Chondroitin sulphate is added to glucosamine as it is said to have an additive effect for treatment of arthritis. The question is does it really make any difference at all to patients with symptoms from osteoarthritis?

Well a study has now been published, in a reputable journal, showing that chondroitin has no effect on pain or any other parameter measured in patients with osteoarthritis. This is good news for patients because the addition of chondroitin to glucosamine vastly increases the cost of this supplement. So now you just need to take glucosamine on its own, knowing the cheaper brand is just as effective as the more expensive product.

Drinking spearmint tea may be beneficial at reducing excessive or unwanted hair growth in women. It appears that extracts of the spearmint plant can reduce androgen or male hormone levels. We know that certain women are more sensitive to male hormone than others leading them to suffer from acne and hair growth on the face.( See article on Vaniqua) http://www.abbeypractice.co.uk/default.asp?id=22&mnu=22&ACT=5&content=80

To achieve lower androgen levels you need to drink at least 2 cups of spearmint tea / day.

This may be a more natural way for women to control hair growth on the face and / or may increase the benefit of using the vaniqua cream.

This may also be a more natural way of putting bromide in the tea!!!!

Acupuncture has been suggested to be of use for the treatment of hypertension. No matter what method of acupuncture I used, I never managed to make any difference to patients blood pressure and abandoned this trial of treatment many years ago.

However many acupuncturists, of which the majority are non-medical, continue to advocate its use for hypertension. Well at last a good clinical trial has been undertaken in America looking at this type of treatment for hypertension. Well what do you know - utter waste of time. No difference was detected in those receiving genuine acupuncture and rubbish acupuncture.

So please patients do not continue to receive treatment that does not or will not work.  I f you honestly believe it has reduced your blood pressure I would suggest you go for a massage instead and you will find that this is just as effective and more pleasurable because the likelihood is you did not need any  treatment in the first place.

Homeopathic medicines are commonly used to treat anxiety but do they work? My own experience suggests that they do not, even in those patients that have the exact symptoms and signs for that homeopathic remedy.

Now someone has reviewed all the clinical trials using homeopathy for anxiety and found likewise that it really does not work for this condition. One can see how taking a homeopathic remedy might work in that the patient believes it is helping and so it does. Anxiety is a symptom that can be manipulated by suggestion, in some mild cases, leading the belief homeopathy works. These studies over a longer period of time show no difference between a sugar pill and the real homeopathic remedy lending support to the notion that homeopathy treatment is all in the mind.

A study has recently been published which appears to show that natural honey not only reduces pain but also appears to shorten the healing time of cold sores or herpes of the lips and genitalia. The honey was compared to cold sore cream (zovirax or acyclovir) that is currently marketed in this country for the treatment of herpes.

The natural honey appeared to decrease the healing time by 50% and reduce pain by 60% during the cold sore episode when compared to zovirax or acyclovir. Remember normal healing times for cold sores are approximately 5-8 days and the natural honey reduced this to 2-4 days which is quite remarkable for a simple cheap natural alternative treatment.

The treatment requires soaking a gauze swab in natural honey and then pressing it against the cold sore for up to 15 minutes 4 times a day. This was compared to applying the zovrax cream 6 times a day.

Next time you have a cold sore get out the natural honey. Who says honey does not shrink the cold sores!

Healers have been sprouting up all over the place claiming they have healing hands or powersand can help the sick. Most of these healers have never demonstrated they have this ability yet the public still turn to them for help. Is this justified?

The answer is a definite no. Patients following cardiac surgery were either prayed for, given hands on spritual healing and touch or had none of these. The outcome was the same in all 3 groups and showed no benefit of any these interventions, as the patients were not aware what type of therapy they were receiving.

Before anyone says well this is only one trial, there was also some television evidence healing had no benefit. In one of the Panorama programmes on Complementary treatments  it was also shown that an actor mimicking all the words and movements of a healer had better effects on patients than the healer himself. This would suggest either that we all have healing hands, which I doubt, or that healing has a placebo effect, in that we believe it will work and so it does have some effect on some of us. The problem with most placebo effects are that they wear off after a few months so you are back to square one.

Personally I have never seen anyone benefit from healing, especially in the long term and that most patients return to more conventional and beneficail treatments sooner or later.

No doubt healers will continue to flourish but I believe this is more down to their listening capability than any healing powers they posess.

We published an article in our 2003 Newsletter and patients were divided as to whether I was right or wrong about the medical benefits of magnetic bracelets. It now seems that I was correct and that magnetic bracelets are useless both in preventing pain in arthritis and other medical problems and only work because of their placebo effect ie. the belief it will work because they have bought one.

We published an update in 2004 where it was believed that only the strong magnets seemed to work  and have an effect on patients' arthritis pain but now we know why. The patients in that study knew who had a magnet on as it would attract metal objects in their pocket etc whereas the other patients  were not able to do this with ther dummy magnets and so knew they were fake. Two recent studies where the magnets were boxed in to prevent patients knowing whether it was a fake or not showed that both the magnetic and the cheap dummy bracelets were both as effective as each other. In other words the magnetism makes no difference.

The advice is do not waste money on these in future.  As the author of the paper pointed out if you insist on buying one, buy the cheapest, as this will at least alleviate the pain in your wallet!!!

To read the previous article click on the following link http://www.abbeypractice.co.uk/default.asp?id=10&ACT=5&content=45&mnu=10

A recent sudy involving giving the common cold to healthy volunteers failed to show any evidence that echinacea, a plant extract that has been used to shorten the duration and severity of the common cold, had any effect on the outcome. Healthy volunteers were given the cold virus after having been given echinacea before and after the inoculation of the virus. Both the group receiving echinacea and the other group receiving chalk or placebo had the same severity of cold and the same duration of symptoms.

The echinacea also failed to stop the volonteers getting the cold.

This study was so well designed that it is highly unlikely echinacea makes any difference to the severity and duration of symptoms suffered with the commom cold.

Agnus castus or the chaste berry fruit appears to help women who suffer from premenstrual tension (PMT).

The symptoms of PMT include irritability, anger, headache, breast tenderness, abdominal bloating and craving of sugary foods. When agnus castus was given to women suffering from these symptoms there appeared to be an improvement of varying degrees in all these symptoms.

The amount of agnus castus that needs to be taken is one a day as long as it contains at least 20mg of a substance casticin which appears to be the active ingredient that helps women with these symptoms.

This is a natural product that has been shown to help PMT symptoms and avoids the use of other substances such as Vitamin B6 and evening primrose oil which have no significant effect on these symptoms.

Several studies appear to show that cranberry juice can prevent urine infections in women. However it cannot be used to treat an established infection which is quite important. It is believed that substances in the cranberry juice prevent bacteria sticking to the wall of the bladder but  it may also prevent infection by changing the acidity of the urine thus preventing bacterial growth.

The dose required to prevent infection recurring is one tablet of concentrated cranberry juice extract twice a day or 250mls of unsweetened cranberry juice three times a day.

This treatment does not work in patients with bladder problems as a result of multiple sclerosis or spinal cord paralysis.

There is now a wealth of evidence that eating a meditteranean diet prevents the development of heart disease. The rate of death from heart disease in countries such Greeece and Italy is half that of this country and evidence suggests that is all accountable by their diet. But what is this diet?

The main components are

• olive oil
• fresh vegetables and fruit each day
• daily consumption of unrefined cereals and cereal products such as pasta, brown rice and whole grain bread
• moderate consumption of fish
• low consumption of meat
• moderate consumption dairy products  such as cheese and yogurt
• moderate consumption of wine
• high consumption of pulses and nuts

As you can see this type of diet can easily be instigated in this country. So next time you are in your supermarket think of these articles of food and perhaps buy a cookbook to help you cook the meals with these products!

Melatonin has recently been shown not only to reduce blood pressure but also improve sleep pattern. This study has recently been published in an American journal. This confirms previous studies that show melatonin can be of benefit in patients with sleep disturbance and which we have reported on in our complementary section of this website http://www.abbeypractice.co.uk/default.asp?id=20&mnu=20

The systolic blood pressure was reduced by 6mmHg and the diastolic reading by 4mmHg but only if the melatonin was taken each night. It is not known whether the improvement in sleep caused the blood pressure to come down or whether it was the effect of the melatonin itself.

The reduction in blood pressure seen would be enough to make someone with mild hypertension brought back into the normal range. At least we have another natural treatment to reduce blood pressure without the need to resort to allopathic medicine.

Some patients have already bought one and others are considering purchasing one for pain for their arthritis. What is it? A magnetic bracelet.

I am going to be blunt about this and say this is pure quackery and a waste of your money. Why do I say this?

read more...

Chicken pox can cause severe itching of the skin where the spots are present and lead to subsequent infection and scarring of the skin. Can the itching sensation and secondary infection by bacteria be helped?

read more...

Beware complementary medicine does not cure cancer.Many complementary techniques and medicines are now widely available but do they work?

read more...

Recent trials have shown that dried artichoke extract may be able to reduce cholesterol levels

read more...

More and more patients seem to be experiencing problems with existing nit lotions that no longer appear to be effective.

read more...