The cumin herbal plant (Cuminum cyminum) was one of the most commonly used spices in Europe, particularly during the Middle Ages. Native to upper Egypt, the cumin herbal plant is characterized by its slender stem and unique branches. Cumin has long been cultivated in Mediterranean countries as well as in Iran, China, India and Arabia.
The Cumin Herbal Plant
The name ?cumin? is a derivative of the Persian city of Kerman. The Persian pronunciation was ?Kermun?. This name evolved to ?Kumun? and then to its present name, ?cumin?, in European pronunciations.
The cumin herbal plant is a herbaceous perennial that is a part of the carrot family, Apiaceae. The plant rarely exceeds one foot in height. The cumin herbal plant has deep green leaves that are divided into long, narrow segments. In the Northern Hemisphere, the cumin herbal plant produces its small, rose-colored or white flower in stalked umbels with four to six rays during the months of June and July. Its flowers contain the seeds that are the commonly used herb referred to simply as ?cumin.?
Today, the cumin herbal plant is grown commercially for use as a spice in Morocco, Egypt, India, Syria, Canada, the United States and Chile.
Cumin in History
The cumin herbal plant is mentioned in the Bible in the books of Isaiah and Matthew. The plant's herbal healing properties have also been mentioned by figures such as Hippocrates and Dioscorides. In addition, Pliny wrote that the ancient Greeks grounded up the cumin herbal plant's seeds to use as a medicine with bread and water or wine. These ancient Greeks noted that when cumin herbal seeds were smoked, they changed the pallor of the face, which is why Horace once exclaimed, ?Ex sangue cuminum!? Some people think this is the reason the Greek believed that the plant was associated with Eros, the god of love.
Health Uses of Cumin
The cumin herbal plant is thought to be a stimulant with antispasmodic and carminative from properties. Herbalists used to tout that the cumin herbal plant has superior carminative properties (the ability to expel gas from the alimentary canal for colic relief) compared to fennel and caraway. However, many patients did not like cumin's flavor so its use as a carminative is now mostly confined to veterinary practice.
The cumin herbal plant seeds contain fatty oil with resin, mucilage and gum, malates and albuminous matter. The film that covers the seeds contains tannin, which explains the plant's historical use to prevent excessive flatulency caused by languid digestion. The cumin herbal plant has also been used as a treatment for colic and dyspeptic headache.
Sometimes the cumin herbal plant is mixed with other drugs to form a stimulating liniment for the treatment of wounds. It is applied like a plaster over wounds, stitches and a person's side when there is pain present believed to be rooted in the sluggish congestion of the body's indolent parts.
How do you find good quality health information on the Internet? Approximately 10 million people in the USA search online for information about their health, or the health of their loved ones, every single day. 140 million Americans have already undertaken such searches. A number of recent studies have reviewed this activity and three factors stand out:
1. Searching on the Internet for health information is a remarkably common activity in America.
2. While many people find health information that seems helpful, most do not really know if it is reliable.
3. People trust doctors to deliver high quality health information, and information from the internet discussed with doctors, who are the "health information experts" often leads to changes in treatment.
As a practicing physician I have long been recommending certain websites and search strategies to my patients.
So what are the 5 search strategies that I recommend?
1. Quick and dirty.
For a quick simple search there is nothing wrong with doing rapid searches at www.google.com or www.yahoo.com ,and review the results from at least the first two or three pages. Just remember that Google displays two types of results, sites ranked by a commercially secret measure of popularity, which is what most people look at first, and sponsored paid links. The second quick and dirty approach to undertake routinely is to go to a couple of quality information sites as your first stop beyond the search engines. I recommend www.wikipedia.com the amazing open source encyclopedia with great breadth and depth, but which still has a level of inaccuracy, and www.medlineplus.gov which is a Government run site and is, in my opinion, the best overall consumer health site on the Internet.
Many people want to go beyond this level of search however, and I would suggest the following strategies;
2 Professional journal searching
There are several free programs on the Internet which allow you to search professional peer-reviewed scientific papers from the health and medical journals. The two main professional databases are: "Medline" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PUBMED at the NIH and "Psycinfo" (http://www.apa.org/psycinfo/ at the American Psychological Association
3 Search evaluated Internet subject gateways
The beauty of Internet searches is that you can pick up useful reliable information which hasn't always been published in peer-reviewed journals, but which has been checked for accuracy by teams of medical reviewers. The gateways I use are the US National Library of Medicine ( http://locatorplus.gov ) or Healthfinder ( www.healthfinder.gov ) in the US, or Intute (http://www.intute.ac.uk ) or NHSDirect (www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk ) in the UK. Other sites are devoted to collecting peer-reviewed "best practice" treatment guidelines (www.guideline.gov ) which you can use to compare with your own treatment regime. The best place to look for information on evidence-based medicine is the Cochrane Library (www.cochrane.org ) and I frequently recommend eMedicine (www.eMedicine.com) which is rapidly becoming effectively the "wikipedia of healthcare".
4 General Web searches
Now we move to the open areas of the Internet that you will find via search engines. Now you really have to start being critical of the quality of the information you retrieve as most of it will not have been subject to proper review mechanisms by qualified experts, and may well have a commercial bias. Use the methods at www.discern.org.uk to evaluate the quality of information on general sites, and in principle tend to focus on mainstream sites run by government agencies or universities.
5 Discussion lists and newsgroups
This is where you can waste most time, and where information is least reliable - but it can be fun, and is sometimes helpful, particularly if you want to communicate with others who have similar needs. You may even be lucky and join a group where there is a real expert. There are many groups on the Internet - just put in a search string including the word "group", as well as whatever topic you are researching. The largest number of health related ones seem to currently be at Google groups (http://groups.google.com/group/HealthyLiving )
Once you have undertaken your searches the most important next step is to discuss your findings with you doctor in a collaborative manner. The role of many doctors in gradually changing, and they are increasingly becoming "information analysts" helping patients find good quality health information that will lead to good healthcare decisions.
Both Paul Ghossain & Peter Yellowlees are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.