Archive for the ‘Complementary Alternative Integrative Medicine’ Category

For three days next week,, Yale Law School will pilot a program allowing its students to check out a “therapy dog” for up to 30 minutes at a time. A memo written by the law librarian, Blair Kaufman, to students noted that therapy dog visits have resulted in  “increased happiness, calmness and overall emotional well-being”.  The program is requesting the students’ feedback to determine whether this program should be a permanent and ongoing program.

A caring operation that’s run for donkeys’ years

DONKEYS have a special place in our history, carrying wounded soldiers in World War I and bearing miners’ tools underground in the gold rush.

But for all that laboring, the humble donkey has had little respect and undertstanding. Australian psychiatrist May Dodd may be the donkey’s best human friend.

Dr. Dodd  runs Victoria’s only donkey hospital and refuge, at her Diamond Creek property and in Tongala. In the days following the Black Saturday bushfires, Dr Dodd evacuated 91 donkeys, on cattle trucks, to safe ground near Echuca. She drove her donkey ambulance through police roadblocks into places such as Kinglake, Chum Creek and Dixons Creek, while the ground was still smouldering.The psychiatrist has cared for more than 300 donkeys in the past 13 years at her home on Ironbark Road, where she also runs her private medical practice full time. The last fire-affected donkey, Moomba, went back home to Humevale just a few months ago, still partially blind from burnt eyes.

Dr Dodd says donkeys and psychiatry may seem an odd match, but they complement each other.

”One is all about the mind and the other is mostly physical work, so it’s a great balance,” she says. ”I have this propensity to protect minority or marginalized groups. Mentally ill patients are often shunned and donkeys are also forgotten by society. But donkeys also have a calm tranquility about them which I, and my patients, enjoy.”

”Donkeys are more dog-like than horse-like; they are inquisitive, affectionate and like to follow you around for a pat.”

Her father was a horse jockey from age 10 in Newmarket, the headquarters of British racing, but Dr. Dodd was always terrified on a horse, preferring the donkey’s slower gait.

But no matter how often he put his only child on a horse, she was always terrified. Instead, she preferred a donkey’s slow plod.

Dr Dodd broke with the family horsing tradition when she completed her medical degree at the University of London.

Not long afterwards, in 1981, she responded to an advertisement calling for doctors to come to Australia. She was meant to work for just two months at the Plenty Valley Repatriation Psychiatric Hospital, but never left.

Dr Dodd sees about 26 patients a week in Diamond Creek, where she lives alone, and cares for the donkeys in her spare time. ”Initially I took a few donkeys on because I had the space” but she had a  difficult time turning any away.

She lends donkeys for work with troubled children and events like Remembrance Day.

The above is excerpted from:

A caring operation that’s run for donkeys’ years

Marika Dobbin

January 5, 2011

There are a number of  current integrative and complementary treatment studies for children and adolescents.

Timothy Culbert is the medical director of the integrative medicine program at Minneapolis-based Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, one of the largest hospital-based, pediatric complementary medicine programs in the country.  Dr. Culbert and his colleagues are about to launch a study at four hospitals in the U.S. and Canada to examine in greater depth the use of nondrug coping skills in kids with cancer.

Several years ago, they developed a “Comfort Kit” designed to teach children coping skills including: deep-breathing relaxation techniques; aromatherapy, in which patients inhale chemicals produced by plant oils; and acupressure, a variant of acupuncture with pressure applied to certain points in the body. 

In several pilot studies, Dr. Culbert’s team found that kids can learn such skills and appear to find them helpful. In one study of 150 kids who underwent surgery , 87% said the techniques helped them cope with pain after the procedure. Another study found that a majority of kids with cancer felt relief from their nausea with accupressure. 

 At the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, Sunita Vohra is running a clinical trial with 80 participants to examine whether a self-calming strategy can help children with a variety of diagnoses, including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and opposition-defiant disorder. The aim is to teach children to focus on “their presence in the moment”—by paying attention to breathing and other sensations and blocking out external commotion.

Vohra is beginning an individualized study of the use of probiotics—micro-organisms thought to be healthy for the person that consumes them—with gastrointestinal diseases. Dr. Vohra is also studying whether melatonin aids sleep in kids with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. 

Wake Forest’s Dr. Kemper has investigated the pediatric use of music therapy, chiropractic care that involves manipulating the body, and “healing touch,” which is based on the premise that the presence of one person’s electromagnetic energy field has an affect on another person. 

Dr. Kemper’s research, including one published in the journal Pediatric Research, has shown that music helps soothe kids with cancer. In 2008, she and her colleagues published findings on eight premature infants showing that live harp music can help them gain weight. Previous findings depicting this effect puzzled them, because such babies can’t increase the number of calories they are eating on their own.

To figure out what was going on, Dr. Kemper’s group put devices called actimeters, which measure very small movements, on the legs of the infants and found that those babies who were exposed to the music were alert and paying attention compared to those in a quiet room or getting the usual care. Soothed babies exhibit fewer tiny muscle movements compared with more tense babies, which reduces the amount of calories they burn.

 It isn’t always clear from these studies what the active ingredient is that’s responsible for the apparent benefit of the therapy. Recent preliminary findings from Dr. Kemper’s group show that kids with cancer report feeling calmer, less anxious and more comfortable in the presence of someone performing healing touch. Yet the study can’t tease apart whether it is the mere presence of a calm person in the room or the actual healing touch that appears to affect the patient.

A method that is safe can be utilized even if it is not shown to be effective, because it gives children and families a sense that they are doing something. The caution is that if a therapy has side effects,expensive, or is used in place of a therapy known to be effective, then the risks outweight the benefits.

A new device, called the Quotient, uses a motion tracker to try to help determine whether a child has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.  The device was invented by  Dr. Martin Teicher,  Harvard Medical School associate professor.The designers feel that this is a more objective test to use for the diagnosis of ADHD than anything else that currently exists, and this is important because the lack of a reliable test to help parents and clinicians be certain of the diagnosis of ADHD has made it difficult for parents to feel comfortable about deciding to use medications in the treatment of their children.

BioBehavioral Diagnostics, of Westford and Philadelphia, says its device can distinguish between the restlessness and jitters of a child with ADHD and the movements of one who does not have the disorder, to help parents and clinicians feel more confident about the diagnosis.

Some skeptics believe that the Quotient is very similar to the continuous performance test, (CPT), where a patient works at a computer to complete tasks while the computer records the number and types of errors the patient makes. Use of the CPT has diminished greatly, due to concerns that the results do not closely correlate to a diagnosis of ADHD.  The developer of the Quotient feels that the camera greatly improves the accuracy of the test, compared to the older CPT.  The patient will play a simple game while sitting at the computer, and is asked to touch the space bar when stars flash on the screen. Impulsivity and concentration are measured by the task, while the infrared cameras in the kiosk record the movements of the patient. The developers say that while persons with and without ADHD complete the attention task, their movements are very different. A person with ADHD moves more, but also moves more simply, while a person without ADHD moves more erratically.

In a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 1996, Teicher reported that the device accurately identified 16 of the 18 children who had been previously diagnosed with ADHD, and all 11 controls without ADHD.

In 2004, BioBehavioral Diagnostics approached McLean to develop Teicher’s work into a marketable diagnostic tool

The test has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and currently 60 Quotient kiosks are in use across the country.The device costs clinicians $19,500; the company then charges $50 per child and $55 for adults for providing a computer-generated report for each patient.

Researchers at UC San Diego and UC Davis examined chocolate consumption and other dietary intake patterns:

• 931 males and female participants who were not using antidepressants
• participants were also given a depression screening test

Results:

• Those that screened positive for possible depression consumed an average of 8.4 servings of chocolate per month
• People that were not depressed consumed 5.4 servings per month
• The highest scorers on the mood tests, indicating possible major depression, consumed 11.8 servings per month
• Findings were similar among women and men
• After controlling for other dietary factors that could be linked to mood — such as caffeine, fat and carbohydrate intake, only chocolate consumption correlated with mood.

A serving of chocolate was defined as one ounce of chocolate candy

The relationship between chocolate and depression exists, but how the two are linked is unclear.

It could be that depression stimulates chocolate cravings as a form of self-treatment.

• Chocolate prompts the release of certain chemicals in the brain, such as dopamine, that produce feelings of pleasure.
• There is no evidence, however, that chocolate has a sustained benefit on improving mood.
• Like alcohol, chocolate may contribute a short-term boost in mood followed by a return to depression or a worsened mood.
• A study published in 2007 in the journal Appetite found that eating chocolate improved mood but only for about three minutes.

It’s also possible that depressed people seek chocolate to improve mood but that the trans fats in some chocolate counteract the effect of omega-3 fatty acids–thought to improve mood–in the body.

Another theory is that chocolate consumption contributes to depression or that some physiological mechanism, such as stress, drives both depression and chocolate cravings. It is possible that eating chocolate for comfort is a learned behavior; Chocolate is popular in North America and Britain, but in other cultures, different foods are considered pleasure-inducing pick-me-ups.

In the February 2010 volume of Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers G. Paul Amminger, Miriam R Schafer et al published the findings from their randomized, placebo-controlled trial, conducted between 2004 and 2007. They identified 81 individuals at very high risk of developing a psychotic disorder, and provided 12 weeks of 1.2 grams daily of omega three polyunsaturated fatty acidsin the treatment group, and placebo n the control group. They monitored the patients afterward for 40 weeks.

The ration of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids in red blood cells was used to determine pre- and post-treatment fatty acid composition.

76 participants completed the study, and at the end, 2 of 41 (4.9 %)individuals in the omega three treated group, compared to 11 of 40 individuals (27.5%)in the placebo group had developed a psychotic disorder. This was determined to be a significant difference. Treatment with omega three polyunsaturated fatty acids also reduced positive symptoms, and negative symptoms, as well as general symptoms. Functioning was also determined to be improved.

There was no difference in adverse effects of the treatment versus placebo.

The treatment team concluded that long-chain omega three polyunsaturated fatty acids reduce the risk of progression to psychosis, and may be a more safe and effective strategy for prevention that antipsychotic medications, for youth with subthreshold psychotic states.

A randomized controlled trial of acupuncture for depression during pregnancy suggested that symptoms were reduced with a response rate similar to standard depression treatments.  Acupuncture may be a viable treatment option for depression during pregnancy.

150 pregnant women who met criteria for major depression were given either acupuncture specific for depression or one of two active controls: control acupuncture or massage. They received 12 sessions during 8 weeks. The acupuncturists who administered treatment were blinded to treatment assignment. The Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression was used to rate severity. 63% of the women who received depression-specific acupuncture reported a significant reduction in symptoms, compared to 44% of women in the other two groups combined.

Many pregnant women with depression stop taking medications when they become pregnant, due to concerns this may harm their unborn babies.  Women with depression are at increased risk for preterm births, and are at increased risk for post partum depression, so treatment of depression during pregnancy is important. Post partum depression interferes with a woman’s ability to care for her infant, and can have lasting effects; previous studies suggest that children of mothers with postpartum depression perform more poorly in school, become frustrated more easily, and have poorer problem solving.

Acupuncture may be a good option in treating depression in pregnant women; this treatment appears to be more effective than other tested non-pharmacologic treatments. Depression during pregnancy is common; up to 14% of women may have depression when pregnant.

Acupuncture for depression during pregnancy: a randomized controlled trial.

Manber R, Schnyer RN, Lyell D, Chambers AS, Caughey AB, Druzin M, Carlyle E, Celio C, Gress JL, Huang MI, Kalista T, Martin-Okada R, Allen JJ.

Obstet Gynecol. 2010 Mar;115(3):511-20.PMID: 20177281