National Links for April, 2009
This blog is an objective and dispassionate source of information on the latest research in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Because my background is in pharmacy and allopathic medicine, I view all CAM as advancing through the development pipeline to eventually become integrated into mainstream healthcare. Some will succeed while others fail. But all are treated fairly here.
www.thecamreport.com
WebMD: Can Chinese Herbs Relieve Eczema? Chinese Herbal Medicine May Offer Relief for Dry, Itchy Skin of Eczema, Studies Say.
Julia Wisniewski, MD, of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and colleagues studied 14 children with persistent eczema who were treated with traditional Chinese medicine at Ming Qi Natural Health Center in Manhattan between August 2006 and May 2008. All of them drank Erka Shizheng Herbal Tea twice a day and soaked in an herbal bath for 20 minutes daily. They also applied an herbal cream to their skin two or three times a day and had acupuncture treatment.
At the start of the study, more than half of the participants had severe symptoms on a standard scale that doctors use to gauge eczema severity. After eight months of treatment, most had mild symptoms. “Improvement in symptoms and quality of life was seen as early as three months,” Wisniewski says. She showed before-and-after photos of several children to document their progress: Red, scaly feet and hands appeared normal six months into therapy.
Participants also reported a reduction in the use of steroids and antibiotics.
www.webmd.com
Washington Post: Do We Need NCCAM?
I was just about to start writing this blog about yesterday's thought-provoking article regarding some legislators' calls to eliminate the NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). But before I got going I remembered I wanted to do a bit of preliminary research in preparation for next Tuesday's "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy" column about probiotics. When I Googled the term, the most useful Web site that turned up was from -- guess where? -- NCCAM.
In the face of this challenging economy, lawmakers are absolutely right to scrutinize every dollar the government spends. Their questions as to whether the NCCAM is earning its $122 million annual keep are perfectly legit.
voices.washingtonpost.com
www.fiercehealthcare.com
According to the study presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, traditional Chinese herbal medicine has shown promising results in treating patients suffering from eczema.
Drinking Erka Shizheng Herbal Tea, soaking in an herbal bath, applying an herbal cream and receiving acupuncture can improve symptoms and the quality of life in individuals with severe eczema.
www.presstv.ir
Baltimore Sun: Ancient Chinese medicine came to Baltimore's jail 16 years ago with the promise of curbing the cravings of drug addiction. Since then, acupuncture has been the centerpiece of a treatment program that serves nearly 700 inmates each year.
Modern science has not found solid evidence that it works. Still, the inmates claim that with acupuncture, all they crave are the meditative moments it brings. They say it soothes them and helps clear their cluttered minds to find the strength to confront their addiction.
"I've done buprenorphine and methadone, but neither one of them could compare to those needles," says Derrick Brooks, 42, who has battled heroin his entire adult life. "Those needles put you in touch with stuff that's within you that no pill or nothing else could do."
www.baltimoresun.com
Chinese Medicine is usually not first in line for the treatment of problems such as foot pain, but authors from the Departments of Podiatry and Pediatrics at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Richmond, California suggest otherwise.
A treatment known as acupuncture is commonly associated with Chinese medicine and involves inserting needles into specific parts of the body to relieve pain.
A study involving 67 patients with foot pain that was not healed by traditional medicine or traditional treatments such as exercise showed that acupuncture provided total relief of pain in 31 cases and significant pain relief in 19 cases.
www.tcmdirectory.com
IndyStar, Indianapolis: Nationally, one in four hospitals now offers therapies in complementary and alternative medicine to address growing demand, according to the American Hospital Association. All 18 hospitals on the U.S. News and World Report's "Best Hospitals" list provide some form of it.
In Indianapolis, the major hospitals offer varying types of CAM. Several have created "integrative" centers or approaches that blend traditional medicine with acupuncture, massage therapy and clinical aromatherapy, along with nutritional supplements and "healing touch" sessions.
www.indystar.com
According to a National Institute of Health publication, about 14.8 million women and men experienced a urinary tract infection in 1995, and with the infection’s propensity to recur, especially in women, can some alternative medicine treatments be helpful too?
Probiotics: Also known as "friendly bacteria" or "good bacteria," these refer to live microorganisms that don't generally harm people. According to a conference report released in November 2005, an assessment of the use of probiotics to prevent and treat infections of the urinary tract or the female genital tract had turned out promising evidence. The conference was co funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and convened by the American Society for Microbiology.
smilinghealth.blogspot.com
Parents Turn to Holistic Remedies When Conventional Treatments Fail
In China, acupuncture has been around for at least 5,000 years. In this country, it's still relatively new, but studies show a growing number of Americans of all ages are seeking treatment.
More than 3 million adults and 150,000 children have used acupuncture for ailments like headaches, back and neck pain, anxiety and ADHD over the past year, according to the 2008 report published by the National Center for Health and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. The Children's Hospital in Minneapolis runs the nation's largest and oldest pediatric acupuncture center.
Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital recently used high tech magnetic resonance imaging to study the brain's response during acupuncture. They found a very interesting pattern of brain areas that are activated by acupuncture: a pattern similar to a brain at rest.
In other words, the brain's response to pain seems to be switched off during acupuncture.
But is this scientific proof that acupuncture actually works?
"I wouldn't quite say we're there yet. There's much more to be done," said Dr. Bruce Rosen, a Harvard-trained doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital.
www.abcnews.go.com
www.personalliberty.com
Acupressure wristbands reduced nausea for cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy, researchers found.
Action Points
? Explain to interested patients that this study showed that specially designed wristbands alleviated self-reported nausea in cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy compared with usual care.
Patients wearing the special wristbands had a 23.8% reduction in self-reported nausea compared with 4.8% among those who received usual care (P=0.01), Joseph Roscoe, Ph.D., of the University of Rochester's James P. Wilmot Cancer Center, and colleagues reported online in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.
They said the findings were probably not attributable to the placebo effect because attempts to manipulate the patients' expectations of efficacy in two separate wristband groups were unsuccessful. "Acupressure bands are an effective, low-cost, non-intrusive, well-accepted, and safe adjunct to standard anti-emetic medication," they said.
www.medpagetoday.com