Contributor, Author at Vitamin Insider

NONTRADITIONAL CARE: ALTERNATIVE? INTEGRATIVE? COMPLEMENTARY?

October 28, 2015January 19, 2017Contributor

How Can Americans Incorporate Nontraditional Care Strategies To Improve Their Health?

More Americans today than ever before are investigating the benefits of nontraditional care. In one recent year more than 38 percent of American adults used some form of alternative medicine. The field of nontraditional therapies is diverse. The benefits are hotly contested. Moving forward more research is needed to determine the true efficacy of many of these practices.

Some of the disciplines included in nontraditional care include:

acupuncture
acupressure
Reiki
homeopathy
naturopathy
chiropractic
biofeedback
aromatherapy
ayurvedic medicine
Traditional Chinese Medicine
balneotherapy
reflexology

Alternative practices may not always exclude traditional/conventional Western medical techniques. For example nontraditional treatments can sometimes work along with mainstream measures in a combination of practices.

Complementary Treatment

The term “complementary therapy” includes forms of nontraditional care used together with conventional medicine. People sometimes try such treatment(s) to relieve symptoms or side effects while they are undergoing standard/conventional treatment to address the actual diagnosis. For example, cancer patients might use nontraditional care for pain relief. At the same time they could be using conventional oncology protocol for treatment of the disease.

Alternative Treatment

Other individuals may decide to pursue so-called “alternative therapy” approaches. In this case the nontraditional care measure would be used alone in lieu of all standard or allopathic treatment.

Integrative Treatment

“Integrative therapy” is generally understood to incorporate nontraditional care into mainstream health protocols. This approach may include different combinations of alternative, complementary and standard treatments. Each treatment needs to be individualized on a case-by-case basis.

Caution

It is essential to tell your conventional healthcare provider(s) about any/all nontraditional care or complementary health approaches you are using or considering. In conclusion always be certain to give your medical team a full picture of everything that you are currently doing or planning to do to manage your health. This disclosure then will help ensure coordinated and safe care for your best outcome overall.

Nontraditional Healthcare – Coverage in the U. S. A.

October 27, 2015October 18, 2017Contributor

How Frequently Do People in the U.S.A. Use Nontraditional Healthcare Strategies Today?

The exact number of individuals currently using nontraditional healthcare in America is not well documented. It has been estimated, though, that at least 10,000 practitioners now serve more than one million U. S. patients each year.

Nationwide, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) estimates that more than 30 percent of adults now use health care approaches developed outside of mainstream Western, or conventional/allopathic, medicine. Additionally about 12 percent of American children also currently receive nontraditional services.

Data collected in the 2007 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) included a comprehensive survey on the use of complementary health treatments. Findings there document that an estimated 3.1 million U.S. adults had used acupuncture in the previous year. The number of visits to acupuncturists tripled between 1997 and 2007. Also, according to the NHIS study, about 2.3 million Americans practiced tai chi and 600,000 practiced qi gong in the previous year.

What Insurance Coverage Is Available for Nontraditional Healthcare?

Many Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) nationwide currently offer at least one form of alternative health care coverage. Services most often covered are chiropractic care (87%) or acupuncture (47%).

There seems to be less reluctance on the part of insurers in America now than there was 10 years ago to cover nontraditional treatments. Insurance coverage for acupuncture, for example, has increased significantly during the past decade. Now the benefits package, more often than ever before, also includes treatments such as moxibustion, herbal medicine and massage.

In 1999, according to the Landmark Report, only about one quarter of all HMOs provided some kind of acupuncture benefit. A 2004 survey, funded by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust, evaluated coverage five years later. That study reported 47% of all employers then offered acupuncture as a covered health benefit, up from 33% in 2002. In contrast, 52% of the POS plans were found to cover acupuncture in 2004. About 47% of the PPO plans offered such coverage, while 44% of conventional plans included acupuncture benefits then.

The most common form of insurance coverage is reimbursement of patients for acupuncture treatment under physicians’ referral. The most prevalently covered conditions are pain-related.

TCM PRACTICE: WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW ?

October 21, 2015January 20, 2017Contributor

Traditional Chinese Medicine: TCM Practice — What Is It?

Chinese researcher Youyou Tu won the Nobel Prize in Medicine on October 5, 2015. In fact she received the award for her innovative work using a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) approach. Since then, interest in TCM practice, including functional herbal remedies, has skyrocketed. As a complementary or alternate approach, TCM techniques overall may offer benefits in managing a variety of symptoms.

History and Objectives of TCM

Historically TCM practice has encompassed a broad range of techniques and approaches. These methods share common concepts which were developed in China. For the most part they are based on ancient Taoist philosophy dating back more than 2000 years.

Included in the discipline are combinations of herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage (Tui na), exercise (qi gong) and dietary therapy. The system aims to identify functional entities which regulate digestion, breathing, aging, etc. TCM practitioners perceive health as harmonious interaction among these entities and with the outside world. In like manner they interpret disease as a disharmony in interaction.

To diagnose, TCM practice aims to trace symptoms linked to patterns of an underlying disharmony. Consequently it uses techniques such as measuring the pulse, inspecting the tongue, skin and eyes and looking at the eating and sleeping habits of the individual.

Holistic Principles of TCM Practice

In summary, then, holistic beliefs of TCM include the following principles:

The human body is a miniature version of the larger, surrounding universe.
Harmony between two opposing yet complementary forces, called yin and yang, supports health. Disease results from an imbalance between these forces.
Five elements symbolically represent all phenomena including the stages of human life. These elements are thought to explain the functioning of the body and how it changes during disease.
- fire
- earth
- wood
- metal
- water
Qi is a vital energy that flows through the body. It performs multiple functions in maintaining health.

Preparation and Action of Traditional Herbal Remedies

In TCM practice the medicinal or herbal remedy is typically prepared as a decoction. In the first place practitioners blend together different parts of plants — leaves, roots, stems, flowers and seeds. Formulas are then administered as teas, capsules, liquid extracts, granules or powders. According to Xingwu Liu, Ph.D., an expert who specializes in traditional herbology from his headquarters in Chicago, the formula components interact synergistically to potentiate the overall effect. Collectively they nourish and activate the mind, the ears and the eyes. Additionally each individual constituent also is thought to exert its own unique effect in managing symptoms.

Authority: China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences

The premier authority on TCM practice is the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences (CACMS). Located in Beijing, it is at the forefront combining ancient herbal traditions with cutting-edge scientific research today. CACMS was established in 1955. In effect it functions as a comprehensive institution for technical research, clinical medicine and medical education. Today CACMS links to and cooperates with the medical circles, research institutions, universities, pharmaceutical companies and non-governmental societies of more than 100 different foreign countries and regions.

Experts from a specialty board within CACMS sometimes oversee cultivation and local harvesting of raw herbs. As a result, this oversight assures the purity and effectiveness of top-quality functional herbal remedies.

MOLECULE NOMENCLATURE: WHAT DOES L- or D- mean?

October 19, 2015October 18, 2017Contributor

What does it mean when I see the letter L- or D- printed in front of the molecule name on a supplement bottle label (e.g., L-arginine or D-fructose)?

Chemists use L- and D- distinction to differentiate between the two different forms of a chiral compound molecule. Called optical isomers or enantiomers, the forms are chemically identical but structurally different. By convention, these are called L- and D- forms, analogous to left-handed and right-handed configurations (based on Latin words, laevus and dexter for left and right). In both forms of the molecule, atomic makeup is exactly the same in composition. That is, they both have the same identity, number and order/sequence of constituent atoms. The atoms, however, are arranged differently in space. In the most simple terms, optical isomers appear as mirror images of each other.

You might think of the situation like a pair of hands or a pair of gloves. The two of them seem to be alike. They have the same size, each with exactly four fingers and a single thumb. Because of the way they are flipped around (oriented differently in space), though, there is no way you could ever rotate a right hand to make it fit exactly like a left one, or vice versa. No matter how the two hands are oriented, twisted or moved, it is impossible for all the major features of both hands to coincide precisely. Similarly, for a chemical compound, the carbon atom with four different attachments has two possible unique configurations. They, too, assume separate spatial arrangements that are not identical, just like the right/left hands in the hand-glove example.

What Difference Does It Make?

Because of the difference in form, necessarily the two isomers interact differently with receptors in the body. Going back to the hand-glove analogy, shaking someone’s right hand is much less awkward to do with your own right hand compared to your left. So, too, the different isomers also interact more or less easily depending on the placement of specific receptors. In the case of amino acids, for example, human cells manufacture only L-amino acids to incorporate into proteins. While amino acids can occur in both L- and D-forms, only the L-forms of the molecule are actually used by cells in the human body.

What Does It Mean If the Name Includes DL- ?

Occasionally you might see a label with DL- noted at the beginning of the supplement name, for example, DL-phenylalanine. This notation means the bottle contains 50% by weight the D- form of the molecule and 50% the L- form.

HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN – 10/16

October 16, 2015July 27, 2016Contributor

Instead of candy, how about charity – near and far?

After weeks of visiting HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN to look for healthier ways to celebrate the Halloween holiday and then sanely and safely to dispose of all the bountiful/excessive candy treats collected during trick-or-treat activities, would you like to take a final look today at an alternative that might enable you and your children to avoid all the hazards of sugar overconsumption and do good for other children worldwide at the same time? Then why not consider, instead, an opportunity to trick-or-treat for charity instead of amassing huge quantities of candy this year?

Starting in 1950 kids have been collecting funds for UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) on Halloween ever since to help other children all over the world who need so much more than just a one-time infusion of candy. Since then, toddlers to teens all over America have gone door-to-door on Halloween with UNICEF collection boxes, calling out, “Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF!” In those 65 years youngsters have raised more than $175 million for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF relief efforts. When you donate to this worthy cause, 90.2 cents of every dollar spent goes directly to help children in need worldwide. By Trick-or-Treating for UNICEF, your children can be superheroes for millions of children in need this Halloween. These youngsters in foreign nations are just like yours in many ways, except that unfortunately they live in countries where poverty or war or natural disaster can make it difficult to get even the basics needed to survive. Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF funds help save children’s lives in over 190 countries and territories through immunization, education, health care, nutrition, clean water and sanitation. To participate, you can find more information and can even enroll directly through their website: http://www.unicefusa.org/mission/usa/trick-or-treat

For other good causes, your local Better Business Bureau may be able to provide you with names of worthy and reputable organizations that operate right in your neighborhood. See what opportunities might be available in your very own back yard, and then hit the street on Halloween to collect funds that will support your favorite hometown charity.

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Hand-in-hand and side-by-side we can join together to make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate and at the same time teach our own children the value of helping neighbors both near and far.

Best Wishes for a Happy, Healthy Halloween!!!

HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN – 10/12

October 9, 2015July 27, 2016Contributor

Now that it’s here, what the heck should I do with all this Halloween candy?

“A little goes a long way,” say some nutritionists when referring to accumulated Halloween candy treats. Consequently these experts often recommend allowing kids to have only one to three pieces of the sweet stuff on any single day, perhaps as a dessert with lunch at school, as an afternoon snack or after dinner as part of the regular meal schedule. The rest of “the stash,” they suggest, might be better consigned to the freezer to wait in icy storage for future occasions — definitely out of sight that way and hopefully out of mind as well.

Provide one zip-lock sandwich bag for each of the days in the agreed-upon time frame and allow your youngster to choose whichever piece(s) of candy will be consumed over each of those upcoming days. Then seal all of the little see-through plastic bags except for the one to be used next day, label each one with the intended date of consumption and promptly deposit them all into your food freezer. Your goal here is to remove the powerful visual cue but at the same time reassure your child that his selected “treat treasures” are not going to disappear overnight. Remove only the designated bag, day by day, until finally all of the treats have been dispensed with only minor impact upon your child’s overall nutrition intake.

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And, as we will see tomorrow here at HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN, not only children but also adults need to take care when dividing up and consuming holiday candy. Please come back to this site Tuesday for more practical management suggestions — this time ones that apply to the big folks in your household.

HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN – 10/13

October 9, 2015July 27, 2016Contributor

Remember: adults can be just as vulnerable as kids!

After yesterday’s HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN recommendations about distributing candy treats for your children in ways that will minimize the immediate nutritional wallop, today we will look at the situation as it applies to adults.

Nutritional peril is not limited exclusively to youngsters in the house; parents and adult caregivers should be every bit as vigilant about their own candy consumption as they are about their children’s intake. Says Karen Ansel, a New York nutrition expert, “Kids go to school all day, and parents are home with candy lying around.” She suggests restricting all of your own holiday treat purchases to small snack/fun-size bars and again cautions, as we had recommended in an earlier post, “If you’re buying Halloween candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters, choose your own least favorite brands so that you are less tempted to eat it yourself.” And do not succumb either to the temptation to stock up on close-out candy sold in the grocery store at discount prices on the day after Halloween, a sure path to diet disaster even if the purchase price has been reduced.

>>> Take any surplus supply of leftover treats that you bought but did not hand out as well as the left-behind yummies your children collected from the neighbors and stash them all deep inside your food freezer. This tactic will surely move the big risk out of your sight (and hopefully out of your mind as well). If you do not have enough freezer space, then instead store your leftover candy in the most inaccessible area of the food pantry at the very back of the highest shelf. If you need to refrigerate any items, be sure to use opaque containers and locate them in the vegetable drawer or in the butter storage compartment to minimize your exposure to visual cues that might prompt you gobble down more than you had intended.

>>> Some people have been successful at melting down uneaten candy and pouring the liquid chocolate into paper- or foil-lined muffin cups. After hardening in the refrigerator, the chocolate can later be frozen inside a plastic storage bag or freezer container to bring out again just in time to use as an ingredient for future Thanksgiving or Christmas baking recipes that will be given away as home-made holiday gifts.

>>> Re-purposing the candy as an ingredient within a “healthier recipe” may also be an option for you. In my household, for example, we sometimes combine 2 cups of milk (whole, 2% or skim — your choice, depending on fat/calorie concerns) with leftover Snickers bars (2 1/2 ounces by weight and chopped into small pieces) and puree them together in a blender until smooth. Then we add a pint of either vanilla ice milk or vanilla frozen yogurt and blend until smooth to make four servings of our favorite “somewhat healthy” milk shake beverage for a special treat.

>>> Occasionally my sisters and I also have been known add a handful of candy corn or else a combination of M&Ms and pretzel sticks to our family’s otherwise high-nutrition applesauce-oatmeal-raisin cookie recipe (you can even let the kitchen-helper kiddies design their own spotted/multi-legged cookie animals with this combo — think: spider, octopus, ladybug or porcupine to start; then let the little imaginations run wild).

>>> Other times we siblings have created a not-really-too-naughty snack mix by combining about 2 cups of broken pretzels with 1/3 cup of dry milk powder, 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of white (granulated) sugar. Then we added 3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) of melted unsalted butter and stirred well, spread the mixture onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet and baked at 275 degrees for about 20 minutes. After cooling the baked mixture, we finally dumped it all into a big bowl and combined it with about 12 ounces of candy bars that had been chopped into 1/2-inch cubes. To improve the nutritional balance, from time to time we have also added air-popped popcorn, nuts, dried fruits or seeds (pumpkin, sunflower or pepita) to the mixture.

>>> Another good idea: immediately after Halloween take all those leftover candy treats along to your workplace and display them in a disposable bowl that you can place in the cafeteria, break room, reception lobby or other high-traffic area to be consumed by passersby. Or pack up the lingering goodies and give them all to your spouse or roommate to dispose of at that person’s place of employment. Whatever it takes, separate yourself from temptation as soon as possible.

Protect yourself by planning in advance … and then follow through on those plans. Do not allow yourself to go into the month of November with extra pounds or with regrets for impulsive behavior.

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And come back to HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN again tomorrow for strategies to clear those tempting treats entirely out of of the house. Prompt action can help you avoid remorse — and extra pounds — as you move into the month of November.

HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN – 10/15

October 9, 2015July 27, 2016Contributor

What about getting PAID for re-gifting that leftover Halloween candy?

After HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN looked yesterday at ways to give away less-favored treats, today you can read on to learn of the possibility for your little ones actually to make money as they rid the household of “too much of the good stuff.”

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Recently health care professionals in many communities have begun innovative buy-back initiatives to purchase excess candy treats with cash or gift certificates. To take advantage of such opportunities, children can assemble their surplus candy soon after Halloween and bring that treasure trove to a designated collection site, which is often an office location of the healthcare provider right there in the neighborhood. Be sure to check in advance, though, to determine valid dates for the program and the hours designated for candy cash-in as well as any special restrictions regulating packaging of the items. Upon surrender, you can expect the candy to be weighed by the authorized office staff person, purchased right there and then promptly bundled up and moved out of temptation’s way.

Consider a program such as Operation Gratitude, which was started by Wisconsin dentist, Dr. Chris Kammer, to purchase unwanted candy (usually for about $1 per pound) and then ship it to U. S. military troops overseas. As part of this program, service personnel also receive toothbrushes, floss and mouthwash from Dr. Kammer along with each handful of candy so that they all can brush thoroughly afterwards. “You can’t get a cavity in a short time with only a handful of exposures to sweet treats,” Dr. Kammer says.

To locate nearby professionals participating in similar programs within your own community, you can visit the Halloween Candy Buyback website, http://www.halloweencandybuyback.com/search-results.html

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And if you might be interested in expanding your impact on an international scope, please be sure to come back to HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN tomorrow to look at a philanthropic program that can enable you bypass the candy consumption danger entirely and at the same time contribute to the welfare of needy children across the globe.

HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN – 10/14

October 9, 2015July 27, 2016Contributor

Disposal strategy: divide and conquer

For the past two days here at the HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN site we’ve been looking at ways to control the impact of the one-time huge infusion of candy and empty-calorie treats that will find their way into your home on the holiday. We have surveyed the landscape for strategies that work for both children and for adults. Today’s question looks more like this: is there an early preemptive strike that you can make to minimize the danger of sugar consequences?

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When the children finally return home from collecting treats, first inspect each item for safety of course, and then have your kiddos divide their “loot” into two piles — one for the candy they really want to keep and eat (and will promptly divide into daily portions to stuff into zip-lock plastic bags for storage inside the food freezer as HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN recommended earlier) but the other for any candy they do not intend to consume. Once divided, pack up the surplus and promptly donate that second pile to a food pantry, a shelter for the homeless, your local Ronald McDonald House, the United Service Organizations (USO) or a nearby senior center or children’s hospital.

To make the donation process even easier — and more fun — perhaps you could plan a special Day After Halloween party to include a few of your children’s friends. Each guest would be invited to bring along all the uneaten/unwanted holiday candy left at that child’s house. You could then pool together all of the donated candy into one big container and allow each child to choose two or three favorite pieces from the treasure chest to take back home. All the rest of the candy is then ready to be donated to the site of your choice. Get it completely out of your house before anybody is tempted to dip into the non-favorite items out of boredom or just because the treats are easily accessible and in plain view. In other words, pass along those “blessings” before they turn into burdens … or excess pounds and inches to carry with you into the month of November.

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For an alternate (and potentially lucrative) strategy to get rid excess candy, come right back here to the HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN site tomorrow. You might be surprised at some of the opportunities right in your own community to convert candy into cash.

HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN – 10/09

October 9, 2015July 27, 2016Contributor

♫ ♫ ♫ “These boots were made for walking” ♫ ♫ ♫

After all of your advance planning, what can you do during the actual trick-or-treat event itself to promote healthy exercise and minimize the impact of all those extra Halloween carbohydrate calories?

To promote healthy physical activity, Texas registered dietitian Kristi King encourages parents to insist that children walk — or even alternate a brisk skip-hop-jog pace — from house to house instead of driving them through the neighborhood in the family car. In the spirit of friendly competition parents might also consider providing siblings and friends with pedometers or activity meters to wear while they walk. That way, at the end of the adventure, there will be a strong incentive to determine who has been the most active “Halloween champion” while collecting those goodies.

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And be sure to head back here to HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN on Monday for suggestions about how to parcel out all those accumulated treats so that the kiddos don’t go into instant sugar overload during a binge session.