Chocolate in pregnancy keeps baby happy

New Scientist, 7 April 04

Expectant mothers can take heart this Easter. Tucking into chocolate eggs is good for the baby, according to a study of over 300 women – especially if you are feeling a bit on edge.

Katri Raikkonen at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and her colleagues asked pregnant women to rate their stress levels and chocolate consumption.

After the babies were born, they looked for an association between the amount of chocolate their mothers had eaten and the babies’ behaviour. Six months after birth, the researchers asked mothers to rate their infants’ behaviour in various categories, including fear, soothability, smiling and laughter.

The babies born to women who had been eating chocolate daily during pregnancy were more active and “positively reactive” – a measure that encompasses traits such as smiling and laughter.

And the babies of stressed women who had regularly consumed chocolate showed less fear of new situations than babies of stressed women who abstained.

See Early Human Development (vol 76, p 139).

I’ve long wanted to post a series of notes on the placebo effect after realizing some of the leading scientists at recent conferences had a total misconception of this effect.

In a clinical trial, it is important to have a double blind study to control for the placebo effect. Everyone in a study will do better on the average. When I was a student in biostatistics at the Stanford Medical School, every patient in the hospital was put on a study for this reason. They get better attention. Medical error will be significantly reduced. The attention will produce a more positive emotional state which has been shown in clinical trials to improve immune function. There are many more powerful effects lumped into this placebo category and some of them are only now beginning to be understood.

The fact that you must control for the placebo effect in a clinical trial has led some scientists who should know better to conclude that the placebo effect is a fake, not a real effect. Placebo effects are real and they can be as strong or stronger than the most powerful drugs. There is substantial research accumulating on therapies like acupuncture that show that pressure or pricking the body in specific places causes major changes in brain chemistry as repeatedly shown in brain scans by researchers in China and the United States. These changes in brain function can induce a real healing effect.

The same effect has been documented for reflexology (applying pressure to points on the body, particularly the feet) and this is why one of the most effective and simple solutions to many emotional problems is EFT, a process that involves simple tapping of meridian points on the body with the fingers. I’ve seen emotional conflicts of 30 years disappear in 60 seconds by using this technique.

Meanwhile, research accumulating of affects of acupuncture on brain chemistry, is starting to be front page news. This research serves as a good model to dispel antiquated notions that lump acupuncture, as well as other techniques, in the category of a fake “placebo effect.”

Acupuncture’s secret: Blood flow to brain

By Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY

Acupuncture on pain-relief points cuts blood flow to key areas of the brain within seconds, providing the clearest explanation to date for how the ancient technique might relieve pain and treat addictions, a Harvard scientist reports today.

Although researchers still don’t fully understand how acupuncture works, “our findings may connect the dots, showing how a common pathway in the brain could make acupuncture helpful for a variety of conditions,” says radiologist Bruce Rosen of Harvard Medical School. He’ll release the findings at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting in Orlando.

Acupuncture modulates the limbic system and subcortical gray structures of the human brain: evidence from fMRI studies in normal subjects

Hui KK, Liu J, Makris N, Gollub RL, Chen AJ, Moore CI, Kennedy DN, Rosen BR, Kwong KK.

MGH-NMR Center, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston 02129, USA. [email protected]

Hum Brain Mapp. 2000;9(1):13-25

Acupuncture, an ancient therapeutic technique, is emerging as an important modality of complementary medicine in the United States. The use and efficacy of acupuncture treatment are not yet widely accepted in Western scientific and medical communities. Demonstration of regionally specific, quantifiable acupuncture effects on relevant structures of the human brain would facilitate acceptance and integration of this therapeutic modality into the practice of modern medicine. Research with animal models of acupuncture indicates that many of the beneficial effects may be mediated at the subcortical level in the brain. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the effects of acupuncture in normal subjects and to provide a foundation for future studies on mechanisms of acupuncture action in therapeutic interventions. Acupuncture needle manipulation was performed at Large Intestine 4 (LI 4, Hegu) on the hand in 13 subjects [Stux, 1997]. Needle manipulation on either hand produced prominent decreases of fMRI signals in the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampus, hypothalamus, ventral tegmental area, anterior cingulate gyrus (BA 24), caudate, putamen, temporal pole, and insula in all 11 subjects who experienced acupuncture sensation. In marked contrast, signal increases were observed primarily in the somatosensory cortex. The two subjects who experienced pain instead of acupuncture sensation exhibited signal increases instead of decreases in the anterior cingulate gyrus (BA 24), caudate, putamen, anterior thalamus, and posterior insula. Superficial tactile stimulation to the same area elicited signal increases in the somatosensory cortex as expected, but no signal decreases in the deep structures. These preliminary results suggest that acupuncture needle manipulation modulates the activity of the limbic system and subcortical structures. We hypothesize that modulation of subcortical structures may be an important mechanism by which acupuncture exerts its complex multisystem effects.

It appears possible to stimulate the production of the hormone leptin to suppress appetite and stimulate neuron development with frequencies in the 4mhz range. These frequencies appear to vary slightly across individuals and more research is needed.

Leptin regulates brain growth: Studies of leptin-deficient mice reveal new roles for the hormone in the hypothalamus

By David Secko, April 2, 2004, The Scientist

In the 10 years since the discovery of the hormone leptin and its appetite-suppressing activity in mice, the hormone has provided a good deal of insight into how a metabolic signal can affect the central nervous system. In the April 2 Science, two papers report that leptin regulates synaptic plasticity and neuronal development.

The best homeopaths have known for a hundred years that treating the patients symptoms works, even when they think the patient is nuts!

Well, guess what, most of the time the patient isn’t the one who is nuts. A lead article in the Boston Globe today reports an usual finding.

Pain study points to a mirror image

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff, 4/2/2004

For more than a century, doctors have reported cases of a mysterious phenomenon: When a patient’s arm or leg was injured, the opposite limb would sometimes feel chronic pain, as well.

Now, Massachusetts General Hospital research on rats suggests that such opposite-limb symptoms may stem from a previously unrecognized connection of pinpoint accuracy between the nerves on one side of the body and the mirror-image spot on the other side.

The research provides the “first conclusive proof” that trauma on one side of the body can cause opposite-side nerve damage, said Dr. Gary J. Bennett of McGill University in Montreal, a leading pain specialist who was not involved in the research. “There’s no precedent for this; it’s a completely out-of-the-blue discovery.”

I’ve been arguing for years at major healthcare conferences that the probability of a correct diagnosis during a typical patient visit of a few minutes is at best 50%, on average. I rarely get any kickback. A former head of the Massachusetts Medical Society thought he did better than that. I told him he was better than average.

The real numbers are worse than that. After many patient visits and hospitalization, and after the patient is dead, postmortems indicate that major problems are missed in 39% of cases and experts agree that over 30% of diagnoses are wrong, even with all that medical science and all the attending physicians have to offer during the entire period you are still breathing before you are sent to the morgue.

We need something a lot better than the current lab tests and CAT scans. I predict that electromagnetic medicine will have a huge impact on diagnosis in the future.

Wrong diagnoses are killing patients

Michael Day, New Scientist, 18 February 04

Many patients in intensive care units are being wrongly diagnosed, according to a study in a UK hospital. Some are dying because doctors fail to spot major conditions such as heart attacks, cancer and pulmonary embolism. The reason, experts say, is not incompetence but that so few post-mortems are now performed that doctors cannot learn from their mistakes.

Fang Gao Smith, a consultant in intensive care medicine at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, and her team checked the accuracy of diagnoses by comparing post-mortem results with patients’ medical records. In 39 per cent of cases, they found major problems had been missed.

The problem is not limited to one hospital, or to the UK. Gao Smith says her findings are consistent with other studies done in Europe and the US. She thinks doctors place too much faith in sophisticated scanners when making diagnoses, and are failing to learn from their mistakes because fewer and fewer autopsies are being done, both in the UK and the US.

We should all practice evidence based medicine and use treatments that are proven in randomized clinical trials, right? Well, there are certain cases where you should avoid your general practicioner because clinical trials show you will get worse treatment. Lower backpain is one. Chronic headaches are another.

While electronic frequencies can often help with headaches, this has not been proven in clinical trials. Meanwhile, see your acupuncturist. Kudos to the British Medical Journal for being an open source publisher!

Acupuncture for chronic headache in primary care: large, pragmatic, randomised trial

Andrew J Vickers, assistant attending research methodologist, Rebecca W Rees, research officer, Catherine E Zollman, general practitioner, Rob McCarney, research officer, Claire M Smith, senior trials coordinator, Nadia Ellis, lecturer, Peter Fisher, director of research, Robbert Van Haselen, deputy director of research

BMJ 2004;328:744 (27 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.38029.421863.EB (published 15 March 2004)

Objective: To determine the effects of a policy of “use acupuncture” on headache, health status, days off sick, and use of resources in patients with chronic headache compared with a policy of “avoid acupuncture.”

Design: Randomised, controlled trial.

Setting: General practices in England and Wales.

Participants: 401 patients with chronic headache, predominantly migraine.

Interventions: Patients were randomly allocated to receive up to 12 acupuncture treatments over three months or to a control intervention offering usual care.

Main outcome measures: Headache score, SF-36 health status, and use of medication were assessed at baseline, three, and 12 months. Use of resources was assessed every three months.

Results: Headache score at 12 months, the primary end point, was lower in the acupuncture group (16.2, SD 13.7, n = 161, 34% reduction from baseline) than in controls (22.3, SD 17.0, n = 140, 16% reduction from baseline). The adjusted difference between means is 4.6 (95% confidence interval 2.2 to 7.0; P = 0.0002). This result is robust to sensitivity analysis incorporating imputation for missing data. Patients in the acupuncture group experienced the equivalent of 22 fewer days of headache per year (8 to 38). SF-36 data favoured acupuncture, although differences reached significance only for physical role functioning, energy, and change in health. Compared with controls, patients randomised to acupuncture used 15% less medication (P = 0.02), made 25% fewer visits to general practitioners (P = 0.10), and took 15% fewer days off sick (P = 0.2).

Conclusions: Acupuncture leads to persisting, clinically relevant benefits for primary care patients with chronic headache, particularly migraine. Expansion of NHS acupuncture services should be considered.

Nanopulses can make cells commit suicide.

Photo by SPL. Nature, 16 Mar 2004

Rifers have been reporting on this since the 1920’s. Now even MIT is starting to get with the program studying how electromagnetic pulses can cause cancer cell apoptosis (cell death). Nature is saying this was discovered in the late 1990s! Duh!

This is the normal scientific process. First you are a kook. Then when others try it and it works, they say it couldn’t possibly work because there is no theoretical explanation of how it could work (i.e. they are ignorant and don’t want to admit it). Then a couple of leading labs start publishing on it and people claim they discovered it first, even though they are 80 years late! Well, the next step is mainstream science where they will say we knew it all along, it’s not even news, it is NIH policy. From that point, it will take at least 17 years to find its way into the practice of the average physician. So we are still at least 20 years away from widespread application of electromagnetic replacements for antibiotics, chemotherapy, radiation, and even many surgical procedures like fat deposit removal, the latest rage at Mass. General Hospital here in Boston.

Ultra-fast shocks scramble cells: Powerful electrical pulses might zap tumours.

Helen Pearson, Nature Science Update, 16 Mar 2004

Using very short, very powerful electric shocks, researchers are developing a way to jolt cancer cells into committing suicide, or healthy cells into healing wounds…

Longer shocks blow a cell apart, but researchers have found that the fleeting nanopulses leave the cell membrane unaffected while mixing up its insides. Now they are working out how to vary the timing and intensity of the shocks to make cells behave in specific ways…

Schoenbach and his colleagues were the first to recognise that you could use high-power, brief shocks to manipulate cells in other ways. Working with electrical engineers in the late 1990s, they discovered that such pulses fry bacteria and sterilize contaminated water.

One of the most significant discoveries was that nanopulses make mammalian cells commit suicide, rather than blowing them up. This is a relatively gentle way of killing, because scavenger cells come and swallow the debris. By contrast, long electric shocks explode cells and liberate toxic molecules that cause inflammation and pain.

For this reason, researchers hope to use nanopulses to kill cancer cells while leaving healthy tissue intact. Schoenbach’s team has already shown that the pulses can shrink mouse tumours by over 50%, and is working on catheters or non-invasive ways to deliver the shocks to the body.

Quite how nanopulses trigger cell suicide still leaves scientists scratching their heads. One idea is that the shock flips molecules in the cell membrane from the inside to the outside, which tells surrounding cells of their imminent death. “It says ‘get rid of me,'” says Thomas Vernier, who is studying the technique at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

However they work, the nanopulses are prompting a flurry of ideas for their use. They might replace liposuction as a way to demolish unwanted flab, or blast away the fatty plaques that cause heart disease. “It is like asking what to do with a newborn baby,” says Weaver. “Our speculations probably will not pick up the most important things.”

As reported previously, chi is a powerful force that can be used to lift Japanese executives of major companies 6 feet in the air and throw them 20 feet across a room without touching them, as in the photo above. It can also be used as a healing force and I recommend everyone try Chi Lel, a form of medical Tai Chi, that anyone can perform, even when ill and unable to move.

The Archives of Internal Medicine published an article this month which reviews health effects of Tai Chi. It is too bad someone won’t study the effects of a real Chi master. It probably would not be publishable because it would not be explainable by conventional medicine. Lifting the editor up in the air and bouncing him off the wall without touching him would be interpreted as fraud. They would have to send in Randi the magician as European medical journals did a few years ago to prove some unusual data was fake. The fact that Randi would be bounced off the wall like everyone else would be suppressed as aberrant data unpublishable in a reputable journal. Actually, I think Randi is smart enough to avoid messing with a real Chi master.

But I digress. A force that can throw a person across a room can have a dramatic effect on internal organs when focused properly, either to heal or to maim, depending on intent. Trying to heal yourself with it is a worthy effort, particularly when it improves balance, flexibility, and cardiovascular fitness as a side effect. Why not direct that time at the gym towards a more profound effort?

The effect of Tai Chi on health outcomes in patients with chronic conditions: a systematic review.

Wang C, Collet JP, Lau J.

Arch Intern Med. 2004 Mar 8;164(5):493-501

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a systematic review of reports on the physical and psychological effects of Tai Chi on various chronic medical conditions.

DATA SOURCES: Search of 11 computerized English and Chinese databases. STUDY SELECTION: Randomized controlled trials, nonrandomized controlled studies, and observational studies published in English or Chinese.

DATA EXTRACTION: Data were extracted for the study objective, population characteristics, study setting, type of Tai Chi intervention, study design, outcome assessment, duration of follow-up, and key results.

DATA SYNTHESIS: There were 9 randomized controlled trials, 23 nonrandomized controlled studies, and 15 observational studies in this review. Benefits were reported in balance and strength, cardiovascular and respiratory function, flexibility, immune system, symptoms of arthritis, muscular strength, and psychological effects.

CONCLUSIONS: Tai Chi appears to have physiological and psychosocial benefits and also appears to be safe and effective in promoting balance control, flexibility, and cardiovascular fitness in older patients with chronic conditions. However, limitations or biases exist in most studies, and it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about the benefits reported. Most indications in which Tai Chi was applied lack a theoretical foundation concerning the mechanism of benefit. Well-designed studies are needed.

I’ve received several email messages asking about prion frequencies. The current epidemic flu produces proteins which appear to be susceptible to frequencies, so it ought to be possible to knock out a prion. I’ve responded that without a test case, or better yet, a set of test cases, it is difficult to identify  frequencies, assess whether there are various strains that require different frequencies, or whether the DNA structure varies across individuals.

In any event, microscopic photos are a good source of candidate frequencies. The frequency of the prion in the image below is 5654.24hz. A number of proteins seem to respond well to frequencies in the 5000-7000hz range. This is an area which obviously needs a lot more study.

Microscopic image of a tissue sample from a human brain that shows a clump of infectious prions (dark pink area).

Image: Dr.Neil Cashman, University of Toronto

Possible diagnosis, treatment, vaccine for mad cow, prion diseases found

Raising antibodies against tyrosine-tyrosine-arginine amino acid sequence the key

by Janet Wong, University of Toronto, 4 Jan 2004

June 2, 2003 — Research led by scientists at the U of T and Caprion Pharmaceuticals has uncovered the basis for a diagnostic, immunotherapy and vaccine, providing a way to detect and treat the brain-wasting damage of infectious prions like those found in mad cow disease and its human version, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

Dr. Neil Cashman, a principal investigator at U of T’s Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases and professor in the Department of Medicine (neurology) and a Caprion founder, says a vaccine approach – which would likely be of most use in animals and livestock – could prevent animals from becoming infected. For humans with diseases like classical or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob, an immunotherapeutic would provide patients with antibodies that bind infectious prions, enabling the immune system to recognize and attack them. For both humans and animals, the diagnostic screening potential of this discovery could significantly improve the safety of the human blood and food systems.

Cashman, who also holds the Jeno Diener Chair in Neurodegenerative Diseases at U of T, says his team tried a new approach in studying infectious prions, which are particles thought to be composed of normal prion proteins that have been compromised and folded into rogue shapes. “The usual way of raising antibodies in the immune system is to grind the infectious agent up and inject it into a mouse to see if it prompts antibody production,” he says. “Scientists have tried this method with prions over the past 15 years, all without success. My group decided to examine it from the sub-molecular level to determine if antibodies would recognize and react to the amino acids exposed at the surface of a prion. It was a novel idea, and when we found that our hypothesis actually worked, we were surprised and pleased.” The researchers’ findings are reported online in the June 1 version of Nature Medicine.

All mammals have prion proteins, the highest levels of which are present in the brain, explains Cashman, a senior scientist at Sunnybrook and Women’s Research Institute and a neurologist in the Department of Medicine at Sunnybrook and Women’s College Health Sciences Centre. Mammals can contract prion diseases by ingesting abnormal or infectious prions. From the digestive system, these prions make their way to the brain. When an abnormal prion comes in contact with a normal prion protein, it causes the protein to misfold, thus creating a copy of the infectious prion. Cashman says the process is more akin to co-opting than replication. However, since the abnormal prion has similar characteristics to the original host protein, the immune system does not recognize it as a foreign invader and does not attack it.

Blackburn, Elizabeth. Bioethics and the Political Distortion of Biomedical Science. NEJM, 1 Apr 2004.

When prominent scientists must fear that descriptions of their research will be misrepresented and misused by their government to advance political ends, something is deeply wrong. Leading scientists are routinely called on to volunteer their expertise to the government, through study sections of the National Institutes of Health and advisory panels of the National Academy of Sciences and as advisers to departments ranging from health and human services to defense. It has been the unspoken attitude of the scientific community that it is our duty to serve our government in this manner, independent of our personal political affiliations and those of the current administration. But something has changed. The healthy skepticism of scientists has turned to cynicism. There is a growing sense that scientific research — which, after all, is defined by the quest for truth — is being manipulated for political ends. There is evidence that such manipulation is being achieved through the stacking of the membership of advisory bodies and through the delay and misrepresentation of their reports.