Alternative Medicine Database

In a study funded by weight loss giant Medifast, participants were far more successful when they used the company's meal replacement program than they were by designing and preparing their own meals--even with the help of registered dietitians.

The study, which was funded by Medifast and designed and implemented by salaried employees of the weight loss company, divided more than 900 obese adults into 2 groups. One group adhered to the Medifast meal replacement plan and one group designed and prepared their own meals with the guidance of dietary experts. Participants in both groups aimed for a caloric intake of about 1000 calories per day.

But the program wasn't perfect. "Diet fatigue" was a problem for more than 40% of the Medifast users, resulting in them abandoning the program by the 10-month mark. The 43% dropout rate is slightly lower than that in programs like Atkins but slightly higher than programs like Weight Watchers.

Ultimately, though, 93% of folks who stayed with the program ultimately lost weight and reduced their body's levels of inflammation and oxidative stress--2 conditions linked to a number of diseases.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture say that antibiotics given to chickens and cows breaks down fairly quickly in soil but hangs around a bit longer in our nation's ponds, lakes and rivers.

Pharmaceutical antibiotics like oxytetracycline are widely used on beef and chicken farms and scientists have known for some time that at least some of those medicines pass through the digestive system of those animals with their "active" components intact. In other words, farm animals are pooping out "live" antibiotics that can then (at least potentially) contaminate our soils and drinking water supplies.

This isn't such a big deal on farms, where microbes in the soil break down the manure and the antibiotics in it pretty soon after the manure is deposited. But those microbes can't survive as well in lakes, streams and ponds--or in soils that are fully saturated with water. And that means that those pharmaceuticals, which are still "active", break down far more slowly.

The results of the USDA's study was published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Depression is more often missed in chronic pain sufferers than it is caught, says a new study.

The fact that chronic pain conditions and clinical depression often go hand-in-hand isn't a new one. But what is new is the increasing burden these patients are placing on the healthcare system. Because their depression may never be appropriately addressed, these folks tend to be highly dissatisfied with the care they receive and tend to see doctor after doctor in an attempt to simply feel normal.

How common is it for a physician to miss depression in a patient being treated for chronic pain? This study, which was published in the journal BMC Family Practice, finds that depression is missed at least 50% of the time.

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration, or FDA, is urging consumers to avoid ear candles. In a Consumer Update issued just today, a spokesperson says that the devices "have caused great concern" in the agency.

Ear candles are made by repeatedly dipping long strips of fabric--usually linen--in beeswax then rolling the strips of fabric into long, narrow cones before the wax sets. Manufacturers sometimes also add finely ground herbs or essential oils to the melted beeswax.

To use an ear candle is a 2-person job. The "patient" lies down and allows the "practitioner" to place the small end of the long cone into the ear canal. The large end is then lit on fire and allowed to burn down to within a few inches of the patient's ear.

Practitioners claim that these devices create a gentle vacuum that softens and extracts excess ear wax, trapped pollutants and various toxins. And, indeed, when the stubs of these ear "candles" are cut opened, users often see a dark-colored mass of crumbled-looking gunk stuck to the walls of the cone.

Common sense, however, will tell you that these things can't possibly work this way. There's no scientific evidence that the heat created by the flame forms any kind a "vacuum" inside the ear and even if it did, any force strong enough the "pull" out earwax would damage the delicate ear drum.

So what about the stuff found in the stubs of burned ear candles? It's nothing more than melted beeswax and ashes from the linen.

You may remember that a few weeks ago we reported on a study that failed to show tea reduced liver fibroids. Now a new study looking at uterine fibroids has produced much better results. This very small animal study looked at the effect of green extract on the growth of uterine fibroids in laboratory rats.

The rats were "implanted" with fibroid cells then separated into 2 groups. Half the animals were given plain water to drink and the other half were given water with EGCG, or epigallocatechin gallate, added to it. EGCG belongs to a group of phytochemicals known as catechins. In the body EGCG acts as a powerful antioxidant that has been linked to lower risks for dementia, heart disease and some forms of cancer. There is even some evidence that it may help reduce the viral load in HIV and AIDS patients.

And the same mechanism that seems to work for those conditions may also help this extract of green tea to slow or even kill the cells that cause fibroids in the uterus. The inhibitory effect could be seen in as little as 24 hours after the onset of "treatment" with the green tea extract and by the time the animals were sacrificed and examined fully, there was even evidence that the EGCG had begun to shrink the fibroids in some of the animals.

In humans, fiborids are usually non-malignant but they can cause pain, heavy menstrual bleeding and--in some cases, even infertility. In extreme cases a hysterectomy is necessary.

A new study links soft drinks to pancreatic cancer, say authors writing in the medical journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

Pancreatic cancer is a fairly rare but deadly form of cancer. While fewer than 43,000 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in any given year, the 5-year survival rate is in the single digits. While obesity and smoking have been implicated, several large studies have failed to prove any single lifestyle issue is definite risk factor for the disease.

If the scientists behind this study are correct, they may have uncovered the first good link between dietary choices and pancreatic cancer. What they did was look at medical data on 60,000 Chinese adults living in Singapore--where soft drinks and other "sugary" drinks are consumed regularly. The data they collected spanned 14 years and researchers had to estimate the number of soft drinks the participants might have consumed.

What they think they've discovered, though, is a link. Adults who drank 2 sodas per week (or more) had an 87% greater chance of developing cancerous tumors of the pancreas than adults who never drank those beverages. Surprisingly, other "sugary" drinks--like fruit juices--didn't seem to increase the risk of pancreatic cancer at all.

The researchers behind this study can't explain how soda works to encourage cancer of the pancreas. Their best guess is that the extra sugar increases insulin in the body and this high level of insulin--which is a hormone, after all--somehow encourages the development of tumors.

This doesn't explain, however, why soft drinks are linked to increased risk and other high-sugar foods are not.

A study published yesterday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology says that herb use among the elderly is positively rampant and, well, those old geezers are just too stupid to tell their doctors about it.

OK, maybe that's an exaggeration but this new study has angered many in the "herbal" community for what many of us considered a very biased look at herbal supplements that have been used safely and effectively for millenia.

Take for example this line--pulled straight from the actual study: "Despite the paucity of scientific evidence supporting the safety or efficacy of herbal products, their widespread promotion in the popular media and the unsubstantiated health care claims about their efficacy drive consumer demand."

Does that sound like a study intended to look at the potential hazards of mixing herbs with heart medications to you? Or does that sound like a biased researcher using a study--and the subsequent media attention--to undermine the public image of "natural" products?

A new study funded by the National Institutes of Health finds that arthritis specialists not only believe in the efficacy of alternative medicine; in most cases, they would recommend it to their own patients.

Researchers sent surveys to 600 arthritis specialists and asked them their opinions of 6 classes of alternative medicine--chiropractic, body work, meditation, acupuncture, supplements and energy medicine. The experts were asked to "grade" each form of alternative medicine in respect to their own perceptions of effectiveness and then to estimate how likely they would be to recommend a particular type of therapy to their own patients.

Out of the 600 specialists invited to participate, more than half--345--actually sent their completed surveys back in. And the results show a surprising acceptance of alternative medicine, especially when the therapies have proven track records.

For example, while energy medicines scored extremely low, massage therapy did extremely well. Only 10% of the specialists surveyed would even hesitantly recommend Reiki but 65% of them said they would be at least "somewhat likely" to recommend massage. Almost that many would recommend meditation practices like yoga or nutritional supplements containing glucosamine and chondroitin.

One interesting--but not surprising--finding in this survey is that arthritis specialists born outside the U.S. were more likely to embrace alternative medicine than those born and educated here. Women, who represented fewer than a quarter of the respondents, were also more likely than men to jump on the alternative bandwagon.