Alternative therapies in health and medicine
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Altern Ther Health Med · Sep 2014
Meta AnalysisEvaluating the efficacy of Tui Na in treatment of childhood anorexia: a meta-analysis.
Medical practitioners are now seeing more children younger than 15 y who are developing childhood anorexia. Hua Tuo chiropractic treatments are an ancient and practical massage therapy and are a type of Tui Na therapy, which has been used for curing childhood anorexia for thousands of years in China. Research literature suggests that chiropractic care produces outcomes at least comparable with alternative treatments. ⋯ The level of evidence reported was mixed, but given the available evidence, the research team concluded that Tui Na therapy was a viable intervention that could benefit infants and young children with anorexia. No serious adverse events were reported. Larger randomized, controlled trials are required to explore the effects of Tui Na therapy for treatment of childhood anorexia further.
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Altern Ther Health Med · Sep 2014
Clinical TrialA novel, multi-ingredient supplement to manage elevated blood lipids in patients with no evidence of cardiovascular disease: a pilot study.
Recent changes in usage guidelines have created the potential for millions more Americans to be prescribed statin medications. Caution should be advised because the risk of adverse effects of statins may outweigh their benefits and preclude their preventive use for patients without confirmed cardiovascular disease (CVD) who present with elevated blood lipids. However, statins have shown some benefit in primary CVD prevention. Red yeast rice (RYR) is a dietary supplement that has been demonstrated to reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels in blood and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids have been shown to reduce blood levels of triglycerides (TGs). Although effective, quality control issues aggravate risk of adverse effects for both of these supplements. Furthermore, low dosages per capsule, which require patients to manage and consume many capsules per day, also may reduce patient compliance to supplementation regimens. ⋯ The MIS supplement decreased total cholesterol and LDL significantly and offers a promising therapy for the management of cholesterol that may enable better patient compliance. The addition of an omega-3 supplement also decreased TGs in the subgroup that received both therapies, although this decrease was not significant, potentially because of the underpowered size of the subgroup. The research team plans future studies with more robust lipid testing and larger numbers of participants to support the findings of the current study.