Medical Marijuana Could Help Patients Reduce Pain With Opiates

ScienceDaily (May. 15, 2012) — A UCSF study suggests patients with chronic pain may experience greater relief if their doctors add cannabinoids -- the main ingredient in cannabis or medical marijuana -- to an opiates-only treatment. The findings, from a small-scale study, also suggest that a combined therapy could result in reduced opiate dosages. 

What I understand is that, scientists discovered that Cannabinoids, one of the main ingredients of the Medical Cannabis or commonly known as medical Marijuana, can be used to reduce the pain of patients who are in Opiates treatment. The study shows that if Cannabinoids are included in these patients' therapy, their pain can be reduced drastically.

Why am I interested in this article? It is interesting that an illegal drug can help make some people's lives better. Especially Cannabinoids one of the major components of Marijuana. This can have a huge impact on the people to see that a drug, such a marijuana, that is believed to be bad for people's  health and for society, actually is good to cure a disease and that it might have even more uses yet unknown to us.

What connection do I have with this article? Connection? Well, one connection this article can have with my life is that I want to study Psychology and possibly specialize in the treatment of patients who have diseases that involve chronicle pain and are under opiates treatment.  This treatment is very common and chronicle disease patients are usually treated by psychologists. These patients are usually treated by psychologists because most of the times chronicle diseases are associated with psychological factors such as stress. So, when I start to work as a Psychologist, and one of my patients has one of these diseases, I will know what I can give them medical Marijuana to reduce the pain and make their lives better.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Area of interaction: Health and Social Education: Cannabinoids is a main component of medical marijuana that a group of scientists and doctors discovered that can be useful to reduce pain in patients who have a chronicle disease involving pain. Chronicle pain, is a disease that can't be removed but it can be reduced. It is caused by many psychological factors such as insomnia, stress, and so on. And many times, these diseases are treated with different techniques such as therapy, natural medicine, and so on.

Human Ingenuity: This type of medicine was discovered by scientists and doctors and they use advanced technology to prove if that medicine can be useful to cure or reduce diseases.

Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111206151448.htm

Jellyfish On the Rise in World's Coastal Ecosytems

ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2012) — Jellyfish are increasing in the majority of the world's coastal ecosystems, according to the first global study of jellyfish abundance by University of British Columbia researchers. 

In a study published in this month's edition of the journal Hydrobiologia,UBC scientists examined data for numerous species of jellyfish for 45 of the world's 66 Large Marine Ecosystems. They found increasing jellyfish populations in 62 per cent of the regions analyzed, including East Asia, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Northeast U.S. Shelf, Hawaii, and Antarctica.

"There has been anecdotal evidence that jellyfish were on the rise in recent decades, but there hasn't been a global study that gathered together all the existing data until now," says Lucas Brotz, a PhD student with the Sea Around Us Project at UBC and lead author of the study.

"Our study confirms these observations scientifically after analysis of available information from 1950 to the present for more than 138 different jellyfish populations around the world."

Jellyfish directly interfere with many human activities -- by stinging swimmers, clogging intakes of power plants, and interfering with fishing. Some species of jellyfish are now a food source in some parts of the world.

"By combining published scientific data with other unpublished data and observations, we could make this study truly global -- and offer the best available scientific estimate of a phenomenon that has been widely discussed," says Daniel Pauly, principal investigator of the Sea Around Us Project and co-author of the study. "We can also see that the places where we see rising numbers of jellyfish are often areas heavily impacted by humans, through pollution, over fishing, and warming waters."

Pauly adds that increasing anecdotal reports of jellyfish abundance may have resulted from an expansion of human activities in marine habitats, so the study also provides a concrete baseline for future studies.

The study also notes decreases in jellyfish abundance in seven per cent of coastal regions, while the remainder of the marine ecosystems showed no obvious trend.

 According to the university of British Columbia, Many people have seen many Jellyfish in the ocean. Scientist state that these happened because of the pollution, over fishing, and warming waters. For these reasons, many people can't do activity in the ocean because the among of the jellyfish in the water.

Why am I interested about this? I , as I say always in other articles, interested about the animal who lives in the oceans, and this article, impacted me because I didn't realized that the jellyfish, or other living animal can change their habitats because of the among of food, or warm water, over fishing and so on. This can be very dangerous because these of fish, is one of the marine animal who has the most dangerous poison in the world. Many people died by those types of fishes.

Connection that I can make? What I want to do can connect with my life, I want to be a Marine biologist. And since they are talking about the environment of the Jelly fish and how they live, I need to know why would they go where the pollution is present.

Area of interaction: Environment, since we are talking about the animals and where they live and they move to other parts.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120418135343.htm