NRSC 4132 Blog

In case you don't know what they are, throat lozenges are those chalky, powdery tablets primarily composed of zinc that you take to alleviate sore throat pain. Similar to a cough drop, they've been around for years and seem to be part of many people's remedy regimen to treat such symptoms of the common cold. Pain is one of those feelings that not many of us like to deal with or even think about. Whether you are taking aspirin, acetaminophen, or throat lozenges to manage throat pain, it is known that many options are abound in the marketplace.

Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional reaction that usually motivates us to seek some sort of "pain-killer." Sometimes it even gets to the point where we don't care to know or what extent we have to go to alleviate our pain--symptoms of such "pain-killers" disregarded. An extensive amount of funding and research has gone into the clinical aspects of pain management drugs including not only over-the-counter pain medications such as Tylenol and Advil, but chronic pain anesthetics with detrimental side effects. Such drug categories include neurolytic blocks, narcotics, opiates, and other analgesics. Side effects from all of these drugs, acute and severe, range from topical rashes and swelling to addiction and cardiac arrest. Holistic healing, be it through ?mind over matter? or ingesting natural antidotes, may be a way to avoid pain killers that bring severe side effects with them. According to comprehensive research involving zinc in last month's issue of Nature Neuroscience, perhaps there are some natural treatment methods of pain management.

Zinc, as previously mentioned, is a metallic chemical element that is readily available and affordable throughout the marketplace. In fact, it is so copious, that it is the 24th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and the second most prevalent trace element in the body according to Nozaki's et al. investigation. Not only is it essential for life and crucial for cellular metabolism, but Nozaki et al. have discovered a role for zinc in brain functions such as neurological disorders and pathological pain management. The trouble with studying this element is the myriad of potential zinc targets on the molecular basis. Nozaki et al. noted that NMDA receptors are one of the potential synaptic targets for zinc effects of excitatory transmission and have key roles in both the physiology and pathology of the nervous system. Notably, these receptors contribute to pain transmission and the development of chronic pain.

As we understand, there are various subunits that comprise the NMDA receptor (NR1 and NR2 subunits). In particular, the NR2A subunit, which is widely expressed in the adult nervous system, has an intense sensitivity for extracellular zinc, or zinc taken in the body beyond endogenous levels of zinc. Using knock-in NR2A-H128S mice, they found that high affinity zinc binding to the NR2A subunit is enough to dampen NMDA receptor function in pain pathways throughout the central nervous system. Though Nozaki et al. have not found the precise location of the site where zinc diffuses in the vicinity of NMDA receptors, they did find that NMDA-dependent spinal long-term potentiation, a well-known substrate for hyperalgesia, is blocked by exogenous zinc.

This is an enormous discovery in terms of future experimentation and the potential role of the natural element zinc in place of dangerous pain-management pharmaceuticals. It's absolutely incredible to me how technology is unveiling Mother Nature's organic remedy for so many of the problems and illnesses in today's society. Not that I doubt the use of western medication and synthetic pharmaceuticals as treatment options for various illnesses, but I strongly condone taking natural elements found on this planet with a far shorter list of side effects. A lesson to consider: keep on sucking on those zinc throat lozenges when you have a sore throat!

Presently, we live in a society that has become increasingly dependent of pharmaceuticals as the great panacea for our discomforts and diseases. Treatment of neurological disorders is most commonly mediated through trial and error dosing of medication. This trend has steadily increased since the 1950s with the use of antidepressants and accompanied the closing of most of America?s mental hospitals. The emphasis on personal treatment and therapy has lost ground to the administration of singular chemicals (or combinations) that alter pathways with predicted but not completely understood chemical results (due to the highly interconnected nature of these chemical pathways.) This method can work wonders, many patients with severely debilitating neurological disorders such as schizophrenia often find great relief in their treatments and are able to live without or with minimal assistance. Drugs are also often a cheaper solution to the problem (compared to high levels of therapy or institutionalization.)
Unfortunately though this practice of pharmaceutical treatment has many limits; Many antidepressants that have been prescribed over the years have been found later to increase suicidal tendencies. Some people have genetic or environmentally caused dispositions that increase or decrease the drug potency or its negative side effects. Some drugs are sought out not for curing disorders or diseases but for recreational or ability enhancing uses (like the highly prevalent the misuse of adderall among students.) Then, of course, there are disorders or injuries which impair the nervous system for which there is no known treatment or specific biochemical pathway on which to act upon. For these reasons many scientists and clinicians are using nonpharmacological treatments, especially the utilization of sensory input, to help ease and heal their patients.
A great leader in this movement towards alternative forms treatment is Dr. V. S. Ramachandran. Dr. Ramachandran is a neuroscientist at the University of California San Diego and has helped people suffering with a strange neurological disorder known as phantom limb syndrome without surgery or drugs. Phantom limb syndrome is the experience of feeling of the presence of an amputated limb, it can be quite painful and is believed to be caused by lack of feedback inhibition (the brain tells the missing hand to clench but the hand cannot clench so the brain tells the hand to clench harder etc.) By using a ?mirror box? Ramachadran has found that he can use external sensory input (the patient ?seeing? his missing hand clench by using the reflection of his present hand) to override the jammed signal.
Another example of novel drug-free therapies has been the use of electrodes to serve as external sensory devices in both the treatment of vestibular malfunction and to return sight to the blind. A grid of electrodes is used in both cases and can be used as a sort of balancing meter for vestibular treatment or as a sort of low resolution black and white television (with an on electrode being white and an off electrode being black.) These treatments have shown success for many patients and may become more popular as technology advances.
These exciting and alternative therapies are of course limited, but may open the door to other forms of treatment for difficult to medicate neurological disorders.

Have you ever experienced a ?gut feeling?? Gut feelings are also known as intuitions. I?m sure you?ve all hear about your mother?s intuition? if not ? I?m sure she?ll tell you ?Mother knows best!? We all know things that weren?t taught to us?but we still know them. For example, best friend says she?s ?okay? but you know she isn?t or your newborn is sick. A gut feeling is a sudden, unexplained judgment where we don?t know the source of origin.

Science has started to research how the stomach and brain are interconnected. ?The concept that the gut and the brain are closely connected, and that this interaction plays an important part not only in gastrointestinal function but also in certain feeling states and in intuitive decision making, is deeply rooted in our language.?(Mayer, 2011)

In the August issue of Nature Review Neuroscience, the article ?Gut feelings: the emerging biology of gut?brain communication,? talks about the foundation of why there are such feelings and the pathways that are taken to create those feelings. ?Recent neurobiological insights into this gut?brain crosstalk have revealed a complex, bidirectional communication system that not only ensures the proper maintenance of gastrointestinal homeostasis and digestion but is likely to have multiple effects on affect, motivation and higher cognitive functions, including intuitive decision making.?(Mayer, 2011) The article discusses the enteric nervous system and the signaling pathways that the gut and brain used to communicate ??The brain communicates to the viscera, including the gastrointestinal tract, through multiple parallel pathways, including the two branches of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), the hypothalamic?pituitary?adrenal (HPA) axis and the sympatho?adrenal axis (modulating the gut-associated lymphoid tissue), and descending monoaminergic pathways (modulating gain of spinal reflexes and dorsal horn excitability). ? (Mayer, 2011) The article then discuss the effect of the stomach to the brain. Most of the consciously perceived information about the stomach is that it?s used for digestion?this isn?t new information. ?However, recent evidence suggests that various forms of subliminal interoceptive inputs from the gut, including those generated by intestinal microbes, may influence memory formation, emotional arousal and affective behaviours.? (Mayer, 2011)

So why do we make decision based off no information but off our ?gut feelings?? Mayer suggests that we have some ?neurological basis? when it comes to our gut-interactions. She suggests that our gut feeling based decision is due to an interoceptive map of gut responses that develops in infancy and continues to develop throughout our stages of life.

The future holds new research on the crosstalk between the stomach and the brain. The primary focus is the mapping associated with the two. ?This includes the remarkable success in mapping the functional neuroanatomy of the ENS, in our understanding of how the brain modulates these ENS circuits and gut functions, and in unraveling the complexity of gut to brain signaling through multiple parallel but interacting communication channels.? (Mayer, 2011) With our current advances in the study of gut feelings we still have many unanswered questions? stay tuned for what science discover next.
To read full article, please visit https://cuvpn.colorado.edu/nrn/journal/v12/n8/full/,DanaInfo=www.nature.com+nrn3071.html