Much like acupuncture and tai chi have emerged from the realm of alternative medicine to take their rightful places as valuable mainstream treatments, so has biofeedback, a mind-over-body technique that trains patients to control typically involuntary bodily processes like blood pressure, stress, muscle tension and blood flow.

One expert describes biofeedback as "internal exercise, much like the physical exercise you perform at the gym. It's done with the head instead of the muscles." That's certainly been a very successful treatment option for Canadian skier Alexandre Bilodeau, who credited one form of biofeedback (bioneurofeedback) for helping him win his country's first Olympic Gold Medal at the recent Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Despite the mainstream acceptance, however, a 2008 American Cancer Society study that polled more than 4,000 cancer survivors found biofeedback, acupuncture/acupressure and hypnosis were rarely used by cancer patients.

An sidenote to readers of our daily blog: In the very same study, taking a supplement was a far more popular choice among cancer survivors.

healthfinder.gov February 4, 2010

WebMD June 27, 2007

The unfortunate downside of using herbal medicines is the subject of a cautionary paper reminding us of the many quality problems still plaguing supplements that we've discussed far too often in this space.

Among other things, the paper, written by an Australian forensic pathologist, warns patients about the risks connected with taking herbal products made in foreign countries, yet sold in America, that can be laced with harmful substances such as lead, arsenic, mercury and, on occasion, standard prescription drugs. Sounds all too familiar to us, considering recent reports of steroid-tainted supplements.

Fact is, consulting your family physician before taking any herbal medicine or supplement often prevents unforeseen and, sometimes, dangerous interactions with a prescription drug, like the effect St. John's Wort has on the anticoagulant warfarin.

Just another reason to do your due diligence FIRST before buying any herbal product or supplement. And, reviewing CNCA's Nutritional Supplement Quality -- The Facts is as good a place as any to start.

Journal of Forensic Sciences, Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 89-92, January 4, 2010

ScienceDaily February 12, 2010

You may recall a study we posted about the placebo effect on your brain and spine. One of the oldest healing treatments around -- acupuncture -- may work entirely in your brain to battle pain too.

British scientists discovered the drain of pain while they were scanning the brains of 17 patients during two rounds of acupuncture (a shallow treatment used by Japanese practitioners and deeper insertions, per the Chinese method).

As a patient receives acupuncture successfully, he or she experiences deqi, a composite of unique sensations connected with the clinical efficacy of the treatment. Out of the 17 patients treated, brain scans of the 10 who experienced deqi showed these sensations contributed to a deactivation of pathways in the brain that process pain.

Good to see that conventional medicine is testing complementary and alternative medical practices like acupuncture and tai chi, and paying closer attention to all the real benefits associated with them.

Brain Research, Vol. 1315, pp. 111-118, February 22, 2010

Telegraph.co.uk February 6, 2010

ScienceDaily February 5, 2010

Evidently, the reputation of probiotics -- live microorganisms that are similar to beneficial ones found in the human gut contained in supplements and foods -- has come a long, long way, when a recent health feature in the New York Times fairly questions their value in functional foods like yogurt.

Just like marshmallows containing collagen or selling Cheerios as a heart-healthy product, the piece illustrates the problems with promoting the value of probiotics in processed, albeit functional, foods:

* Listing a probiotic as an ingredient on a label in yogurt, for example, doesn't guarantee the efficacy of the product.

* Product labels can be misleading, considering the recent settlement of a class-action lawsuit against Dannon.

* The value of a probiotic depends on the individual strain, like lactobacillus GG that may be beneficial, not only in reducing diarrhea, but treating milk allergies and atopic eczema, according to the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology.

New York Times September 28, 2009

The Daily Green September 29, 2009

Minneapolis Star-Tribune September 29, 2009

Although it certainly sounds far-fetched, a growing body of research is proving how an animal's extraordinary sense of smell may detect such diseases as tuberculosis, diabetes and even certain forms of cancer.

Some of the more interesting results have come from the Pine Street Foundation, a California-based non-profit group whose mission is to help cancer patients make better treatment decisions through education and research, through their work with dogs. Just three years ago, international research funded by the foundation discovered that a dog's keen sense of smell could rule out or detect the presence of early or late-stage lung and breast cancer an astonishing 90 percent of the time.

With the support of governmental funding, Pine Street researchers are taking the "sniff" test a step further, to determine if a trained group of dogs can detect early-stage ovarian cancer in samples of exhaled breath.

What's more, an Irish study published late last year in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine tracked anecdotal reports from 212 dog owners, all Type 1 diabetics, who reported warnings from their pets about hypoglycemic events.

Even more amazing is how the African pouched rat can be trained to detect explosives as well as tuberculosis cells in a Petri dish more efficiently than conventional methods, as you can see in this awesome YouTube video.

Pine Street Foundation May 14, 2009

People: Pets August 18, 2009

Health.com August 16, 2009

National Geographic June 2, 2009

Perhaps, the Labor Day weekend was another slow news period for the Wall Street Journal, as evidenced by the latest in a seemingly ongoing series of articles appearing in the mainstream media (MSM) slamming the presence of dangerous ingredients in some herbal supplements.

A good portion of the article is devoted to eye-opening, first-person accounts of consumers, young and old, who experienced very serious and very legitimate medical problems, as a result of taking some supplements, followed by citations of reports documenting the health-harming presence of foreign substances -- think steroids and prescription drugs -- in them.

Buried about halfway down, however, was the real moral of the story, voiced by Andrew Shao, vice president for The Council for Responsible Nutrition, whose organization welcomed recent efforts by the FDA to jump-start its enforcement efforts. In a statement, Shao urged consumers to be savvy as well about the supplements they use.

To that end, the rest of the story took a more even-handed approach, detailing the many ways consumers can do their homework to ensure the supplements they use are safe, from surfing the Web to studiously reading product labels to consulting with their physicians before taking them.

Learn more about what you can do to protect your health and that of your loved ones by watching this short, informative video by Dr. Timothy Birdsall, vice chairman of CNCA's Quality Control Unit.

Wall Street Journal September 7, 2009

If you believe the nearly $34 billion spent out-of-pocket on complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) in America over the past year is a lot of money, think again.

Based on data culled from the 2007 National Health Interview Survey funded by the CDC and the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, CAM amounts to just 1.5 percent of the $2.2 trillion spent by consumers on health care and 11.2 percent of the $286.6 billion spent on out-of-pocket treatments.

About two-thirds of those out-of-pocket expenses were spent on self-care costs (classes, materials and products), with a majority (nearly $15 billion) devoted non-vitamin, non-mineral, natural products. The remainder of that total ($11.9 billion) was allotted to more than 350 million office visits with chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists and their peers.

What's more, CAM-related spending on products and office visits represented a mere fraction of the amounts paid by consumers for prescription drugs (about 33 percent) and office visits to physicians (25 percent).

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine July 30, 2009

USA Today July 31, 2009

Nutraceuticals World July 31, 2009