Friday, July 1, 2011

Article - Easing Menopause symptoms with Food


Easing Menopause Symptoms With Food

Posted: 06/28/11 09:51 AM ET


"I didn't sign up for this, I just want to feel normal again," said Judy, my patient who aptly describes what the 21st century Western woman going through menopause feels. If you want to know how to turn down your body's internal "thermostat" you are in the right place. Alternative medicine, including food therapy, is a viable option for managing menopause symptoms.

Menopause symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, irritability, brain fog and other symptoms seem to be considered the norm for women over the age of 50. Researchers from the Department of Integrated Health at Westminster University polled 1,000 British women ages 45 to 55 and compared their answers to those of women from the U.S., Canada, Japan and China. The conclusion was that Japanese and Chinese women suffer the least amount of menopause symptoms. British women suffer the most and Americans are somewhere in between.1 For any woman sweating through this life change, you can stop the roller coaster and "get back to normal" using alternative medicine.

What causes this disparity between menopausal women in the East and West? In Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China women do not generally seek medical attention for menopause symptoms.9 The reasons for these cultural differences are complex. Certainly diet and lifestyle choices play a key role. The question is why don't women in these cultures need Hormone Replacement Therapies (HRT) or medical treatments the way that the majority of Western women do?

The last year has been a confusing time with medical flip-flops on the benefits and dangers of artificial hormones. I see more and more women who are giving up on trusting research produced by the health care establishment and looking to alternative medicine for answers.

Not only is it difficult to stay keep up with the latest menopause drug treatment information, but much too often this advice is influenced by drug companies or doctors who fail to disclose their ties to study outcomes. One truth every doctor knows is that medicines have risks. Medicines should be prescribed only when the benefits outweighs the risks, including the risks of side effects which may not show up until years later. Healthy diet and lifestyle therapies have no risks. Cooking with Chinese herbs and incorporating food therapy have been done for centuries and have absolutely no known risks.

This article is part two on the subject of alternative medicine for menopause. Part one (see it here) explained how Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) views menopause. TCM recognizes menopause as part of the natural aging process and is often termed Kidney Yin Deficiency. The manifestations of aging include gray hair, dryness and the end of menstruation -- in other words, signs the kidney energy is waning.

TCM views the kidney energy as sustaining the metabolic process and decreases naturally as we age. When the balance of kidney yin and yang energy is "upset," symptoms such as hot flashes and night sweats may appear. Throughout Asia it is Chinese herbs and food that are most commonly used to gently tonify the kidney energy and restore the balance between yin and yang. Acupuncture is also used to restore this balance and studies have proven its effectiveness.10 The role of herbal medicine was discussed in part one and I now want to address the roll diet plays in menopause.

It seems Asian cultures understand Hippocrates, the father of medicine's credo, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food." Asian cultures blend four important principals into every meal.

1. Meals consist of varying food temperatures, i.e. peppers are a hot food, seaweed is cold and black beans are warm.

2. A large variety of foods with five flavors are eaten in every meal. The five flavors are sour, sweet, pungent, bitter and salty.

3. Soy products are eaten nearly every day.

4. An old Chinese Proverb says, "He that takes medicine and neglects diet, wastes the skill of the physician."

Food Temperatures
Since our goal here is to turn down the thermostat, let's start the discussion with "cold" foods -- or foods that cool us off. This is the same principle applied to eating watermelon on a hot summer day. Asian cultures use food temperatures to balance the body's needs.

Cold herbs and foods simply cool you off. But the principal is best practiced in combination. Mixing cold foods and warm foods is best. Too much cold food inhibits digestion and may lead to diarrhea. A few of the best cold foods are: cucumber, diakon radish, mung bean, dandelion greens, cabbage, bok choy, cauliflower, celery, carrots and romaine lettuce. Eat a least two servings of these a day for your internal air conditioner to kick into action. Cold fruits include lemon, cantaloupe, grapefruit, mulberry, apples, pears, watermelon, apricots and persimmons.

Five Flavors
Incorporating the five flavors into your meals may be a new concept but is not all that difficult. There are several good books on this subject. One of my favorites is The Tao of Nutrition by Ni and McNease. Bitter foods will help the most for those suffering with menopause symptoms. They operate as an internal air conditioner, because bitter foods disperse heat. Examples of bitter foods include kale, green tea, watercress, turnips, asparagus and tangerine peel. Tangerine peel is used in Chinese herbal medicine and in TCM food therapy. Adding tangerine peel to meat or vegetables helps by promoting the circulation of stomach Qi, (energy) thereby improving digestion. Its bitter and acrid flavor not only helps digestion but relieves indigestion. Tangerine peel strengthens the stomach and works like a carminative to clear excess mucus. (More herbs for menopause here.)

Soy Foods
One interesting cultural advantage for menopausal women in Asia may be the amount of soy or tofu eaten daily. Soy is full of protein, rich in vitamins and enzymes. It's an isoflavone, a class of phytoestrogen (plant derived compounds) with estrogenic activity.11 Soy has been part of the Asian diet for thousands of years. Unprocessed tofu is made fresh and sold in nearly every market. Soy tofu is eaten in small amounts daily from the time children are very young to the end of their lives.

But, the key here is the soy and tofu they eat is made from "unprocessed and non-gmo" soy beans. Sadly, this is increasingly difficult to find in American stores and nearly all American soy beans are derived from genetically modified organisms (GMO). Not a healthy choice to start with and unfortunately most of our tofu is manufactured through a highly refined process. For this reason, I would not consider soy tofu a healthy food in the U.S. right now.

Refined food products almost always lose their nutritional value after being heated to extreme temperatures. This process kills all of the nutrients and all of the important enzymes which the body needs to digest them. As a result, eating processed American soy tofu can give you terrible gas, bloating and indigestion and even worse, it's becoming a common allergen. A small serving of soy a couple of times a week won't harm you, but I recommend eating only fermented and non-GMO soy. Products such as miso, sprouted tofu, soy yogurt and tempeh are my first choice. A little organic soy sauce is also ok . If you can be certain your tofu is organic and unprocessed I would consider it a healthy choice.

Changing the way you look at food according to temperature and taste takes some time. Maybe this is a new concept for you and maybe you've never seen some of the foods listed above. Although you may not choose to eat everything on this list, you can certainly eat some.

Tapping into your body's internal thermostat doesn't work exactly like the thermostat on your wall. So, be patient. Be consistent with dietary changes and enjoy the food you eat. Find some recipes you like and bring variety to your diet every day. Incorporate the five flavors of salty, bitter, sour, pungent and sweet into your lifestyle. Chinese medicine uses food therapy full of phytochemicals, vitamins and nutrients to restore vibrant health and balance to the entire person. This therapy has been adopted for thousands of years without any side effects.

What part of your diet will you change to help your menopause symptoms?

For more articles on Dietary Food Therapy go here and here.

References:

1. Women of UK study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2233879/

2. Lock M. Menopause in Japanese women. Womens Health Iss. 1995;274(16):12-65.

3. Kagawa-Singer M., Kim S., Wu K., Adler S.R., Kawanishi Y., Wongvipat N. Comparison of the menopause and midlife transition between Japanese American and European American women. Med Anthropol Q. 2002;16(1):64-91.

4. Haines C.J., Rong L., Chung T.K.H., Leung D.H.Y. The perception of the menopause and the climacteric among women in Hong-Kong and Southern China. Prev Med. 1995;24(3):245-248. [PubMed]

5. Lam P.M., Leung T.N., Haines C., Chung T.K.H. Climacteric symptoms and knowledge about hormone replacement therapy among Hong Kong Chinese women aged 40-60 years. Maturitas. 2003;45(2):99-107. [PubMed]

6. Chen Y.L.D., Voda A.M., Mansfield P.K. Chinese midlife women's perceptions and attitudes about menopause. Menopause. 1998;5(1):28-34. [PubMed]

7. Tsao L.I., Chang W.Y., Hung L.L., Chang S.H., Chou P.C. Perimenopausal knowledge of mid-life women in northern Taiwan. J Clin Nurs. 2004;13(5):627-635. [PubMed]
8. Ismael N.N. A study on the menopause in Malaysia. Maturitas. 1994;19(3):205-209. [PubMed]

9. Chim H., Tan B.H.I., Ang C.C., Chew E.M.D., Chong Y.S., Saw S.M. The prevalence of menopausal symptoms in a community in Singapore. Maturitas. 2002;41(4):275-282. [PubMed]

10. Acupuncture for Menopause hot flashes and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20060667 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14650571

11. Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/soyiso/


NewScientist.com article

Chinese medicine offers new Parkinson's treatments

There's an active ingredient in there somewhere (Image: Sipa Press/Rex Features)

There's an active ingredient in there somewhere (Image: Sipa Press/Rex Features)

A hooked herb, root extract and a dash of bark – it may sound like a witches' brew, but these compounds could provide treatments for diseases that have so far foiled western doctors, such as Parkinson's and irritable bowel syndrome.

For over 2000 years Chinese doctors have treated "the shakes" – now known as Parkinson's disease – with gou teng, a herb with hook-like branches.

Early this year, 115 people with Parkinson's were given a combination of traditional Chinese medical herbs, including gou teng, or a placebo for 13 weeks. At the end of the study, volunteers who had taken the herbs slept better and had more fluent speech than those taking the placebo.

Gou teng appears to stabilise symptoms, says Li Min, a traditional Chinese doctor at Hong Kong Baptist University. Now, Li and her colleagues have figured out how it might work.

Preserving dopamine

Parkinson's symptoms, such as muscle tremors, slowness of movement and rigidity, are caused by the progressive destruction of brain cells that produce dopamine. Previous work has suggested that an abundance of a protein called alpha-synuclein may be to blame. Current treatments aim to boost levels of dopamine, which only partly alleviates symptoms and does not affect the protein clusters.

It is thought that clumps of alpha-synuclein accumulate because brain cells cannot remove them through autophagy – a type of programmed cell death. Mice without the genes needed for autophagy quickly develop Parkinson's-like symptoms.

According to Li, autophagy is the only known process that gets rid of abnormal proteins within cells. "Enhancing this pathway may be key to treating Parkinson's," she says.

Li's team screened gou teng for its active compounds and tested which of these compounds increase the rate of autophagy and remove alpha-synuclein. To do this, the team added the compounds to human nerve cells and fruit flies that had been genetically modified to develop alpha-synuclein clusters.

Rapamycin connection

One of the compounds, an alkaloid called isorhy, induced autophagy for alpha-synuclein at a similar rate to a drug called rapamycin. Rapamycin is normally used to suppress the immune system in transplant patients, but has recently been touted as a promising candidate for Parkinson's treatment because it prevents nerve cell death in flies with a Parkinson's-like disease. However, because rapamycin depresses the immune system, it would have serious side effects for people with Parkinson's. Gou teng, meanwhile, has been taken for centuries with no apparent side effects.

Further testing found that isorhy activates autophagy through a different pathway to rapamycin, which may explain why it does not affect the immune system in the same way. Li, who recently presented her results at the Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, will begin trials of Isorhy in rodents later this year.

Herbs for the gut

Meanwhile, Zhaoxiang Bian, also at Hong Kong Baptist University, is developing a drug called JCM-16021 for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) using seven herbal plants and based on a Chinese formulation called tong xie yao fang, used to treat IBS since the 1300s.

IBS affects up to 20 per cent of people, causing abdominal pain, constipation and diarrhoea. "They feel really rotten, and it's sufficiently severe for people to take time off work," says John Furness at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Stress management can help symptoms, but there is no effective medicine to treat it.

In 2007, Bian gave 80 people with IBS either JCM-16021 with Holopon – a drug that interrupts nerve impulses in the parasympathetic nervous system responsible for digestion – or Holopon alone. After eight weeks, 52 per cent of those given JCM-16021 with Holopon reported reduced IBS symptoms, compared with 32 per cent of those given Holopon alone.

IBS is partly caused by high levels of serotonin in the gut. Last year, Bian found that giving JCM-16021 to rats with IBS-like symptoms broke down serotonin in their bowel faster than normal, reducing their discomfort.

His team has since isolated several active compounds in JCM-16021 that block serotonin's activity in the rat gut, including magnolol, a herb taken from the bark of Magnoliae officinalis.

Root of relief

This month, Keiko Lee at Juntendo University in Tokyo, Japan, found that paeoniflorin, a root extract used in JCM-16021, acts as an analgesic in rats, inhibiting adrenaline receptors in the spine.

Bian is now combining the active extracts of JCM-16021 to develop a new drug that attacks IBS from different angles. Unlike conventional approaches, which target only one aspect of the disease, he believes the combination drug will be more effective.

"I think it is a very rational way to go," says Furness, but warns that combination drugs usually take longer to gain approval because of the greater-than-usual possibility of unexpected side effects. But because these compounds have a long history of being safe for human consumption, it is hoped they will be approved faster, says Li.

"In the past the pharmaceutical industry didn't put much effort into traditional Chinese medicine," says Jing Kang, a biochemist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "In the past few years this has been changing. More people are paying attention."

Journal references: gou teng and Parkinson's: Parkinson's Disease, DOI: 10.4061/2011/789506; rapamycin and Parkinson's: Nature Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1038/nn.2372; JCM-16021 and serotonin: World Journal of Gastroenterology, DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v16.i7.837; paeoniflorin and pain relief: European Journal of Pain DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpain.2011.04.011

Friday, June 10, 2011

Acupuncture needles vs Hypodermic needles

You can fit 18 acupuncture needles into the tip of 1 hypodermic needle....
So fear not....

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Acupuncture Facial Rejuvenation

Acupuncture Facial Rejuvenation

Acupuncture has been used to treat skin complaints and reduce signs of aging for centuries. In fact, facial rejuvenation acupuncture, also known as cosmetic acupuncture, has a recorded history going as far back as China's Sung Dynasty (960AD - 1270AD), when the Empress and the Emperor's concubines used it to engender beauty and good health.

Facial rejuvenation acupuncture can improve muscle tone, increase collagen production, tighten pores and boost circulation and moisture in the skin. Moreover, when acupuncture is used to create overall balance within the body, the physical, mental and emotional patterns that contribute to aging are addressed, helping you look and feel younger.

The theory behind facial acupuncture is that hair-thin needles inserted along wrinkles and frown lines stimulate energy and relax the muscles. This leads to a tightening of the facial muscles, which decreases sagging of the facial skin, and an increase in the production of collagen, filling in fine lines and wrinkles.

Benefits of Acupuncture Facial Rejuvenation:
Increases the production of collagen and elastin
Improves muscle tone (preventing further aging and wrinkles)
Improves local lymph and blood circulation
Softens or erases fine lines and wrinkles
Reduces the depth of deeper lines
Decreases bags (puffiness) under the eyes
Reduces or eliminates acne and rosacea
Provides a consistently smoother and brighter face
To look and feel years younger, facial rejuvenation acupuncture offers less risk, expense and recovery time than medical alternatives. While this procedure cannot reshape facial features, it is a more subtle rejuvenation that can take years off one's face safely and naturally while improving overall health.

Courtesy of Acufinder.com

Please call Driftwood Acupuncture & Wellness to find out if you are a good candidate for Facial rejuvenation Acupuncture at 415-570-1527 or visit our website at www.driftwoodacu.com to find out more.

Acupuncture can help cure chronic sinus congestion

http://www.healthcmi.com/index.php/acupuncturist-news-online/347-acupuncturecureschronicsinuscongestion1811

BBC News - Acupuncture is more than a Placebo

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4493011.stm