THE POWER OF PACEBOS

The placebo effect occurs when a "sham" treatment causes someone to be healed.  The placebo effect has been known for years.  There is recent research that is exploring and validating its impact even further.

        Placebos have been studied in a number of ways:

        1 - Doctors in Texas did fake arthroscopic knee surgery on patients.  One group had only three little cuts made where the instruments would have been inserted.  Two years later, the sham surgery and real surgery patients both reported the same amount of relief from pain and swelling.

        2 - A baldness study found 86% of the men taking a drug either maintained or recovered the amount of hair on their heads.  42% of the placebos did, too!

        3 - In Japan, people had poison ivy rubbed on one arm and were told it was a harmless leaf.  On the other arm, they had a harmless leaf rubbed on it, but they were told it was poison ivy.  100% broke out with poison ivy on the side where the harmless leaf was actually rubbed.

        Scientists are looking at a concept called expectancy theory to explain the phenomenon.  What the brain believes about the immediate future, it will begin to react to, whether or not the future event is real or sham.
A study with monkeys showed that their brains would begin firing 20 to 30 seconds before they received a consistent reward for doing something.

        Another key element is the belief of the doctor or healing practitioner.  Studies have shown that when the doctor was positively enthusiastic, the placebo effect was much higher.

        Since placebos are 55% to 60% as effective as drugs, maybe we need to be more intensely exploring how to increase this to 100%.

Some Facts About Science Fraud

I found an article in Discover Magazine. It listed 20 things you didn’t know about science fraud from the past and the present. I want to share several with you.

1. Chinese scientists were three times more likely to commit fraud as compared to Americans while French scientists were the least likely to commit fraud.

2. Issac Newton fudged numbers in his Principia which is considered the greatest physics text ever written. Even Freud, Darwin and Pasteur seemed to have altered data.

3. In the 1980s, psychologist Stephen Breuning published results from fictitious trials of tranquilizers; his findings affected the clinical practice for treating mentally retarded children.

4. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Research Integrity estimates that there are 2,300 cases of misconduct among NIH-funded researchers every year.

So…can we really trust studies that are reported in the medical journals? The problem is we don’t know which studies are true and can be relied upon and which have been falsified.

Tamiflu for Influenza (flu) – Does It Really Work?

You’ve probably seen the ads for the most popular Influenza (flu) antiviral – Roche’s Tamiflu. It’s supposed to reduce the duration of flu by around 21 hours if taken in the first 36 to 48 hours of illness.

It is also believed to reduce the risk of pneumonia and other complications.

While Tamiflu generates around $3.5 billion a year in sales, is it really as good as the amount of sales would lead you to believe?

The answer appears to be we don’t know.

The Cochrane Collaboration, a highly regarded independent organization that analyses medical research, and the British medical BMJ have been attempting to obtain key studies that are supposed to validate these claims.

Roche has not turned over the research materials. BMJ reported that 8 out of 10 clinical studies that supposedly support Tamiflu’s efficacy have never been published and the other two studies, which were funded and authored by Roche, could not be relied on.

Now, the question is a simple one – without seeing all the research, how can we be sure that Tamiflu does what it says it does or is it just a profit center for Roche?

Reported Health & Healing, Vol. 23, No. 1

Here are 5 things that Forbe’s says you should know:
The Myth of Tamiflu

Bad Cholesterol May Be Losing Its Bad Image

As you probably know, docs want you to raise your good HDL cholesterol and lower your bad LDL cholesterol. This advice may not apply any more.

Scientists at Texas A&M University have found that LDL cholesterol is actually needed by the body to build new muscle. This finding is as important for children developing new muscle as it is for older folks who are losing muscle. LDL cholesterol also helps circulate Vitamin D around our body.

Now here’s the kicker, Dr. Harlan Krumholz of Yale’s Department of Cardiovascular Medicine found that old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attacks as did old people with high cholesterol.

In addition, a review of nineteen studies of more than 68,000 deaths by the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota found that low cholesterol predicted an increased risk of dying from gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases.

This means the prescriptions that are written for cholesterol lowering drugs may not be saving lives at all; instead they may be causing more deaths by lowered cholesterol.

As a matter of fact, the medical community recently lowered acceptable cholesterol levels to below 200 mg/dl. This reduction put many more people on cholesterol drugs.

To make matters worse, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute is now urging cholesterol screening for all children between the ages of 9 and 11. The American Academy of Pediatrics has endorsed this recommendation.

These are probably not great ideas! These results point to a big oops since a lot of modern medicine is focused on reducing bad cholesterol.

It’s your heart.

(Reported by the Alliance for Natural Health, November 29, 2011)

A Unique Way To Improve A Child’s Concentration And Reduce ADHD

A 2010 study published by the NPI Center (Natural and Nutritional Products Industry Center) worked with children with ADHD. The children were given krill oil for a period of 13 weeks.

The study compared EEG patterns and found that the children taking krill oil markedly improved their concentration by 60%.

A 2007 study found that adults taking krill oil reported a 50% improvement in planning skills and 49% improvement in social skills. The dose of krill oil was 500 mg per day.

The omega-3 fat in the krill oil improved the symptoms of

del.icio.us Tags: ADHD,krill oil,omega-3,mercola,ritalin,concerta

more effectively than drugs like Ritalin and Concerta.

A good source of krill oil is from Mercola.com.

Strep Throat May Cause Rheumatic Fever

If as a kid you had rheumatic fever, you need to be aware that an untreated strep throat can retrigger your rheumatic fever, which is an inflammatory disease that can affect the heart, joints and central nervous system.

There is a particular type of strep bacterium called group A bhs that is the one that can trigger an autoimmune response, causing the body to turn on itself. One of the proteins on the strep bacterium’s surface is called the M protein. The M protein structurally resembles certain heart proteins. The body’s natural defense response is to create antibodies to fight the strep and the M protein.

This leads to the body attacking some of the heart tissue and heart values. Damage to the values can lead to permanent and often serious rheumatic heart disease.

Since a lot of docs might never have seen rheumatic fever thanks to its near elimination, you might need to point out to your doc the connection if you’ve had rheumatic fever and you get a strep throat infection.

(Reported Discover May 2011)

Technorati Tags: strep thorat,rheumatic fever,untreated sore throat,strep bacterium,autoimmune response

To Scan Or Not To Scan – Your Body That Is!

Medical scanning using MRI, CT and PET imaging machines has grown into a $100 billion dollar a year business with 95 million scans done each year. Still, some big questions remain: Are they helpful and are they safe?

The answer revealed by recent research studies is that 20% to 50% of the procedures reviewed should never have been done because their results did not help diagnose ailments or treat patients.

Part of the problem is that older machines may create bad scans, which may lead to false or poor diagnostic data. According to Dr. Gary Glazer, the chairman of radiology at Stanford University, a scan done on a 10-year-old machine versus a new one will have significant differences in the quality of the image. Even a scan done on the latest equipment may not have been done correctly or correctly read by a qualified doctor.

In addition, the field is mostly unregulated. While imaging centers can choose to become accredited by the American College of Radiology, not many do. This will change in 2012 when a Medicare law goes into effect requiring accreditation.

Another concern is that a growing number of doctors are referring patients to imaging centers owned by the doctors themselves. Studies have found up to 3.2 times as many scans are ordered by those docs. So, is a scan being requested by the doc because it’s necessary or because it’s profitable?

The final issue is the amount of radiation that you are exposed to when a scan is done. A study of hospital patients showed that they had been exposed to 45 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation. Since the typical X-ray delivers .02 mSv, 12% of patients had been exposed to more that twice that amount.

With all these concerns, you need to ask your doc some questions before you agree to have a scan done, including how old the machine is and the qualifications of the scanner and the interpreter.

(Reported The Virginian Pilot, 2009, Article by Gina Kolata, New York Times News Service)

Sitting Up Straight Isn’t All That It’s “Cracked” Up To Be

Scottish researchers reported that sitting up straight is actually bad for your back (so much for all that nagging from your Mom to sit up straight). The researchers took MRI scans of 22 volunteers. They found that sitting upright at a 90-degree angle put enough pressure on the lower back to squeeze fluid from the disks that cushion the vertebrae.

So, what’s the best position? Slouching! Well, it’s slouching with a caveat: Your knees should to be three to four inches lower than your hips, and you need to recline slightly (instead of sitting at a 90-degree angle, lean back to a 135-degree angle) and voila, the pressure is off.

(As reported in Prevention Magazine)

Taking Multivitamins May Help You Live Longer

Research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that the cells of multivitamin users may have a younger blood cell age than the cells of non-users.

The researchers examined the length of women’s telomeres, which are located at the end of each cell. Each time the cell reproduces, the telomere shortens and when it’s totally gone, the cell dies.

The researchers analyzed the multivitamin use, nutrient intake and telomere length in 586 women. The daily multivitamin users’ telomeres were on average 5.1% longer. This result means that taking a multivitamin may be one of the easiest things you can do to increase your cells’ longevity.

Technorati Tags: jerry teplitz,clinical nutrition,multivitamins,nutrition research,telomeres

Attention Deficit Disorder Running Rampant

  A glance at the statistics around Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is quite disturbing.

Using diagnostic criteria analysis to determine the number of projected cases of ADHD, you get a figure of around 4% of school-age children potentially having ADHD.

Yet a study published a few years ago in the American Journal of Public Health found an ADHD rate of 63% in just one school district in southeastern Virginia when the data was analyzed. This would seem to indicate that the medical profession’s ability to accurately diagnose a child with ADHD is quite limited.

This misdiagnosis and mislabeling is resulting in way too many children being put on Ritalin, to the extent that one in five fifth grade Caucasian boys are taking Ritalin.

If your child is diagnosed with ADHD, one alternative to giving your child Ritalin is to use Brain Gym^® movement and exercises.  You may find them to be the way back to normalcy for your kid. To find a Brain Gym (BG) Consultant in your area, go to BrainGym.org. To explore some of the Brain Gym Books, you can see my recommendations here at: Brain Gym - Children.

Another thing that I have found effective is using Steven Halpern’s music CD Connections and his subliminal CD Accelerating Learning.

Over the years, I’ve recommended to a number of parents that they play Connections (or Comfort Zone) an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening in the child’s environment. The child doesn’t have to stop whatever they are doing to listen to it; the CD just has to be playing in the environment.

When the child needs to study, have the child play Halpern’s Accelerating Learning CD. I’ve had at least a half dozen parents who have followed this recommendation share with me that their child, who had behavior problems in school, was behaving normally in school within a week of following these recommendations.

If you’d like to experiment with the Halpern music with your child, you can take advantage of my 60-day money-back guarantee to prove to yourself that what I am saying is true. If not, you can simply return the CDs for a refund. Review Music CDs

LiveJournal Tags: Dr. Jerry Teplitz,ADHD,Ritalin,Subliminal Music,Steven Halpern,Brain Gyms,Brain Gym for Children

Alternative Therapies Gaining Ground In Hospitals

Alternative Therapies Gaining Ground In Hospitals:

LiveJournal Tags: Dr. Jerry Teplitz,American Hospital Association,alternative treatments,acupuncture,music therapy

The American Hospital Association reports that 37% of American hospitals are making complementary and alternative treatments available to their patients. The therapies include acupuncture, touch therapy, and music and art therapy. This percentage has grown from 2005, when it was offered by only 25% of hospitals.

The majority of hospitals are using patient satisfaction as the best way of determining whether an alterative treatment was beneficial. Next, the hospital looks at clinical data on its effectiveness. At the Cleveland Clinic, half of 1,700 patients undergoing heart surgery opted for alternatives and 93% of the patients found the services were helpful.

As an example, a nurse was having difficulty inserting an IV into a patient’s arm because of the patient’s anxiousness over her scheduled surgery. Instead of continuing to prod and poke the patient, the nurse called in a massage therapist and in 10 minutes the IV was in place.

So…if you have time to make a choice as to which hospital you go to, ask them if they offer alternative treatment programs. If they don’t, make sure to tell or write the head honcho as to why you’re not going to be using their facility. If enough folks did that, the 37% figure would grow quickly and dramatically and so would the benefits to the patients. (Reported in USA Today Online 9-14-08)

Danish Study Warnings Against Taking Vitamins C & E are Wrong...

Recent Warnings Against Taking Vitamin C & E Are Wrong

There were recent reports in the media about a study that found that taking Vitamins C and E caused a higher risk of death. In the Danish study researchers reported a 4 to 7 increase in death risk in those taking the vitamins.

According to Jeffrey Blumberg, Ph.D., director of the antioxidants research lab at Tufts University in Boston, the methodology was flawed since most of the people in the study were already very ill.

Blumberg also said that hundreds of studies have been conducted showing the safety of Vitamins C & E.

So…I’m still taking mine.
(Reported in AARP, July&August 2007)

Bookmark