Figs Relieve Constipation in Clinical Trial

Doctormurray.com

How crazy is it that Americans spend over $2 billion a year on laxatives to deal with constipation? Here is something else to ponder, studies designed to determine the percentage of adults suffering from chronic constipation put the number between 24% to almost 50%.

Rather than relying on laxatives and stool softeners, people need to wake up and look first to foods to improve digestive health. An elaborate new study has added figs to a long list of effective foods to aid intestinal health and relieve constipation.

Background Data:
The fig tree is native to the Middle East and Mediterranean and is one of the world’s first cultivated trees. The fig tree can trace its history back to the earliest of times with mentions in the Bible (remember the fig leaf?) and other ancient writings. Figs are grown in moderate climates all over the world with the five leading world producers being Turkey, Greece, the U.S., Portugal, and Spain. Approximately 99% of the U.S. crop in grown in California.

Figs have a unique, sweet taste; a chewy texture to their flesh and skin; and a crunchiness to their seeds.  Fresh figs are delicate and perishable, so most often figs are dried, either by exposure to sunlight or through an artificial process, creating a sweet and nutritious dried fruit that can be enjoyed throughout the year.   Figs range dramatically in color and subtly in texture depending upon the variety, of which there are more than one hundred and fifty. Some of the most popular varieties are:

·         Adriatic: the variety most often used to make fig bars, which has a light green skin and pink-tan flesh

·         Black Mission: blackish-purple skin and pink colored flesh

·         Kadota: green skin and purplish flesh

·         Calimyrna: greenish-yellow skin and amber flesh

·         Brown Turkey: purple skin and red flesh

Figs are high in natural simple sugars, minerals, fiber, and flavonoids.
Historically, figs have been recommended as a laxative as well as to nourish and tone the intestines.

Animal studies have confirmed these benefits. After feeding rats or beagles fig paste for three to four weeks, researchers have observed increases in the production of the protective mucin that lines the intestines, as well as improved peristalsis (the intestinal contractions that propel the food bolus through the intestines). Fig consumption also shortened the time fecal material stayed in the colon, as well as increased the fecal quantity indicating a pronounced prebiotic effect.

New Data:
To test the effects of figs as a laxative in humans with chronic constipation, a very elaborate study was conducted in Korea at the Clinical Trial Center for Functional Foods in the Chonbuk National University Hospital. In order to make the study double-blind, obviously figs could not be used because it would be impossible to make a placebo look just like a fig. So, the researchers made figs into a paste and also created a placebo paste out of flavoring agents, sugar and modified starch that had the same taste, smell and appearance as the fig paste.

Next, 40 subjects were selected who met the criteria of suffering from what is termed functional constipation. In functional constipation people experience reduced stool frequency (e.g., less than 3 bowel movements a week), hard stools, and difficulty or straining passing stools. Functional constipation is different from the irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) because it does not have the abdominal discomfort or pain, and a change in stool frequency or consistency characteristic of IBS.

The patients were then divided into two groups. One group got the fig paste that was equal to about 3 figs and the other got the placebo paste for 8 weeks. The primary outcome was colon transit time and secondary outcomes were based upon results from a questionnaire related to defecation.

The results were obvious and statistically significant in favor of the fig paste. In particular, there was a significant reduction in colon transit time and a significant improvement in stool type compared with the placebo. The colon transit time was reduced from 63 hours to 38 hours in the fig group. Stool consistency was improved (i.e., stools were softer) with fig paste consumption.

These results show that eating approximately 3 figs per day results in significant improvement in bowel function in patients suffering from chronic constipation.

Commentary:
The truth is that constipation will often respond to a high-fiber diet, plentiful fluid consumption, and exercise. This fact is well accepted and there is absolutely no argument from anyone in the medical community that focusing on these natural approaches should constitute the first step in the treatment of chronic constipation. Yet, we are purchasing $2 billion worth of laxatives each year? It just doesn’t make sense.

Especially important in relieving and preventing constipation is the recommendation of increasing dietary fiber. High levels of dietary fiber increases both the frequency and quantity of bowel movements, decreases the transit time of stools, decreases the absorption of toxins from the stool, and appears to be a preventive factor in several diseases.  The recommended daily intake is 25-35 grams of fiber from dietary sources. However, higher amounts may be more optimal for health as our evolutionary diet contained approximately 100 grams of daily fiber. Most Americans only get about 10-15 grams of fiber each day, hardly enough to help propel food through our digestive tract and nourish the microbiome.

Why Sleeping in on Weekends Could Be Bad for Your Health

secondopinionnewsletter.com

You’ve heard of jet lag. But have you heard of social jet lag? Jet lag refers to a sudden change in sleep hours after traveling across time zones. Social jet lag refers to going to bed later and waking up later on weekends than on weekdays. The two are similar — a sudden change in sleep hours. Sleeping in on weekends is a luxury that seemingly would translate to a net positive for health, rather than a negative. But is it?

Sierra B. Forbush, of my alma mater the University of Arizona in Tucson, said the disruption to the body’s natural sleep cycle caused by late-night weekend bedtimes followed by later wake times is not a good habit. Her research is showing that if you’re a weekday early riser, sleeping in on weekends could be hazardous to your health.

The results of her study of over 800 men and women were presented this past month at SLEEP 2017, the joint annual meeting of the American Society of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society. It showed that social jet lag was associated with a host of poor health outcomes, including chronic fatigue, poor mood, and even an increased risk for heart disease. Previous studies of social jet lag have associated the habit with a higher risk for substance use, especially smoking, and for obesity.

“Social jet lag … is caused by social responsibility,” Forbush said. “That could be your school or your work. Many people on weekdays wake up at, say, 7 a.m. to get to work by 8, but on the weekends they want to sleep in. We looked at how that shift affects your health.”

To do the study, Forbush and her colleagues used five different questionnaires. They included 984 men and women between the ages of 24 to 60 years in the study. Their overall health was self-reported as “excellent,” “good,” or “fair/poor.” They also measured the participants’ degree of cardiovascular disease, depression, fatigue, and sleepiness. Here’s what they found.

Social jet lag increased the risk of self-described poorer health, mood disorders, fatigue, and daytime sleepiness. Amazingly, each hour of social jet lag is also associated with an 11% increase in the likelihood of heart disease. The effects were independent of total sleep time and insomnia.

According to Forbush, “These results indicate that sleep regularity, beyond sleep duration alone, plays a significant role in our health. This suggests that a regular sleep schedule may be an effective, relatively simple, and inexpensive preventative treatment for heart disease as well as many other health problems.” I think I remember my grandmother telling me, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a person both healthy and wise.” Now, it’s official.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adults should sleep seven or more hours per night on a regular basis to promote optimal health. And this study points out that in addition to getting enough sleep, healthy sleep requires appropriate timing and regularity. If you have trouble sleeping, taking supplements like Advanced Sleep Formula (800-791-3395) can help you get to sleep and get the full seven-plus hours of sleep you need for good health.

REF: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170605085326.htm.

Interesting and Impressive Benefits of Green Tea 

By Mercola.com

When you’re thirsty, pure water is always a good choice, but sometimes you may be craving something different – a cool refreshment on a hot summer day or a warm mug to sip on when temperatures plummet. Green tea fits the bill in both cases and, even better, provides significant benefits to your health.

You’re probably already aware that green tea is healthy… but you may be surprised to learn just how healthy it actually is. Green tea is one beverage you can feel good about enjoying even multiple times a day.

9 Health Benefits of Green Tea

1. Bioactive Compounds with Medicinal Properties

Green tea is rich in naturally occurring plant compounds called polyphenols, which can account for up to 30 percent of the dry leaf weight of green tea.

Within the group of polyphenols are flavonoids, which contain catechins. One of the most powerful catechins is epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), which has been shown to positively impact a number of illnesses and conditions.

2. Improve Brain Function

Green tea contains theanine, an amino acid that crosses the blood-brain barrier and has psychoactive properties. Theanine increases levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), serotonin, dopamine, and alpha wave activity, and may reduce mental and physical stress and produce feelings of relaxation.1
Theanine may also help to prevent age-related memory decline2 and has been shown to affect areas of your brain involved in attention and complex problem-solving.3

3. Increase Fat Burning and Weight Loss

There is some evidence that long-term consumption of green tea catechins is beneficial for burning fat and may work with other chemicals to increase levels of fat oxidation and thermogenesis.
In one recent study, men who took a green tea extract reduced their body fat by 1.63 percent and increased their fat oxidation rates by 25 percent compared to those taking a placebo.4 And according to research in Physiology & Behavior:

“Positive effects on body-weight management have been shown using green tea mixtures. Green tea, by containing both tea catechins and caffeine, may act through inhibition of catechol O-methyl-transferase, and inhibition of phosphodiesterase.

Here the mechanisms may also operate synergistically. A green tea-caffeine mixture improves weight maintenance, through thermogenesis, fat oxidation, and sparing fat free mass…

Taken together, these functional ingredients have the potential to produce significant effects on metabolic targets such as thermogenesis, and fat oxidation.”

4. Lower Your Risk of Cancer

Green tea components have been shown to downregulate the expression of proteins involved in inflammation, cell signalization, cell motility, and angiogenesis, while an association between green tea intake and decreased risk of cancers (including ovarian and breast5) have been reported.6

Women who drank more than three cups of green tea a day also had a reduced risk of breast cancer recurrence,7 and previous research has shown green tea polyphenols act on molecular pathways to shut down the production and spread of tumor cells.8

They also discourage the growth of the blood vessels that feed the tumors. EGCG even acts as an antiangiogenic and antitumor agent, and helps modulate tumor cell response to chemotherapy.9

5. Lower Your Risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s

In a study presented at the 2015 International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases, those who drank green tea one to six days a week had less mental decline than those who didn’t drink it.10 In addition, the researchers revealed tea drinkers had a lower risk of dementia than non-tea drinkers.

In another study of 12 healthy volunteers, those who received a beverage containing 27.5 grams of green tea extract showed increased connectivity between the parietal and frontal cortex of the brain compared to those who drank a non-green tea beverage.11

The increased activity was correlated with improved performance on working memory tasks, and the researchers believe the results suggest green tea may be useful for treating cognitive impairments, including dementia.

Green tea polyphenols also appear to have an inhibitory affect on mechanisms involved in triggering Parkinson’s disease, leading researchers to suggest it may be useful for both prevention and treatment.12

6. Improve Your Dental Health

Green tea is thought to improve periodontal health by reducing inflammation, preventing bone resorption, and limiting the growth of certain bacteria associated with dental diseases.

Researchers noted that “the more frequently subjects drank green tea, [the] better was their periodontal condition.’13 Green tea may even help prevent bad breath.

Researchers concluded, “green tea was very effective in reducing oral malodor temporarily because of its disinfectant and deodorant activities, whereas other foods were not effective.”14

7. Lower Your Risk of Type 2 Diabetes

Green tea improves lipid and glucose metabolism, prevents sudden increases in blood sugar levels, and has a balancing effect on metabolic rate.15 One study even found people who consume six or more cups of green tea daily had a 33 percent lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than those who consumed less than one cup per week.16

8. Lower Your Risk of Heart Disease and Stroke

Green tea improves both blood flow and the ability of your arteries to relax, with research suggesting a few cups of green tea each day may help prevent heart disease.17 Study results also show EGCG can be helpful for the prevention of arterio­sclerosis, cerebral thrombus, heart attack, and stroke — in part due to its ability to relax your arteries and improve blood flow.18

Green tea also appears to inhibit the oxidation of LDL cholesterol in your bloodstream.19 Oxidized LDL is more harmful than normal non-oxidized LDL because it’s smaller and denser. This allows it to penetrate the lining of your arteries, where it will stimulate plaque formation associated with heart disease.

In a meta-analysis of green tea for stroke, meanwhile, it was found that drinking at least three cups of green tea daily lowered stroke risk by 21 percent. The researchers noted, “Drinking tea regularly may be one of the most practical lifestyle changes you can make to significantly reduce your risk of suffering a stroke.”20

9. Increase Longevity

Drinking green tea is associated with reduced mortality due to all causes, as well as reduced mortality due to heart disease. In one study of Japanese women, those who drank five or more cups of green tea daily were 23 percent less likely to due during an 11-year period.

Separate research found elderly individuals (aged 65 to 84) who drank the most green tea were 76 percent less likely to die during the six-year study period.21 Research also shows holistic benefits to green tea consumption, including lower blood pressure, oxidative stress, and chronic inflammation.22

Freshly Brewed Tea Is Best for Your Health

While it may be tempting to purchase pre-made bottled tea, especially the iced variety, be aware that it likely won’t contain the same level of health-boosting flavonoids as freshly brewed tea. Nutrition scientist Dr. Jeffrey Blumberg, director of the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at Tufts University, told Bay Area Bites:23

“Tea is not stable… You know that cloudy stuff that you see at the bottom of a bottle of ice tea or a gallon batch that you made a few days ago? That’s precipitated flavonoids – and that doesn’t do you any good.”

An analysis of the strength and purity of more than 20 green tea products by ConsumerLab.com found that EGCG levels in bottled green tea can range from just 4 milligrams (mg) per cup to 47 mg, while brewable green tea (from tea bags, loose tea, or a K-cup) contained levels ranging from 25 mg to 86 mg per serving.24

One variety, bottled Diet Snapple Green Tea, reportedly contained almost no EGCG, while Honest Tea Green Tea with Honey contained only about 60 percent of the 190 mg of catechins claimed on the label.25 Added sugars or artificial sweeteners were also common in the bottled tea brands.

Fortunately, brewing your own tea fresh at home is easy. Here are a few simple guidelines for making the “perfect” cup of tea:

·         Bring water to a boil in a tea kettle (avoid using a non-stick pot, as this can release harmful chemicals when heated)

·         Preheat your teapot or cup to prevent the water from cooling too quickly when transferred. Simply add a small amount of boiling water to the pot or tea up that you’re going to steep the tea in. Ceramic and porcelain retain heat well. Then cover the pot or cup with a lid. Add a tea cozy if you have one, or drape with a towel. Let stand until warm, then pour out the water. (This step is unnecessary if you’ll be drinking your tea iced).

·         Put the tea into an infuser, strainer, or add loose into the tea pot. Steeping without an infuser or strainer will produce a more flavorful tea. Start with one heaped teaspoon per cup of tea, or follow the instructions on the tea package. The robustness of the flavor can be tweaked by using more or less tea

·         Add boiling water. Use the correct amount for the amount of tea you added (i.e. for four teaspoons of tea, add four cups of water). The ideal water temperature varies based on the type of tea being steeped:

oWhite or green teas (full leaf): Well below boiling (170 to 185°F or 76 to 85°C). Once the water has been brought to a boil, remove from heat and let the water cool for about 30 seconds for white tea and 60 seconds for green tea before pouring it over the leaves

oOolongs (full leaf): 185 to 210°F or 85 to 98°C

oBlack teas (full leaf) and Pu-erhs: Full rolling boil (212°F or 100°C)
·         Cover the pot with a cozy or towel and let steep. Follow steeping instructions on the package. If there are none, here are some general steeping guidelines. Taste frequently as you want it to be flavorful but not bitter:

oOolong teas: 4 to 7 minutes

oBlack teas: 3 to 5 minutes

oGreen teas: 2 to 3 minutes

·         Once the desired flavor has been achieved you need to remove the strainer or infuser. If you’re using loose leaves, pour the tea through a strainer into your cup and any leftover into another vessel (cover with a cozy to retain the heat)

·         If you prefer iced tea, transfer your tea to the refrigerator to cool or add just enough ice to bring the temperature down (be careful not to water it down too much).

Tips for Getting the Most Health Benefits Out of Your Tea

There are many variables that affect just how healthy your cup of green tea is. A telltale sign of high-quality green tea is that the tea is in fact green. If your green tea looks brown rather than green, it’s likely been oxidized, which can damage or destroy many of its most valuable compounds. Many enjoy using loose tea leaves, which ConsumerLab found may offer even more antioxidants (while also avoiding potential toxins in tea bags). Other considerations include:

1.    Add Lemon: To boost the benefits of green tea, add a squirt of lemon juice to your cup. Previous research has demonstrated that vitamin C significantly increases the amount of catechins available for your body to absorb. In fact, citrus juice increased available catechin levels by more than five times, causing 80 percent of tea’s catechins to remain bioavailable.26

2.    Skip the Milk: The proteins in milk may bind to and neutralize the antioxidants in tea, such that its health benefits are significantly reduced. One study even found “All [beneficial vascular protective] effects were completely inhibited by the addition of milk to tea.”27

3.    Choose Organic and Grown in a Non-Polluted Environment: Green tea plants are known to be especially effective at absorbing lead from the soil, which is then taken up into the plants’ leaves. Areas with excessive industrial pollution, 28 may therefore contain substantial amounts of lead.29 Both black and green teas are naturally high in fluoride as well, even if organically grown without pesticides.

This is because the plant readily absorbs fluoride thorough its root system, including naturally occurring fluoride in the soil. There are reports of people who have developed crippling skeletal fluorosis from drinking high amounts of iced tea alone.30

When selecting tea of any kind, it should preferably be organic (to avoid pesticides) and grown in a pristine environment because, as mentioned, tea is known to accumulate fluoride, heavy metals, and other toxins from soil and water. A clean growing environment is essential to producing a pure, high-quality tea, and, ideally, the water you use to brew it should be fluoride-free as well.

The Fungus Formerly Known As…

Tina Beaudoin, ND

In 2007, Cordyceps sinensis was reclassified and dubbed Ophiocordyceps sinensis when molecular analysis revealed the need to create a new family, Ophiocordycipitaceae.

The diverse health benefits of this unique sac fungus are impressive. For thousands of years in Asia, traditional healers have used cordyceps for a variety of conditions, including energy, appetite, stamina, libido, endurance and sleeping disturbances as well as general tonic.1

In terms of energy and stamina, we are often looking for options to help reduce fatigue while we work with patients to identify and address the underlying factors contributing to their symptoms. Cordyceps has been shown to improve exercise performance (metabolic and ventilatory thresholds) in healthy elderly subjects after just 12 weeks.2 One possible mechanism of action could be explained in animal models that showed cordyceps extract treatment leads to an increase in the ATP/inorganic phosphate ratio (increased energy) in the liver after just three weeks.3

There are numerous studies that illustrate the benefits of cordyceps on our immune system. The anticancer and antimetastatic activity of cordyceps is well documented, specifically in breast cancer, prostate and liver cancer.4, 5,6 One study postulated that the anticancer action might be due to one of the constituents, possibly cordycepin, by a promotion of an adenosine deaminase inhibitor. The same study also found antimetastatic properties “through inhibiting platelet aggregation induced by cancer cells and suppressing the invasiveness of cancer cells via inhibiting the activity of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and MMP-9 and accelerating the secretion of tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase (TIMP)-1 and TIMP-2 from cancer cells.”7 In a mouse study, cordyceps administration led to decreased bacterial growth and dissemination of group A streptococcal (GAS) infection, increased macrophage phagocytosis and increased survival rates.8

While you might want to consider using cordyceps as a singular agent for those patients struggling with fatigue and low immune function, there are thousands of studies citing the efficacy of reishi, turkeytail, maitake and many others medicinal mushrooms. For this reason, mushrooms are often used in combination formulas to add multiple potential mechanisms of action to give the patient the synergistic benefits of many “fun guys.”

Nick’s comment:

Although not mentioned in the article cordyceps is effective in lowering cholesterol…

Clinical studies published in Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (involving 273 patients (in 9 hospitals) with high cholesterol level) show that Cordyceps sinensis helps to lower total cholesterol by 10–21% and triglycerides by 9–26%. At the same time, it helps to increase HDL cholesterol (‘good’ cholesterol) by 27–30%. (Zhu, JS, Halpern, GM, Jones, K. The scientific rediscovery of an ancient Chinese herbal medicine: Cordyceps sinensis. Part I. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 1998, 4(3), 289–303.)

An increase in the level of lipids, especially cholesterol, increases the chance of getting atherosclerosis.

In the double-blind placebo-controlled study involving 245 patients published by Halpern (1999), after 2 months of administration of Cordyceps at a dose of 1g/day, total cholesterol dropped by an average of 17.5% among 61% of patients (in the control group, the reduction was only 1.17% among 28.8% of patients) and ‘useful’ HDL cholesterol increased by 27.19% for 76.2% of patients. (Halpern, G.M. 1999. Cordyceps: China’s healing mushroom. New York: Avery Publishing Group.)

Mushrooms & Health: Reviewing the Latest Data

Paul Anderson NMD

The use of mushrooms, mushroom extracts and mushroom combinations in the care of human health is thousands of years old. There are few agents in the record of human history that can rival the duration, impact or reputation of mushrooms in medicine.

In some ways, one may believe that the use of mushrooms in healthcare is so well understood that research would have stopped being done long ago. This is the case, for the most part, in regard to research on many modern pharmaceutical agents (unless a researcher wishes to try a new indication with an old drug). A very brief search of the data shows many papers published in peer-reviewed medical literature, with some as current as two months ago. In this review, I have chosen four papers published in 2016 and one—which I believe is of note—from the bygone days of 2014. As one who is involved in research using many “old” agents (and some new), I find that when communicating with a patient regarding the utility of an agent in their healthcare, some mention of active and positive research on that agent increases their desire to use it and follow the therapeutic plan I have set out. This review is intended to briefly provide that information for medicinal mushrooms.

While there are plethora of mushrooms and mushroom fractions used in medicine, I am focusing this paper on those reported on in the five publications mentioned and cited in the references.

Crohn’s Disease

Therkelsen et al1 discussed the effect of the medicinal Agaricus blazei Murill-based mushroom extract on the symptoms, fatigue and quality of life in patients with Crohn’s disease in a paper published this summer. The results show significant improvement on symptoms, for both genders, in the mushroom treated group. The patients did not report any adverse effects of the mushrooms. The authors conclude that “Crohn’s patients with mild to moderate symptoms may have beneficiary effects of [the mushroom therapy] as a safe supplement in addition to conventional medication.” The effects of the mushroom in the GI tract, as well as systemically, are likely behind the benefits noted. These mushrooms (as many do) exhibit immunomodulatory effects which are so crucial to the care of people with autoimmunity. That the inflammatory bowel diseases have both a direct gut effect and a systemic effect (as we see, for example, with curcumin) is of great therapeutic benefit.

Malnutrition and Cachexia

Llauradó et al 2  studied oral administration of an aqueous extract from the oyster mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus that enhances the immunonutritional recovery of malnourished mice. I know that mouse studies are not preferred over human studies. But gaining the mechanistic information one can from an animal study in a condition such as malnourishment can “fast track” the trial of a natural agent in humans with the same or similar condition.

As one who struggles with the treatment of patients with cachexia (mostly secondary to cancer but not always), any agent that can potentially turn the biology of these suffering patients around is needed clinically. In cachexia, we know that a multi-agent approach is always required and that the more “at the core” of the cachexia biology the agent works, the more beneficial an addition to the therapy plan it is. The authors make some very promising discoveries in this respect which—when compared to the biological “faults” created by cachexia—make this agent worth a trial in cachexic and underweight patients:

“Oral treatment with CW-P normalized haemoglobin levels, liver arginase and gut mucosal weight. CW-P increased total liver proteins and DNA and protein contents in gut mucosa. Pleurotus extract provided benefits in terms of macrophages activation as well as in haemopoiesis, as judged by the recovery of bone marrow cells and leukocyte counts. Moreover, CW-P stimulated humoral immunity (T-dependent and T non-dependent antibodies responses) compared to non-supplemented mice. CW-P extract from the oyster mushroom can be used to develop specific food or nutritional supplement formulations with potential clinical applications in the immunotherapy.”

With the caveat that malnutrition and cachexia must be treated in a well-rounded manner, it seems to me that the availability of a potentially strong synergist to nutritional therapies in an aqueous form may be potentially lifesaving to these patients.

Ganoderma (Reishi) and Cancer

Jin et al 3 reviewed the role of Ganoderma lucidum (Reishi mushroom) in cancer treatment. As a preface, such reviews need to have their conclusions considered in the context of the “primary question” or the endpoint the review was focused on. This is important, as I have seen such reviews say “there is no scientific data to support…” and such a review was cited, only to find out that the review was answering a totally different question than the “no data” person was speaking of. With this in mind, the review was seeking to answer this question: “Should reishi be used as a first-line therapy in cancer?” This is a pretty tall order for anything to fill (let alone a mushroom), as the therapy of “cancer” is actually many entities and there are many variations related to stage, grade and patient immunity that can affect any therapeutic outcome. That said, the authors conclusions are summarized here:
The review did not find sufficient evidence to justify the use of G. lucidum as a first-line treatment for cancer.

It remains uncertain whether G. lucidum helps prolong long-term cancer survival.

However, G. lucidum could be administered as an alternative adjunct to conventional treatment in consideration of its potential of enhancing tumour response and stimulating host immunity.

1.   lucidum was generally well tolerated by most participants with only a scattered number of minor adverse events. No major toxicity was observed across the studies.

Future studies should put emphasis on the improvement in methodological quality while further clinical research on the effect of G. lucidum on long-term cancer survival is needed.
It is no surprise that Reishi didn’t have the data to take first place in the therapy of “cancer”—very few agents could claim that. It is also no surprise that it had excellent safety, enhanced host response and tumor immunity and was, by the reviewers, recommended for consideration as an adjunct in the care of a person with cancer.

Mechanisms of Immunological Benefit

Chang et al4 (the eldest paper reviewed, from way back in 2014) looked at Ganoderma lucidum stimulating NK cell cytotoxicity by inducing NKG2D/NCR activation and secretion of perforin and granulysin. Their conclusion was that Ganoderma, in their research, showed a cellular and molecular mechanism to account for the reported anticancer effects of G. lucidum extracts in humans. Of note, this was also an aqueous extract.

This mechanism actually has crossover from oncology effects to infectious disease as well. Perforin and granulysin are two cytolytic molecules that natural killer cells use to kill (hence the name of the cell type) any cell without “self” surface receptors. This includes things such as cancer cells, virally infected cells, bacteria and others.  Enhancement of natural killer cell function is well established in the basic immunology sciences as enhancing “surveillance” immunity and lowering infections and oncogenesis.

The Form of an Extract Does Matter
Lu et al5 in their paper published this summer, “Immunomodulatory properties of medicinal mushrooms: differential effects of water and ethanol extracts on NK cell-mediated cytotoxicity,” make an excellent point regarding the form of a mushroom extract and its effect on the mechanism and actual immunologic effect of the agent.

Through the same mechanisms mentioned above4, these researchers showed that aqueous extracts (note: most papers reviewed above used this form) allow these natural killer cell benefits and alcohol extracts block it. From the conclusions: “Water extracts enhance NK cell cytotoxic activity against cancer cells, whereas ethanol extracts inhibit cytotoxicity.” This difference in extraction processes is well known in herbal medicine and generally in botanical medicines and herbalism, the “method” of extraction is highly respected as to clinical outcome. This paper, and the fact that the majority of the studies presented today used aqueous extracts, enhances the notion that such extracts are likely superior to alcohol extracts in the case of immune responses of mushroom-based agents.

Implications for Practice

Medicinal mushrooms have a great pool of data supporting their use in modern times. They are also some of the most treasured agents in healthcare in the thousands of years of recorded history we have. My common thought is that if an agent has “stood the test of time” (and we know it to be effective), the science will not only prove that out, but also repeatedly support and elucidate more and more mechanisms explaining the clinically noted outcomes.

Brain Cancer Patient Beats the Odds With
a Therapy I Thought Was a Hoax

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sMS-MD-aHM

January 2017
Volume 27    |   Issue 1
Dr. Frank Shallenberger
www.secondopinionnewsletter.com

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If you live long enough, you just might start to become more than a little cynical about this world. I’ve been working in medicine for over 40 years now and the experience has made me more than just cynical. It’s made me a hearty believer in something called Sturgeon’s Law.

Theodore Sturgeon is a world famous science fiction author. In his later years, Sturgeon developed Sturgeon’s Law. It’s really quite simple. It goes like this: “90% of everything is crap.” And in my time in medicine, I can tell you that Sturgeon’s Law is pretty accurate. But notice that Sturgeon didn’t say 100%.

There are a lot of things out there that at first glance appear to be in the 90% category, but then turn out to be the real thing. Something happened to me about three years ago that has led me to a place I would never have guessed I would go. And what I’ve learned since then just might be the most important message I send out all year (and it’s only January). That’s why I’m kicking off the New Year with this – and dedicating almost the entire issue of this month’s Second Opinion to one topic. And all of this started with Barry.

I’ve known Barry for years. His son grew up with my son. But since the kids grew up, I hadn’t seen him for a long time. Then one day about three years ago, Barry called me up and told me he was in trouble. Barry had started to have headaches and was losing his balance. A few scans later, he found out he had brain cancer. It was a solitary tumor, so the first thing his doctors did was to take it out surgically. He was immediately better, but you can guess what happened six months later. The symptoms returned and the scans showed that the cancer was back. At this point, his doctors told him that the next step was radiation. So that’s what he did.

The radiation knocked the tumor back a few notches and his symptoms disappeared again. But he was having such a hard time with the side effects of the radiation that he called me to see if there was something I could do. Now here’s the thing. I wish he would have called me right away when he first had the diagnosis. I would have treated him with ozone therapy before and after the surgery and the radiation therapy. His odds for a cure would have been much better. And the side effects from both treatments would have been minimal. In my world, there’s no way that a patient should have surgery or radiation therapy without a course of ozone therapy before and after. But that bridge was already crossed and so we had to deal with what was at hand. Barry still had brain cancer and he was now sick from radiation damage.

He immediately started a course of ozone therapy combined with intravenous vitamin C therapy. Within a few days he was already feeling better. Ozone treatment is the only treatment I have ever found that can turn radiation damage around. We continued the treatments along with some immune-stimulating supplements and a special diet. Barry was looking good a month later. And that’s when we had the talk. I told him that although this plan was a good one, there was no way that it would be able to stop the cancer. He needed something else. That’s when I lost track of him. He told me he was going to do some investigating. I figured that would likely be the last time I saw him this side of heaven. But I was wrong.

Barry’s doctors had given him about six months to live. So imagine my surprise when I was driving to work one morning about a year later and the cell phone rang and it was Barry’s number. My first thought was that he had died and one of his sons was using his phone to call me up to let me know. But it was Barry’s voice. And he sounded great, like the same old Barry I had known for years. He told me that he started taking a special oil and had really tightened up on his diet. The result? He was feeling great. And unbelievably enough, his scans not only showed that his cancer had completely stopped growing, but they also showed that the cancer had actually shrunk! Of course, the first thing out of my mouth was, “What in the world have you been doing?”

“I started taking hemp oil,” was the answer. Now I thought that hemp was just another word for the same remedy that Mick Jagger and hippies all over the world have in their medicine cabinets — marijuana. But don’t break out your old Jimi Hendrix records yet. Although hemp oil is very similar to marijuana, it’s significantly different. Hemp and marijuana are versions or strains of the same plant — cannabis. The difference has to do with special substances in both hemp and marijuana called cannabinols.

Cannabis has more than 100 different cannabinols. But two of them stand out. One of them is THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). Marijuana has the distinction of having a very high content of THC. THC is the only cannabinol that gets you high. Too much THC and you can’t think straight and become disoriented. But there’s another cannabinol that’s also found in high amounts. It’s called CBD (cannabidiol). CBD does not produce a high. But as you will soon see, the effects of CBD on the human body are nothing short of amazing.

Besides THC and CBD, there also are a host of other cannabinols in much smaller amounts in cannabis. But almost all the research on cannabis has looked at the effects of THC and CBD. The difference between hemp and marijuana has to do with THC. Hemp contains very little THC – less than 0.3%. Marijuana can contain anywhere from 5-30%. And there’s another big difference. Hemp and hemp extracts, unlike marijuana, are legal in all 50 states. Other than the fact that hemp has almost no THC, the two plants are the same. All of the other cannabinols are present in both plants. So what is the effect of CBD, and why did it work so well in Barry’s case?

Here’s a remarkable fact that I would never have guessed. Research has shown that our bodies actually make their own cannabinols. The cannabinols that we make are called endocannabinols. And in order for the body to use the endocannabinols it makes, it has its own cannabinol receptors. These receptors are special molecules that occur on the surface of cells that allow the endocannabinols to work. One absolutely amazing fact is that there are more cannabinol receptors in the human body than any other receptor system. That shows you just how important these molecules are for our health.

Multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury, neuropathic pain, cancer, atherosclerosis, stroke, diabetes, myocardial infarction, hypertension, glaucoma, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and osteoporosis are just some of the diseases in which alterations in the endocannabinol system play a role. And that’s where the magic of CBD works. CBD (and also THC) interacts with our cannabinol receptors. In that sense, CBD works much more like a nutrient than a drug. And what it does when it interacts with the cannabinol receptors is nothing short of wonderful!

The receptors that CBD interacts with are found in large amounts in the peripheral nervous system, the internal organs, the skin, the muscles, the ligaments, and in the immune system. And when CBD acts on these cells, it decreases inflammation, decreases pain, decreases tension and anxiety, increases energy levels, and stimulates the immune system. So how did that help Barry? First of all it made him feel better, more relaxed, less pain, and more energy. But it also had a very obvious direct anti-cancer effect. How did it do that? In three ways.

First, almost all cancers require inflammation in order to survive. In fact, inflammation is so important to cancer that cancer cells activate a special pathway called the NF-kB (NF-kappa Beta) pathway that causes inflammation. CBD decreases inflammation by deactivating the NF-kB pathway. And in this way, it decreases the ability for cancer cells to grow and spread.

Secondly, CBD stimulates the immune system. When patients get cancer, their immune systems are often in need of help. And when they have surgery, radiation, and chemo, they need even more help. CBD can have a profoundly positive effect on the immune response. But that’s not all. Like certain chemotherapy drugs, CBD is an angiogenesis inhibitor.

Angiogenesis is the process that cells use to form new blood vessels and improve blood flow. Since cancer cells don’t die and are constantly growing, they have an ever-increasing need for more blood. So to provide the extra blood flow, cancer cells produce pro-angiogenic factors that act to promote angiogenesis. This allows them to grow and spread without restraint. Scientists have discovered that CBD acts as an angiogenesis inhibitor by preventing cancer cells from producing these pro-angiogenic factors and also by directly affecting blood-vessel growth.

And if that’s not enough, CBD has a direct anti-cancer effect on tumors. By interacting with the cannabinol receptors on tumor cells, it inhibits tumor growth and leads to apoptosis. As most of my readers know by now, the reason that cancers are so problematic is that they refuse to die. Normal cells go through a process called apoptosis in which they eventually die. But cancer cells have found a way to avoid apoptosis. So they don’t die! This leads to uncontrolled growth and all of the problems associated with that. CBD helps to undo that by stimulating apoptosis in cancer cells.

But CBD does more than only stimulate apoptosis through the cannabinol receptors. It also has a direct anti-cancer action that has nothing to do with the receptors. Because of its uncontrolled growth, cancers often kill their victims by invading into and destroying healthy tissues and organs. But when scientists looked at the effect of CBD on the ability of glioma cancer cells to migrate and invade into surrounding tissues, they discovered something marvelous.

The researchers found out that CBD directly impaired the migration and invasion of these cancer cells in a dose-dependent way. That means that the more CBD they added to the cancer cells, the less they were able to invade other tissues. And when they blocked the CBD receptors, they saw the same effect. That proves that the effect was not through the receptors, but instead was a direct anti-cancer effect. The authors concluded, “These results reinforce the evidence of anti-tumor properties of CBD, demonstrating its ability to limit tumor invasion….” Oh, and by the way, Barry’s cancer is a glioma. So it’s no wonder it worked so well.

But what about studies on cancers other than glioma? Other studies show that CBD has anti-cancer activity in lung cancer, hormonal cancers, melanoma, leukemia, colon cancers, thyroid cancer, prostate cancer, and both estrogen positive and estrogen-negative breast cancers. In all of these cancers, CBD weakens cancer cells, making them more susceptible to chemo and radiation. And it decreases their ability to grow, invade, and metastasize. Additionally, every one of these studies shows that CBD does no harm to healthy cells.

So if you’re battling cancer, no matter what course of therapy you decide to use, I can think of nothing easier and better for you than making CBD therapy a part of your plan. I’ve been using it routinely in all my cancer patients for the last 18 months. I have to say that my results are even better than they were before. And if you’re like me and don’t have cancer, I can’t think of anything better to take than some CBD just for prevention. You will also sleep better, be calmer, have more energy, and have fewer aches and pains. Fighting cancer is only the tip of the iceberg for this therapy.

I’ve found that CBD is great for virtually anything that ails you. The list includes Crohn’s disease, chronic pain, drug and alcohol addiction, chronic anxiety, insomnia, seizures, Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases, depression, high blood pressure, spasticity, migraines, Tourette’s syndrome, glaucoma, and autism.

CBD is available from here http://bit.ly/2ILsETI

REFS;
Paola, Massi, Marta Solinas, et al. “Cannabidiol as potential anticancer drug.” Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2013 February; 75(2): 303–312.

Shohami, E. and M. Horowitz. “Cannabinoids in Health and Disease.” J Basic Clin Physiol Pharmacol. 2016 May 1;27(3):175-9. https://youtu.be/1sMS-MD-aHM.

Vaccani, A., P. Massi, et al. “Cannabidiol inhibits human glioma cell migration through a cannabinoid receptor-independent mechanism.” Br J Pharmacol. 2005 April;144(8):1032-6.

Busting the 8-Hour Sleep Myth: Why You Should Wake Up in the Night

Natalie Wolchover in http://www.livescience.com/ 

More than one-third of American adults wake up in the middle of the night on a regular basis. Of those who experience “nocturnal awakenings,” nearly half are unable to fall back asleep right away. Doctors frequently diagnose this condition as a sleep disorder called “middle-of-the-night insomnia,” and prescribe medication to treat it.

Mounting evidence suggests, however, that nocturnal awakenings aren’t abnormal at all; they are the natural rhythm that your body gravitates toward. According to historians and psychiatrists alike, it is the compressed, continuous eight-hour sleep routine to which everyone aspires today that is unprecedented in human history. We’ve been sleeping all wrong lately — so if you have “insomnia,” you may actually be doing things right.

The flip of a light switch

“The dominant pattern of sleep, arguably since time immemorial, was biphasic,” Roger Ekirch, a sleep historian at Virginia Tech University and author of “At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past” (Norton 2005), told Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

“Humans slept in two four-hour blocks, which were separated by a period of wakefulness in the middle of the night lasting an hour or more. During this time some might stay in bed, pray, think about their dreams, or talk with their spouses. Others might get up and do tasks or even visit neighbors before going back to sleep.”

References to “first sleep” or “deep sleep” and “second sleep” or “morning sleep” abound in legal depositions, literature and other archival documents from pre-Industrial European times. Gradually, though, during the 19th century, “language changed and references to segmented sleep fell away,” said Ekirch. “Now people call it insomnia.”

You can blame the shift in your sleeping habits on Thomas Edison’s lightbulb and the Industrial Revolution.

Ekirch explained that in the past, and especially during winter, darkness spanned up to 14 hours each night. Except for those affluent enough to burn candles for hours, folks were left with little to do but go to bed early, and this gave a great deal of flexibility to their nightly sleep requirements. Segmented or biphasic sleep patterns evolved to fill the long stretch of nighttime, and as observed by anthropologists, segmented sleep continues to be the norm for many people in undeveloped parts of the world, such as the Tiv group in Central Nigeria.

In places with electricity, though, artificial lighting has prolonged our experience of daylight, allowing us to be productive for longer. At the same time, it has cut nighttime short, and so to get enough sleep we now have to do it all in one go. Now, “normal” sleep requires forgoing the periods of wakefulness that used to break up the night; we simply don’t have time for a midnight chat with the neighbor any longer. “But people with particularly strong circadian rhythms continue to [wake up in the night],” said Ekirch.

In the 1990s, a sleep scientist named Thomas Wehr discovered that everyone sleeps biphasically when subjected to natural patterns of light and dark. In Wehr’s well-known study, he subjected participants to 14 hours of darkness per night, and found that they gradually shifted to a routine of taking two hours to fall asleep, then sleeping in two four-hour phases separated by about an hour of wakefulness—a pattern that exactly matched Ekirch’s historical findings.

Wehr concluded that biphasic sleeping is the most natural sleep pattern, and is actually beneficial, rather than a form of insomnia. He also inferred that modern humans are chronically sleep-deprived, which may be why we usually take only 15 minutes to fall asleep, and why we try our best not to wake up in the night.

One benefit of biphasic sleeping may be that it makes it easier to recall and access dreams. Wehr’s study subjects normally awakened from REM sleep, which is the deep sleep stage during which dreams occur. According to Ekirch, the historical evidence bears that out. “Waking up directly after dreaming afforded people a pathway to their subconscious,” he said. “With morning dreams we don’t have the opportunity to let our dreams settle. The light goes on and we get out of bed immediately. So in short, we have lost what people in the past regarded as a critically important part of their lives – their dream life.”

Sleepers set in their ways

Wehr’s and Ekirch’s results are becoming more and more widely known, and psychiatrists and sleep specialists are beginning to implement them. However, the behavioral paradigm shift has been slow to take hold. According to a recent article in Psychiatric Times  by Walter Brown, a psychiatrist at Brown Medical School, “Working against the clinical application of [Wehr’s and Erkich’s] findings is the extent to which they fly in the face of current thinking. The general public seems to regard 7 to 8 hours of unbroken sleep as a birthright; anything less means that something is awry. Sleep specialists share this assumption.”

But, Brown wrote, this is changing. Clinical psychiatrists are finding that if they can make their insomnia patients stop seeing their sleep as problematic, their condition becomes more tolerable. “If they perceive interrupted sleep as normal, they experience less distress when they wake at night, and fall back to sleep more easily.”

In other words, if you wake up in the night, don’t worry about it. “Waking up after a couple of hours may not be insomnia,” wrote Wehr. “It may be normal sleep.” Ekirch added, “If people don’t fight it, they’ll find themselves falling asleep again after roughly one hour.”

How Do We Fall Asleep?

Natalie Wolchover  http://www.livescience.com  

Falling asleep is a routine yet mystifying process. Like trying to see the 3D image in a Magic Eye poster, the more you focus on it, the less likely it is to happen. It shies away from scrutiny and is best approached with an air of detached disinterest; so, though most of us fall asleep every night, we can’t say exactly how we do it.

Even neuroscientists are still struggling to understand the mechanisms the brain uses to switch from a state of wakefulness to unconscious sleep, but research reveals that the transition is a lot more gradual and tumultuous than the flip of a light switch.

According to recent work by neuroscientists at Washington University in St. Louis, during the pre-sleep stage of the process — the period when you’re in bed with the lights off and your eyes closed, slowly “letting go” of the trials of the tribulations of the day — your brain waves exhibit what’s known as alpha activity, typically associated with quiet wakefulness.

“It is in this period that the brain progressively disengages from the external world,” Linda Larson-Prior and her colleagues wrote in a 2011 paper. “Subjects slowly oscillate between attending to external and internal thoughts, with the majority of internal thoughts being autobiographical or self-referential in nature.”

Then, at some crucial moment, you enter the transitional sleep stage, known as stage 1. Brain waves slow down, shifting to a form known as theta-band activity, but are still punctuated by brief bursts of alpha activity. These hiccups give you the sense that you’re still awake, said Scott Campbell, director of the Laboratory of Human Chronobiology at Weill Cornell Medical College, citing a landmark sleep study performed in the 1960s.

“Investigators asked subjects aroused out of various stages of sleep whether they considered themselves asleep. Only about 10 percent of those aroused from stage 1 said that they had been asleep.”

Think of what happens when you doze off while watching a movie: You remember bits and pieces of scenes for quite a while before conking out completely. Those excerpts — picked up during the short bursts of alpha-band activity in your brain — give you a sense that you’re awake, though you’re actually well on your way to dreamland.

Next, your brain moves on to stage 2, the start of “true” non-REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when those bursts of alpha activity die down. All neuroscientists agree that this stage is sleep, though you still might not know it. In that same 1960s study of sleep arousal, “about 60 percent believed that they had been asleep when aroused out of stage 2,” Campbell told Life’s Little Mysteries. The other 40 percent would tell you they hadn’t fallen asleep yet.

This makes sense in light of a 2010 study by Taiwanese neuroscientists. They demonstrated that sleep stage 2 is associated with further reductions in the perception of external stimuli. Though we’re asleep, we might still hear a word or two of dialogue from that movie; it gradually fades away.

Next, we enter slow wave sleep (also known as deep sleep, delta-band activity, or stages 3 and 4), and finally, experience REM sleep — the stage when we dream. While stages 1 and 2 are difficult to perceive, 90 percent of people recognize themselves as having definitely fallen asleep when aroused after entering stages 3 or 4. That means we’ve completed the transition. From then on, we spend the rest of the night cycling between non-REM stages 2, 3 and 4, and REM sleep.

Sleep onset really does abhor attention. “For most people, the harder they try to fall asleep, the less success they have,” Campbell said. “One dramatic example of this is Sleep Onset Insomnia. People with SOI are often so worried about the consequences of not falling asleep (i.e., exhaustion the next day), that they keep themselves awake by obsessing about falling asleep.”

Of course, it’s not just thinking about falling asleep that keeps us awake; obsessing about anything is likely to interfere. Campbell said, “That’s why ‘counting sheep,’ or thinking about anything with little emotional content can help the sleep onset process.”

SAFFRON FLOATS

www.Townsendletter.com

Jacob Schor, ND, FABNO
drjacobschor1@msn.com
for more great articles by the author go here:  http://www.denvernaturopathic.com/NewsletterListA-Z.htm

One could say that great minds think alike. It might be more accurate to say that eccentric minds sometimes get lost in similar parallel universes.

My colleague Mark Davis, the naturopath of dubious fame for being the fecal transplant expert, was our houseguest for a few days last November.

Over morning coffee, we realized that both of us had been engaged in a similar experiment, mixing dried saffron filaments with honey and adding the mixture to our morning coffee. We had both independently thought that this would be a great idea. If you stir 1 gram of saffron into half a cupof honey, each teaspoon will, in theory, provide about 30 mg of saffron. One could make a cup of saffron tea by simply adding a spoon of this saffronized honey to hot water and end up with a decent dose of saffron in it. We were both past drinking saffron tea; we were stirring our saffron-laced honey into our morning coffee.

It turned out that both of us had notice the saffron studies published over the past few years. The papers that initially grabbed our attention focused on psychological effects.
Agha-Hosseini reported back in 2008 that taking 30 mg/day of saffron improved premenstrual syndrome symptoms (PMS). Improvements were seen in the Total Premenstrual Daily Symptoms and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. It did take 3 to 4 menstrual cycles to see results, though.1

Four earlier human clinical trials had shown that saffron significantly relieved depression. Two of these studies, one by Akhondzadeh and a second by Noorbala, both published in 2005, used 30 mg of saffron a day in 6-week trials. Akhondzadeh compared saffron against placebo, while Noobala compared saffron effect against the fluoxetine [Prozac], Saffron worked better against depression than the placebo and better than the Prozac.2,3

These researchers reported similar results in 2006 and 2007 but used stigma and flower petals rather than just the stigma. In November 2006, Moshiri reported that petals (30 mg/day) were more effective than placebo.4 In March 2007, Akondzadeh reported that in an 8-week trial, petals (30 mg/ day) were as effective as fluoxetine (10 mg/day) in treating mild to moderate depression.5

A review by Kazdair et al. published in September 2015 lists a range ofactions:
Saffron has been suggested to be effective in the treatment of a wide range of disorders including coronary artery diseases, hypertension, stomach disorders, dysmenorrhea and learning and memory impairments. In addition, different studies have indicated that saffron has anti-inflammatory, anti-atherosclerotic, antigenotoxic and cytotoxic activities. Antitussive effects of stigmas and petals of C. sativus and its components, safranal and crocin have also been demonstrated.

The anticonvulsant and anti-Alzheimer properties of saffron extract were shown in human and animal studies. The efficacy of C. sativus in the treatment of mild to moderate depression was also reported in clinical trial. Administration of C. sativus and its constituents increased glutamate and dopamine levels in the brain in a dose-dependent manner. It also interacts with the opioid system to reduce withdrawal syndrome.6
Another review, published a few months earlier in July 2015, combined data from 12 earlier clinical trials “examining the effectiveness of saffron (Crocus sativus L.) on psychological and behavioral outcomes.” The conclusion: “Saffron may improve the symptoms and the effects of depression, premenstrual syndrome, sexual dysfunction and infertility, and excessive snacking behaviors.”7

The idea that saffron has value in treating depression is certainly quite old. In Greek mythology, Crocus was a mortal youth who became overly enamored with the nymph Smilax. He was left forlorn when she grew bored with him. The gods turned him into the crocus flower that we obtain saffron from. Smilax was also turned into a flower, one that we call bindweed.8

In yet another meta-analysis, this one from September 2014, Lopresti and Drummund combined data from six randomized placebo-controlled trials and concluded, “Saffron had large treatment effects and, when compared with antidepressant medications, had similar antidepressant efficacy. Saffron’s antidepressant effects potentially are due to its serotonergic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, neuro­endocrine and neuroprotective effects.”9

Obviously, using whole flowers would be more cost effective than stigmata. Fukui tested an even more cost-effective idea in 2011. Study participants were asked to simply smell a tincture of saffron several times a day. The saffron was dilute enough that the participants could not detect whether they had the tincture that contained saffron or the placebo. This no-cost intervention nevertheless significantly changed cortisol and other serum markers.10 Fukui’s study encouraged Dr. Davis and me to favor saffron tea over capsules, as it might act in part via an aromatherapy effect.

Saffron’s effect on cancer is of great interest. Most if not all cancer patients will experience some degree of depression, and the idea that an effective antidepressant might also provide benefits against cancer is attractive. An October 2011 study reported that a molecular constituent of saffron called crocetin “significantly enhanced the cytotoxicity induced by vincristine” against cervical, NSCLC, ovarian, and breast cancer cell lines.11Another October article described using saffron in a liposomal form to increase cytotoxic action against HeLa and MCF-7 cells.12 A May 2011 paper reported that “saffron exerts a significant chemopreventive effect against liver cancer through inhibition of cell proliferation and induction of apoptosis.”13 An April 2011 paper reported that crocetin “affects the growth of cancer cells by inhibiting nucleic acid synthesis, enhancing anti-oxidative system, inducing apoptosis and hindering growth factor signaling pathways.”14 Papers from both May 2011 and 2010 suggest a potential benefit against lung cancer, the more recent telling us, “Saffron could decrease the cell viability in the malignant cells as a concentration- and time- dependent manner… [and could] be considered as a promising chemotherapeutic agent in lung cancer treatment in future.”15

An October 2010 paper had reached a similar conclusion: “The extract exerts pro-apoptotic effects in a lung cancer-derived cell line and could be considered as a potential chemotherapeutic agent in lung cancer.”16 A January 2011 paper reported that “Crocetin inhibits invasiveness of breast cancer cells through downregulation of matrix metalloproteinases.”17 Other papers have suggested possible utility in treating pancreatic cancer and lymphoma.18″20

Hosseni et al. reported in September 2015 the results of their small clinical trial in which 13 patients with cancer metastasized to the liver were divided into two groups. Both groups received standard chemotherapy treatment. Patients in one group received 50 mg of saffron in a capsule twice a day during chemotherapy, while the second group received placebo. Of the 13 patients who started, only 7 finished the study. Two of the 4 patients who took saffron showed a partial and complete response. No response was seen in the placebo group. Admittedly, the sample size is too small for this study to be convincing. On the other hand, most of us would probably volunteer to get the saffron if we were offered it and not the placebo.21

A September 2015 article published in Oncotarget by Rangarajan and fellow researchers at Kansas University describes an experiment in mice which suggests that saffron extracts strikingly inhibit pancreatic cancer cell growth in both cell cultures and in mice. “The mice who were given the crocetinic acid demonstrated a 75 percent reduction in their tumor growth, while the mice in the control group, which didn’t receive the crocetinic acid, actually saw a 250 percent increase in tumor growth.”22

Saffron continues to appear quite safe to use, even in high- risk patient populations. A September 2015 paper by Mousavi et al. reported on a double-blind, placebo-controlled study performed on patients with schizophrenia. A total of 66 male patients were divided into three groups. While receiving their normal treatment, they also received a 12-week treatment with an aqueous extract of saffron (15 mg twice daily), crocin (15 mg twice daily), or placebo. Sixty-one patients completed the trial; none of them reported a serious side effect. White blood cell counts increased significantly in patients receiving saffron aqua extract, but it was within the normal range and had no clinical significance. Other hematologic components, markers of thyroid, liver, and kidney, or inflammation markers had no statistically significant difference among the groups.23

Recent publications suggest that saffron has benefit for a range of other conditions. Human clinical trials have been published in the last year or two, suggesting a benefit in depression, Alzheimer’s disease, glaucoma, macular degeneration, and erectile dysfunction.24-29

Studies on depression have advanced, moving from treating patients with mild to moderate depression in 2014 to a study on treating major depressive disorders in 2015.30,31

I used to tell patients interested in taking saffron that they should make a water alcohol extraction, adding half an ounce of boiling water to a gram of saffron, lettng it steep for a few days and then adding an equal volume of vodka and dosing it by the drop. While that method remains sound, both Mark Davis and I apparently simultaneously tried the same experiment; we both mixed a gram of saffron into half a cup of honey. Dr. Davis isn’t the only colleague who shares my interest in saffron; I’ve been trading abstracts and full text articles on saffron with Dr. Davis Lamson, the other “Davis” in my world.

There is something emotionally touching to find both “Davis Senior” and “Davis Junior,” the former being more than twice the age of the younger, fascinated by the same herb. It brings a sensation of confluence; we have all independently adopted the same therapy at the same time into our practices. To my amusement, Davis Lamson’s method of calculating the dose of milligrams saffron per teaspoon of honey suspension was far more complicated and involved convoluted conversions of cups to milliliters then back to teaspoons, while Mark Davis and I took the simple route of simply dividing 1000 mg/gm by 24 tsp/ half-cup honey; we all ended up with about 42 mg saffron/ tsp honey.

In the end, this honey suspension experiment did not work as well as Dr. Davis and I had hoped. Saffron is so very light; despite how viscous honey is, the saffron floats to the top of the honey. Dr. Davis has already modified his approach and meticulously hand-grinds the saffron filaments with a mortar and pestle before mixing it in. I take a simpler approach; when the saffron floats to the top, I just stir it back in. It isn’t a big deal.

I find myself feeling quite pleased with this saffron business. Perhaps it is all the saffron I’ve consumed of late. I think it is something else. The idea that Dr. Davis, Dr. Lamson, and I have wandered along our own paths to arrive at much the same place at the same time is pleasing. It is nice to find oneself in such fine company.

Coenzyme Q10 and atrial fibrillation

from  www.drjanson.com

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a condition in which the smaller chamber of the heart does not beat regularly, but merely quivers with no rhythmic contraction. This leads to reduced heart function, but because the atrial beat contributes only about 20 percent of the blood to the left ventricle (the rest passes passively through the mitral valve) it is usually not a debilitating condition. However, because the chamber is not contracting, the blood is more likely to coagulate while collecting in the intricate channels of the atrial wall. For this reason, patients who are in persistent AF are usually put on anticoagulants, such as warfarin (Coumadin), or some of the newer agents used for the same purpose, to prevent a dislodged clot from causing a stroke or other tissue damage.

Patients with heart failure often develop AF, and they may be at a higher risk of more severe cardiac arrhythmias, depending on the severity of their heart failure. In a new study, 102 heart failure patients were given either a combination of the usual heart failure drugs with a placebo, or the same drugs plus a daily supplement of 30 mg of coenzyme Q10. The subjects included 72 men and 30 women aged 45 to 82 years. They were evaluated at the start of the study by electrocardiogram, Holter monitor for 24 hours, and blood levels of inflammatory substances that are markers for heart risks. They were then evaluated again after 6 months and 12 months.

At both follow-up evaluations, those subjects in the coenzyme Q10 treatment group had a significantly lower incidence of AF. At 12 months, the incidence of AF was 6.3 percent in the group treated with coenzyme Q10, compared with 22.2 percent in the control group. The heart muscle function (ejection fraction) was significantly better in the treatment group (24 percent increase) at both follow-up evaluations compared to the control group (19 percent increase). In addition, the inflammatory markers were markedly lower in the coenzyme Q10 treatment group than in the controls. For example, the decline in C-reactive protein (CRP) levels in the medication-only group was 20 percent, but in the coQ10 group the decline was 40 percent. (Zhao Q, et al., Effect of coenzyme q10 on the incidence of atrial fibrillation in patients with heart failure. J Investig Med. 2015 Jun;63(5):735-9.)

Practical guidelines:

Coenzyme Q10 is essential for energy production in muscle cells, and the heart requires more than any other muscle. Levels are often too low in heart patients, and treatment with statin drugs can lower it further. The dose of coenzyme Q10 in this study was very low compared to typical treatment levels (30 mg as opposed to 100 to 400 mg, or even higher in heart patients with more severe disease).

It is easy to design a study to fail, and I am surprised that this study showed such statistically significant benefits with such a small dose and with a relatively small group of subjects. In the citations found with this study, only one article gives the specific dose of coenzyme Q10, and in that one the dose averaged 100 mg per day, so I am surprised that they chose to treat with only 30 mg. My recommendation is a dose of 100 to 200 mg per day (I take 400 mg) and ubiquinol (the reduced form) is likely to be better than the more common ubiquinone (the oxidized form), although this is converted in the body to ubiquinol.

Nick’s Comment:  Another treatment is using a mixture of Lecithin and vitamin B5 which helps increase the neurotransmitter that regulates heart rate.Read the article about this treatment here  http://www.townsendletter.com/FebMarch2013/milner0213.html

Acupressure Improves Sleep Among Menopausal Women

By MASSAGE Magazine October 1, 2015

To complement the Research Reports in the October 2015 issue of MASSAGE Magazine. Summary: In a recent study, self-administered acupressure significantly improved sleep quality among menopausal women experiencing sleep difficulties.

The consistent use of acupressure, applied at home as a self-care technique, resulted in a significant improvement in sleep quality among menopausal women, according to recent research.

The study, “The effect of acupressure on sleep quality in menopausal women: a randomized control trial,” involved 120 menopausal women ranging in age from 41 to 65, with a score higher than five on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index.

The women were randomly assigned to either the acupressure group, the sham acupressure group or the control group. Those in the acupressure and sham acupressure groups were trained to use circular massage covering about one centimeter in diameter on specified points with about three to four kilograms of pressure. The women in the control group had a health-based conversation once a week.

Acupressure techniques assigned

Subjects in the acupressure and sham acupressure groups were asked to perform the techniques at home for 10 minutes two hours before going to sleep. They were instructed to do so every night except Fridays for four weeks in a row.

According to the researchers, women in the acupressure group were trained to massage four acupoints: Shenmen on the wrist crease; Sanyinjiao point (SP6) on both feet; Fengchi on the hairline at the back of the neck (occipital area); and Yintang at the top of the nose on the centerline between the eyebrows. Women in the sham acupressure group were instructed to massage four sham acupoints.

( You can find the points with these instructions…..Shenmen On the front of the wrist toward the inner end of the wrist crease just inside of the small prominent bone, Sanyinjiao three fingers above the inner ankle bone behind the tibia, Fengchi in the soft spot at the back of the neck, one and a half fingers from the midline and just below the margin of the skull bone, Yintang at the midpoint between the inner ends of the eyebrows. Find the most tender spot in the area and massage the point until the sensation reduces)

The results

The main outcome measure for this study was sleep quality, as measured by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Results of the research showed a significant improvement in sleep quality among the women in both the acupressure group and the sham acupressure group as compared to the control group. However, the improvement in sleep quality was much greater among women in the acupressure group as compared to the sham acupressure group.

“The total improvement of [Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score] in comparison to baseline was 41 percent in the acupressure group and 17 percent in the sham acupressure group,” stated the study’s authors.The researchers concluded that acupressure is effective when it comes to improving sleep quality among menopausal women.

Nick’s comment:  Even though this study was done with menopausal women the treatment can be used by anyone and at any age.

About the Authors

Authors: Zahra Abedian, Leila Eskandari, Hamid Abdi and Saeed Ebrahimzadeh.

Sources: Evidence-Based Care Research Centre, Department of Midwifery, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Sheikh Hospital, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran; Health Center, Semnan University of Medical Science, Semnan, Iran. Originally published in the July 2015 issue of the Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences, 40(4), 328-334.