first by the belief that ground-up and tinctured human remains could cure anything from bubonic plague to a headache, and then by the macabre ideas Victorian people had about after-dinner entertainment, the bandaged corpses of ancient Egyptians were the subject of fascination from the Middle Ages to the 19th…

A new research study finds that medicinal cannabis reduces cancer-related pain and the need for opiate-based painkillers.Medicinal cannabis reduces cancer-related pain and the need for opiate-based painkillers, reveals a new comprehensive study of its use by oncology patients.A comprehensive assessment of the benefits of medical cannabis for cancer-related pain found that for most oncology patients, pain measures improved significantly, other cancer-related symptoms also decreased, the consumption of painkillers was…