Drink to Your Health (Part 1) — COFFEE

By AltMed1-Peggy  |  2012/05/18 21:38 Posted in Foods, News & Articles  |  Comments (0)

 

Lately, we’ve seen lots of good news about studies that show popular beverages are as good for us as they are good tasting and pleasant to drink. In this Drink to Your Health series, we’ll take a look at what health benefits research is finding for water, green tea, black tea, red wine, and other drinks.

 

Today, we take a look at coffee. Not long ago, coffee was considered an unhealthy drink, a guilty  pleasure people indulge but apologized for with embarrassed remarks such as, “I know I really shouldn’t but … ”  People who truly enjoyed coffee didn’t want to give it up, no matter what the prevailing health theories said at the time.

 

But in the last few years, coffee has been transformed from villain to bystander to good guy.

 

Now research shows those java-licious cups of Joe are loaded with antioxidants that help protect against many diseases including:

  • type 2 diabetes
  • cancers (several types)
  • cardiovascular problems
  • Parkinson’s disease
  • Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias
  • liver disease

 

And the latest study shows people who drink coffee every day live longer than those who don’t. The study started in 1995 with approximately 400,000 people aged 50 to 71 who did not have heart disease, stroke at that time. Also excluded were people whose daily calorie intake too high or too low.

 

When people who drank just one cup of coffee each day were compared to people who drank none, the coffee drinkers were less likely to die by 5 percent in women and 6 percent in men.

 

Most coffee drinkers had two to three cups each day. Women in that group were 13 percent less likely to die; men were 10 percent less likely than coffee-abstainers to die.

 

The greatest difference was found in women who drank four to five cups of coffee daily. Their death risk was 16 percent lower.

 

They also noted that the chances of dying from heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, diabetes, infections, injuries, and accidents was lower in coffee drinkers.

 

Why?  Researchers don’t know yet.

 

And they also don’t have enough information at this point to say whether coffee was the cause of longer lifespan or merely an associated factor – or, to look at that question another way, If longevity is a car speeding down the highway, is coffee the driver of that car or merely a hitchhiker tagging along for the ride?

 

We won’t know for sure until more research is done, but for now it’s good to know that coffee lovers can relax and enjoy another cup of their favorite healthy brew.

 

Want to read the coffee-longevity study? See Association of Coffee Drinking with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality, published in the May 17, 2012, New England Journal of Medicine.

 

For other articles about coffee’s health benefits, see:

*  Say it’s so, Joe: The potential health benefits – and drawbacks – of coffee, Coffee and Your Health, WebMD,

* Coffee and Health: What does the research say? MayoClinic.com

* Why coffee protects against diabetes, ScienceDaily.com

* Coffee drinkers may live longer, study suggests. USA TODAY

What Makes an Alternative Medicine Source Credible (or Not)?

By AltMed1-Peggy  |  2012/05/17 22:07 Posted in Integrative (Blended) Medicine, News & Articles, Questions & Answers, Resources, Should You Try It?  |  Comments (0)

 

The wonderful thing about having access to information on the Internet is that everything you want to know or could ever want to know is “out there” somewhere. It may be easy or hard to find, depending on how obscure it is and how well you use search tools, but odds are the answer is there, somewhere.

 

And the not-so-wonderful thing about it is that everything is out there, whether it’s valid or false, useful or frivolous, sincere or scam. Sometimes it’s easy to brush off the baloney, weed out the wacko, and spot the scams. But not always.

 

That’s why it’s important to think about what signs to look for before you believe (or buy) what you find online.  Conventional health and medicine websites may display the HON (short for Health On the Net) Code  symbol, which tells you the site has gone through a fairly stringent vetting process and passed. I can’t recall seeing the HON Code on an AltMed site but if I found it on one, I’d consider that site trustworthy.

 

But even without such a clear cue, other signs can tip the balance toward or away from credibility. Here are a few of my “red flags.”

  • Too much hype. Enthusiasm is fine but when an email or post or website that raves too enthusiastically about how wonderful a supplement or treatment or product, it casts a big shadow of doubt. If the item – whatever it may be – is really THAT fantastic, why do you have to push it so fervently? Can’t it stand on its own merits?  If facts and evidence show it really does what the hype claims, that goes a lot further to convince me than shouting and touting it with slick sales spiels.

 

  • Selling. It’s disappointing to discover an otherwise promising report about a supplement, product or device, book or treatment is really just fancy packaging for a sales pitch. If the person or group that created that report weren’t selling the item, would they still praise it so highly? 

 

  • Secrets “they” don’t want you to know. If this really is true, how did this report manage to sneak past the mysterious “They” who don’t want us to know about it?  And how did the author of this article or email or web page get past “them” to discover this “secret” information? To me, that “secret” tag means “be skeptical.”

 

What are your red flags? What tells you that you can trust what you’re reading? Please share your comments and we’ll revisit this topic in the future.

Autism and Nutrition Factors

By AltMed1-Peggy  |  2012/05/16 21:47 Posted in Integrative (Blended) Medicine, News & Articles  |  Comments (0)

 

The lead article in the latest open-access issue of IMCJ Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal takes a look at the role of nutrition in the causes of and management of autism. The prevalence of autism is now double that of Down syndrome, the authors report, with at least 40 cases in every 10,000 children.

 

If you are interested in autism or concerned about autism and autism spectrum disorders, you may wish to read this open access article and the companion news article. Both are listed and linked below.

 

If you do read the articles, please share your thoughts here. Do you agree with the researchers’ conclusions? Is there a factor you think they have overlooked? What do you think might account for the increasing number of autism cases?

 

And if you do not read the articles, what deterred you from doing so? 

 

Nutritional Factors in Autism: An Overview of Nutritional Factors in the Etiology and Management of Autism, Balasubramanian Santhanam, MD; Barry Kendler, PhD, FACN. Integrative Medicine, Vol. 11, No. 1, Feb/Mar 2012, pp. 46-49.

 

Autism 360: The Development of an Online Database with Patient-entered Data, Sidney MacDonald Baker, MD, Integrative Medicine, vol. 11, No. 1, Feb/Mar 2012. p. 18

Benefits of New “PAP” Acupuncture Method Last 100 Times Longer

By AltMed1-Peggy  |  2012/05/15 21:00 Posted in Acupuncture, Integrative (Blended) Medicine, News & Articles  |  Comments (0)

Here’s another news item from the world of acupuncture.

 

A new approach to this 4,000-year-old treatment for pain relief and other problems may prolong the benefits of treatment by as much as 100 times longer than traditional acupuncture, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reported in the April 23 online edition of a journal called Molecular Pain.

 

The new element is a substance called prostatic acid phosphatase, or PAP for short. The same researchers had previously tested PAP by injecting into rodent spines and found the substances relieved chronic pan and the effects lasted as long as three days. But that procedure is usually reserved for those in excruciating pain. And, lead researcher associate professor Mark J. Zylka, PhD, said in a UNC news release, “spinal injections are invasive and must be performed in clinical setting.”

 

Zylka became interested in how acupuncture relieves pain. When an acupuncturist inserts a very fine acupuncture needle into a specific spot called an acupuncture point and manipulates the needle to stimulate that acupuncture point, molecules called nucleotides are released and converted into pain-reducing adenosine. The resulting pain relief usually lasts for hours after treatment.

PAP makes adenosine too and when injected in the spine, its pain relieving effects last for days. Zylka wondered if blending the two could boost pain control even more so his team tested the idea by injecting PAP into an acupuncture point behind the knee.

They learned two key things: 

1. When PAP was paired with acupuncture, pain relief lasted 100 times longer than conventional acupuncture. Researchers dubbed the combo “PAPupuncture.”

2. Choosing a different injection site (other than the spine) allowed PAP doses to be increased and as a result, one injection worked to reduce inflammatory pain and neuropathic pain symptoms.

The tests on animals worked so well that human trials are coming up next.

 

Those who want to read the study can click this title: PAPupuncture has localized and long-lasting antinociceptive effects in mouse models of acute and chronic pain, by Julie K. Hurt and Mark J. Zylka, Molecular Pain 2012, 8:28. doi: 10.1186/1744-8069-8-28

Zoomobile Therapy: Visiting Animals Promote Healing

By AltMed1-Peggy  |  2012/05/14 08:00 Posted in News & Articles, Pets and Companion Animals  |  Comments (0)

 

The topic for this Guest Post Exchange is animals and healing. 

GUEST BLOGGER Sarah Valley Allen writes about animals and the many ways service and companion animals play a role in healing. Her blog, Animals Help Heal  is packed with inspiring and uplifting articles and great photos of all sorts of animals. She lists Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT), Animal Assisted Activity (AAA), and Hippotherapy (physical therapy involving horses) among her favorite subjects, so it’s not surprising to read of her plan to incorporate animal therapy into her practice after she completes her physical therapy doctorate program. Today, she tells AltMedForYou readers how she learned about the healing power of animals. (And my topic for her blog is alternative medicine for animals.)

Enjoy!

Zoomobile Therapy clip_image001

For a little over four years, I was the Zoomobile Coordinator at the Audubon Zoo. This meant that I took animals from the zoo’s education collection to visit schools, nursing homes, libraries and hospitals.  In doing so, I learned about the healing power of animals.

We had a standing monthly engagement at each of the three hospitals in town. The visits were set up by the hospital Child Life departments so our visits were for the children.  Usually we’d do a show in the play room for the kids who were well enough to attend and then we’d do room visits for the others.

imageIt was on one such visit that I met a little girl who was not happy at all. When we first went into her room, she did NOT want to see the animals, but I wasn’t going to go away so easily. I introduced her to Daisy Duke, an African Pygmy hedgehog. Suddenly there was a complete change in her attitude. She began to smile and even laugh as Daisy poked her nose out from her rolled up body. The little girl’s parents were thrilled, as were the nurses. This was this the first time that she smiled since she arrived at the hospital and it was the first time the nurses were able to give her a shot without a big fight. This prickly little creature had somehow calmed her down and allowed healing to take place.

When I visited nursing homes, I liked to take animals like chickens, rabbits, snakes and turtles; animals that the residents might remember having when they were younger. Often I’d hear stories about their animals and how it was their job to collect the eggs or how the rooster used to terrorize them so much they didn’t go in their own backyards. The animals also gave the residents common ground to talk about with each other so instead of being isolated and depressed, they felt like a part of a community of animal lovers. I’ve been back to some of those nursing homes and the friendships that started with the Zoomobile visit are still going strong.

imageOne specific nursing home visit was especially memorable. I was about to bring out a snake, so I warned the residents, as I always do, “I’m going to take out a snake, but don’t worry I’ll have a good hold of it and you don’t have to touch it if you don’t want to.” As I pulled Eden, the ball python, out of the bag she travelled in, there was a commotion in the back of the room. I quickly apologized for scaring anyone, thinking that maybe I  hadn’t said my warning loud enough for those in the back to hear. I talked about the snake a bit and then started walking around the room with her so the residents who wanted to could touch her. One gentleman was particularly interested in stroking the snake. As he was finishing, the staff came to me and said, “He was the one that made all the noise when you took the snake out.” I was confused because he hadn’t seemed afraid of the snake. Then they told me that up until that point they had thought the man was mute because he had not spoken a word the entire time he had been there. But somehow seeing that snake motivated him to communicate for the first time in years.

 

Experiences like these are what inspired me to go back to school. I just finished the first year of my Doctorate of Physical Therapy program and I plan on integrating animals into my practice once I graduate. Animals are amazing healers and motivators. Many people will get out of bed to care for their pet when they otherwise wouldn’t get up. Taking your dog for a walk gets you out of the house and moving. Nuzzling a furry animal is calming, lowering your blood pressure. The benefits are limitless!

 

 

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© 2012 by Sarah Valley Allen, all rights reserved

 

Dr. Andrew Weil’s “Spontaneous Happiness” works for Jackie Dishner

By AltMed1-Peggy  |  2012/05/14 06:00 Posted in Alternative Medicine Books, Guest Posts, Integrative (Blended) Medicine, News & Articles, Resources, Should You Try It?  |  Comments (2)

 

Today brings several firsts for AltMedForYou – our first guest post, first book review, and first exchange of posts between blogs. We begin with our guest’s great review of a book by a giant in the field of alternative medicine. I hope you’ll enjoy this review as much as I did and I encourage you to visit the writer’s blog often. (You’ll find my article about positive visualization posted there today.)

JackieDishner_2129Web

GUEST BLOGGER  Jackie Dishner, author of BACKROADS & BYWAYS OF ARIZONA, is a freelance writer who specializes in design, self-help and travel. She writes for consumer magazines, trade publications and websites. She blogs at BIKE WITH JACKIE, where she posts inspirational messages and discusses her BIKE philosophy and its mind-body connection, which can lead you to spontaneous happiness, a topic Dr. Andrew Weil recently wrote about in his latest book. Jackie has the review for you here.

Spontaneous Happiness

By Andrew Weil, MD

282 pp. Little, Brown and Company, $27.99

 

If you think being a happy person means you have to smile 24/7, you can relax. In Spontaneous Happiness, Dr. Andrew Weil, one of the founders of integrative medicine and a professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson dissolves that fallacy.

 

Spontaneous happiness, he says is more about finding that middle ground, that sense of contentment, serenity, comfort, balance and resilience. You won’t have all of this all the time, and you don’t have to. Are you relieved?

 

You should be. In his book about happiness, the New York Times bestselling author – he’s written 12 books that deal with some form of integrative medicine – shares his theory about how you can achieve this emotional well-being.

   SpontaneousHappiness_book

Starting with his thoughts about why people are so depressed – Do you realize 1 in 10 of us here in the U.S., including our children, take one or more antidepressant drugs and that the World Health Organization predicts that by 2030 more people worldwide will be affected by depression than any other health condition? – Dr. Weil’s book goes on to offer solutions for your unhappiness. His prerogative would be that you make a few lifestyle changes, as opposed to filling another prescription. Yet, he doesn’t fully discount medication for those with extreme mental health issues, such as bi-polar disorder.

 

 

But he doesn’t hold back, either, when it comes to suggesting a depression epidemic is taking place that might have in fact been manufactured. Pharmaceutical companies, the big insurers, and corporate healthcare prosper and have huge incentive to keep the epidemic growing. More than 164 million antidepressant prescriptions were written in 2008, worth $9.6 billion in U.S. sales, he writes.

 

Dr. Weil cites various research and includes interviews with other integrative or alternative medicine practitioners. One, a Native American healer, says something as simple as gathering a circle of friends for support and prayer can do wonders for all dimensions of the human experience: physical, mental, social and spiritual.  

 

Among the many informative points, Dr. Weil addresses how physical disease can be tied to your emotions, the critical importance of physical activity, the importance of touch, and he also mentions visualization, breathe work, and his concern that technology is socially isolating us from each other.

 

The part I like best about this book is the “8-week Program for Optimal Well-Being” he walks you through at the end. After explaining the various types of alternative therapies you can do to connect with your own sense of contentment, serenity, comfort, balance and resilience, he gives you a plan to see it through. The program requires you to answer a lot of questions each week about your general health and lifestyle, followed by some very specific tasks to take care of your body, mind and spirit. His point is to get you to connect with where you really are in life right now so you can get where you really want to be.

 

Clearly, spontaneous happiness doesn’t happen overnight.

 

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© 2012 by Jackie Dishner, all rights reserved.

Acupuncture May Hold Key to Reducing Muscle Loss in Elderly and Infirm

By AltMed1-Peggy  |  2012/05/13 15:46 Posted in Acupuncture, News & Articles  |  Comments (0)

A team of researchers from Japan presented their findings at the sixth annual Experimental Biology 2012 meeting in April that showed a promising new approach to combat skeletal muscle loss.

They were investigating acupuncture as a tool that could help at risk elderly and infirm people who can’t use the methods that are usually recommended to prevent muscle loss, or atrophy. Those standard recommendations — exercise, better nutrition, and mechanical stimulation – may be effective for most people but they can be too challenging for frail elders and people who have medical problems.

 

The researchers realized there’s a need for a different approach, ideally one that does not involve drugs, so they looked at the genes and proteins involved in muscle atrophy.

 

“Muscle mass and structure are determined by the balance between protein degradation [breakdown] and synthesis [building],” says Akiko Onda, an acupuncturist and graduate student at the Waseda University School of Sport Sciences, who has been conducting a series of studies on skeletal muscle atrophy for the past four years.

Their studies led to focusing on mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid), a type of gene or genetic blueprint carrier, like atrogin-1 that is specific to muscle atrophy.

 

Preliminary findings were presented at the April 2012 meeting and reported in a news release. The researchers showed that acupuncture treatments significantly reverse the problem-causing action of those genes, like flipping an “Off” switch to prevent genes that play a key role in skeletal muscle atrophy from working. 

 

“We hope to introduce acupuncture as a new strategy for preventing skeletal muscle atrophy in the future,” Onda said. 

How soon could that “in the future” be?  It will take a while. First more research will have to be done to get a clearer picture of how the acupuncture connection works. Then research will be needed to fine-tune the findings into a practical treatment for skeletal muscle atrophy.

 

Acupressure Tap Technique

By AltMed1-Peggy  |  2012/05/12 22:49 Posted in Acupuncture, Integrative (Blended) Medicine, News & Articles  |  Comments (2)

 

Acupuncture can be a wonderful remedy for many conditions. It’s one of the oldest healing practices in the world.

 

Studies investigating its effectiveness for knee pain, lower back pain, cancer pain, alcohol addiction, chronic stress, polycystic ovary syndrome, asthma, allergies, and other ailments have been mixed, according to Research Results posted on the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine website. 

 

How it works:

 

A trained acupuncturist inserts super-fine acupuncture needles at “meridians” or acupuncture points where energy flow may be blocked or stagnant to elevate spirits, ease pain, and promote healing. The needles are so thin that they’re barely noticeable when inserted just under the skin.

 

There’s also a no-needle version called acupressure that works on the same principles, but instead of using needles to stimulate acupuncture points, pressure is applied with fingers, thumbs and hands. 

 

Yet another variation uses tapping instead of needles or fingers to activate the same acupuncture points. It’s designed for do-it-yourselfers—people who want to learn how to use these techniques on their own to manage their own health concerns.

 

If you’re interested in trying it, check out the 20-something how-to demonstration video that expert Gina Green has uploaded to YouTube.com. They show  exactly how to use the techniques for various problems. Green’s  instructions are clear, direct, and easy to swallow.

 

I believe many of her techniques work. What do you think?

 

 

 

© 2012 all rights reserved.

Menu Medicine: Oregano in Pizza and Pasta Sauce Kills Prostate Cancer Cells

By AltMed1-Peggy  |  2012/05/11 16:48 Posted in Foods, Herbs, News & Articles, Spices  |  Comments (0)

 

Good news for men who love pizza and spicy pasta sauce. Those two favorite foods may help fight prostate cancer.

 

We already knew tomato sauce appears to reduce the risk of cancer. And we knew oregano, the herb that gives many Italian foods their classic spicy flavor, has many health benefits too including fighting bacteria and inflammation.

 

Now, new research indicates oregano contains a key component that helps kill cancer cells.

 

Long Island University (LIU) researchers presented their study’s preliminary findings at Experimental Biology 2012, an annual gathering of six scientific societies, that was held in San Diego, California, this April.

 

Previous research had reported that pizza cut cancer risk but researchers thought this effect was due to the lycopene in tomato sauce on pizza, explains LIU researcher Supriya Bavadekar, PhD, RPh. Her team focused on carvacrol, a constituent of oregano, and found that carvacrol promotes cancer cell “apoptosis,” which in plain English means cancer cell suicide.

 

“If the study continues to yield positive results, this super-spice may represent a very promising therapy for patients with prostate cancer” without the toxic side effects that accompany current prostate cancer treatments, Dr. Bavadekar said in an LIU news release.

 

Best of all, pizza as preventive medicine would be a great tasting treatment.

Red Pepper Curbs Appetite and Burns Calories

By AltMed1-Peggy  |  2012/05/10 13:14 Posted in Foods, News & Articles, Spices  |  Comments (0)

 

Yesterday, we told you about a study that found a weight loss benefit in black pepper, the same black pepper that many of us buy at the grocery store or use in restaurants to add flavor to foods. Today’s report is not a news item but instead is a reminder that red pepper has weight loss benefits too, specifically ground cayenne pepper.

 

Cayenne is a popular ingredient in many spicy recipes and, like black pepper, it’s available for purchase at grocery stores in the spice section. If you’re going to try adding more black pepper to your meals, consider adding cayenne too.

 

Last April, Purdue University researchers reported this simple red pepper can help curb appetite and burn calories. Its key is capsaicin, the component in some chili peppers that makes them taste and feel “hot.”

 

Before the Purdue study, there had been other research that showed capsaicin in red chili peppers aids weight loss, but their findings were based on consuming more red peppers than most Americans would be comfortable with adding to their daily diets. But the Purdue study was based on an intake of only one gram – just half a teaspoon – which most would find very do-able, even those who don’t like spicy foods. 

 

The study of 25 people who were not overweight included 12 who did not like spicy foods and 13 who did. Those who normally didn’t eat red pepper were less hungry for fatty, salty and sweet foods, and less hungry overall. And both groups – those who liked it and would normally eat more than 1 gram, and those who didn’t like it and would normally eat less than half a gram – burned more calories because red pepper raised their core body temperatures.

 

It’s the taste and heat of red pepper that triggers appetite suppression and “thermogenic” (core body heat producing) response. As lead researcher Richard Mattes, MPH, PhD, RD, distinguished professor of foods and nutrition, said in Purdue’s news release about the research, “That burn in your mouth is responsible for that effect.”

 

Want to read the full text of the study? See: The effects of hedonically acceptable red pepper doses on thermogenesis and appetite.