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Is sunlight good for our heart?

By John Wiens DC|February 18, 2013|Research|

Humans evolved being exposed for about half of the day to the light of the sun. Nowadays, exposure to sunlight is actively discouraged for fear of skin cancer, and contemporary lifestyles are associated with long hours spent under artificial light indoors. Besides an increasing appreciation for the adverse effects of these life-style-related behavioural changes on our chronobiology, the balance between the beneficial and harmful effects of sunlight on human health is the subject of considerable debate, in both the scientific and popular press, and the latter is of major public health significance. While there is incontrovertible evidence that ultraviolet radiation (UVR) in the form of sunlight is a significant predisposing factor for non-melanoma and melanoma skin cancers in pale skinned people, a growing body of data suggest general health benefits brought about by sunlight.

The researchers propose that many of the beneficial effects of sunlight, particularly those related to cardiovascular health, are mediated by mechanisms that are independent of melatonin, vitamin D, and exposure to UVB alone. Specifically, they suggest that the skin is a significant store of nitric oxide (NO)-related species that can be mobilized by sunlight and delivered to the systemic circulation to exert coronary vasodilator and cardioprotective as well as antihypertensive effects. They further hypothesize that this dermal NO reservoir is a product of local production and dietary supply with nitrate-rich foods.

The full article (pdf) is available on the European Heart Journal website.

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Posturing for Wellness: Good Health Begins with Good Posture

By Frank M. Painter|February 13, 2013|Backpacks, Chiropractic Care, Posture|

Posturing for Wellness: Good Health Begins with Good Posture

The Chiro.Org Blog

SOURCE: The ACA

Doctors of chiropractic have long emphasized the importance of posture and other lifestyle factors in the body’s ability to function optimally. In a broad sense, good posture can be considered an ongoing battle against bad habits. “The body endures hundreds of insults each day,” says Scott W. Donkin, DC, DACBOH, “but we have the choice of controlling how they affect us. Once destructive habits are identified, people can change, prevent, and relieve both present and future physical problems. The quality of our later years can be enhanced and many physical problems prevented if we understand and deal early on with the underlying issues.” Dr. Donkin is the author of Sitting on the Job. [1]

Lifetime Regimen

What most people don’t know is that the following should be a lifetime regimen-for everyone-and not just when the back hurts. ACA Council on Chiropractic Orthopedics vice president Gary L. Carver, DC, DABCO, says that when they first get up in the morning, “People should use their hands and arms for support to get into a seated position. Next, they should swing their legs to the floor and stand up-using the hinge of the hips, rather than the back.”

But once the body is upright, is it up right? In other words, are the muscles, joints, and skeleton in a balanced posture? Too often, the answer is “no.” “As long as our body is performing, we take it for granted. We don’t concentrate on what we need to do to maintain good posture habits,” says Leo Bronston, DC, DABCO, DACAN, CCSP, and secretary of the ACA Council on Chiropractic Orthopedics. “Generally, we tend to hunch forward when we should be rolling our shoulders back and opening up the chest wall. That is something we need to practice-activating the proper postural muscles. We see many patients who simply don’t know how to achieve a more balanced trunk and neutral spine. Just as we learned to eat with a fork and that became automatic, we can train our muscles for good posture and balance, whether we’re standing, rising from a seated position, or getting out of bed.”

There are many more articles like this in our:

Backpacks and Children Page

(more…)

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There Will Never Be Enough Research To Satisfy Our Critics

By Frank M. Painter|January 24, 2013|Chiropractic Care, Evidence-based Medicine, Health Care Reform, Patient Satisfaction, Spinal Manipulation|

There Will Never Be Enough Research To Satisfy Our Critics

The Chiro.Org Blog

A Chiro.Org Editorial

For some, there will never be enough research to support the use of chiropractic. These people will forever hide behind the claim that they wish to protect patients from quackish practices.

For those who may have forgotten, or for those who never knew, organized medicine spent decades and tens of millions of dollars trying to discredit and destroy chiropractic. Today, the vestiges of that oppression is still found on fringe web sites that ignore the body of peer-reviewed research supporting chiropractic care.

The Wilk anti-trust case against the AMA and 20 other named medical groups revealed that the AMA Plan was to:

Undermine Chiropractic schools
Undercut insurance programs for Chiropractic patients
Conceal evidence of the effectiveness of Chiropractic care
Subvert government inquires into the effectiveness of Chiropractic, and
Promote other activities that would control the monopoly that the AMA had on health care
They even threatened their own ranks: any MD who taught in our schools, performed research with chiropractors, or accepted a referral from, or made a referral to a chiropractor, would lose their hospital privileges, leaving them unable to treat patients.

while, all along, they knew that:<

There also was some evidence before the Committee that chiropractic was effective – more effective than the medical profession in treating certain kinds of problems such as workmen’s back injuries.

The Committee on Quackery was also aware that some medical physicians believed chiropractic to be effective and that chiropractors were better trained to deal with musculoskeletal problems than most medical physicians.
(Opinion pp. 7)

(more…)

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Medical Students Take the Complementary, Alternative and Integrative Medicine Attitudes Questionnaire (CAIMAQ)

By Frank M. Painter|January 24, 2013|Evidence-based Medicine, Outcome Assessment|

Medical Students Take the Complementary, Alternative and Integrative Medicine Attitudes Questionnaire (CAIMAQ)

The Chiro.Org Blog

SOURCE: Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (eCAM) 2011 (Apr 14)

Center for East-West Medicine,
Department of Medicine,
David Geffen School of Medicine,
University of California,
Los Angeles, CA, USA

While the use of complementary, alternative and integrative medicine (CAIM) is substantial, it continues to exist at the periphery of allopathic medicine. Understanding the attitudes of medical students toward CAIM will be useful in understanding future integration of CAIM and allopathic medicine. This study was conducted to develop and evaluate an instrument and assess medical students’ attitudes toward CAIM. The Complementary, Alternative and Integrative Medicine Attitudes Questionnaire (CAIMAQ) was developed by a panel of experts in CAIM, allopathic medicine, medical education and survey development. A total of 1770 CAIMAQ surveys (51% of US medical schools participated) were obtained in a national sample of medical students in 2007.

Factor analysis of the CAIMAQ revealed five distinct attitudinal domains:

desirability of CAIM therapies,
progressive patient/physician health care roles,
mind-body-spirit connection,
principles of allostasis and
a holistic understanding of disease.

The students held the most positive attitude for the “mind-body-spirit connection” and the least positive for the “desirability of CAIM therapies”. This study provided initial support for the reliability of the CAIMAQ. The survey results indicated that in general students responded more positively to the principles of CAIM than to CAIM treatment. A higher quality of CAIM-related medical education and expanded research into CAIM therapies would facilitate appropriate integration of CAIM into medical curricula. The most significant limitation of this study is a low response rate, and further work is required to assess more representative populations in order to determine whether the relationships found in this study are generalizable. (more…)

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Cochrane systematic review has demonstrated that antioxidant supplements may increase mortality

By John Wiens DC|January 13, 2013|Nutrition|

Source Cochrane Summaries

Antioxidant supplements for prevention of mortality in healthy participants and patients with various diseases

Bjelakovic G, Nikolova D, Gluud LL, Simonetti RG, Gluud C

Previous research on animal and physiological models suggests that antioxidant supplements have beneficial effects that may prolong life. Some observational studies also suggest that antioxidant supplements may prolong life, whereas other observational studies demonstrate neutral or harmful effects. Our Cochrane review from 2008 demonstrated that antioxidant supplements seem to increase mortality. This review is now updated.

The present systematic review included 78 randomised clinical trials. In total, 296,707 participants were randomised to antioxidant supplements (beta-carotene, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, and selenium) versus placebo or no intervention. Twenty-six trials included 215,900 healthy participants. Fifty-two trials included 80,807 participants with various diseases in a stable phase (including gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, neurological, ocular, dermatological, rheumatoid, renal, endocrinological, or unspecified diseases). A total of 21,484 of 183,749 participants (11.7%) randomised to antioxidant supplements and 11,479 of 112,958 participants (10.2%) randomised to placebo or no intervention died. The trials appeared to have enough statistical similarity that they could be combined. When all of the trials were combined, antioxidants may or may not have increased mortality depending on which statistical combination method was employed; the analysis that is typically used when similarity is present demonstrated that antioxidant use did slightly increase mortality (that is, the patients consuming the antioxidants were 1.03 times as likely to die as were the controls). When analyses were done to identify factors that were associated with this finding, the two factors identified were better methodology to prevent bias from being a factor in the trial (trials with ‘low risk of bias’) and the use of vitamin A. In fact, when the trials with low risks of bias were considered separately, the increased mortality was even more pronounced (1.04 times as likely to die as were the controls). The potential damage from vitamin A disappeared when only the low risks of bias trials were considered. The increased risk of mortality was associated with beta-carotene and possibly vitamin E and vitamin A, but was not associated with the use of vitamin C or selenium. The current evidence does not support the use of antioxidant supplements in the general population or in patients with various diseases.

Authors’ conclusions:

We found no evidence to support antioxidant supplements for primary or secondary prevention. Beta-carotene and vitamin E seem to increase mortality, and so may higher doses of vitamin A. Antioxidant supplements need to be considered as medicinal products and should undergo sufficient evaluation before marketing.

Abstract included here.

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