NJ Advance Media recently asked Jun Mao, MD, Chief of Integrative Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK), to elaborate on a study he led to evaluate whether this type of acupuncture helps women suffering from hot flashes and sleep problems due to breast cancer treatment.
Photo by Shutterstock 358910648. Image of a group of acupuncture needles on a white background sourced from Shutterstock. Available here.
One of the most uncomfortable challenges for practitioners new to hospice massage can be the initial entering into the hospice client’s room or stepping up to a hospice client’s wheelchair.
The incidence of adhesions following abdominal surgery is cumulative with multiple surgeries and female gynecological surgeries give a particularly high rate of adhesions. In one study, autopsy investigations indicated a 90% incidence of adhesions in patients with multiple surgeries, 70% incidence of adhesions in patients with a gynecologic surgery, a 50% incidence of adhesions with appendectomy, and a greater than 20% incidence of adhesions in patients with no surgical history. Adhesions may occur as the result of tissue damage to the abdomen besides surgery, including traumatic injury, inflammatory disease, intraperitoneal chemotherapy, and radiation therapy (1).
By English: Cpl. Katherine M. Solano [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Rooted in Five Element Theory, the practice of clearing energetic blocks before initiating treatment is at the core of my facial acupuncture classes. A block is defined as, "A break in, or impediment to, the smooth flow of Qi."1 Blocks can prevent treatments from being effective or holding. They must be cleared in order for healing to take place. Behind any facial acupuncture treatment, whether it is for cosmetic or functional (neuromuscular) purposes, is the principle of directing energy up to the face.
Photo by Shutterstock 246115861. Image of an esthetician applying a beauty mask to a female face sourced from Shutterstock. Available here.
After a corpse flower opened at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) last summer, drawing 30,000 visitors in the course of its brief and pungent bloom, it received the posthumous honor of becoming the three millionth specimen digitized from the Bronx institution’s herbarium. While NYBG is among New York City’s great green wonders, it’s also home to the world’s second-largest herbarium, created just after the garden was established in 1891. The William and Lynda Steere Herbarium now houses 7.8 million plant and fungal specimens, representing biodiversity from every continent. But what is a herbarium, you might ask, and why does it matter?
JMK at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons
Anglo-Saxon medicine relied primarily on plant-based remedies, from artichokes simmered in wine to cure smelly armpits to licorice root for soothing pains of the chest, liver, or bladder. Such natural treatments filled the pages of books known as “herbals.” The British Library owns the only extant illustrated Old English herbal, which is about 1,000 years old, and it recently digitized the entire manuscript and uploaded it online for public perusal.
Stanford University Libraries. (n.d.). [Manuscript: London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius C. III]. Stanford University Libraries. Available here.
The Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center is known throughout the world for its innovative and often revolutionary cancer treatments. What may be surprising is that members of the Mass General team are supplementing their biomedical cancer treatments with a therapy so ancient that it predates recorded history. The therapy? Acupuncture.
Photo by Shutterstock 281440808. Image of an acupuncturist pointing at BL17 on an acupuncture model sourced from Shutterstock. Available here.
This review summarizes the biological activities of YCHD and its medical applications. The main active compounds of YCHD are chlorogenic acid, rhein, geniposide, emodin, and scoparone. The pharmacological actions of YCHD include inhibition of hepatic steatosis, apoptosis, necrosis, anti-inflammation, and immune regulation. YCHD could be developed as a new therapeutic strategy for the treatment of hepatic diseases.
By Jpbrigand (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Essential oils are natural antimicrobials that have the potential to provide a safer alternative to synthetic antimicrobials currently used in the food industry. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of essential oils from white wormwood, rose-scented geranium and bay laurel against Salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli O157:H7 on fresh produce and to examine consumer acceptability of fresh produce treated with these essential oils.
Friedrich Haag [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
For more than a decade, Bill Cook has gotten a weekly massage. He isn’t a professional athlete. He didn’t receive a lifetime gift certificate to a spa. Nor is the procedure a mere indulgence, he says – it’s medicinal.
Photo by Shutterstock 291691319. Image of a close portrait of a young woman during a Reiki session sourced from Shutterstock. Available here.
Young dandelion leaves are a wonderful spring tonic as they offer lots of nutrition with a bit of bitter flavor. When your body detects bitterness, it helps stimulate lots of different stages of digestion, from increased saliva, which breaks down carbohydrates, to HCL in the stomach, to bile production and release, which helps to break down fats, to a variety of digestive enzymes. Many people are beginning to realize that the lack of bitter foods and drinks in our diet is an underlying cause for many of the rampant digestive issues we see today.
By UpstateNYer (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Researchers at the University of Oregon designed "The Mouse Meditation Project" to explore the connection between stress, brain activity, and meditation.
Image sourced from Fandom's Totally Real Situations wiki. Available here.
Further, postoperative pain scores and the incidence of side-effects were all lower in the transcutaneous electric acupoint stimulation group. In conclusion, transcutaneous electric acupoint stimulation can significantly improve the quality of recovery and decrease the incidence of anaesthesia-related side-effects for patients undergoing ambulatory surgery.
Unsplash. (n.d.). [Mujer en traje médico azul de pie junto a mujer en túnica blanca]. Unsplash. Available here.
Acupuncture relieves pain due to shingles, reduces the need for painkillers, speeds the healing of herpes zoster lesions, and reduces the incidence of postherpetic neuralgia (PHN). Tianjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine researchers combined acupuncture with standard drug therapy. Patients receiving both drug therapy and acupuncture in a combined treatment protocol had superior patient outcomes compared with patients using only drug therapy.
Image by Mariegriffiths at the English language Wikipedia. Licensed under GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
A study published Thursday in Health Psychology found that among people who fell ill after being exposed to a cold virus, those who were lonely were more likely to report severe runny nose, sneezing, sore throat and other symptoms. That adds to the evidence linking loneliness to more serious health problems including heart disease and early death.
Arief Rahman Saan (Ezagren) [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons
Loneliness is a well-established risk factor for poor physical health. Much less is known about
how loneliness affects patient-reported outcomes (PROs), such as somatic symptoms, which are increasingly important for guiding symptom management and assessing quality of patient care.
See page for author [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
This open-label, prospective, phase I/II trial was performed to establish the safety and efficacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) herbal products for treating non–anemia-related fatigue in patients with cancer.
Its full name, kway teow pad Thai, hints at its possible Chinese origins; kway teow, in Chinese, refers to rice noodles. It is likely that some early version of the dish came to Thailand with settlers crossing from southern China, who brought their own recipe for fried rice noodles...The cooked meats and vegetables in pad Thai resemble dishes prepared by the Cantonese and Tae Chiew (Chao Zhou in Mandarin) from China’s eastern Guangdong province. Nevertheless, the flavors and textures are pure Thai.
By Andy Mitchell from Glasgow, UK (Pad Thai with Prawn) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
When faced with the image of a sumotori (a sumo wrestler or rikishi),1 most food-minded people are likely to ask, “What do they eat to look like that?” I asked this question as a high-school exchange student in Japan a decade ago and have been exploring it ever since.
Tōshūsai Sharaku. Ukiyo-e print of the seven-year-old sumo wrestler Daidōzan Bungorō, 1794. Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Available here.
The earliest use of cupping that is recorded is from the famous Taoist alchemist and herbalist, Ge Hong (281–341 A.D.). The method was described in his book A Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies, in which the cups were actually animal horns, used for draining pustules. As a result of using horns, cupping has been known as jiaofa, or the horn technique. In a Tang Dynasty book, Necessities of a Frontier Official, cupping was prescribed for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis (or a similar disorder). More recently, Zhao Xuemin, during the Qing Dynasty, wrote Supplement to Outline of Materia Medica, including an entire chapter on “fire jar qi” (huoquan qi). In it, he emphasized the value of this treatment, using cups made of bamboo or pottery, in alleviating headache of wind-cold type, bi syndrome of wind origin, dizziness, and abdominal pain.
Image sourced from ITM Online. Available here.