How to Solve Trauma Problem Naturally

How to Solve Trauma Problem Naturally

Trauma — 'the forgotten disease' — is a general term for all those wounds and injuries that flesh is heir to. Trauma is a common cause of death — the fourth most common in the United States alone, after heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Tragically, trauma's most common victim is a young man in his 20s.

Yet the care and nutrition of trauma patients have been largely overlooked by medicine, according to Augusta Askari, assistant professor in the department of surgery at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo. To help fill in the gaps in knowledge about trauma, Dr. Askari, and her colleagues have been studying zinc and nitrogen metabolism in injured rats. And they've discovered that trauma accelerates losses of both these minerals, at a time when the need for them is especially high.

Zinc is an essential trace element, vital to life,' Dr. Askari told us. 'It's part of RNA and DNA — it's in every single cell in the body. In trauma, it appears to be particularly important because of its role in wound healing and the formation of new protein.

In their study, Dr. Askari's group looked at zinc and nitrogen loss in 33 laboratory rats being fed intravenously. They chose to study animals being fed in this way because it's common among trauma patients and because intravenous feeding can itself increase urinary zinc loss. Sixteen of the 33 rats had broken hind legs, and for the next seven days, both injured and uninjured rats were monitored for weight as well as zinc and nitrogen loss.

The researchers found that the injured rats lost far more zinc and nitrogen than the uninjured ones. They concluded that these losses must have been caused by the injury alone because the feeding solution was identical for both groups of animals.

The problem, in short, is a double one: trauma deprives the body of these substances just when they're needed most to form new proteins, heal wounds, and speed recovery.

(See also HOSPITAL MALNUTRITION.)