Acupuncture Really Helps Osteoarthritis Sufferers According to Study

The US National Institutes of Health conducted a study to determine whether acupuncture can improve movement and decrease pain for those suffering with osteoarthritis of the knee. The study involved 570 patients with some receiving sham acupuncture and/or guidance on self help, along with standard treatment with drugs, while other received regular acupuncture in addition to standard treatment. Sham acupuncture consisted of ‘pretending’ to insert needles into acupuncture points without actually administering treatment.

The study concluded that acupuncture is an effective complement to standard treatment, with a 40% decrease in pain as well as a 40% improvement in knee movement and function. Although the results seem positive, it is to be noted that many people dropped out of the study and other studies have produced contradictory results.

Regardless, by fourteen weeks into the study the group receiving regular acupuncture had much improvement in knee functions and reduced levels of pain compared to the sham group.

Many studies are being done on acupuncture to determine whether it is a viable complimentary medicine. This age-old traditional Chinese medicine is growing in popularity in the United States, with or without clinical trials.

The study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and received a lot of positive feedback. Many health professionals have made comments about the positive nature of the study and seem to feel as though they are one step closer to identifying acupuncture as a very useful complementary medicine that can help those who are not getting full relief from conventional, allopathic medicine alone.

Nutrition for Healthier Eyes

Eating properly can help to maintain excellent vision and even improve weak vision. An article at newstarget, in fact, outlines several different ways one can eat properly for vision and claims that a healthy diet is the foundation for excellent vision. If this is true, it may point to why so many Americans have failing vision, since our diets are noticeably lacking in vitamins, minerals, whole foods and superfoods.

The article, which does not advocate one certain diet for everyone, points out many ways one can use nutrition to improve their vision. The basic message is to eat more fruits and vegetables, such as dark leafy greens, colorful veggies full of phytonutrients like beets, carrots and squash, and fruits high in antioxidants, such as blackberries and strawberries. The article also advocates taking vitamin supplements, drinking fresh vegetable juices and adding superfoods, such as chlorella, spirulina, nutritional yeast to one’s diet.

In addition to eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, they also recommend reducing dietary sugars, which can diminish nutrients in the body and play a role in cross-linking of collagen fibers in the eye.

Other recommendations include getting enough essential fats, using herbal eye washes and resting your eyes by taking off your glasses.

To read the entire article, full of helpful resources and information, visit: http://www.newstarget.com/022268.html

Media Fallacies: Don't always believe the mainstream media

Do you look to mainstream media for information about nutrition and health? Do you trust the mainstream media to give you the most accurate information?

An article on NaturalNews.com was one of the only articles that reported a mainstream media fallacy in the world of nutritional supplements, reporting that although a study was done to show the benefits of vitamin C and vitamin E, the mainstream media took the information and twisted it on its head.

The study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and showed that a nine-year trial of women taking vitamin C and E supplements found a 31% reduction in stroke and a 22% reduction in risk of heart attacks. The problem with the study is that not all of the women actually took the vitamins on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the researchers ignored this fact and printed the findings while including the women that that did not take the vitamins. When they were included, the study found no significant benefits to the study.

The article, which was highly opinionated, stated that, “media outlets just can't wait to be spoon-fed the latest propaganda from drug company collaborators and then parrot it out to the public as fact.” The article also pointed out that it would be easy to give pharmaceuticals to a group and then include those who did not take the pharmaceuticals to prove they didn’t work.

The study, despite being flawed with regard to pointing out the findings of the women who did take the vitamins, resulted in a flurry of articles from various sources. Fox News reported: Antioxidants Do Not Protect High-Risk Women from Heart Disease. ABC News reported: Vitamins No Magic Bullet for Heart Health, and even Forbes, NY, reported: Antioxidants No Magic Bullet for Heart Disease in Women.

The NaturalNews.com article went out of its way to point out the many fallacies in our country by stating that we have: “an international reputation in ruins, a dysfunctional national press, a national health care system that actually promotes disease and cures no one, a mentally impaired President, a broken public education system, an irreversible addiction to oil, a drugged-up population of voters and a deeply-ingrained habit of spending itself into financial oblivion.”

Acupuncture as an anesthetic and the Limbic System

Even though acupuncture has still not been approved as a medical procedure in the US and remains a ‘complimentary’ medicine and ‘alternative’ healing method, an article on BBC reports that acupuncture deactivates parts of the brain that register pain. The article, which highlights a study done on television, points out the findings of the study: with deep needling, the limbic system is deactivated.

The study was part of three-part series on complimentary medicine and showed brain scans for people having acupuncture. A control group was given superficial needling of only 1mm in the skin. Other volunteers were subjected to the normal 1cm needling of acupuncture points.

The group with deep needling showed that part of the pain matrix, the limbic system, was deactivated. Those with shallow needling showed a normal reaction to pain.

While the researchers were surprised, they still do not recommend it for anesthetic, although it is used in China. They do, however, admit that acupuncture has a huge effect on the human brain and that it can act as pain relief.

Can Acupuncture help In Vitro Fertilization?

Many couples are resorting to IVF for pregnancy help. In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) is the process of fertilizing the female egg with the male sperm outside the body to create an embryo that is then inserted into the womb. Researchers have been wondering if acupuncture can help this process, resulting in many studies and trials.

Recently, a study conducted by US and Dutch researchers (formerly published in the British Medical Journal) claimed that acupuncture does help IVF – with one out of every ten IVF cycles resulting in one extra pregnancy. The study concluded that acupuncture helps those in the US, but not as much in Europe.

The reasoning? Well, it appears that most of the studies were done in Chinese clinics, which have a lower pregnancy rate than the average European clinic. When the studies were compared to the European rate of pregnancy, no change was shown.

The study looked at more than 1,000 women from seven different trial studies, combining the results to get an overall picture of the effectiveness of acupuncture.

Even though the studies presented that those who combine acupuncture and IVF had a 65% higher chance of pregnancy, in the US many in the medical community are still not convinced.

Do ferrets kiss their owners?

Chloe - size comparison

Yes, at least Chloe does. How does a ferret kiss its owner? The same way a dog will kiss you, by licking you on the lips.

Interesting how all pet animals aim for the lips. With a dog, it can be a little sloppy and annoying, though well appreciated (I have been an owner of several wonderful dogs). With ferrets, the kisses take the form of little petite licks from tiny scratchy tongues that seem to be just as raspy as a cat's tongue.

When we first got Chloe, she was a little reserved as compared to now. That's probably understandable since she didn't come out of a good environment (Chloe was a "rescue ferret"). However, now, the first thing Chloe does when we take her out of her cage for "run around the house and destroy everything time" is kiss me or my wife. And I mean that is absolutely the very first thing she does. It's true affection.

Oh, the shot above is several years old and may even date back to when Chloe first graced our home (i.e. was thrust upon two naive and unsuspecting ferret owners to be). As you can see, there is a blank VHS video tape in the photo...it won't be long before they attain the same novelty as eight tracks, I suppose.



Chloe the ferret - a Mini Blog about Ferrets

What's a Blogroll really for?

This is an interesting question and I wonder if it is one that really occurs even to most bloggers. After all, the purpose of a blogroll should be apparent. To list those blogs that you like, find commonality with, and want to keep up with.

Unfortunately, as with most things web-related, the original purpose of something online usually, at some point, becomes separated from its later (perhaps inevitable) pragmatic purpose. Thus, we see very often that blogrolls are often nothing more than reciprocal link exchanges.

Ok, I probably shouldn't get started on reciprocals. This is a hot topic for debate among SEO types and may forever continue to be...Are reciprocals dead?, Are reciprocal links devalued?, Are reciprocal links penalized by google?,etc, etc, yadda, yadda, who gives a flip.

On this subject, I will say that I personally don't care for reciprocals in most cases because the individuals who ordinarily approach you for link exchanges----A) maintain low quality sites, B) maintain sites that have nothing to do with your site and C) make me automatically think of the google-inspired phrase "linking to a bad neighborhood". What do I with letters requesting a reciprocal link exchange? Into file 13 with no consideration whatsoever.

Blogrolls, in too many cases, have simply degenerated to this level. They exist to algorithmically pump up the sites of friends and to pump up one's own sites (this is known as running a network). Blogrolls that are compiled by bloggers for this purpose typically have little value. Why? Mainly because the blogs that appear on such lists are not chosen because the owner of the blog has an intrinsic interest in them.

Which brings me back to the question of what a blogroll is really for. In my case, it's for this reason: to make it easier for me to get to the blogs that I have found, over time, that I like to read. No other reason. If people who come across my blog find that they like the blogs on the list, great. If it diverts that all-important web traffic away from my site, fine as well.

So, I've decided that I need to start compiling a list of blogs that, lately, I find I like to visit.

BTW, here are the latest definitions that have been added to the Health Nutrition Dictionary:



Phytosterols

Vitamin Deficiency

Mesomorph

Endomorph

Ectomorph

Adenosine Triphosphate

Body Mass Index

Stretch Marks

Hypertrophy

Pregnant Mothers Need Vitamin E to Reduce Asthma in Children

According to a study, expectant mothers should eat plenty of vegetable oils, margarine, nuts and sunflower seeds, as well as other foods rich in vitamin E, to help ward off the possibility of their unborn children developing asthma.

The study was done at the University of Aberdeen involving 2,000 pregnant women and their children. The team studied them over a five-year period and concluded that children of mothers with the lowest amount of vitamin E were five times more likely to develop signs of asthma by their fifth birthday. Those taking high amounts of vitamin E were less likely to see signs of asthma such as wheezing, coughing and tightness in the chest.

The researchers recommend a balanced diet, but claim that getting enough vitamin E during the first sixteen months of pregnancy is crucial, due to the fact that the airways are fully developed in the embryo by sixteen weeks.

The study was published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Surprising findings were that the children’s own diet did not seem to be a factor in whether or not they developed asthma.

Organic food really is healthier

For the longest time, advocates of organic food have had to deal with the naysayers. A lot of people still think that organic food is mostly hype and a way to charge more money for practically the same items. They fail to recognize the benefits of richer, cleaner soil and the lack of pesticides and genetically modified chemicals.

The truth is that organic foods really are more nutritious and they actually do taste better. A study conducted by Newcastle University and funded by the European Union found that organic food contains higher levels of antioxidants and flavonoids, less unhealthy fats, as well as higher levels of valuable minerals.

The study also found that organic milk had 50% to 80% more antioxidants than milk from non-organic cattle and that many organic foods, from onions and cabbage to potatoes and wheat, had 20% to 50% more minerals than non-organic varieties.

The researchers are still trying to find out what the logical difference is to produce such staggering results. Ongoing research will try to find out why organic food has a higher nutritional content.

How the sexes fare when they reach 100 years

Old dog diagram

Lindsey Tanner, writing for the associated press, began a short article with a fairly bold statement: “Living to one hundred is easier than you might think”.

A person reading this line might tend to think “Hmm. Oh, really? That’s not what my occasional perusal of the obituaries tell me”. However, Ms. Tanner’s article had some very interesting things to say about which of us may achieve the status of becoming a centenarian, and how the sexes fare, comparatively speaking, when they get there.

First of all, how do we arrive at the ripe old age of one hundred years? Is it genetics, or environment (i.e. how we lived and what we ate during our life). Well, lately, scientists think that genetics may not tell as much of the story as previously thought. In fact, a study of men in their seventies found that those individuals who avoided smoking, becoming overweight and inactive, and who controlled their blood pressure and blood glucose levels, had a 54 percent chance of living into their nineties.

Those are fairly good odds and the fact that taking personal responsibility for one’s health can result in a significantly extended lifespan is wonderful news.

Now, how do men and women fare, comparatively, when they reach 100? The differences between the sexes are actually stark.

Among women this old, only about a third still retain the ability to attend to their own bathing and the ability to dress themselves. Men, on the other hand, who reach 100 have a 75 percent probability that they will still be able to dress and bathe without assistance.

Why the differences? No one is really quite sure. Are men better suited for the “longevity game”? Actually, no. The speculation is that only the hardiest of men live to the age of 100; whereas women are more likely to survive to 100 despite suffering significant limitations as a result of medical impairments.


Here are some more additions to the Vitamin Stuff Dictionary:

Allium

Carotenes

Catecholamines

Fat Soluble Vitamins

Water Soluble Vitamins

Omega-6 Fatty Acids

Sugar Alcohols

Sodium PCA

Anthocyanins

Astaxanthin

High Fat Diets and Vitamin C Create Carcinogens

Vitamin C is very high in antioxidants and may offer anti-cancer properties. Most people think that you can simply add vitamin C to your diet via food or supplements to receive anti-cancer benefits, but, according to a recent study, vitamin C mixed with dietary fats can produce carcinogenic compounds in the stomach.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Glasgow, was shared at the annual Society of Experimental Biology in Glasgow. What they found was vitamin C mixed with dietary fat produces carcinogenic N-nitrosamine, while reducing the antioxidant properties of vitamin C.

Basically, if you are eating a high fat, highly processed meat and dairy diet, taking vitamin C will not help add antioxidants to your diet, but will instead add carcinogenic compounds that can lead to stomach cancer. This happens when nitrate combines with stomach acids. Usually vitamin C hinders this process, but when mixed with dietary fats it does not.

The lesson I take from this is keep my fat intake to a healthy minimum, to avoid saturated fat and to get more monounsaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat.