Black rice bran reduces inflammation

Mendel Friedman and colleagues at the US Department of Agricultures Western Regional Research Center in Albany, California conducted the research, which became the focus of the latest episode in the American Chemical Societys (ACS) award-winning podcast series, Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions.In previous research as well, the group identified several potential health benefits from eating black rice bran. Bran is the outer husk of the grain, which is removed during the processing of brown rice to produce the familiar white rice. Those experiments, which were done in cell cultures, hinted that black rice bran suppressed the release of histamine, which causes inflammation.A diet consisting of 10 per cent black rice bran reduced inflammation associated with allergic contact dermatitis, a common type of skin irritation.