Study: External Qi Gong therapy can help control drug cravings.

Excerpt From NewsMedical.Net

Cocaine is one of the most addictive drugs of abuse. Few effective treatments are available to help control cravings and withdrawal symptoms among individuals undergoing therapy to overcome cocaine abuse. Promising results from a study of qigong therapy are published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal website at http://www.liebertpub.com/acm.

Individuals undergoing residential substance abuse treatment who received qigong therapy, compared to a similar duration of sham treatment, reported significantly reduced cravings for cocaine in response to viewing and handling items related to cocaine use. The qigong treatment group were also significantly less likely to have symptoms of depression than the sham treatment group.

In the article "A Pilot Study of Qigong for Reducing Cocaine Craving Early in Recovery," David Smelson, PsyD, David Eisenberg, MD, and coauthors demonstrate the feasibility of delivering external qigong therapy (EQT) to a population of recently abstinent cocaine-dependent individuals. In EQT, a trained qigong practitioner using focused intention directs and unblocks bioenergy (qi) to help an individual achieve balance that facilitates healing and equilibration in withdrawal.

"This early work may have profound consequences in drug rehabilitation programs, and certainly deserves further focused and rigorous evaluation," says Editor-in-Chief Kim A. Jobst, MA, DM, Functional Shift Consulting Ltd., Hereford, U.K.

A call for caution on the drastic increase of Antipsychotic Prescription Drug use.

In a recent NYTIMES article, Dr.Richard A Friedman delivers a bit of a shocker~

"You will never guess what the fifth and sixth best-selling prescription drugs are in the United States, so I’ll just tell you: Abilify and Seroquel, two powerful antipsychotics. In 2011 alone, they and other antipsychotic drugs were prescribed to 3.1 million Americans at a cost of $18.2 billion, a 13 percent increase over the previous year, according to the market research firm IMS Health."

Indeed, prescription drug use is increasing drastically. Read more on this article from the New York Times here: 

Atypical antipsychotics can be lifesaving for people who have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression. But patients should think twice — and then some — before using these drugs to deal with the low-grade unhappiness, anxiety and insomnia that comes with modern life.

New Study: Cannabidiol, a non- THC compound derived from Marijuana effectively treats schizophrenia.

A certain marijuana compound known as cannabidiol (CBD) can treat schizophrenia as well as antipsychotic drugs, with far fewer side effects, according to a preliminary clinical trial. Cannabidiol differs from THC which is the much publicized intoxicating chemical in THC. 

The research team, led by Markus Leweke of the University of Cologne in Germany, studied 39 people with schizophrenia who were hospitalized for a psychotic episode. Nineteen patients were treated with amisulpride, an antipsychotic medication that is not approved in the U.S., but is similar to other approved drugs.

The remaining 20 patients were given CBD, a substance found in marijuana that is considered responsible for the mellowing or anxiety-reducing effects. Unlike the main ingredient in marijuana, THC, which can trigger psychotic episodes and worsen schizophrenia, CBD has antipsychotic effects, according to prior research in both animals and humans.

Neither the patients nor the scientists knew who was receiving which drug. At the end of the four-week trial, both groups made significant clinical improvements in their schizophrenic symptoms, and there was no difference between those getting CBD or amisulpride.

“The results were amazing,” said Daniel Piomelli, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology at the University of California-Irvine and a co-author of the study. “Not only was [CBD] as effective as standard antipsychotics, but it was also essentially free of the typical side effects seen with antipsychotic drugs.”

Antipsychotic drugs may cause devastating and sometimes permanent movement disorders; they can also lower a patient’s motivation and pleasure. The new generation of these drugs can also lead to weight gain and increase the risk for diabetes. These side effects are well known as a major hindrance during treatment.

http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/06/07/marijuana-compound-may-beat-antipsychotics-at-treating-schizophrenia/39803.html

High fat diets may be linked to depression.

The latest in the news has multiple stories that are being reported even in the mainstream media on the effects of your diet on your health. However, often we forget that health includes mental health. Various reports have shown certain foods affect mood, and also the ability for one to function at top performance, both physically and mentally. 

This new study though, weighs heavy on the mind.... literally. 

From Scientific American: 

" What is the effect of a high fat diet? Well, it appears to be getting more complicated with each new study.

It looks like diet-induced obesity might produce depressive-like effects in mice. But how the diet is doing that is not so well defined.

*“Diet-induced obesity promotes depressive-like behaviour that is associated with neural adaptations in brain reward circuitry” International Journal of Obesity, 2012.

Several studies in humans have found a correlation between obesity and the development of depression. But it’s important to keep in mind that correlation is not causation. Many people who become obese also have other things going on (socioeconomic status, family history, comorbid disorders) which can influence the development of depression. In order to determine if obesity itself is causing depression, you first have to deliberately cause obesity in a controlled population.

And this is where mice come in. Using a specialty high fat and high sugar diet, Sharma and Fulton fed up a set of mice for 12 weeks, until they were significantly fatter than control mice. They then looked at behavioral tests for anxiety and depression.

Depressive-like behavior has been correlated in the past with changes in stress-responses, so the authors looked at the stress hormone corticosterone (which is cortisol in humans). High-fat diet mice showed slightly higher corticosterone, but much higher levels after stress, suggesting that they may be more sensitive to stress than normal mice.

The authors also looked at alterations in reward pathways like the nucleus accumbens and striatum, and found significant changes. Though changes in these areas are not usually correlated with depressive-like behavior, they have been shown in other high fat studies and are thought to relate to differences in how animals eating high fat diets process rewards.

From these data the authors conclude that their high-fat diet obesity produced depressive-like behavior. And while I think the preliminary data has potential, I also think there could be improvements...." 

Read more from the original story here: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/2012/05/02/high-fat-diets-and-depression-a-look-in-mice/?WT.mc_id=SA_syn_HuffPo

Mixing prescription pills a recipe for disaster.

Howard Cohen 
The Miami Herald

04-16-12

April 14--Dr. Barbara Krantz has a message for those who care for an elderly mom, dad, grandparent or friend: Falls, depression and insomnia should not be so easily dismissed as signs of getting older.

"Those are things that can be attributed to the physiological cause of aging but, if caregivers are aware, it can also be prescription drug abuse or interaction. All of a sudden mom is getting more and more forgetful. It could be her medication. It doesn't have to be her brain,'' said Krantz, medical director for the Hanley Center, a West Palm Beach-based addiction treatment and recovery center.

Senior adult admissions in centers like Hanley for prescription drug abuse have increased 450 percent since 2000 and unintentional overdose is the second leading injury-related cause of death among seniors, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The problem is particularly acute among the elderly.

"Most people in their 70s and 80s average seven or eight medications and have a hard time handling these," said Dr. Daniel Varon, associate medical director for the Wien Center for Alzheimer's and Memory Disorders at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach.

Rising numbers

Nationwide, one person died every 19 minutes of prescription drug overdoses, about 27,000 in 2011, reports the CDC. The bump represents an increase from 2008, when one or more prescription drugs were responsible for about 20,000 deaths. That year, opiate pain relievers like Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet accounted for 14,800 of those deaths, an almost fourfold increase from 1999.

About half of the prescription painkiller deaths involved at least one other drug, including anti-anxiety medications such as the popular Xanax.

Sales of prescription drugs have tripled from 2000 to 2009. Pharmacies dispensed 111 tons of opioid pain relievers, the category that includes oxycodone and hydrocodone, in 2010. It was the equivalent of giving every man, woman and child in the United States 40 five-milligram Percocets and 24 five-milligram Vicodins.

Many of those pills go to the elderly, who often suffer from memory loss, mild cognitive impairment or the more debilitating Alzheimer's. The result is that the elderly patient can tend to double up on a dose, mix incompatible medications or forget to take a medication altogether. The recipe is a cocktail for disaster.

Read More: http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=13010&Section=Aging

Know your food pt. 2: Prozac, antihistamines, acetaminophen, enrofloxacin in your chicken?

Following up on the "Know Your Food" trail, we get this recent story from Chemical and Engineering News about how, just like a human who has a nail or hair test to determine what drugs he or she may have been taking while employed at a workplace, you can do the same with animals. What researchers have been finding is rather alarming. 

"They tested each sample for 59 fungicides, antibiotics, and other compounds using liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. The researchers found 24 drugs and personal-care products, including the antibiotics ciprofloxacin, enrofloxacin, and tetracycline; antihistamines; the pain reliever acetaminophen; and fluoxetine, better known as Prozac."

"...the team also detected strictly human-use substances such as caffeine and the hormone norgestimate, which is used in oral contraceptives and to treat adverse symptoms of menopause."

And apparently the high-temperature treatment of the byproducts that become "chicken meal" or "feather meal" that's used for a variety of purposes (including, in a nature-defying move, being fed back to the chickens) don't break down all the chemical concentration and compounds. 

"They found that most of the chemicals tested partially broke down, but at least 20% of each of the parent compounds remained."

Read more of this story here: http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/web/2012/03/Chicken-Feathers-Carry-Drugs.html

Stanford Study: Drug Side Effects are Potentially 5 Times More Than Advertised.

"New research on Drug Side Effects done at Stanford School of Medicine has discovered nearly 5 times the 70 or so potential reactions that are listed on the average drug insert." 

March 24, 2012

Prescription medications usually always carry a rather frightening (and long) list of possible side effects. These drug side effects may range from mild symptoms like headache or nausea to more serious risks such as seizures or temporary blindness. New research suggests that the side effects listed on the label often represent just a small portion of what users are really experiencing.

Results of the Study

Two separate databases were created to organize the findings of this research and both are available to the public. The first, OFFSIDES, discovered an additional 329 side effects on average for each of the 1,332 drugs that were studied - nearly 5 times the 70 or so potential reactions that are listed on the average drug insert.

The TWOSIDES database relates to drug interactions and is based on more than 50,000 possible medication combinations. An additional 1,301 contraindications were discovered. One of the most important findings is a previously unknown risk of fatal cardiac conditions in patients taking SSRI class antidepressants at the same time as a commonly prescribed blood pressure medication.

While the results of this study are quite alarming, this method of analyzing data will be very beneficial to the medical industry as well as the patients taking the drugs. It may take several years before many of the newly discovered side effects and interactions are mandatorily included in the medication packaging, but doctors and their patients can use the knowledge to determine the most effective prescription combinations for the specified conditions.

You read it here first: Statin (Lipitor) complications include: Diabetes, Memory Loss

Months back, the Classical Medicine Journal went over some analysis of new studies that were beginning to show links between Statins (chemical compounds used in prescribed drugs as an aid in lowering cholesterol chemically) and various side effects ranging from incovenient to severely debilitating. 

Now that news has hit mainstream media and the FDA is adding new warnings. 

Read More: 

Feb 28 (Reuters) - U.S. health regulators will add warnings to the labels of widely used cholesterol lowering drugs, such as Lipitor, to indicate that they may raise levels of blood sugar and could cause memory loss.

Click to read more ...