Observations placeholder
Croll, Oswald - Preface of Signatures – 04
Identifier
016022
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
J Altern Complement Med. 2010 Oct;16(10):1065-71. doi: 10.1089/acm.2009.0090. Effects of two natural medicine formulations on irritable bowel syndrome symptoms: a pilot study. Hawrelak JA1, Myers SP.
OBJECTIVE: The study objective was to assess the effects and tolerability of two novel natural medicine formulations in improving bowel habit and abdominal symptoms in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The DA-IBS formula was designed to treat diarrhea-predominant and alternating bowel habit IBS, and the C-IBS formula was designed to treat constipation-predominant IBS.
DESIGN: This was a two arm, open-label, uncontrolled pilot study.
SETTINGS/LOCATION: Subjects were recruited from the greater Lismore area (NSW, Australia) in 2001.
SUBJECTS: The study included 31 patients who fulfilled the Rome II criteria for IBS. Twenty-one (21) patients were classified as suffering from diarrhea-predominant or alternating bowel habit IBS and 10 patients were classified with constipation-predominant IBS.
INTERVENTIONS: The DA-IBS formula consisted of a mixture of dried, powdered bilberry fruit, slippery elm bark, agrimony aerial parts, and cinnamon quills. The C-IBS formula consisted of a mixture of dried powdered slippery elm bark, lactulose, oat bran, and licorice root. The aim of each formula was to normalize stool frequency and stool consistency.
RESULTS: Ingestion of the DA-IBS formula was associated with a small, but significant increase in bowel movement frequency (p = 0.027). Subjects in the DA-IBS group also experienced reductions in straining (p = 0.004), abdominal pain (p = 0.006), bloating (p < 0.0001), flatulence (p = 0.0001), and global IBS symptoms (p = 0.002) during the treatment phase of the trial. Subjects in the C-IBS group experienced a 20% increase in bowel movement frequency (p = 0.016) and significant reductions in straining (p < 0.0001), abdominal pain (p = 0.032), bloating (p = 0.034), and global IBS symptom severity (p = 0.0005), as well as improvements in stool consistency (p < 0.0001). Both formulas were well-tolerated.
CONCLUSIONS: The DA-IBS formula was not effective in improving bowel habit in individuals with diarrhea-predominant or alternating bowel habit IBS, although it did significantly improve a number of IBS symptoms. The C-IBS formula significantly improved both bowel habit and IBS symptoms in patients with constipation-predominant IBS. Further research is warranted on C-IBS, as a potentially useful therapeutic formula.
PMID: 20954962
A description of the experience
Croll, Oswald - Preface of Signatures – 04
If we now feign that plants do speak, and be willing to manifest their secret commodities wherein they excel, howsoever they express themselves, and in what manner soever they are about to speak, their language is not perceived by all, like as the speech, and characters of writing, to several nations, are proper and peculiar; whence it is needful, that either all be of one nation, or all be able to speak infinite languages, if all should alike understand; which by divine institution is not permitted.
So the exquisite artifice of Nature in her similitudes of things, though briefly, and sufficiently perspicuous to all, yet is perceived only by few.
All herbs, flowers, trees, and other things which proceed out of the Earth, are books, and magick signs, communicated to us, by the immense mercy of God, which signs are our medicine.
But that by their knowledge we may come to the true and appointed medicine, I shall offer somewhat to the ingenuous.
Who so desireth to be an expert physician, and to have knowledge of those things which point to medicine, by that art, which Nature externally proposeth by signs, he may understand what those internally signify: for every thing that is intrinsic, bares the external figure of its occult property, as well in insensible and sensible creatures.