Alternative Medicine Under the Microscope (Part 1)

Alternative medicine has long been valued as an option to healing the body through unorthodox methods, herbs, oils, and meditation. The federal government has just stepped in to make sure alternative medicine is, in fact, all it claims to be: healthy and effective. Even though alternative medicine has been proven helpful in a variety of ailments and diseases, the government is now trying to make these methods rely on statistical numbers from their clinical trials in order to prove their success.

With more than 80 million adult alternative medicine subscribers in the United States alone, it makes sense to want to follow up these vast practices with costly amounts of scientific evidence. While some alternative medicine studies do use trials to track their results, a lot of these are lacking in structure and aren’t large enough to give accurate records.

The director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Josephine Briggs says that the focus on better standards are already making headway in new alternative research techniques, “The research has been making steady progress…it’s reasonably new that rigorous methods are being used to study these health practices.” To determine which trials are to get more money to create larger testing groups harboring more attention at the NCCAM, Dr. Briggs and her researchers are trying to spread out the $122 million this year evenly among those trials best suited for positive outcomes instead of investing in a lot of trials with a bigger possibility of a false positive reading which shines a poor light on alternative medicine.

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Youth Suicides on an Upward Trend (Part 2)

Sour economy. "When the economy is bad, and jobs are harder to find, it's a tough time for kids who are trying to get a job," she said. Zuckerman also noted the stressors of getting into college and being able to afford it. However, overall, she thinks that children are more isolated, even from their families, than ever before. "Kids and family members are spending more and more time apart," she said. "Apart might mean being on the computer. Kids and their families are not watching TV together, they're not eating meals together, they are not talking to each other nearly as much."Each year in the U.S., thousands of teenagers commit suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15-to-24-year-olds, according to the CDC, surpassed only by accidents and homicide. The reasons behind a teen's suicide or attempted suicide can be complex and while it can be difficult for adults to remember how it felt to be a teen-to be caught in that gray area between childhood and adulthood-parents should be aware of the signs of adolescents who may try to kill themselves. Many of the signs and symptoms of suicidal feelings are similar to those of depression:

• Change in eating and sleeping habits
• Withdrawal from friends, family and regular activities
• Violent actions, rebellious behavior, or running away
• Drug and alcohol use
• Unusual neglect of personal appearance
• Marked personality change
• Loss of interest in pleasurable activities
• Persistent boredom, difficulty concentrating, or a decline in the quality of schoolwork
• Frequent complaints about physical symptoms, often related to emotions, such as stomachaches, headaches, and fatigue
• Not tolerating praise or rewards

They may also talk about suicide or death or "going away," or talk about feeling hopeless or guilty. If one or more of these signs occurs, parents should talk to their child about their concerns and seek professional help from a physician or a qualified mental health professional. With an adequate support network of family and friends, along with appropriate treatment, children and teens that are suicidal can heal and return to a healthier path of development.
The study findings were published in the September 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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Youth Suicides on an Upward Trend (Part 1)

Being a teen isn't easy—it's a time of growing self-identity, pressure to fit in socially and to perform academically accompanied by the awakening of sexual feelings, which can bring about a great deal of confusion and anxiety. And life can feel even more difficult for teens that have additional problems to deal with, such as living in violent or abusive environments or experiencing a stressful life event, such as the death of a loved one, divorce, or a breakup with a boyfriend or girlfriend. For a growing number of teens, suicide may appear to be a solution to their problems and stress. After more than a decade of declines, there was an 18 percent increase in suicide rates for American youth under age 19 in 2004, with the trend persisting in 2005, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). So, what is fueling this spike in youth suicide?

Jeff Bridge, an investigator in the Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice from Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and colleagues studied suicide trends among adolescents from the National Vital Statistics Systems at the CDC. They found that, based on suicide rate trends from 1996 to 2003, the rates of suicide among youths aged 10 to 19 were higher in 2004 and 2005 than had been expected. In 2004, there were 326 more suicides than expected and in 2005, there were 292 more suicides than expected. "This is significant, because pediatric suicide rates in the U.S. had been declining steadily for a decade until 2004, when the suicide rate among U.S. youth younger than 20 years of age increased by 18 percent, the largest single-year increase in the past 15 years," Bridge said.

Some experts believe the increase could be due to the reluctance of doctors to prescribe anti-depressant medications after a public health advisory issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in October of 2003 warned health care providers of an increased risk of suicide attempts or suicide-related behavior among children and teens taking SSRI's, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Since the warning and subsequent label revisions, there has been a 20 percent decline in the drugs' use. Dr. David Fassler, a psychiatry professor at the University of Vermont, who wasn't involved in the new study, said the report suggests a "very disturbing" upward trend that correlates with a decline in teen use of antidepressants, according to the Associated Press. Dr. Fassler is among those who believe the drugs' benefits, including treating depression that is the leading cause of suicide, outweigh their risks.

Bridge said that, while a link between the warnings and suicide risks has not been established, there are other factors that could be contributing to the increase in youth suicides. They include the influence of Internet social networking sites, an increase in suicide among U.S. troops returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, higher rates of untreated or undiagnosed depression, and access to firearms. Nearly 60 percent of all suicides in the United States are committed with a gun. "We now need to consider the possibility that this increase is an indicator of an emerging public health crisis. Studies to identify causal factors are important next steps," he added.

Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women and Families, also thinks that untreated depression may play a role in the increased suicide rate, but says there are other reasons as well. For older teens, the increase may be due in part to the

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ncision-Free Weight Loss Surgery in Experimental Phase ( Part 1)

Obesity is proliferating in the United States. Research statistics show that between 1962 and 2000, the number of obese Americans grew from 13 percent to 31 percent of the population. Obesity surgery has been shown to be the only long-term effective means of weight loss for morbidly obese patients, typically working far better than diet, exercise or drugs. Over the years, these operations have become less painful and invasive. The most common bariatric operation, which once required a large incision, is now performed through several small incisions in the abdomen. A new weight loss surgery currently being evaluated in a U.S. study also allows doctors to reduce the size of the stomach, but with one big difference—no surgical incisions.

In the procedure, named Toga, for transoral gastroplasy, surgeons pass a stapler down the throat and staple the stomach from the inside, forming a thumb-sized tube that holds only a small amount of food. This gives patients a feeling of fullness after a small meal. The procedure is intended to be safer and easier for patients to tolerate than conventional obesity surgery. However, the procedure isn’t quite as simple as it sounds.

First, the patient is given general anesthesia and put on a respirator. Then the surgeons thread a dilator, a tube about three-quarters of an inch wide, down the patients’ throat to stretch the esophagus. The stomach is inflated with carbon dioxide to create a space to work. Next another wide tube, this one about two feet long, which contains the stapler, is inserted.

After the stapler is properly positioned, it is activated and a sail and curving wire emerges to help push aside the folds of the stomach. Then a vacuum pump is used to draw parts of the front and back walls of the stomach into the device to be stapled together. Three rows of staples are needed, but the stapler only holds one row. Consequently, the device has to be withdrawn, rinsed, reloaded, inserted back down the throat and repositioned for each row. The surgery takes about three hours.

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Link Between Sedentary Behavior and Uterine Cancer

Women, put down the remote or romance novel and get to exercising! It seems that not only could a little exercise help to reduce weight and other weight-attributing side effects, it may even help to ward off endometrine cancer, also known as uterine cancer, in obese or overweight women. Uterine cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women behind breast cancer, lung cancer and colon cancer.

More than 35,000 women are diagnosed annually in the U.S. with endometrine cancer, the #1 form of gynecologic cancer. The most common subtype is endometrioid adenocarcinoma that usually occurs a few decades after menopause and has been linked to excessive estrogen levels. The most common sign of endometrine cancer is vaginal bleeding between menstrual cycles or after menopause, and the most common treatment is the total removal of the uterus through a surgical procedure known as a hysterectomy.

The American Cancer Society’s Prospective Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort found that overweight and obese women, who exercised even lightly or moderately instead of being sedentary, in their spare time, reduced their risks of developing uterine cancer. The study began in 1992 with a questionnaire being mailed to those baseline cohort member’s between 50 and 74 years old, who were chosen for the study and resided in one of the 21 states, with a population based state cancer registries. Detailed information in regards to diet, updated lifestyle factors, and prospective cancer and mortality incidence checks were gathered.

From 1992 to 2001, Dr. Alpha Patel and colleagues with the American Cancer Society gathered research from the participants through completed biannual questionnaires. The questionnaires asked questions in regards to time spent participating in recreational or non-recreational physical activities and questions about their time sitting, not including sitting time at work. They followed nearly 60,000 post menopausal women, according to the American Journal of Epidemiology’s April 15th issue. 314 cases of uterine cancer were reported. The study resulted in the conclusion that women who sat more than three hours a day, not accounting for time sitting at work, increasing their odds of developing uterine cancer by 55 percent.

Get to walking or take part in some form of physical activity, not only to reduce weight and the possible side effects extra weight may cause, but also to ward off cancer. The authors involved in the Prospective Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort, released in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Cancer, say that the association between sedimentary behavior and uterine or endometrine cancer may be better defined with discoveries of other studies and that "sedentary behavior has been associated with obesity and with metabolic abnormalities, resulting in increased circulating estrogen, insulin, and other hormones that may promote cell proliferation."

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