New Study: How Acupuncture Reduces Stress Levels

Good news, acupuncture fans: It really does help relieve stress. And now, a new study is giving a closer look at why.

The new study explores the biological mechanisms involved in acupuncture's stress-relieving abilities, something science has yet to fully understand.

The researchers discovered that stress hormones were lower in rats that had received electronic acupuncture. Results were published in the Journal of Endocrinology.

"Many practitioners of acupuncture have observed that this ancient practice can reduce stress in their patients, but there is a lack of biological proof of how or why this happens. We're starting to understand what's going on at the molecular level that helps explain acupuncture's benefit,” study researcher Dr. Ladan Eshkevari, an associate professor of nursing at Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies, said in a statement.

For the study, Eshkevari and colleagues designed a series of tests with electronic acupuncture to ensure that each rat received the exact same dose of pressure. Eshkevari targeted the spot below the knee, or the “Zusanli” point, with the needle. This area is the same in rats and humans and it is reported that stimulating it can alleviate stress and other conditions.

For the 10-day experiment, researchers split the rats into four groups. One group was a control group with no added stress and no acupuncture; one group was made to be stressed out for an hour each day but didn't receive acupuncture; one group was made to feel stressed for an hour each day but received "sham" acupuncture by their tails; and one group was made to feel stressed and received the genuine acupuncture treatment at the Zusanli area.

The body secretes an assortment of hormones into the bloodstream as a reaction to stress, which the researchers were then able to measure in the rats. They assessed blood hormone levels secreted by the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland and the adrenal gland -- together these are known as the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis. They also measured a peptide involved in creatures' "fight or flight" responses, called NPY.

Researchers discovered that the "...electronic acupuncture blocks the chronic, stress-induced elevations of the HPA axis hormones and the sympathetic NPY pathway,” Eshkevari said in the statement.

Since stress has been linked with detrimental health effects including heart disease and even brain shrinkage it’s important to study any measures to combat its detrimental nature.

New Study: Acupuncture beneficial for Bell's Palsy treatments.

New York (Reuters Health) - Patients with facial paralysis saw greater improvements in function after a more intensive form of acupuncture in a new study from China that compared the treatment to standard acupuncture.

Researchers found that wiggling the acupuncture needles to produce a sensation called "de qi" led to a patient's having a better chance of recovering full facial function in six months than if the needles were just inserted and left alone.

De qi "should be considered to be included in clinical guidelines for acupuncture treatment," said Dr. Wei Wang at Key Laboratory of Neurological Diseases of Chinese Ministry of Education in Wuhan, Hubei.

The study did not measure how well people would have recovered without receiving acupuncture, so it's impossible to say whether the therapy worked any better than conventional, Western approaches or no therapy at all.

De qi is combination of feelings - including achiness, coolness, warmth, and tingling - which is considered by traditional Chinese medicine to ensure the best therapeutic benefit, said Wang, one of the authors of the study.

But "this long held belief has never been confirmed," he told Reuters Health.

To see whether de qi makes a difference to the effectiveness of acupuncture therapy, he and his colleagues asked 317 adults with Bell's palsy to undergo five half-hour acupuncture treatments for four weeks.

Bell's is usually a temporary facial paralysis that typically affects one side and lasts a few months.

It often results from a viral infection that inflames facial nerves, and the steroid prednisone is a common treatment. Over the counter analgesics, vitamins and physical therapy are also sometimes used to treat the condition.

About 40,000 Americans get Bell's palsy each year, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Wang said his group focused on this condition because recovery of the facial nerves affected by Bell's does not seem to be as susceptible to the placebo effect as other nerve conditions, such as pain.

Half of the participants were randomly assigned to receive treatments that would elicit de qi, in which the acupuncturist twisted the needles and moved them up and down several times during the session.

The other participants had the needles inserted and left alone.

All of the patients also received prednisone.

Neurologists, who didn't know which treatment each participant had received, determined the patients' facial function score on a scale of 200, with higher numbers corresponding to better movement.

In both groups, patients had started with facial function scores around 130 to 135. After six months of treatment, participants in the de qi group had somewhat greater facial function, such as in raising the eyebrows, blinking and baring teeth.

The de qi group scored an average of 195, while the other acupuncture group scored 186.

Wang said it's difficult to interpret just what these numbers mean in terms of muscle performance - say, whether a person can smile fully or not - but that a difference of nine points would be noticeable to the patients.

In addition, the team found that 94 percent of participants who received de qi acupuncture completely recovered their facial function by the end of six months, while 77 percent did in the other acupuncture group.

read more: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/acupuncture-bells-palsy_n_2767694.html

Acupuncture as a cure for allergies | Time Magazine

Acupuncture already helps to relieve pain in some patients, and the latest study hints that it might relieve sneezing and itchy eyes as well.

From Time/CNN

Most patients plagued with sniffles brought on by seasonal allergies turn to antihistamines for relief, but when they don't get relief, some opt for alternative treatments like acupuncture, in which tiny needles inserted just under the skin at specific points in the body are used to reduce certain symptoms.

In a study published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers examined 422 people who tested positive for pollen allergies and had allergic nasal symptoms such as a runny nose. The participants reported their symptoms as well as what medication and doses they used to treat them.

The researchers then divided them into three groups; one received 12 acupuncture treatments and took antihistamines as needed, a second group received 12 fake acupuncture treatments (needles placed at random, non-meaningful points in the body) and took antihistamines as needed, while the final group only took antihistamines for symptoms.

After two months, the researchers asked the patients about their symptoms and how much medication they used. The participants who received the real acupuncture treatments with their antihistamines showed a greater improvement in their allergy symptoms and less use of antihistamines compared to the other groups.

But the fact that even the participants receiving the sham acupuncture therapy reported some relief of their symptoms suggests that a strong placebo effect may be responsible for at least part of the improvement.

That possibility was supported by the fact that after four months of follow-up, the difference between the groups was less pronounced. The researchers speculate that the patients' expectations of how much the acupuncture might help them could have influenced their reports of improved symptoms.

But if the treatments are providing some type of relief, then acupuncture's potential role in treating allergies should be investigated further, the authors say. "The effectiveness of acupuncture for (seasonal allergies) compared with other antiallergic interventions and the possible underlying mechanisms of any effect, including context effects, need to be addressed in further research," they write in the study.

Read more: Acupuncture for allergies

Meditate your way to a better sexual experience?

Many outlets have been touting Meditation as something of a cure-all and a life enhancer. While this can be true, the headline "Meditate Your Way to A Better Sex Life", along with the current era of "all enhancing pills" just seems almost too good to be true. 

But then Yahoo has a top headline that leads a reader to the following: 

According to researchers at Canada's University of British Columbia and Israel's HadassahUniversity Hospital, just a few sessions of meditation can boost your sex drive and speed arousal time.

The researchers measured the reactions of 24 women who were watching an erotic film, then measured for a second time after they attended three 'mindfulness' meditation courses.

Even though the participants were watching the same film, they were more turned on than during the first viewing.

The reasons for this aren't fully understood, but researchers believe the art of meditation allows you to 'turn off' the active part of your brain and focus on specific feelings and sensations instead.

In this interview, researcher Lori Brotto of  the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, a Buddhist meditator herself, describes how she uses mindfulness meditation to help women who are unable to have intercourse because of actual or anticipated pain.

...in the last seven years we’ve carried out at least three studies now adapting the mindfulness based intervention to gynaecologic cancer survivors who we know have a high incidence of sexual side-effects following treatment. And most recently we’ve looked at either three-session or four-session mindfulness intervention versus a wait-list control group, or an education only control group. And women will report improvements in their level of sexual desire, their level of sexual arousal; we also measure the physiological sexual arousal response. We have women come into our lab, we expose them to some short video clips, neutral and erotic video clips and we measure their sexual arousal response  before and after treatment. And not only do we see an increase in the genital arousal response but we also see more agreement between the genital response and women’s self-report of being sexually aroused. So it seems that their mind and their body is more in unison following the intervention.

Read more of the original article here: 

http://www.theidproject.org/blog/nancy-thompson/2012/12/05/daily-connect-meditation-new-viagra

Homeopathic remedy for dengue fever now in tests.

A homeopathic drug extracted from a plant native to the US and used as a traditional medicine in that country the 19th century, promises a cure for dengue, says a study by the state-run King Institute of Preventive Medicine.

The King Institute team headed by a Chennai-based homoeopath administered the drug extracted from Eupatorium perfoliatum to 50 patients with secondary dengue and found all of them recovered. "The platelet counts came under control for almost all patients and blood tests showed marked improvement," said King Institute director Dr P Gunasekaran. The study, lead by Dr N R Jayakumar of Madan Homoeo Clinic, was presented at an international symposium on 'Challenges and strategies in the prevention and management of viral infections' at Central Learther Research Institute recently.

Marijuana and Cancer: Scientists find compound that stops spread of aggressive cancers.

From Huffington Post 

A chemical derived from Cannabis stops spread of certain aggressive cancers: but cannot be effective by just smoking the herb.A pair of scientists at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco has found that a compound derived from marijuana could stop metastasis in many kinds of aggressive cancer, potentially altering the fatality of the disease forever.

"It took us about 20 years of research to figure this out, but we are very excited," said Pierre Desprez, one of the scientists behind the discovery, to The Huffington Post. "We want to get started with trials as soon as possible."

The Daily Beast first reported on the finding, which has already undergone both laboratory and animal testing, and is awaiting permission for clinical trials in humans.

Desprez, a molecular biologist, spent decades studying ID-1, the gene that causes cancer to spread. Meanwhile, fellow researcher Sean McAllister was studying the effects of Cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-toxic, non-psychoactive chemical compound found in the cannabis plant. Finally, the pair collaborated, combining CBD and cells containing high levels of ID-1 in a petri dish.

"What we found was that his Cannabidiol could essentially 'turn off' the ID-1," Desprez told HuffPost. The cells stopped spreading and returned to normal.

"We likely would not have found this on our own," he added. "That's why collaboration is so essential to scientific discovery."

Desprez and McAllister first published a paper about the finding in 2007. Since then, their team has found that CBD works both in the lab and in animals. And now, they've found even more good news.

"We started by researching breast cancer," said Desprez. "But now we've found that Cannabidiol works with many kinds of aggressive cancers--brain, prostate--any kind in which these high levels of ID-1 are present."

Desprez hopes that clinical trials will begin immediately.

"We've found no toxicity in the animals we've tested, and Cannabidiol is already used in humans for a variety of other ailments," he said. Indeed, the compound is used to relieve anxiety and nausea, and, since it is non-psychoactive, does not cause the "high" associated with THC.

While marijuana advocates will surely praise the discovery, Desprez explained that it's not so easy as just lighting up.

"We used injections in the animal testing and are also testing pills," he said. "But you could never get enough Cannabidiol for it to be effective just from smoking."

Read more and watch video here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/marijuana-and-cancer_n_1898208.html

Kudzu herbal pill may cure binge drinking?

For many suffering from alcohol additction, any option for help is one worth persuing. But what if a herbal supplement that could help those in binge drinking is literally growing all around? 

...kudzu may also prove helpful in cutting something else—alcohol consumption. Studies of the impact of kudzu on drinking alcohol have been conducted in the past, and this new study focused on puerarin, a specific component of the Chinese herb, to determine if it could reduce the amount of alcohol individuals consumed.

Ten twenty-something men and women participated in the study, which consisted of four 90-minute sessions. The sessions took place in simulated “apartments” which were equipped with a TV, DVD player, and a refrigerator stocked with the participant’s favorite beer and non-alcoholic beverages.

The participants were allowed to consume as many beers as they wanted (up to six) during the first session. After the session, they were each given either placebo or a pill containing puerarin and told to take it daily. They then returned for a second session.

Two weeks later, the subjects completed a third session, but after this occurrence they were given the pill they did not get the first time. After they took their assigned pills for one week, they returned for the fourth and final session.

When the subjects took puerarin, they drank significantly fewer beers (decline from 3.5 to 2.4). In addition, “we noted that their rate of consumption decreased, meaning they drank slower and took more sips to finish a beer,” explained lead author David Penetar, PhD, of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory at McLean Hospital, which indicated an impact on binge drinking.

Read More: http://www.emaxhealth.com/1275/chinese-herb-kudzu-may-reduce-binge-drinking-alcoholism

Steroid Injections for Back Pain - No More Effective Than Placebo.

NY TIMES: Steroid Injections for Back Pain - No More Effective Than Placebo. 

A randomized trial of steroid injections for back pain has shown that they are no more effective than a placebo.

Because the long-term benefits of surgery remain unproven and pain medicines often have serious side effects, doctors have increasingly turned to steroid injections to treat lumbosacral radiculopathy, a common cause of back pain. The condition stems from damage to the discs between the vertebrae that often leads to sciatica, numbness or pain in the legs.

Researchers tested 84 adults with back pain of less than six months’ duration, dividing them into three groups. They received either steroids, etanercept (an arthritis medicine) or an inactive saline solution in two injections given two weeks apart.

At the end of one month, they were assessed for pain.

Leg and back pain decreased in all three groups, but there were no statistically significant differences among them. The researchers conclude that steroids may provide some short-term analgesic effect, but that the improvement in all of the patients was mainly due to normal healing.

The lead author, Dr. Steven P. Cohen, an associate professor of anesthesiology at Johns Hopkins, was disappointed with the results but said that he still hopes drugs like etanercept might someday be proven effective. But for now, he said, “the strongest evidence for back pain relief is with exercise.”

The study appears in the April 17 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/for-back-pain-steroid-shots-no-more-effective-than-placebo/