Acupuncture Decreases High Blood Pressure

A recent study published in Medical Acupuncture has shown that electroacupuncture can significantly reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure in hypertensive subjects. After the treatment, plasma levels of norepinephrine, renin and aldosterone were all significantly decreased and this is thought to be related to the beneficial effects of the electroacupuncture.

“Almost anything can be done if one proceeds slowly enough. Often we are discouraged by the enormity of a task or the length of a journey and become impatient with the difficulties we face. We lose faith in ourselves. Patience reminds us that what is in front of us is just this moment, just this step, just this breath.”

Joseph Goldstein

Whole Food Plant Based Diet

For some time, I’ve been puzzled about what constitutes a healthy diet. Surely I can’t be the only one? We’re fed so much conflicting and fluctuating advice that it’s difficult to know what to believe…and that’s without even delving into the plethora of commercial weight-losing fad diets out there! I think we can all appreciate that we are what we eat…but what should we eat?

I decided to do a little research, just because I thought someone out there must have the answer! After ploughing through a few books most of which were okayish to good I came across a book that was life changing! Incidentally, it had been on my reading list for a few years but after reading the summary, I decided  I wasn’t ready to apply the changes it recommended…

The book is “The China Study” by T. Colin Campbell. Campbell is professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University. He has been at the forefront of nutrition research for over 40 years and has authored over 300 research papers. He was program director of the China Study which was the culmination of a 20 year partnership between Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine. The China Study is considered the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted! In addition, he has served on numerous panels and boards tasked with allocating research grants and providing government with nutritional guidelines.

Although medicine has progressed over the last century, we’re still woefully inadequate at dealing with diseases of affluence such as cancer, diabetes and coronary heart disease. The main reason we’re struggling is that the answer lies not in medical breakthroughs but in our diet. It is possible to free ourselves from these diseases but the system has done a great job of burying the evidence. By the ‘system’ I mean: the pharmaceutical industry, food industry, medical industry, academia and government.  These industries are profoundly connected and intertwined but unfortunately they prioritise their own financial profit rather than our health. The players with the most money wield the greatest influence. Sadly, for us, the truth doesn’t financially benefit the ‘system’! Campbell writes about this in depth in both “The China Study” and “Whole”.

In “Whole”, Campbell briefly explains how a whole food, plant-based diet could help decrease global warming, preserve fresh water supplies, decrease human poverty and of course, stop the animal cruelty in modern livestock farms. It turns out that a lot of our problems are linked but our reductionist view has prevented us from seeing the whole picture.

In “The China Study”, Campbell amasses and impressive, both in depth and breadth, amount of evidence in favour of the health benefits of a whole food, plant-based diet. There is now overwhelming scientific evidence that this diet can help us:

• Live longer
• Look and feel younger
• Have more energy
• Lose weight
• Lower our blood cholesterol
• Prevent and even reverse heart disease
• Lower our risk of prostate, breast and other cancers
• Preserve our eyesight in our later years
• Prevent and treat diabetes
• Avoid surgery in many instances
• Vastly decrease the need for pharmaceutical drugs
• Keep our bones strong
• Avoid impotence
• Avoid stroke
• Prevent kidney stones
• Keep our baby from getting Type 1 diabetes
• Alleviate constipation
• Lower our blood pressure
• Avoid Alzheimer’s
• Beat arthritis
• And more…

Campbell’s 8 principles of food and health are:

1. Nutrition represents the combined activities of countless food substances. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
2. Vitamin supplements are not a panacea for good health.
3. There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants.
4. Genes do not determine disease on their own. Genes function only by being activated, or expressed, and nutrition plays a critical role in determining which genes, good and bad, are expressed.
5. Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals.
6. The same nutrition that prevents disease in its early stages (before diagnosis) can also halt or reverse disease in its later stages (after diagnosis).
7. Nutrition that is truly beneficial for one chronic disease will support health across the board.
8. Good nutrition creates health in all areas of existence. All parts are connected.

His advice is to “consume plant-based foods in forms as close to their natural state as possible (whole foods). Eat a variety of vegetables, fruits, raw nuts and seeds, beans and legumes, and whole grains. Avoid heavily processed foods and animal products. Stay away from added salt, oil and sugar. Aim to get 80 percent of your calories from carbohydrates, 10 percent from fat, and 10 percent from protein.”

I know this advice may contradict certain beliefs that we hold but the evidence against animal protein and dairy is pretty damning. I can only suggest that you read “The China Study” to familiarise yourself with the mountain of evidence. Whether we act on it or not is another question but at least it will be an informed decision! Exactly how we act on it is something I hope to tackle in another post.

Tips For Weight Loss

Last month a group of researchers from Tufts University published a fascinating article in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Their objective was to determine how changes in intake of protein foods, glycemic load (GL) of carbohydrates, and the interrelationship between the two influence long-term weight gains.  The GL of food is a number that estimates how much the food will raise a person’s blood glucose level after eating it. Glycemic load accounts for how much carbohydrate is in the food and how much each gram of carbohydrate in the food raises blood glucose levels.

They followed a group of over 120,000 men and women for 16 to 24 years whilst adjusting for body mass index and lifestyle changes such as smoking, physical activity, television watching and sleep duration.

Protein

• Meat, chicken (with skin) and regular cheese were positively associated with long-term weight gain
• No association for milk, legumes, peanuts, eggs
• Yogurt, peanut butter, nuts, chicken (without skin), low-fat cheese and seafood were associated with weight loss

Glycemic Load

• Increases in GL were associated with weight gain

Protein & Glycemic Load Synergy

• Changes in GL of carbohydrates affect the usual weight changing effects of protein foods; for example, increased cheese intake was associated with weight gain when GL increased, with weight stability when GL did not change, and with weight loss when GL decreased.

“Our study adds to growing new research that counting calories is not the most effective strategy for long-term weight management and prevention,” said senior author Dariush Mozaffarian. “Some foods help prevent weight gain, others make it worse.  Most interestingly, the combination of foods seems to make a big difference.  Our findings suggest we should not only emphasize specific protein-rich foods like fish, nuts, and yogurt to prevent weight gain, but also focus on avoiding refined grains, starches, and sugars in order to maximize the benefits of these healthful protein-rich foods, create new benefits for other foods like eggs and cheese, and reduce the weight gain associated with meats.”

Paracetamol Ineffective For Back Pain And Osteoarthritis

Most of us have us have used paracetamol at some point in our lives, whether to bring down a fever, for a headache, joint pain or some other painful condition. In fact, if we have a look in our medicine cabinets we’ll probably find a box…or two! Machado et al. from George Institute for Global Health at the University of Sydney recently reviewed the scientific literature with the aim of investigating the efficacy and safety of paracetamol (acetaminophen) in the management of spinal pain and osteoarthritis of the hip or knee. They included 13 randomised controlled trials in their review and the results were published in the BMJ.

They found that for low back pain, paracetamol was ineffective at reducing pain or disability and at improving quality of life. It’s important to point out that by “ineffective”, they mean that paracetamol did not provide more benefit than a placebo. For hip and knee osteoarthritis they found that there was a significant, although not clinically important, effect on pain and disability in the short term. Adverse events were not more likely with paracetamol than placebo but patients taking paracetamol are 4 times more likely to have abnormal results on liver function tests.

Although the clinical importance of the last finding is uncertain, paracetamol has been linked to increasing incidence of mortality, increased risk of cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and renal disease. This study has prompted the BMJ to release an editorial discussing the use of paracetamol for back pain and osteoarthritis. One of the problems for GPs is that the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends paracetamol as the first port of call for low back pain and arthritis. Taking this option away leaves NSAIDS and opioids which both present even more health risks… Non-pharmalogical options should be pursued and developed i.e. physical activity and exercise, weight loss, nutritional supplements and physiotherapy of course!

New Pain Mechanisms Revealed

Neuropathic pain is a chronic pain condition caused by a damaged or dysfunctional nervous system. It is characterised by shooting and burning pain that lasts long after the initial onset. Common causes of neuropathic pain include:

• alcoholism
• amputation
• back, leg and hip problems
• chemotherapy
• diabetes
• facial nerve problems
• HIV or AIDS
• multiple sclerosis
• shingles
• spine surgery

Unfortunately neuropathic pain doesn’t respond much to conventional analgesics but instead, antidepressants (amitriptyline and duloxetine) and anticonvulsants (gabapentin and pregabalin) have been found to help relieve pain.

A new study published in this month’s edition of Neuron by Thomas Nevian et al from the Department of Physiology at the University of Bern has revealed some of the mechanisms involved in neuropathic pain. In a mouse model, they found that neurons in the gyrus cinguli, a part of the brain found in the limbic system (usually associated with emotion) are modified by pain forming a “pain memory”. Neurons in the gyrus cinguli become more excitable due to a down-regulated ion channel. This leads to an increased number of nerve impulses which the brain perceives as pain.

The researchers managed to restore the function of the ion channel by activating a receptor sensitive to serotonin. This explains the success of some antidepressants in treating neuropathic pain. Nevian et al were able to identify the specific subtype of serotonin receptor that was more efficient at reducing the perception of pain. Excitingly, this could lead to the development of more effective drugs to treat neuropathic pain.

Meditation Decreases Chronic Neck Pain

A group of German researchers recently published the results of a study looking into the benefits of meditation on people with chronic neck pain. The article was published in The Journal of Pain. They studied about 90 people who had neck pain for an average of 11 years. The average age of the participants was 50 years. Their results found significant improvements in pain reduction and pain coping but no effect on functional disability.

The findings suggest that meditation could be used as an adjunct alongside physical treatments that provide functional benefits.

The Miracle Cure

Scarlett McNally, a Consultant Orthopaedic surgeon, and her colleagues have spent 2 years analysing more than 200 separate pieces of research. The effect that regular exercise could have on our health is amazing. Exercise could:

• prevent type 2 diabetes
• reduce the risk of getting breast cancer by 25%
• decrease the risk of bowel cancer by 45%
• reduce the risk of having a stroke by 30%
• reduce the risk of developing dementia by 30%
• cut the risk of developing heart disease by over 40%
• as well as improvements to mental health

Exercise doesn’t have to be vigorous but it should be regular. Simply start by increasing your physical activity in whatever way you can: walk more, take the stairs, do some gardening, ride a bike…the possibilities are endless!

“Breathing is the link between body and mind.

The breath can lead the body toward wellness and the mind toward calmness.”

A G Mohan

What Triggers Low Back Pain?

A study published this month in Arthritis Care and Research by Daniel Steffens et al. from the University of Sydney has looked at the risk factors that could lead to acute low back pain. Acute low back pain is back pain that comes on suddenly and resolves after a few days or weeks as opposed to chronic low back pain which is long-standing.

They surveyed close to 1000 people and asked them about the presence of 12 physical and psychosocial factors up to 4 days before the onset of back pain. The results revealed that a number of triggers were linked to acute low back pain:

• moderate to vigorous physical activity increased the risk by 3
• manual tasks involving awkward postures increased the risk by 8
• being distracted during an activity increased the risk by 25
• age decreased the effect of exposure to heavy loads
• risk was highest between 7 am and mid-day

Over the years, I’ve noticed that the parents of young children have an increased incidence of low back pain. Having seen some of the risk factors high-lighted in this study, it becomes evident how sleep-deprived, fatigued and distracted parents that often lift their children in awkward positions can dramatically increase the risk of low back pain. It’s also interesting to note that distraction seems to massively increase the risk of low back pain and therefore underlines the importance of mindfulness.