I love it when the Wall Street Journal covers CAM–especially when they do it well! Read about the 4 herb combo cancer treatment known as PHY906 in Chinese Medicine Goes Under the Microscope by Shirley S. Wang.
Related alternahealthgrrrl stories:
Hooray for Holistic Healthcare!
Natural Cholesterol Helpers: Safe Alternatives to Statin Drugs
New research reveals the reasons that massage after exercise feels so heavenly. Bodywork reduces cellular inflammation and promotes mitochondria growth in muscles, finds scientists from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
The researchers found that massage reduced the activity of inflammation-inducing proteins called cytokines in muscle cells and …MORE
Does CAM=crazy? Some think so. Since I gave this blog a tagline about holistic health, I’ve discovered negative connotations connected to terms like holistic medicine or complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Some people equate them with the experimental, fringe, risky—even unscientific and absurd. Others act as if its all just code for rejection of modern medicine, belief in alien abductions or good old witchcraft.
So sad! I use them as synonyms for integrative or patient-driven medicine, preventative health or wellness or comprehensive healthcare. Maybe even ‘the best of both worlds.” In fact, the NIH says integrative medicine “combines mainstream medical therapies and CAM therapies for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness” but it’s still got a reputation for being, well, wacky.
The misconception is prevalent. Even Dr Weil–who defines integrative medicine as “medicine that takes account of the whole person including all aspects of lifestyle. It emphasizes the therapeutic relationship and makes use of all appropriate therapies, both conventional and alternative”–has to deal with the mix up. His renown website dedicates a few columns to explaining the difference between integrative or holistic medicine and alternative medicine: Any therapy that is typically excluded by conventional medicine, and that patients use instead of conventional medicine, is known as “alternative medicine.” It’s a catch-all term…An alternative medicine practice that is used in conjunction with a conventional one is known as a “complementary” medicine. Example: using ginger syrup to prevent nausea during chemotherapy. Together, complementary and alternative medicines are often referred to by the acronym CAM…integrative medicine “cherry picks” the very best, scientifically validated therapies from both conventional and CAM systems.
So there you have it. I’ve tweaked my tagline to include patient empowerment, because this blog is about integrative medicine and the importance of understanding all the wellness strategies and treatment options “out there”.
No anal probes required.
Don’t miss HuffPo’s Healthy Living channel’s round up of the year in integrative medicine. They call these events “breakthroughs” but since so much of complementary and alternative medicine news is about evidence and acceptance (if not use) I think words like moments, turning points, or happenings are more apt. Regardless, great stuff, including Dean Ornish’s appointment (you read it here–Dr Vegan Goes to Washington). Read more>> 11 Integrative Medicine Breakthroughs of 2011
December 28th add on:
John Weeks follows up with a good post about the year in integrative medicine policy and action.
Playing in a soccer league can boost more than just physical fitness, says new British research. It can boost mental health, too.
A small study presented at the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology annual meeting found that playing amateur football can help even those with serious mental health problems. Four years after researchers from Staffordshire and Aston Universities set up a soccer league for men with mental health problems, they evaluated the health of the players. Results showed overall improvements to mental health, including an improved ability to deal with psychological problems such as depression. They also reported increased confidence and even improvements in their social lives.
Previous research from the University of Copenhagen showed that soccer was a mood booster good for overall health, boosting feelings of belonging and reducing anxiety and worry.
To find an adult recreational soccer league near you, check out your local parks and recreation department or Active.com
If you haven’t seen the New York Times Health Guide’s “Picture Your Life After Cancer” lately, take a close look. Nearly 1100 powerful real-life stories and photographs from readers make up this multimedia project. Only a publication with such enormous reach could do this so well. (I know from experience, I worked on a similar, smaller yet strong and successful More Magazine breast cancer feature, “This Is What Survival Looks Like”) Bravo to the editors, producers and cancer survivor contributors!
News flash: Yoga and meditation are good for you! So says Prevention Mag in the December issue’s Integrative Medicine Awards.
OK, it’s not as bad as the last lame story on women and sleep meds, but it’s seriously annoying. Prevention names the complementary and alternative medicine therapies, like meditation and yoga, that are “good.” Nice of you to notice, PRVTN editors! Feels like a scramble to catch up with the well established trend. And it’s just a weird way to package health service. On the plus side, I like the health insurance information and the love for Joan Gussow.
A real win? CAM modalities highlighted in every issue.
Mainstream medicine is opening up to integrative health, according to Huff Post Healthy Living. In case you missed it, Catherine Pearson wrote about the medical community’s (aka the medical industrial complex) growing acceptance of integrative medicine, and a cool new med school program at the University of Maryland. Read more.
Love this: The US Military is catching onto CAM. At a recent educational forum hosted by the Bravewell Collaborative, representatives from the U.S. military reported that complementary and alternative medicine is being incorporated into care. The Army Pain Management Task Force recently broadened their approach to pain management, which now includes acupuncture and massage.
In Arizona, the Air Force and National Guard has started a wellness program to encourage healthy lifestyles. The popular program includes mindfulness, mindful eating, integrative health coaching and resilience training– and it may even expand and be implemented Air Force-wide.
What’s behind your everyday actions? While it’s unclear how this finding figures into health behaviors, new research suggests that the idea of God can influence motivation. Believing in a higher power—whether or not you call yourself religious—may help you avoid temptation, according to research just published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, one of the APA’s publications. Yet the same belief may also discourage you from realizing personal goals. Psychologists say that the belief in an omniscient power may help prevent us from misbehaving. Still, a fatalistic view may hold us back from pursuing personal goals. The researchers write, “reminders of God can (a) hinder self-regulation, by reducing people’s active engagement in goal pursuit, but also (b) facilitate self-regulation, by increasing people’s temptation resistance.”
Especially interesting: the study looked at the non-religiously devout, so the results suggest that whether or not you call yourself religious, something is likely influencing your actions. The authors conclude, “From popular and classic works of fiction, to the news media, to everyday conversation, the social world is replete with mentions of God. The current findings suggest that this exposure may have broad societal consequences for fundamental psychological processes of self-regulation, which in turn underlie much of health, happiness, and human productivity.”
Pre-hab for cancer?
In the blogosphere, Joseph Nowinski, PhD calls for a rethinking of palliative care, a term used to describe care for symptoms and stress related to serious illness. The Huff Po blogger has argued that we’d be better off if cancer survivors were offered CAM therapies such as yoga and acupuncture along with rehab as part of comprehensive care, because many can relieve stress and pain. Here, he goes even further and suggests that regular stress reduction may help reduce the risk of developing cancer in the first place. Amen to that.
