The Impact of Petrissage on Functional Measures of High-Heeled Shoe Wearers

BackgroundMany women enjoy wearing high heels despite knowing they can harm their feet. Many uncomfortable conditions can originate from wearing this shoe, leading to biomechanical changes in ankle joints. Hence, the study is aimed to identify the effects of massage therapy in improving muscular flexibility among women wearing high heels. MethodologyForty female participants with chronic heel pain were included in the single-blinded, randomized controlled trial. Participants were divided into Group-A (Stretching and deep heat) and Group-B (petrissage and deep heat). The treatment was performed for 4 weeks, 3 sessions/week in both groups. Foot function index and ankle dorsiflexion were recorded at baseline and after 4-weeks of intervention. ResultsForty female participants with a mean age of 28.23±6.24 were recruited. Both groups showed significant improvement in all three variables, i.e. Pain, disability, and ankle dorsiflexion. However, Group-B showed more significant results with mean differences of 1.80±2.22 and 4.1±6.7 (p<0.05) for pain and disability, respectively. A similar result was observed for ankle dorsiflexion in which a mean difference of 0.95±1.08 in the left and 1.25±1.12 in the right ankle was observed. ConclusionBoth treatment programs are highly effective in reducing pain, reducing disability, and improving ankle joint ROM. However, petrissage massage and deep heating were superior to superficial heat with static stretching for females with chronic heel pain.   DOI: https: //doi. Org/10.59564/amrj/01.01/006

Remediation of Tannery Effluent by Bacterial Assisted Constructed Wetlands

Global industrial development has deteriorated the quality of the environment by polluting the biosphere. Among all the industries, tanneries are the most polluting ones. Although leather tanning is an important economic activity all over the world; transformation of raw hides and skins of animals into useful leather goods and products produce huge amounts of effluent, burdened with highly toxic organic and inorganic pollutants. This toxic effluent is usually discharged directly into the environment without any treatment, which may cause severe damage to the ecosystems that it comes in contact with, mostly soil and water resources and associated biota. Various physicochemical processes are being employed to treat industrial effluents in developed countries, but these conventional technologies are cost-prohibitive, produce secondary pollution, and are difficult to implement in developing countries to treat large volumes of complex tannery effluent with high loads of organics and inorganics. So, in this current scenario, the most viable option is to use biological processes, hence, in this regard constructed wetlands (CWs) offer a more promising solution to overcome aquatic pollution by a sustainable, affordable, and practical way to remove pollutants. Unfortunately, CWs application to reduce pollution levels in tannery effluent has been a rather neglected area of research. In the present research work, potential of CWs vegetated with different macrophytes viz., Brachiaria mutica, Canna indica, Cyperus laevigatus, Leptochloa fusca, and Typha domingensis to remediate tannery effluent was assessed. Moreover, the effect of augmenting CWs with endophytic bacteria was also investigated for improvement in their remediation potential. This project revealed that CWs vegetated with pollutant-tolerant plants and bioaugmented with pollutant-degrading bacteria have great potential to remediate and detoxify inherent tannery pollutants. Furthermore, toxicity evaluation by fish bioassay revealed that tannery effluent treatment through CWs significantly reduced its toxicity level, in contrast to the high toxicity hazard associated with untreated tannery effluent.