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Karen Vaughan
Karen Vaughan Acupuncture and Herbs
253 Garfield Pl Apt 1R
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Fluoridated water must be treated as a medicine, and cannot be used to prepare foods. That is the decision of the European Court of Justice, in a landmark case dealing with the classification and regulation of ‘functional drinks’ in member states of the European Community. (HLH Warenvertriebs and Orthica (Joined Cases C-211/03, C-299/03, C-316/03 and C-318/03) 9 June 2005) What are the implications of this? Tap water cannot be used in prepared foods of any kind, foods made with tap water cannot be imported either between European states or from the US. Unless they do full medical testing on it as for any other drug or functional food. I do note that the European countries seem to be ignoring the Court of Justice decision which was given a few years ago and only the anti-flouridation forces are making much of it.
Foods and caffeinated beverages can help meet your hydration needs. And you can overdo liquids. Myths about hydration dispelled. [...]
We all know people who push themselves until they collapse with a flu, or who suddenly come down with a disease when faced with a wedding where they would come face to face with an ex. We have seen people with chronic stress develop autoimmune disease or chronic fatigue. Perhaps disease is the body’s way of dealing with stresses that might otherwise overwhelm it. Perhaps we should reconsider the adaptive value of disease.
In febrile disease we should look at the value of fever and how it can help. In children over one year of age, fever has the value of increasing the temperature to fight the pathogens, making the child tired enough to get sleep and to challenge the immune system and strengthen it. So what should the strategy be? Continue reading Darwinian Disease: What is the Adaptive Value of Illness?
David Kessler, former FDA Commissioner under GW Bush and Clinton, explores why we are so driven by reward-driven eating that our control mechanisms have disappeared. In his book, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, Kessler discusses how we biologically lay down neurological pathways that induce us to eat. In recent decades the food industry, in collusion with the advertising industry, and our own lifestyle changes have short-circuited the body’s self-regulating mechanisms, leaving many at the mercy of reward-driven eating.
There was a time when people ate at home, at the table during prescribed mealtimes and were unlikely to eat on the street. Now we pass outlets that stimulate our senses with neurologically exciting foods made of fat, sugar and salt, attractive presentation, pleasant odors (have you passed a Cinnabon lately?) and all of the emotional triggers associated with the food by advertising, and we biologically set ourselves up for triggering eating these foods. Even if you do not succumb on day one of your diet, the neurological pathways are being laid down to entice you later.
Listen to an interview with Leonard Lopate at:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/2009/04/27/segments/129905″>< Leonard Lopate Show>
And read the book:
http://astore.amazon.com/acupandherbby-20/detail/1605297852″
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The Shenzhou Vll spacecraft successfully lifted off from China carrying traditional Chinese herbal medicine to prevent the astronauts (taikonauts) from getting motion sickness.
Taikong Yangxin, or “space heart-nourishing” capsules, are “made of more than 10 types of Chinese herbs and have proven to be effective in improving the astronaut’s cardiovascular condition,” according to Li Yongzhi, director of the medical arm of the country’s astronaut training centre.
She told Xinhua News Agency that TCM pills are superior to western motion sickness cures because they do not have side-effects. The herbs will be taken in granule form which can be diluted with water and taken to treat motion sickness during the space flight.
Astronauts Yang Liwei, Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng, who flew in 2003 and 2005, took the herbal medicines before and after their spaceflight but not during it.
Li said the pills on the spacecraft will be particularly useful for the two astronauts who are scheduled to carry out the extra-vehicular activities. “The medicine will boost their physical conditions and improve their adaptability in an extreme environment,” she said.
Li said that the herbal pills, which have previously been found effective in rats, will be mass-produced for market sales in the future. Ingredients have not been disclosed but it is likely that they contain ginger and Chinese hawthorn.
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Salt is more than the simple white crystals that we used to find in the blue container with the girl and the umbrella. Sea salts, land salts, red and black salts all provide new salt experiences.
© by Karen S. Vaughan, MSTOM, L.Ac.
Nora Ephron wrote an amusing article in the NY Times recently complaining that salt is no longer on the tables or that lump salt, which she referred to as kosher or sea salt, is out and only sits in lumps on her food.
Sea salt is not the same as kosher salt. Kosher salt is salt in lumps, and is usually refined. Sea salt is unrefined and has more minerals, especially trace minerals in it. It can come in big lumps, as Ephron described, or in small crystals or powder. I am sure that expensive restaurants will use sea salt in large lumps because it seems trendier. Our taste for salt is really a taste for minerals, so just taking in sodium chloride misses the need for a broader spectrum of minerals. In fact if we just use plain sodium chloride, we may overconsume it because we are not getting the other minerals that a salt taste is a proxy for. Continue reading Salt!
A recent study indicating that stimulating skin with toothpicks was nearly as effective as puncturing the skin with acupuncture needles is being touted in the medical skeptics circles as proof that acupuncture is some kind of placebo.
There was no sham acupuncture involved. Acupuncture is a technique of stimulating, not puncturing, points on the body for physiological effect. Any kind of acupuncture that touches the skin, including so-called sham acupuncture needles, is acupuncture. The Japanese have developed entire systems of noninvasive acupuncture.
While I am more likely to use a stainless steel probe when I use noninvasive acupuncture techniques, the toothpicks touched the skin at the acupoints. The skin contains three afferent sensory nerves that signal the central nervous system as well as modulating the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, specifically the vagus nerve.
The toothpicks stimulated the cutaneous nerves to send a signal to the spinal cord activating the spinal neurons that secrete enkephalin and dynorphin that inhibit pain messages. Then the signal continued up to the midbrain and pituitary to activate the raphe descending pain-inhibitions system which secretes monoamines, serotonin and norepinephrine. Those further inhibit pain.
Once the sensations from the toothpicks reached the spinal cord several nerve pathways were excited, reaching the cerebral cortex which released neurochemicals that not only inhibit pain but also promotes homeostasis. When the body is in distress, homeostasis does help balance the mind.
The study showed that three techniques of acupuncture beat out western medicine for back pain.
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From Harvard: a two years old trial found that diabetic women who drank coffee had 10% less inflammation in their blood vessels, shown by lower CRP levels than controls for each additional cup of coffee drunk per day. These results are much better than the recent Crestor statin trial on CRP. From other research, the likely antiiflammatory constituent is chlorogenic acid, also present in blueberries.
Am J Clin Nutr. 2006 Oct;84(4):888-93.
Coffee consumption and markers of inflammation and endothelial dysfunction in healthy and diabetic women.
Lopez-Garcia E, van Dam RM, Qi L, Hu FB. Department of Nutrition and Epidemiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. esther.lopez@uam.es
BACKGROUND: In several short-term studies, coffee consumption has been associated with impairment of endothelial function. OBJECTIVE: The objective was to assess the relation between long-term caffeinated and decaffeinated filtered coffee consumption and markers of inflammation and endothelial dysfunction. … CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that neither caffeinated nor decaffeinated filtered coffee has a detrimental effect on endothelial function. In contrast, the results suggest that coffee consumption is inversely associated with markers of inflammation and endothelial dysfunction.
See Related Posts: Coffee Herbs November Herbal Blog Party on Morning Wake Up Beverages Caffeine Halts Progression of Alzheimer’s Simple Ways to Support Brain Function Health Myths About Hydration Fewer Serious or Lethal Prostate Cancers in Male Coffee Drinkers
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Acupuncture Beats Western Medicine for Treating Low Back Pain
by S. L. Baker
Natural News
The results of the largest randomized back pain trial of its kind shows acupuncture clearly helps people with chronic low back pain more than standard medical care. But the results of the SPINE (Stimulating Points to Investigate Needling Efficacy) study, just published in the May 11, 2009 Archives of Internal Medicine, has some researchers scratching their heads over the remarkable findings. The reason the study’s results are so intriguing? Not just one but three different forms of acupuncture beat out western medicine in helping relieve low back pain.
The SPINE trial included 638 adults with chronic low back pain who were patients at two nonprofit health plans, Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, Washington, and Northern California Kaiser Permanente in Oakland. All the research subjects ranked their pain as a minimum of three on a scale of zero to 10 of “bothersome” discomfort.
Continue reading Acupuncture Beats Western Medicine for Treating Low Back Pain
Butter has been eaten since Biblical times and even before: In Mesopotamia, butter from goats and sheep has been eaten since 9000-8000 BC, and cows were domesticated for such use a thousand years later. The first reference to butter in written history was found on a 4,500-year-old limestone tablet illustrating how butter was made. Although butter was part of the human diet for tens of thousands of years, a series of misleading studies in the 1950s and 1960s vilified it. 
At the turn of the 20th century, heart disease in America was so rare that medical students from all the New York City medical schools were summoned to see a heart attack. By 1960, it was our number one killer. Yet during the same time period, butter consumption had decreased – from eighteen pounds per person per year, to four. A researcher named Ancel Keys first proposed that saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet were to blame for coronary heart disease but numerous subsequent studies costing hundreds of millions of dollars, have failed to conclusively back up this claim. In fact a Medical Research Council survey showed that men eating butter ran half the risk of developing heart disease as those using margarine.
Continue reading Butter is Good for Your Health
Women who are being treated for breast cancer often have side effects like debilitating hot flashes, other vasomotor conditions, and depression that cannot be treated with carcinogenic hormones. A 2008 study, in The International Journal of Radiation Oncology, found acupuncture equal in effectiveness but superior in side effects to treat women coping with the side effects of conventional breast cancer medicine.
Dr. Elanor Walker’s study involved 47 patients who received the common breast cancer treatment of Tamoxifen or Arimidex and as a result had at least 14 hot flashes per week as well as excessive sweating, night sweats and depression. The Results
Both of the groups showed significant improvement in the adverse effects of breast cancer treatment. The study reported “that acupuncture is at least as effective as venlafaxine in reducing vasomotor and other symptoms associated with anti-estrogen hormonal treatment of breast cancer.”
Although the main symptoms were decreased relatively equally among the two groups, the venlafaxine group reported a host of negative side effects such as nausea, dry mouth, headache, insomnia, dizziness, double vision, increased blood pressure, constipation, fatigue, anxiety, feeling ”spaced out,” and body spasms at night.
Patients from the acupuncture group experienced side effects as well, however they were positive in nature. The acupuncture-treated group experienced increased energy, clarity of thought, sexual desire, and an increased sense of well-being compared to before the treatment. After the 12 week trial was complete, the reduction in hot flashes lasted longer for the acupuncture patients than for the venlafaxine group.
In other words, although [...]
Women who are being treated for breast cancer often have side effects like debilitating hot flashes, other vasomotor conditions, and depression that cannot be treated with carcinogenic hormones.
A 2008 American study, which appeared in the September issue of The International Journal of Radiation Oncology, examined the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating women coping with the side effects of conventional breast cancer medicine. Eleanor Walker, M.D., a radiation oncologist at the Henry Ford Hospital Department of Radiation Oncology in Detroit, led a team of researchers to compare acupuncture treatment with the common anti-estrogen treatment used to control breast cancer therapy side effects. The side effects, such as hot flashes and depression, affect about 80% of women treated for breast cancer and are usually treated by the pharmaceutical anti-depressant venlafaxine (Effexor). Many breast cancer patients refuse venlafaxine because of its own set of negative side effects. The Study
The clinical trial, titled “Acupuncture for the Treatment of Vasomotor Symptoms in Breast Cancer Patients Receiving Hormone Suppression Treatment,” compared acupuncture treatment to venlafixine therapy for 12 weeks. The trial was randomized, which means that the patients were randomly placed into either treatment group. This ensured that both known and unknown confounding factors were evenly distributed between groups. Randomization is a common scientific technique for increasing the reliability of experimental results.
Dr. Walker’s study involved 47 patients who received the common breast cancer treatment of Tamoxifen or Arimidex and as a result had at least 14 hot flashes per week as well as excessive sweating, night sweats [...]
Acupuncture has long been used to enhance fertility, including IVF treatments which are enhanced by the treatment, by 10-50% depending upon the study. Constance Marie, 43, best known as George Lopez’s wife on “The George Lopez Show,” recently opened up about her struggle to get pregnant.
Here is an excerpt from a recent article on People.com’s Celebrity Baby Blog
“Constance Marie has been open and honest about her struggle to conceive daughter Luna Marie, 3 months, and in a new interview with MomLogic she offers advice to other women experiencing infertility”
“Constance — who conceived Luna on her third IVF trial after two miscarriages and an unsuccessful attempt with Clomid — also credits a “detox” for helping her to become pregnant. “I did acupuncture throughout the process, started eating organically, cut out fish because of the mercury, did a liver-gall bladder detox cleanse, and stopped drinking out of plastic bottles and got rid of all my Tupperware,” she explains, citing BPA concerns. ”I also tried Japanese enzyme baths, where you get buried up to your neck in wood shavings and enzymes, which pull toxins out of your body when they’re heated — you feel amazing afterward!”
To read the whole article click here
First off, if you work where infectious diseases are prominent, have serious chemical sensitivity or mold issues, you probably need to purchase a respirator with a small micron opening such as the nanomasks that have shaped silicon holders. That said, most of us benefit from the reduction of incoming germs, without total  protection, relying upon our immune systems to do the rest of the work.
The easiest thing to do for everyday exposures is to put a double or triple layered scarf over your nose and mouth and breathe through it while you are out in public places, or riding trains Cover the eyes with glasses or dark glasses and wear a pair of gloves, and you are good to go. In the summer just use a cotton scarf and sunglasses, and use your waterless hand cleaner after touching doorknobs, banisters and the like in public places. Make sure you wash well between uses.
Continue reading How to Make A Face Mask
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Worried About Breast Cancer?
Read about Natural Breast Care and support me in the 2010 Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. Paleo Diet in A Nutshell Eat
1. Pasture raised or wild meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and any natural animal fat
2. Vegetables, including leaves, stems, bulbs, roots
3. Fruits and berries (includes avocados and olives)
4. Nuts such as almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans, coconut, etc.
5. Herbs and spices
Avoid/minimize
(in order of importance)
1. Sweeteners, including sugar (white, brown, organic, whatever), maple syrup, rice or agave syrup, etc.
2. Vegetable oils other than extra virgin olive, avocado, palm, and coconut.
3. Cereal grains and flour or grain products (bread, pasta, pastries, etc.) Especially avoid glutinous grains like wheat, barley, rye or triticale.
4. Dry legumes (beans and peas, including soy and peanuts)
5. Dairy products. If you take them, use goat or raw or both
.
(thanks to Rachel and Donald Matsez, authors of The Garden of Eating)
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And Organic Berries
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