Could Cobra Venom Replace Opioids in Treating Chronic Pain?
The King Cobra’s bite can kill you within 30 minutes, however, the same substance has also been developed into a drug that can ease chronic pain that even the strongest synthetic painkillers can’t touch. And today, along with venoms from an array of other creatures, cobra venom is showing great promise in the fight against a number of deadly diseases.
People have used venoms as medicines for thousands of years; Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, and homeopathy, and other traditional systems of medicines have all recognized the potency of venoms and used them to treat pain, inflammation, cardiovascular disease, and more. Western medicine got involved in the early 1980s, when the first venom-derived drug Captopril, was approved by the FDA for use in hypertension. Today, there’s been a resurgence of interest among researchers and the pharmaceutical industry owing to advances in the study of these compounds.
The most recent study out of Florida Atlantic University shows the potential of cone snail venom in treating severe malaria.
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Stimulating This Nerve May Reduce Chronic Stress in the Body
A flurry of new research has been pointing to one nerve that just may be the key to true health and wellbeing.
The vagus nerve, which comes from the Latin word for “wandering”, is the longest and most complex nerve in the human body, traveling from the brain stem all the way down to the colon.
Dr. Donese Worden is a Naturopathic Medical Doctor who has been closely following the research. “The vagus nerve is like an information superhighway, and it goes back and forth from the brain to the organs, and now we know it communicates with the microbiome,” she said.
“It specifically really works on talking to the heart, the lungs, the gut, and the brain. And the feedback goes both ways. So when we’re upset about something, if you feel hungry, you’re short of breath, your heart is beating fast, it’s because of that information traveling back up to the brain from the nervous system saying ‘something is up and we need to take care of it.'”
