Hi Everyone,
Dr Phil Maffetone has posted ten new audio interviews on his website discussing health care and related issues.  Dr. Phil says:  "I have finished "The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing." This comprehensive unique book will go through the editorial process and soon appear in bookstores and online retailers. I will begin posting announcements on the Sports page, including the timetable from the publisher (Skyhorse). "  The agenda for the ICAKUSA meeting in a few weeks hit Google News today.
Enjoy,
Donald



1. Get CME credit for online searches
2. Confirming treatment results faster increases patient satisfaction.
3. Poor teaching affects children's genetic ability to read
4. Banning transfatty acids helps health.
5. Dark chocolate helps blood pressure in liver disease.
6. Surfing the internet helps your brain more than brain exercises.
7. Mild exercise and computer use help your brain in old age.
8. Guitar radius fracture from electric shock.
9. Panic attacks from changing posture.
10. Olive oil reduces inflammation
11. Stimulating the stomach muscles helps breathing. 
12. 7 traits of extraordinary leaders.
13. Delete 4 common bad habits and gain 12 years.
14. Insomnia causes jaw pain not vice versa
15. Too much chocolate may cause depression.
16. 40% of chiropractic patients want to have "wellness" care.
17. Exercise and stretching can cause muscle damage and pain.
18. Brain problems can cause chronic jaw pain
19. Negative attitude causes more pain.
20. Regardless of pain, function and health can still improve.
21. Risk factors for medical professional misconduct.
22. Qi Gong influences the social health of practitioners.
23. Acupuncture may help PMS symptoms.
24. X-rays show foreign objects in bodies.
25. Osteopaths surprised at quick muscle strength recovery with manipulation.
26. Cranial Osteopathic treatment helps vision.
27. Almond skins help gut problems.
28. Blueberries repair muscle damage from over exercise.
29. Walking is the best exercise for less stroke risk.
30. Broccoli is a sun blocker.






1. Get CME credit for online searches.  Here is a great app for your iphone to get credit for all your online clinically useful reading like AK News and Views.  Check with your Registration board and/or your professional association for approval.  I was wondering when such a great app would launch.  Well here it is.  Don't waste your reading.  Earn CME credit as you find answers online to your clinical questions. Use the iPhone® iPod Touch® application to document your clinical searches as a learning activity using your office or home computer. XtraCredit allows you to document your search activity via text or dictation (iPod Touch users must have a microphone for dictation).   Certified exclusively by the Lippincott Continuing Medical Education Institute, (LCMEI), a part of Wolters Kluwer Health, XtraCredit allows physicians to receive CME credit for online searches among hundreds of approved online resources including: Ovid's institutional aggregated research platform OvidSP, PubMed, National Guideline Clearing House, OMIM, and scores of others listed below. Credit is provided for this Internet Point-of-Care CME activity by the LCMEI. See summary of credit information in the iPhone to the right. 

2. Confirming treatment results faster increases patient satisfaction. "A total of 1148 parents completed at least 1 questionnaire. User satisfaction was significantly lower when the assessment was made after a visit to the outpatient clinic compared to an assessment made at the clinic. The response rates of questionnaires completed at the clinic were significantly higher than the response rates of questionnaires completed after the visit. Both the timing of surveys and response rates need to be taken into consideration when planning user surveys. Outcomes from surveys conducted at different times are not readily comparable."  


3. Poor teaching affects children's genetic ability to read.  "Children’s reading achievement is influenced by genetics as well as by family and school environments. The importance of teacher quality as a specific school environmental influence on reading achievement is unknown. We studied first‐ and second‐grade students in Florida from schools representing diverse environments. Comparison of monozygotic and dizygotic twins, differentiating genetic similarities of 100% and 50%, provided an estimate of genetic variance in reading achievement. Teacher quality was measured by how much reading gain the non‐twin classmates achieved. The magnitude of genetic variance associated with twins’ oral reading fluency increased as the quality of their teacher increased. In circumstances where the teachers are all excellent, the variability in student reading achievement may appear to be largely due to genetics. However, poor teaching impedes the ability of children to reach their potential." 


4. Banning transfatty acids helps health.  "Eliminating trans-fatty acids from food through a national government policy is one of the most "straightforward public-health strategies" to rapidly improve the health of people, according to a new editorial [1]. Such a policy would protect all vulnerable populations, including children and poorer members of the community, would save thousands of lives, and would significantly reduce cardiovascular events, according to the editorialists." 

5. Dark chocolate helps blood pressure in liver disease. "Dark chocolate helps to keep down blood pressure after meals in the liver of cirrhosis patients, according to research unveiled here at the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) 45th Annual Meeting by Swiss and Spanish researchers." 

6. Surfing the internet helps your brain more than brain exercises. "Commercial brain training programs that are widely claimed to increase cognitive function have received a failing grade.  In a large study of more than 11,000 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 60 years, those who did computerized brain training exercises 3 times a week for 6 weeks actually showed less improvement in cognitive function than control participants who did not train their brains, but merely surfed the Internet instead, according to new research reported online April 20 in Nature". 

7. Mild exercise and computer use help your brain in old age. ""Moderate physical exercise, such as brisk walking, biking, and swimming, may be beneficial in terms of reducing the risk of MCI, and we also know that mentally stimulating activities also reduce the risk of dementia or cognitive impairment. What our study showed is that when you combine moderate physical exercise and computer use there is an additive beneficial effect," principal investigator Yonas E. Geda, MD, MSc, a neuropsychiatrist and an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, told Medscape Psychiatry." 

8. Guitar radius fracture from electric shock. "Electrical injury ranges widely from simple shock and mild burns to more extensive superficial injury, internal injury, and mortality. Bony fracture from electrically-induced tetanic muscle contraction is a rare but recognized injury. We report the case of a 14-year-old boy who suffered a minor burn and radius fracture related to an electrical injury involving his electric guitar. An interesting pattern is emerging from available case reports of similar injuries."   

9. Panic attacks from changing posture. "Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) is a condition that results from orthostatic intolerance. Patients, frequently young females, present with tachycardia, headache, palpitation, sweating, nausea and near syncope, on changing their posture from lying to standing. It is frequently misdiagnosed as panic attacks or anxiety neurosis. Tilt-table testing is diagnostic. Treatment depends on the type, whether primary or secondary, and there are non-pharmacological and pharmacological options."   

10. Olive oil reduces inflammation. "This study shows that intake of a breakfast based in virgin olive oil rich in phenol compounds is able to repress the in vivo expression of several pro-inflammatory genes, thereby switching the activity of peripheral blood mononuclear cells to a less deleterious inflammatory profile. These results provide at least a partial molecular basis for the reduced risk of cardiovascular disease observed in Mediterranean countries, where virgin olive oil represents the main source of dietary fat. Admittedly, other lifestyle factors are also likely to contribute to lowered risk of cardiovascular disease in this region."   

11. Stimulating the stomach muscles helps breathing. "hese studies demonstrated that inspiratory intercostal muscle stimulation resulted in only a small opposing inspiratory action (</=3 cmH(2)O). We conclude that, during SCS, 1) contraction of the obliques and TA muscles makes the largest contribution to changes in Paw, and 2) stimulation with a two-electrode lead system results in more complete abdominal muscle activation and enhanced mechanical actions of the obliques and transversus muscles."  Free download


12. 7 traits of extraordinary leaders.  "When people make a decision (either consciously or unconsciously) to follow your leadership, they do it primarily because of one of two things: your character or your skills. They want to know if you are the kind of person they want to follow and if you have the skills to take them further. Yes, there are other variables, but these are the bulk of the matter." 


13. Delete 4 common bad habits and gain 12 years. "The findings are from a study that tracked nearly 5,000 British adults for 20 years, and they highlight yet another reason to adopt a healthier lifestyle.  Overall, 314 people studied had all four unhealthy behaviors. Among them, 91 died during the study, or 29 percent. Among the 387 healthiest people with none of the four habits, only 32 died, or about 8 percent.  The risky behaviors were: smoking tobacco; downing more than three alcoholic drinks per day for men and more than two daily for women; getting less than two hours of physical activity per week; and eating fruits and vegetables fewer than three times daily.  These habits combined substantially increased the risk of death and made people who engaged in them seem 12 years older than people in the healthiest group, said lead researcher Elisabeth Kvaavik of the University of Oslo.  
The study appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine." 

14. Insomnia causes jaw pain not vice versa. "Analyses revealed that initial-month increases in insomnia were associated with next-month increases in average daily pain, but not vice versa. The direction of the effect was such that initial-month increases in insomnia symptom severity were associated with next-month increases in average daily pain. These data suggest that naturally occurring fluctuations in insomnia symptom severity are prospectively associated with fluctuations in daily pain experience for persons with TMD. Potential mechanisms by which insomnia might influence pain in TMD and therapeutic implications of these findings are discussed."  

15. Too much chocolate may cause depression. "Higher CES-D depression scores were associated with greater chocolate consumption. Whether there is a causal connection, and if so in which direction, is a matter for future prospective study."   

16. 40% of chiropractic patients want to have "wellness" care. "Although prudence dictates great caution when generalizing from this study, if confirmed by subsequent research among other similar cohorts, the present results may lend support to continued arguments of consumer demand for a more comprehensive paradigm of chiropractic care, beyond routine musculoskeletal complaints, that conceptualizes the systemic, nonspecific effects of the chiropractic encounter in much broader terms." 

17. Exercise and stretching can cause muscle damage and pain. " Movement-based actions such as EC and muscle stretching produce unique tissue responses and modulate neuropeptide and nociceptive receptor expression in a manner particularly relevant to repeated muscle damage."  

18. Brain problems can cause chronic jaw pain. "Myofascial pain of the temporomandibular region (M-TMD) is a common, but poorly understood chronic disorder. It is unknown whether the condition is a peripheral problem, or a disorder of the central nervous system (CNS). To investigate possible CNS substrates of M-TMD, we compared the brain morphology of 15 women with M-TMD to that of 15 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. High-resolution structural brain and brainstem scans were carried out using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and data were analyzed using a voxel-based morphometry approach. The M-TMD group evidenced decreased or increased gray matter volume compared to controls in several areas of the trigeminothalamocortical pathway, including brainstem trigeminal sensory nuclei, the thalamus, and the primary somatosensory cortex. In addition, M-TMD individuals showed increased gray matter volume compared to controls in limbic regions such as the posterior putamen, globus pallidus, and anterior insula. Within the M-TMD group, jaw pain, pain tolerance, and pain duration were differentially associated with brain and brainstem gray matter volume. Self-reported pain severity was associated with increased gray matter in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex and posterior cingulate. Sensitivity to pressure algometry was associated with decreased gray matter in the pons, corresponding to the trigeminal sensory nuclei. Longer pain duration was associated with greater gray matter in the posterior cingulate, hippocampus, midbrain, and cerebellum. The pattern of gray matter abnormality found in M-TMD individuals suggests the involvement of trigeminal and limbic system dysregulation, as well as potential somatotopic reorganization in the putamen, thalamus, and somatosensory cortex."  

19. Negative attitude causes more pain. "These results suggest that both distraction and catastrophizing have substantial effects on experimental pain in normal subjects and these variables interact as a function of time."

20. Regardless of pain, function and health can still improve. "Changes in pain were also associated with changes in health status. Results suggest that patients whose pain is not reduced to a mild level of severity can still experience clinically important changes in function and health status."   


21. Risk factors for medical professional misconduct. "This small study suggests that male sex, a lower socioeconomic background, and early academic difficulties at medical school could be risk factors for subsequent professional misconduct. The findings are preliminary and should be interpreted with caution. Most doctors with risk factors will not come before the GMC’s disciplinary panels."   

22. Qi Gong influences the social health of practitioners. "This paper presents an in-depth, idiographic study of how individuals experience others during Qi Gong practice. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three Qi Gong groups to collect research data. These data were transcribed verbatim and subjected to content and thematic analysis across and within groups. The analysis indicates extraordinary experiences of Qi Gong practitioners at various levels of their social functioning. Qi Gong influences their social health in complex and dimensional ways. The author compares and contrasts his results with those of recent research. Implications for practice are briefly outlined and possible strategies for future research are presented."  

23. Acupuncture may help PMS symptoms. "Although the included trials showed that acupuncture may be beneficial to patients with PMS, there is insufficient evidence to support this conclusion due to methodological flaws in the studies, including unknowns in sequence generation, concealment of allocation, blinding and outcome measures."  

24. X-rays show foreign objects in bodies. Here is an interesting collection.  

25. Osteopaths surprised at quick muscle strength recovery with manipulation. "The case presented by Lavelle and McKeigue1 is extremely unusual. It is highly unlikely that the average osteopathic physician will see a patient arrive at his or her office 1 day after onset of a relatively benign neurapraxic lesion, and that the osteopathic physician will know how to apply OMT to resolve the patient'scondition. An osteopathic physician may be more likely to encounter a patient who has been experiencing foot drop symptoms over an extended period—cases that would not be neurapraxia. I am concerned that the authors did not emphasize the importance in such cases of pursuing a definitive diagnostic workup and considering alternative or more aggressive treatments for patients."

26. Cranial Osteopathic treatment helps vision. "The present study suggests that osteopathy in the cranial field may result in beneficial effects on visual function in adults with cranial asymmetry. However, this finding requires additional investigation with a larger sample size and longer intervention and follow-up periods."  

27. Almond skins help gut problems. "In this study we investigated the potential prebiotic effect of natural (NS) and blanched (BS) almond skins, the latter being a byproduct of the almond-processing industry. A full model of the gastrointestinal tract, including in vitro gastric and duodenal digestion, followed by colonic fermentation using mixed faecal bacterial cultures, was used. Both NS and BS significantly increased the population of bifidobacteria and Clostridium coccoides/Eubacterium rectale group, resulting in a prebiotic index (3.2 for BS and 3.3 for NS) that compared well with the commercial prebiotic fructo-oligosaccharides (4.2) at a 24-h incubation. No significant differences in the proportion of gut bacteria groups and in short-chain fatty acid production were detected between NS and BS, showing that polyphenols present in almond skins did not affect bacterial fermentation. In conclusion, we have shown that dietary fibre from almond skins altered the composition of gut bacteria and almond skins resulting from industrial blanching could be used as potential prebiotics."  

28. Blueberries repair muscle damage from over exercise. "Skeletal muscle damage can result from disease and unaccustomed or excessive exercise. Muscle dysfunction occurs via an increased level of reactive oxygen species and hence there is potential in antioxidants as amelioration strategies. We explored the putative benefit of fruit polyphenolic extracts in reducing the susceptibility of skeletal muscle cells to oxidative stress. Muscle myotubes were simultaneously challenged with fruit extracts (1-50  g/mL) and calcium ionophore (A23187), hydrogen peroxide, or 2,4-dinitrophenol and damage monitored by release of cytosolic enzymes. A blueberry fruit extract displayed a potent and significant dose-dependant protective capacity. Evaluation of the protective capacity of anthocyanin sub-extracts of blueberry fruit and pure individual glycosides, with identification of extract polyphenolic components using MS, suggested that malvidin galactoside and/or glucoside were the active compounds. These in vitro data support the concept that blueberry fruits or derived foods rich in malvidin glycosides may be beneficial in alleviating muscle damage caused by oxidative stress. More research on the benefits of blueberry fruit consumption in human intervention studies is warranted."

29. Walking is the best exercise for less stroke risk. "This study shows a tendency for leisure-time physical activity to be associated with lower stroke risk in women. In particular, walking wasgenerally associated with lower risks of total, ischemic, and hemorrhagic stroke."

30. Broccoli is a sun blocker.   "Feeding broccoli sprout extracts providing daily doses of 10  mol of glucoraphanin to SKH-1 hairless mice with prior chronic exposure to UV radiation (30 mJ cm-2 of UVB, twice a week, for 17 weeks) inhibited the development of skin tumors during the subsequent 13 weeks; compared to the controls, tumor incidence, multiplicity, and volume were reduced by 25, 47, and 70%, respectively, in the animals that received the protective agent."

Education/Learning

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

We must learn to apply all that we know so that we can attract all that we want.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

Don’t see the mind for more than it is, but don’t misread it for all that it can be.

Sharpen your interest in two major subjects: life and people. You will only gather information from a source if you are interested in it.

Education must precede motivation.
Donald McDowall
DC, MAppSc, DNBCE, DIBAK, FACC