via Tai Chi Boosts Efficacy of Antidepressant Therapy in Older Adults

Treatment Expectations and Preferences as Predicto… [Spine (Phila Pa 1976). 2010] – PubMed result

ScienceDaily (Aug. 11, 2009) — Acupuncture has been used in East-Asian medicine for thousands of years to treat pain, possibly by activating the body’s natural painkillers. But how it works at the cellular level is largely unknown.

Using brain imaging, a University of Michigan study provides novel evidence that traditional Chinese acupuncture affects the brain’s long-term ability to regulate pain.

Read the rest of this article here: Chinese Acupuncture Affects Brain’s Ability To Regulate Pain, UM Study Shows

via Pulse – Acupuncture improves exercise tolerance

“In traditional Chinese medicine, balance is the goal. The kidneys are your source of yin and yang. When you are in excellent health, the relaxed yin state is in balance with the adrenal yang state. When you experience an excess of yin or yang influences, the problem may be in the kidneys. Any chronic imbalance can eventually cause a deficiency in the kidneys. In traditional Chinese medicine, the kidneys are your most important organs. They regulate your internal qi (chi). If you are strong physically, and sound mentally and emotionally, you have abundant kidney qi.”

Read the rest of this article here: Kidneys and Adrenals In Traditional Chinese Medicine – EmpowHER.com

One of the most painful and crippling autoimmune diseases to affect the joints, osteoarthritis is a condition that affects the articular cartilage and the subchondral bones. Symptoms of this disease include joint pain, tenderness, stiffness, locking and at times, effusion. There can be many different causes of osteoarthritis, like hereditary, developmental, metabolic etc. The basic pathophysiology of this condition lies in the fact that there is progressive loss of cartilage due to which the bone may be exposed and eventually damaged. Osteoarthritis is the most common type of arthritis and is one of the leading causes of chronic disability in the United States, affecting nearly 27 million people. This is the reason why everyone is always trying to find natural pain relief for osteoarthritis, because as it is an autoimmune disease, there is no fixed cure for it. Rather than endlessly popping pain killers, it is better that people try out other measures to attain pain relief. Given below are a few natural measures to deal with osteoarthritis

Read the rest of this article here: Natural Pain Relief for Osteoarthritis

ScienceDaily (June 11, 2010) — In what could lead to a major advance in the treatment of prostate cancer, scientists now know exactly why polyphenols in red wine and green tea inhibit cancer growth. This new discovery, published online in The FASEB Journal, explains how antioxidants in red wine and green tea produce a combined effect to disrupt an important cell signaling pathway necessary for prostate cancer growth. This finding is important because it may lead to the development of drugs that could stop or slow cancer progression, or improve current treatments.

To read the rest of this article, click here:  Polyphenols in red wine and green tea halt prostate cancer growth, study suggests

Read the rest of this article at the Santa Monica Mirror

English.news.cn   2010-05-31 09:00:04

BEIJING, May 31 (Xinhuanet) — A study conducted by neuroscientists in the U.S. finds that acupuncture can ease pain by triggering a natural painkilling chemical called adenosine, according to the Nature Neuroscience Monday.

The ancient Chinese art, which involves sticking needles into the body's "pressure points," has been underestimated and doubted for a long time, media reports quoted the journal as saying.

Critics say that what the patients benefit from the process is all in the mind. The care, attention and the belief of the treatment result in "placebo effect" for them.

But Maiken Nedergaard, the leading neuroscientist of the research group, said his research revealed a physical mechanism through which acupuncture relieved pain.

The research group performed acupuncture on mice with sore paws. They mimicked a standard acupuncture treatment.

During and just after this operation, levels of adenosine in the tissues surrounding the needle surged 24-fold. The mouse's discomfort — measurable by the rodents' response time to touch and heat — was reduced by two-thirds.

Increasing levels of adenosine without acupuncture also had a soothing effect, the journal Nature Neuroscience reports.

via Acupuncture eases pain: Nature Neuroscience.