Word: roots
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Behind the absorbing plot and images, Saramago crafts a profoundly cynical allegory for the condition of humanityand the fragility of the comforts we take forgranted. At the root of the story is not anexplanation for humanity's existence or diagrammeddirections on how to live virtuously: Saramago isnot constructing a sermon on the merits ofobservant, moral living and rational governments.Rather, at the heart of the novel lies a deeplydisturbing hunch that perhaps, in the end, life isblind. We depend on life having a purpose, adirection. The truly disturbing question Saramagoposes is, what if life really means nothing? Thisquestion...
Critics are uneasy. Kava, they fear, will turn out to be merely herbal medicine's root du jour, a scientifically unproven preparation that is at best useless and at worst dangerous. But doctors and consumers are two different groups, and even as concerns are raised, kava's popularity continues to grow. "I think kava is really hot," says Dr. Hyla Cass, a UCLA psychiatrist and co-author of Kava: Nature's Answer to Stress, Anxiety, and Insomnia (Prima Health). "It's a sleeper...
...alleged powers, kava is a pretty pedestrian plant. One of 2,000 members of the extended pepper family, it grows principally in the South Pacific, where it is harvested like any other cash crop. The root was largely unknown in the U.S., but that changed in 1996. That year, a coalition of 21 herbal-product makers devised a plan to bring more kava to American shores and shelves. Using aggressive ad campaigns, they quickly raised the profile of the root. When word began circulating that kava might have the power to calm--and when ABC ran a story to that...
That's what studies with rats suggest, anyway. But rats aren't people, and although researchers in Germany have reported that kava is safe and effective for humans--prompting that country to approve the root as a treatment for mild anxiety--many U.S. physicians are unimpressed. "If a substance has an effect on mood, that doesn't necessarily mean it has therapeutic value," says psychiatrist Benedetto Vitiello of the National Institute of Mental Health. "A good cup of coffee has an influence on mood, but it's not really an antidepressant...
...effects of longer use are unknown. Psychological addiction is a risk even if physical addiction isn't. Also worrisome is the danger of adverse drug interaction. A kava user in Georgia who had been taking the sedative Xanax had blackouts when he switched from the drug to the root...