Studies and Progress Notes (Jan 2010)

* * *  STUDIES and PROGRESS NOTES  * * *

* *  SPIRITUAL AWARENESS AND WHOLISTIC HEALING  * *

In this randomized clinical trial 62 women receiving radiation treatment for gynecological and breast cancer at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri were studied. The treatment group received a total of six Healing Touch treatments by Level II or Level III HT practitioners, whereas the control group received six mock treatments by Research Associates not trained in HT. Subjects who received Healing Touch demonstrated better quality of life as measured by the SF-36 in all nine domains with significant differences in vitality, pain, and physical functioning.
Source: Cook, C.A.L., Guerrerio, J.F., Slater, V.E. Healing Touch and quality of life in women receiving radiation treatment for cancer: A randomized controlled trial, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 2004, 10(3), p. 24-41.


IJHC – WHR Observations

Quality of life is often overlooked in medical treatments. Spiritual Healing and other CAM approaches put more life in a person's days, while conventional therapies tend to focus only on putting more days in a person's life.

* *  FUTURE RESEARCH IN WHOLISTIC HEALING  * * 

The IJHC/WHR E-Zine features monthly suggestions for future research in healing.
READERS ARE INVITED TO SUBMIT SUGGESTIONS FOR TOPICS TO STUDY
If your topic is chosen, you ill receive free access to the IJHC for a month, including the current issue and all back issues.
 

Quality of life assessments

It takes little extra effort to obtain a QOL measurement when doing research on physical interventions for physical problems. Healthcare journals could encourage this by giving priority to accepting articles which include such measures.

* *  WHOLISTIC APPROACHES  * * 

Exercise reduces frequency of viral respiratory infections

This study suggests that 1 year of moderate-intensity exercise training can reduce the incidence of colds among postmenopausal women. These findings are of public health relevance and add a new facet to the growing literature on the health benefits of moderate exercise.
Source: Chubak J, McTiernan A, Sorensen B. Moderate-Intensity Exercise Reduces the Incidence of Colds Among Postmenopausal Women, American J Med, 2006, 119(11), 937 – 942.


IJHC – WHR Observations

This study is particularly relevant as we are bombarded with media and medical pressures to get vaccinations for the flu virus.

Excessive consumption of sweets at age 10 increases violence in adulthood

Diet has been associated with behavioral problems, including aggression, but the long-term effects of childhood diet on adult violence have not been studied. We tested the hypothesis that excessive consumption of confectionery at age 10 years predicts convictions for violence in adulthood (age 34 years). Data from age 5, 10 and 34 years were used. Children who ate confectionery daily at age 10 years were significantly more likely to have been convicted for violence at age 34 years, a relationship that was robust when controlling for ecological and individual factors.
Source: Moore, Simon C. Confectionery consumption in childhood and adult violence. British Journal of Psychiatry (2009) 195: 366-367.


IJHC – WHR Observations

This is just in case you need further reasons to encourage children to have healthy diets!

* *  COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES  * * 

Largest chiropractic report ever shows AK treatment successful for 157 children with developmental delay syndromes (dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADD, ADHD, and learning disabilities)

OBJECTIVE: This study presents a case series of 157 children with developmental delay syndromes, including the conditions such as dyspraxia, dyslexia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and learning disabilities who received chiropractic care.

CLINICAL FEATURES: A consecutive sample of 157 children aged 6 to 13 years (86 boys and 71 girls) with difficulties in reading, learning, social interaction, and school performance who met these inclusion criteria were included.

INTERVENTION AND OUTCOMES: Each patient received a multimodal chiropractic treatment protocol, applied kinesiology chiropractic technique. The outcome measures were a series of 8 standardized psychometric tests given to the children by a certified speech therapist pre- and posttreatment, which evaluate 20 separate areas of cognitive function, including patient- or parent-reported improvements in school performance, social interaction, and sporting activities. Individual and group data showed that at the end of treatment, the 157 children showed improvements in the 8 psychometric tests and 20 areas of cognitive function compared with their values before treatment. Their ability to concentrate, maintain focus and attention, and control impulsivity and their performance at home and school improved.

CONCLUSIONS: This report suggests that a multimodal chiropractic method that assesses and treats motor dysfunction reduced symptoms and enhanced the cognitive performance in this group of children.
Source: Cuthbert SC. Developmental delay syndromes: psychometric testing before and after chiropractic treatment of 157 children. J Manipulative Physiol Ther. 2009, 32(8), 660-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
19836603?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.
Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=1  .
Forwarded by Earl Cook


IJHC – WHR Observations

Conventional medicine often has little to offer children with developmental delays and similar problems. It is great to see a study confirming the efficacy of chiropractic in helping these children, whose Improvements will alter the entire course of their lives.

No deaths from vitamins or minerals - poison control statistics prove supplements' safety

There was not even one death caused by a vitamin or dietary mineral in 2007, according to the most recent statistics available from the U.S. National Poison Data System. The 132-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers published in the journal Clinical Toxicology shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin. (1)

Furthermore, there were zero deaths in 2007 from any dietary mineral supplement. This means there were no fatalities from calcium, chromium, zinc, colloidal silver, selenium, iron, or multimineral supplements. There was one death from chronic overdose of magnesium hydroxide, commonly known as the laxative/antacid milk of magnesia, and it was inappropriately listed in the "dietary supplement" reporting category. Nutritional supplements do not contain magnesium hydroxide.
Over half of the U.S. population takes daily nutritional supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet daily, that makes 154,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of over 56 billion doses annually. Since many persons take more than just one vitamin or mineral tablet, the numbers are considerably higher, and the safety of nutritional supplements is all the more remarkable.

61 poison centers provide coast-to-coast data for the U.S. National Poison Data System, which is then reviewed by 29 medical and clinical toxicologists. In 2007, NPDS reported 1,597 fatalities from drugs and other ingested materials. Not one death was due to a vitamin or dietary mineral supplement.

If nutritional supplements are allegedly so "dangerous," as the FDA and the news media so often claim, then where are the bodies?

Source: Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Heard SE; American Association of Poison Control Centers. 2007 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers' National Poison Data System (NPDS): 25th Annual Report. Clin Toxicol (Phila). 2008 Dec;46(10):927-1057. Full text article available for free download at http://www.aapcc.org/DNN/Portals/0/NPDS%20reports/2008%20AAPCC%20Annual%20Report.pdf Vitamins statistics are found in Table 22B, journal pages 1027-1028. Minerals are in the same table, page 1024.

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IJHC – WHR Observations

No wonder the drug companies and those under their influence want to restrict access to effective doses of vitamins and supplements! They have already succeeded through Codex legislation in the EU. Beware of similar attempts in the US, Canada and elsewhere.

More CAM reviews at
http://www.naturalhealthvillage.com/
www.mdlinx.com/FamilyMDLinx 
 www.ucalgary.ca/~camig/litsearch.html
AMSA website
www.amsa.org/humed/camresources/camnews.cfm

* *  TECHNOLOGY  * *

Nanotechnology enables more rapid lab tests

Combining microrheological techniques and using optical tweezers with lab-on-a-chip technology, has made it possible to produce sensitive sensors for measuring the changes that occur when molecules interact with each other.

Source: Yao, Alison et al. Microrheology with optical tweezer, Lab Chip, 2009, 9, 2568
 http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/LC/article.asp?doi=b907992k


IJHC – WHR Observations

This is a sensitive biochemical system that may also be suitable for studies of effects of spiritual healing.

* *  ENVIRONMENT (HEALING OUR PLANET)  * *

The seriousness of global heating

A frightening new climate change study says the United States must eliminate its enormous rate of carbon emission within ten years.

The international climate talks in Copenhagen in December 2009

They say that everyone who finally gets it about climate change has an "Oh, shit" moment -- an instant when the full scientific implications become clear and they suddenly realize what a horrifically dangerous situation humanity has created for itself… Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chair of an advisory council known by its German acronym, WBGU, is a physicist whose specialty, fittingly enough, is chaos theory. His study, Solving the Climate Dilemma: The Budget Approach, has now been published here. If its conclusions are correct -- and Schellnhuber ranks among the world's half-dozen most eminent climate scientists -- it has monumental implications for the pivotal meeting in December in Copenhagen.

Schellnhuber and his WBGU colleagues go a giant step beyond the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body whose scientific reports are constrained because the world's governments must approve their contents. The IPCC says that by 2020 rich industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent (compared with 1990) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020 -- in other words, quit carbon entirely within ten years. Germany and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the world as a whole must be carbon free by 2050. The study adds that big polluters can delay their day of reckoning by "buying" emissions rights from developing countries, a step the study estimates would extend some countries' deadlines by a decade or so.

There is a fundamental political assumption underlying the WBGU study: that the right to emit greenhouse gases is shared equally by all people on earth. Known in diplomatic circles as "the per capita principle," this approach has long been insisted upon by China and most other developing countries and thus is seen as essential to an agreement in Copenhagen, though among G-8 leaders only Merkel has endorsed it. The WBGU study applies the per capita principle to the world population of 7 billion people and arrives at an annual emissions quota of 2.8 tons of carbon dioxide per person. That's harsh news for Americans, who emit twenty tons per person annually, and it explains why the US deadline is the most imminent. But China won't welcome this study either. China's combination of high annual emissions and huge population gives it a deadline only a few years later than Europe's and Japan's.

"I myself was terrified when I saw these numbers," Schellnhuber told me. He urges governments to agree in Copenhagen to launch "a Green Apollo Project." Like John Kennedy's pledge to land a man on the moon in ten years, a global Green Apollo Project would aim to put leading economies on a trajectory of zero carbon emissions within ten years. Combined with carbon trading with low-emissions countries, Schellnhuber says, such a "wartime mobilization" might still save us from the worst impacts of climate change. The alternative is more and more "Oh, shit" moments for all of us.

See more stories tagged with: global warming, climate change

Mark Hertsgaard, a fellow of The Open Society Institute, is The Nation magazine's environment correspondent. His new book, Living Through the Storm: How Our Children Can Survive the Next 50 Years of Climate Change, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin.


IJHC – WHR Observations

We must give top priority to dealing with global heating.

YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE BY WRITING TO YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES IN GOVERNMENT. IF ENOUGH OF US DO THIS, WE CAN ELECT PEOPLE WHO WILL RESPOND TO US RATHER THAN TO THE CORPORATIONS WHOSE BOTTOM LINE IS THEIR PROFITS, RATHER THAN THE SURVIVAL OF LIFE ON OUR PLANET.

* *  HUMAN ECOLOGY  * * 

These are the 2009 ‘Alternative Nobel Prizes’ for humanitarian and planetary healing work.

PRESS RELEASE 13 OCTOBER 2009 30th Right Livelihood Awards: Wake-up calls to secure our common future

The 2009 Right Livelihood Awards go to four recipients:
The Honorary Award goes to DAVID SUZUKI (Canada) "for his lifetime advocacy of the socially responsible use of science, and for his massive contribution to raising awareness about the perils of climate change and building public support for policies to address it".

Three recipients receive cash awards of EUR 50,000 each:

RENÉ NGONGO (Democratic Republic of Congo) is honoured "for his courage in confronting the forces that are destroying the Congo's rainforests and building political support for their conservation and sustainable use".

ALYN WARE (New Zealand) is recognised "for his effective and creative advocacy and initiatives over two decades to further peace education and to rid the world of nuclear weapons".

CATHERINE HAMLIN (Ethiopia) is awarded "for her fifty years dedicated to treating obstetric fistula patients, thereby restoring the health, hope and dignity of thousands of Africa's poorest women".

Quote The Right Livelihood Award Jury gave the following motivation for its choice of Laureates:  "Despite the scientific warnings about the imminent threat and disastrous impacts of climate change and despite our knowledge about solutions, the global response to this crisis is still painfully slow and largely inadequate. At the same time, the threat from nuclear weapons has by no means diminished, and the treatable diseases of poverty shame our common humanity. The 2009 Right Livelihood Award Recipients demonstrate concretely what has to be done in order to tackle climate change, rid the world of nuclear weapons, and provide crucial medical treatment to the poor and marginalised."

Background Founded in 1980 the Right Livelihood Awards are presented annually in the Swedish Parliament and are often referred to as 'Alternative Nobel Prizes'. They were introduced "to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today".

Jakob von Uexkull, a Swedish-German professional philatelist, sold his business to provide the original funding. Since then, the Award has been supported by individual donors.

82 candidates from 46 countries were proposed for the Right Livelihood Awards this year, whereof 36 come from industrialized and 46 from "developing" countries.
30th Anniversary Conference next year
On the invitation of the City of Bonn and thanks to the support by Bonn-based foundations, The Right Livelihood Award Foundation will hold its 30th Anniversary Conference in Bonn, Germany, from September 14-19th, 2010.

Further information, http://www.rightlivelihood.org/


IJHC – WHR Observations

Exceptional humanitarian achievements deserve as much recognition, if not more, than the advances in the conventional sciences.

Body reactions to reprimands in the workplace

People who feel betrayed or unrecognized at work -- for example, when they are reprimanded, given an assignment that seems unworthy, or told to take a pay cut -- experience it as a neural impulse, as powerful and painful as a physical blow. Most people learn to rationalize or temper their reactions, but they also limit their commitment and engagement. They become purely transactional employees, reluctant to give more of themselves to the company, because the social context stands in their way. Leaders who understand this dynamic can more effectively engage their employees' best talents, support collaborative teams, and create an environment that fosters productive change. Indeed, the ability to intentionally address the social brain in the service of optimal performance will be a distinguishing leadership capability in the years ahead. This in-depth Strategy + Business Magazine article explores further.
http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=3891


IJHC – WHR Observations

The body is a part of the mind, storing memories of thoughts, experiences and feelings. It is good to see a growing recognition of the potential contributions of decency in the workplace to healthcare.