THERE'S AN OPTION FOR PEOPLE WITH COLITIS
Colitis is a very painful condition. There's now a natural method you can use to stop the pain.
It's called curcumin which is the active ingredient in the spice turmeric.
It may help reduce and prevent colon inflammation. You can now purchase it in supplement form.
A study reported in the Journal of Pain found that having a daily spiritual ritual or experience can help people with chronic pain feel better.
They had 35 people with rheumatoid arthritis keep daily diaries that rated their religious coping strategies, pain levels, mood and social support. People who had less pain had religious and coping strategies that worked for them personally.
Using Your Mind To Relieve Arthritis Pain
Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine have been busy. They also researched the impact of a meditation technique called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on chronic arthritis.
The researchers found that people with rheumatoid arthritis who practiced MBSR for 6 months were 35% less distressed than those who didn’t use this method – even though their physical disease progressed at the same rates as the control group.
Other studies have shown that MBSR works to reduce pain by constantly refocusing the mind on the present moment. To learn how to do MBSR read Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
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)
Since I’m talking about arthritis, there was a study reported in Rheumatology (March 24, 2008) about the impact of taking cod liver oil once a day for relief of arthritis pain.
The researchers gave patients either 10 g of cod liver oil or a placebo daily.
After 12 weeks they found that 39% of the patients on the cod liver oil were able to reduce the need for drugs versus 10% for the placebo group.
So… to better control your rheumatoid arthritis use your mind and use cod liver oil.
Look for the new easy to swallow flavors: Now available in Orange and other easy flavors!
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Two forms of oxygen therapy may help manage two types of debilitating headache pain, a new research review suggests.
In a review of nine small clinical trials, the researchers found that hyperbaric oxygen therapy showed promise for halting pain during migraine attacks. A similar treatment -- normobaric, or normal-pressure, oxygen therapy -- eased pain in people suffering from cluster headaches.
The findings are published in the Cochrane Library, a publication of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research.
Both migraines and cluster headaches can be debilitating. Migraines typically cause throbbing pain in one area of the head, often accompanied by nausea, vomiting or sensitivity to light and sound.
Cluster headaches cause sharp pain on one side of the head, including the eye; that lasts anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours and come in waves -- repeated attacks over a few weeks to months, followed by a period of no symptoms.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy involves breathing pure oxygen in a sealed, pressurized chamber. With normobaric oxygen therapy, patients breathe pure oxygen from a portable unit under normal conditions.
Normal-pressure oxygen has long been used for severe headache pain, and there is some evidence that hyperbaric oxygen could be helpful, but few controlled clinical trials have evaluated the therapies.
For the current study, researchers were able to find nine clinical trials performed between 1981 and 2004 involving a total of 201 patients. When they combined data from three, they found that hyperbaric oxygen therapy was six times more likely to relieve migraine pain than a "sham" (placebo) therapy used for comparison.
Similarly, one study showed that normal-pressure oxygen outperformed sham therapy in easing cluster headache pain. Another trial found the therapy to be effective, but not better than the medication ergotamine.
None of the two forms of oxygen therapy prevented future headache attacks, however, lead researcher Dr. Michael H. Bennett, of Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick, Australia, told Reuters Health.
He said that based on the evidence, people with cluster headaches who are not finding quick or complete relief from their medication could ask their doctor about normobaric oxygen therapy.
Hyperbaric oxygen could be an option for stubborn migraine pain, according to Bennett, but it may not be all that practical.
"Unfortunately, this treatment will be relatively expensive and may not be covered by medical insurance or provided by local medical services," he said. "It is likely that hyperbaric oxygen will only be used in the very worst cases where relief is not obtained by any alternative method."
Exactly why oxygen therapy works is not entirely clear. Bennett noted that migraines involve blood vessel dilation in the head, and hyperbaric oxygen causes vessels to constrict, which may help explain the pain reduction. There is also evidence that hyperbaric oxygen blocks the "chemical pathways" that lead people to feel migraine pain, he explained.
As for cluster headaches, they are associated with altered activity in certain brain areas. "In general," Bennett explained, "oxygen seems to return the activity of these areas to normal, and may be directly responsible for the effect of oxygen on the headache."
SOURCE: Cochrane Library, online July 16, 2008.
Article courtesy of Amy Norton
American Crystal, a Wyoming-based sugar company, has announced, along with several other leading US sugar providers, that they will be releasing sugar from genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets to stores in 2008.
Like other GE products, the GE sugar will not be labeled at all. Since half of the granulated sugar in the US comes from sugar beets, this means another source of GE ingredients is being unknowingly inserted into our food products.
By the way, the European Union has not approved GE beets for human consumption. Isn’t it better for us to play it safe than to allow our food supply potentially to be contaminated by GE beets?
For more on the roles of genetics, see my posts here:
http://natural-health-alternative.blogspot.com/search/label/Genetics%20Roles-Research
