Chiropractic “boot camp” for back and leg pain caused by spinal stenosis —A study published last year looked at a group of patients treated at a major hospital in Toronto.  Patients in the study averaged 70 years old and had an average duration of 11 years of back pain and 8.6 years of leg pain.  Their “boot camp” program included treatment up to three times weekly for six weeks consisting of chiropractic adjustments, exercises, and instruction on problem solving, relaxation and body positioning.  The researchers concluded that in these patients “all outcomes demonstrated statistically significant and clinically important improvements.”

Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2015 38:188-194

Chiropractic adjustments increase blood levels of anti-oxidants —Researchers at the Federal University of Riol Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil reported that a course of chiropractic manipulation twice weekly for five weeks increased the blood levels of two antioxidant enzymes (superoxide dismutase or SOD and glutathione peroxidase or GPx) in 23 patients with chronic neck or back pain.  The researchers theorized that this may be one mechanism of pain relief, since these enzymes reduce the excitability of nerves when pain is present and may reduce cell damage as well.

Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2015 38:119-129

Chiropractic treatment for neck and arm pain with disc herniation —Researchers in Switzerland followed treatment of 50 consecutive patients who had neck and arm pain with MRI-proven disc herniation.  Patients were treated with chiropractic adjustments 3 to 5 times weekly for 2 to 4 weeks and 1 to 3 times weekly thereafter until pain was gone.  At 2 weeks 55.3% of all patients were significantly improved, at 1 months 68.9% and at 3 months 85.7% were significantly improved with none being worse.  Although acute (short-term patients) improved faster, at 3 months 76.2% of sub-acute and chronic patients were significantly improved, which researchers pointed out was highly significant and far above expectations.

Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2013;36:461-467 

(Note from Dr. Mha Atma: When patients are suffering from neck and arm pain or from back and leg pain and have an MRI which shows a herniated disc, they are usually told by doctors they need drugs, epidurals and/or surgery and are sometime warned against seeing a chiropractor.  This study illustrated the effectiveness and safety of chiropractic care in cases of disc herniation, and is worth sharing with others including your doctors!)

One more review on safety of chiropractic in treating herniated discs —Researchers from Australia and the Netherlands performed a comprehensive review of scientific literature examining safety and effectiveness of chiropractic in treatment of lower back disc herniations. They concluded that evidence suggests that chiropractic manipulation is as effective as surgery and that the risk is no more than the risk of treatment with exercise and less than treatment with drug therapy.

          Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2013;xx:1-15

One more interesting study: about lowering cholesterol by eating just a few brazil nuts, from Michael Gregor, MD.... 

Four Nuts Once a Month 

One of the craziest studies I read all year involved feeding people a single serving of Brazil nuts to see what it would do to the cholesterol levels of healthy volunteers. They gave ten men and women a single meal containing zero, one, four, or eight Brazil nuts, and found that the ingestion of just that single serving almost immediately improved cholesterol levels. LDL, so-called “bad” cholesterol levels in the blood, was significantly lower starting just nine hours after the ingestion of nuts, and by no insignificant amount, nearly 20 points within a day. Even drugs don’t work that fast. It takes statins around four days to have a significant effect. 

But that’s not even the crazy part. 

The researchers went back and measured their cholesterol five days later, and then 30 days later. Now keep in mind they weren’t eating Brazil nuts this whole time. They just had that single serving of Brazil nuts a month before and their cholesterol was still down 30 days later. It went down and stayed down, after eating just four nuts… That’s nuts! 

And no, the study was not funded by the Brazil nut industry. 

Interestingly, four nuts actually seemed to work faster than the eight nuts to lower bad cholesterol and boost good cholesterol. These results suggest that eating just four nuts might be enough to improve the levels of LDL and HDL for up to 30 days, and maybe longer—they didn’t test past 30. 

Now normally, when a study comes out in the medical literature showing some too-good-to-be-true result like this you want to wait to see the results replicated before you change your clinical practice, before you recommend something to your patients, particularly when the study is done on only ten people, and especially when the findings are literally just too incredible to be believed. But when the intervention is cheap, easy, harmless and healthy—eating four Brazil nuts a month—then, in my opinion, the burden of proof is kind of reversed. I think the reasonable default position is to do it until proven otherwise. 

They concluded a single serving was sufficient “without producing liver and kidney toxicity.” What they’re referring to is the high selenium content of Brazil nuts—so high that four eaten every day may actually bump us up against the tolerable daily limit for selenium, but not something we have to worry about if we’re just eating four once a month.

 

read this online with a few more links

 

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