Scared of the dentist? New acupuncture study shows cure for phobia.

 Acupuncture may well be the new cure for patients who are scared of going to the dentist. A new study carried out by experts at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria has revealed significant evidence that traditional Chinese medicine could help to relax nervous patients prior to dental treatment.

"The aim of the study was to analyse whether acupuncture in the outer ear could reduce fear of dental treatment," wrote Andrea Michalek-Sauberer and her co-author from the clinical department for special anaesthetic and pain therapy at the AKH (Allgemeines Krankenhaus) in Vienna.

The research was carried out on 182 randomly selected patients whose fear of the dentist was measured before the therapy with a psychological test created by the experts. The patients then underwent either acupuncture carried out on the specific parts of the outer ear which help to calm and relax, fake acupuncture on fingers or shoulders or no therapy at all. The psychological test was then repeated 20 minutes later just before the dental treatment itself.

The results of the test revealed that those who received some form of therapy before dental treatment were significantly less anxious than those who did not. The patients who received the real acupuncture in the outer ear scored 7.9 points less on the scale of the chosen psychological test than the group who received no treatment. The group who received the fake acupuncture scored only 3.7 points less.

"Aurikular (outer ear) acupuncture could be an option for dental patients, who suffer from severe fear and want urgent therapy," concluded the author of the report.

Magnesium intake helps relieve feelings anxiety and fear.

12-06-11

 A new study shows that increased magnesium intake is a key to helping the brain naturally reduce anxiety and stress, reducing fear response and helping with socail anxiety disorder, PTSD and panic phobias. 

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- A supplemented intake of magnesium is found to enhance the brain's ability to reduce fear and anxiety responses, making way for a possible supplemental treatment for many anxiety disorders such as social anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), panic disorder, specific phobias and others. In the October 2011 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, top neuroscientists at Tsinghua University in Beijing, University of Texas, and University of Toronto revealed that by increasing the extracellular magnesium concentration in the brain through a new magnesium compound called Magtein(TM), the cognitive ability - an essential facility that controls fear and anxiety - is enhanced. This development becomes extremely significant considering anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in America, affecting 18% of the population(1).

Anxiety disorders can be triggered by fear and thus, affect cognitive functioning. When in danger, fear is essential for survival. This fear triggers the brain to respond with many split-second changes in the body to prepare to defend against the danger or to avoid it. This response is a healthy reaction meant to protect a person from harm.

But in anxiety disorders this reaction is enhanced so that the fear memory continues even when one is no longer in danger, affecting cognitive ability on a daily basis.

"Through our study, we found that increasing brain magnesium with Magtein enhances not only the learning and memory ability, but also top-down inhibition of fear memory of rats," explains Dr. Guosong Liu, one of the study's principal scientists. "When the cognitive ability is enhanced, fear responses such as anxiety-like and PTSD-like behaviors, are controlled."

According to Liu, the use of a high magnesium treatment induces a unique pattern of action on brain regions involved in and responsible for the body's emotional processes. It heightens the function of the prefrontalcortex, a brain region involved in controlling fear responses, without affecting the function of amygdala - the brain's evolutionary conserved region involved in fear memory formation and storage. "By increasing brain magnesium through Magtein, cognitive ability goes up, fear memory remains unchanged".

http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=11979&Section=NUTRITION