Integrative medicine最新文献

Many strategies were tried by our public health authorities to contain, mitigate, and treat the COVID-19 pandemic. With now 3 years of experience, research is being published that can help us determine what worked, and what did not. Unfortunately, assessing the research is very challenging. Not only are many of the approaches still not rigorously evaluated, but politics and censorship clearly distorted the research and reporting. In this, the first of 2 editorials, I review the research on Physical Strategies, Natural Health Products, and Healthy Lifestyle. In the next editorial I will take on Drugs and Vaccinations.

For almost two centuries, disease-treatment medicine has dominated healthcare. This has resulted in many benefits, especially for acute infections, injuries, acute life-threatening disease, congenital malformations, etc. However, we have also seen a parallel and relentless increase in chronic disease. In fact, we now suffer the highest burden of virtually every chronic disease in every age group ever in human history. Why? It is not because disease-treatment medicine is wrong, but rather because it is incomplete. Today's healthcare is missing health care and is focused almost solely on disease. Through recorded history, there has been an ongoing philosophical dynamic between treating disease vs promoting health. Dominance by either side is insufficient. This editorial explores Health Medicine and why embracing this concept is critical for solving our healthcare crisis. It is organized as follows: a brief review of history, the rationale for "Health" medicine, what defines it, why organizing under it is important, how an optimal system could be organized, and the potential response of conventional medicine.

The Microbiome Theory of Aging (MTA) explains how microbial imbalance in the intestinal tract, which is also referred to as dysbiosis, causes health problems that accelerate biological aging. The underlying mechanisms involved include increased inflammation, elevated levels of zonulin, destruction of intestinal tight junctions, and intestinal permeability, which allow lipopolysaccharides (LPS) to leak into systemic circulation. LPS is a powerful endotoxin that causes chronic inflammation throughout the body. Chronic inflammation is associated with chronic diseases and the acceleration of biological aging. Postbiotic metabolites are compounds that are created by probiotic bacteria in the colon. Postbiotic metabolites have been called the new frontier in microbiome science due to their key roles in regulating the structure and function of the gut microbiome and many aspects of human health.

Background: A 63-year-old male with a 4-year history of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) safely and successfully integrated personalized nutrition and lifestyle modifications to improve the symptomatic outcome of his illness.

Case/intervention: The client presented to our nutritional practice with fatigue, acid reflux, joint pain, brain fog and skin rashes. During the nutritional intervention, he safely used a variety of nutritional interventions and supplementation, including dietary improvements, omega-3 fish oils, N-acetyl cysteine, prebiotics and intermittent fasting, along with stress reduction techniques. His symptoms decreased significantly, or disappeared, over 4 years of using these interventions.

Conclusion: This case demonstrates the safety and potential benefits of personalized nutrition, stress reduction techniques and targeted supplementation in helping to decrease symptoms of SLE. Our client's energy levels and overall performance improved, skin rashes and acid reflux resolved, joint pain and stiffness decreased and brain fog gradually lessened over the 4 years he was in our care.

Context: Worldwide, large numbers of people have Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis. Unfortunately, approved medications are highly ineffective and have costly, untoward side effects. One alternative for neurodegenerative disorders may be use of plasmalogens, a type of phospholipid.

Objective: The objective of the study was to assess the effectiveness of a unique extract of plasmalogen from scallops for older adults with concerns either about memory and cognition or some form of actual memory loss or cognitive dysfunction.

Design: This pilot study was a 90-day intervention.

Setting: The study took place in the homes of participants.

Participants: Participants were nine older adults from South Florida.

Intervention: Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups taking different amounts of Hokkaido Scallop Oil Plasmalogen (HSOP) per day: (1) one 0.5-mg capsule-five participants or (2) two 0.5-mg capsules-four participants.

Outcome measures: The participants completed the assessments at baseline and postintervention. To determine if HSOP would have an effect on cognitive function, participants completed the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). To evaluate issues with activities and depressive symptoms or disorders, participants completed assessments with the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and Independent Activities of Daily Living (IADL) and the Center for Epidemiological Survey-Depression (CESD). The outcome measures were compared from baseline to postintervention, and the differences were assessed for statistical significance with paired-samples t tests. Correlation coefficients were assessed at baseline and postintervention between age and the outcome measures as well.

Results: The average score of the MMSE at baseline was 19.1 (SD = 9.7), the average score at postintervention improved to 21.9 (SD = 10.2), and the difference from baseline to postintervention was statistically significant (t(6) = -2.7, P = .04). All other changes on the outcome measures were insignificant. For the MMSE, five subjects improved, one subject remained the same, and one subject worsened. For the CESD, one subject worsened, and five subjects improved. For the IADL and ADL, five subjects remained the same, and one subject improved. At baseline and as expected, age was inversely correlated with the MMSE (r = -0.88, P = .002), and the MMSE was inversely correlated with the ADL (r = -0.93, P = .002). No other correlations were significant. The correlations at postintervention showed a similar pattern to those at baseline.

Conclusions: The pilot study showed that HSOP is safe to take and may provide some benefits for cognitive function and depressive symptoms, based on the cli

Although unconventional, for many years naturopathic physicians have theorized that patient-specific dietary intolerances are a significant cause of chronic disease. This is in addition to common health limiting dietary factors, such as excess calories or insufficient nutrients. Over the past 36 years of clinical practice, our doctors have developed a unique patient-specific dietary evaluation and treatment strategy aimed at preventing, mitigating, and even resolving chronic disease. We call this procedure the Advanced Universal Dietary Intolerance Test (AUDIT). The goal of this dietary therapy is to improve health and decrease risk by identifying and eliminating a patient's unique food intolerances. The AUDIT is similar to the standard E-RD, which for many decades has been considered by the naturopathic profession to be the "gold standard" for identifying dietary intolerances. Although the standard technique has a history of being helpful, its shortcomings regarding efficiency and accuracy significantly limit its utility. The AUDIT is an attempt to resolve these issues. Contrary to the common technique (E-RD), which depends largely on subjective patient improvement upon elimination and an exacerbation upon reintroduction, the AUDIT employs common objective markers. These include weight, lipid panel, blood sugar, and a metabolic panel to validate the results. Unlike the many weeks required by the common technique to make a distinction of intolerance, the AUDIT tracks rise in water weight (i.e., systemic edema) that occurs after a five-day elimination phase. Twelve hours after reintroducing a test food, the initial observation is made of a patient-specific intolerance reaction. The second association is observed in the improvement of laboratory markers after 5 weeks of the AUDIT, defining a reduction in disease risk. This outcome study demonstrates that AUDIT has the potential to prevent and treat some of the common chronic diseases seen in primary care. Though not presented in this literature, patients who followed the AUDIT strategy routinely achieved a long-term, sustainable improvement in their chronic disease, or even a resolution.

Context: The science of the metabolism of CoQ10 before and after its absorption into the blood is well known. Almost nothing is known about the absorption of CoQ10 into the lymph.

Objective: The study intended to measure and compare the single-dose absorption of three CoQ10 product formulations-crystal-free ubiquinone, crystalline ubiquinol, and a dry-powder ubiquinone-into the abdominal lymph duct as compared to their absorption into the blood circulation.

Design: The researcher designed an animal study.

Animals: The animals were six large dogs (>50 Kg).

Intervention: By gastric gavage, the dogs were given a 100-mg dose of either crystal-free ubiquinone (Q-Best), crystalline ubiquinol (Qunol), or dry-powder ubiquinone, and lymph and venous samples (5 ml) were collected.

Outcome measures: The primary end-point measurements for three CoQ10 product types were the concentration (Cmax), time of Cmax (Tmax), and total CoQ10 absorbed into the lymph and that transported to the blood.

Results: Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) crystals were found in the dry powder and crystalline ubiquinol formulations. No crystals were found in the crystal-free formulation. Crystals from both the crystalline and dry-powder formulations were found in the small intestine's chyme. After ingestion of a 100-mg dose of CoQ10 formulation, the group mean absorption into the lymph peaked in 2 hours for all three formulations, and the peak appearance (Cmax) in the blood occurred at 6 hours. The absorption was significantly (P ≤ .001) greater for the crystal-free formulation compared to that of the crystalline and dry-powder formulations measured in the lymph and plasma.

Conclusions: These data show that the crystal-free formulation's absorption is superior to that found for the other two formulations. These results show that CoQ10 crystals are the causative factor for the poor absorption of CoQ10. The delayed appearance in the blood is due to the slow lymph flow delivering CoQ10 to the blood. The absorption of CoQ10 may not be as poor as described in the literature.

There has been continuing growth in the understanding of the role that omega-3 fatty acid supplements play in the support of immune function. The progress in both the basic science and clinical research surrounding the impact of various formulations of omega-3 fatty acid supplements on immune function has resulted in the recognition that the impact of these supplements is beyond that of the omega-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docasahexaenoic acid (DHA) alone, and includes other fatty acids containing omega-3 derivatives termed pro-resolving mediators, along with vitamins A and D found naturally in some marine oils. The research on omega-3 oil supplements has also highlighted the importance that the supplement formulation be derived from a certified sustainable source, free of heavy metals and organic pollutants, minimally processed, and composed of the natural triglyceride form of the fatty acids for improved safety and effectiveness in providing immune support.

Due to industrialization and inadequate controls on release of manufacturing chemicals into the environment and into the products being made, the entire population is constantly being exposed to a wide variety of chemical pollutants. The key question, of course, is their safety. The most acutely damaging ones have been progressively limited. However, virtually all safety research is on single toxins and very little of it looks at the impact of chronic exposure, especially chronic exposure to multiple chemicals simultaneously. This editorial discusses the clinical significance of 4 of the chemicals (acrolein, acrylamide, perchlorate, and phthalates) found most often in samples doctors send to labs for analysis. The research clearly demonstrates that these chemicals in a dose-dependent manner disrupt physiology, impair health, and increase risk for common diseases.