November 4, 2009, 8:02 AM CT

Do you eat your meal quickly?

As per a newly released study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), eating a meal quickly, as in comparison to slowly, curtails the release of hormones in the gut that induce feelings of being full. The decreased release of these hormones, can often lead to overeating.

"Most of us have heard that eating fast can lead to food overconsumption and obesity, and in fact some findings based on observation have supported this notion," said Alexander Kokkinos, MD, PhD, of Laiko General Hospital in Athens Greece and main author of the study. "Our study provides a possible explanation for the relationship between speed eating and overeating by showing that the rate at which someone eats may impact the release of gut hormones that signal the brain to stop eating".

In the last few years, research regarding gut hormones, such as peptide YY (PYY) and glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1), has shown that their release after a meal acts on the brain and induces satiety and meal termination. Until now, concentrations of appetite-regulating hormones have not been examined in the context of different rates of eating.

In this study, subjects consumed the same test meal, 300ml of ice-cream, at different rates. Scientists took blood samples for the measurement of glucose, insulin, plasma lipids and gut hormones before the meal and at 30 minute intervals after the beginning of eating, until the end of the session, 210 minutes later. Scientists observed that subjects who took the full 30 minutes to finish the ice cream had higher concentrations of PYY and GLP-1 and also tended to have a higher fullness rating......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

November 4, 2009, 7:57 AM CT

Consumption Of Processed And Fried Foods

Scientists from Mount Sinai School of Medicine report that cutting back on the consumption of processed and fried foods, which are high in toxins called Advanced Glycation End products (AGEs), can reduce inflammation and actually help restore the body's natural defenses regardless of age or health status. These benefits are present even without changing caloric or nutrient intake.

The findings, reported in the October/recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, provide a simple dietary intervention that could result in weight loss and have significant impact on several epidemic diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, and kidney disease.

The findings are the result of a clinical study involving over 350 people which was conducted in collaboration with, and with support from, the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The study builds on earlier research conducted in animal models that demonstrated the effective prevention of these diseases and even the extension of lifespan by consuming a reduced AGE diet.

"What is noteworthy about our findings is that reduced AGE consumption proved to be effective in all study participants, including healthy persons and persons who have a chronic condition such as kidney disease," said the study's main author Helen Vlassara, MD, Professor and Director of the Division of Experimental Diabetes and Aging at Mount Sinai School of Medicine......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

November 2, 2009, 11:36 PM CT

Childhood cancer survivors less likely to marry

Adult survivors of childhood cancer are 20 to 25 percent more likely to never marry compared with siblings and the general population, Yale School of Medicine scientists report in a newly released study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Nina Kadan-Lottick, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine, and his colleagues studied almost 9,000 adult survivors of childhood cancer participating in the multisite Childhood Cancer Survivor Study. The team reviewed the frequency of marriage and divorce rates among survivors compared with their sibling groups in the U.S. Census data. Participants completed mailed surveys every two to three years on their health and psychosocial status in a research study that's ongoing.

Results showed that an estimated 42 percent of survivors were married, 7.3 percent were separated or divorced and 46 percent were never married. Patients who were previously treated for a brain tumor were 50 percent more likely than siblings and the general U.S. population to never marry. Of the childhood cancer survivors who did marry, divorce patterns were similar to their peers.

"Our findings suggest that in addition to the long-term physical effects of cancer, such as short stature, poor physical functioning and cognitive problems, social implications also exist," said Kadan-Lottick, who is a member of Yale Cancer Center......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

November 2, 2009, 8:43 AM CT

Aggressive osteoporosis prevention needed

Aggressively managing patients at risk for osteoporosis could reduce the hip fracture rate in the United States by 25 percent, as per a Kaiser Permanente study reported in the recent issue of the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery The first step must be a more active role by orthopedic surgeons in osteoporosis disease management, scientists say.

This study, the largest to look at osteoporosis management in men and women over 50 years old, followed 650,000 men and women in Kaiser Permanente's osteoporosis management program and found hip fractures dropped by 38 percent, preventing 970 hip fractures in 2007.

The prospective observational study examined the effectiveness of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California's Healthy Bones Program from 2002 to 2007. Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect, the world's largest civilian electronic health record database, was used to collect data on patients that included anti-osteoporosis medicine usage, bone density scans and fragility fractures.

A recent report showed that Kaiser Permanente in Southern California leads the nation for effective osteoporosis disease management. The National Committee on Quality Assurance, a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality, recently released the results in its Quality Compass study of reporting health plans for 2008. Of the 10 million Americans who have osteoporosis, 80 percent are women......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 28, 2009, 6:31 AM CT

Vegetables can protect unborn child against diabetes

New evidence is emerging for how important it is for pregnant women to eat good, nutritious food. Expecting mothers who eat vegetables every day seem to have children who are less likely to develop type 1 diabetes, a newly released study from the Sahlgrenska Academy has revealed.

The study waccording toformed in collaboration with Linkoping University, which is conducting a population study called ABIS (All Babies in Southeast Sweden). The results have been reported in the journal Pediatric Diabetes.

"This is the first study to show a link between vegetable intake during pregnancy and the risk of the child subsequently developing type 1 diabetes, but more studies of various kinds will be needed before we can say anything definitive," says researcher and clinical nutritionist Hilde Brekke from the Sahlgrenska Academy.

Blood samples from almost 6,000 five year-olds were analysed in the study. In type 1 diabetes, certain cells in the pancreas gradually get worse at producing insulin, leading to insulin deficiency. Children at risk of developing type 1 diabetes have antibodies in their blood which attack these insulin-producing cells.

Of the 6,000 children tested, three per cent had either elevated levels of these antibodies or fully developed type 1 diabetes at the age of five. These risk markers were up to twice as common in children whose mothers rarely ate vegetables during pregnancy. The risk was lowest among children whose mothers stated that they ate vegetables every day......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

October 28, 2009, 6:17 AM CT

Room design can enhance patient care

The design of a consultation room can improve the quality of a visit to the physician's office. A collaborative research study developed by Nurture by Steelcase and Mayo Clinic, was conducted to understand the extent to which a consultation room designed to support present-day clinical encounters could affect the consultation between patients and clinicians. The results of this randomized trial, the first of its kind, will appear in the recent issue of Health Environments Research and Design Journal (HERD).

"This study supports the notion that the space in which people meet can influence how they work together," says Victor Montori, M.D., the lead Mayo researcher. He also says more studies in other health care systems are needed to confirm these findings. You can view Dr. Montori discussing the study on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24AHuqzYW5c.

"Helping to build a body of evidence that leads to better health care outcomes and experiences is foundational to our mission," says Joyce Bromberg, director of Workspace Futures Research for Steelcase. Nurture is Steelcase's healthcare division a company focused on space and environments and how products within those environments can make them more comfortable, efficient and conducive to the healing process......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 26, 2009, 7:45 AM CT

Binge eating trends

Existing research shows that rates of binge eating among adult women is virtually identical across race. However, among college age women, it's a different story: Caucasian women are more apt to exhibit binge eating behaviors than African American women, as per a research studypresented at this month's annual scientific meeting of the Obesity Society.

"We are trying to figure out when the diet trajectory changes, and when it is that African-Americans start to exhibit these behaviors. It's important to look at the eating habits of this group as they may contribute to early onset weight gain and obesity," said Melissa Napolitano, clinical psychology expert at the Center for Obesity Research and Education and associate professor of kinesiology in the College of Health Professions.

In the study, 715 female college students completed an on-line survey about health habits, behaviors and attitudes. Each woman self-reported her height and weight. Answers were then in comparison to the Eating Disorder Diagnostic Scale, a questionnaire that is used to diagnose a variety of eating disorders, and the Binge Eating Scale, to gauge the severity of binge eating symptoms.

Binge Eating Disorder is classified by eating amounts of food larger than most people would consider normal within a 2-hour period; a sense of loss of control during these eating periods; eating past the point of feeling comfortably full; and feelings of embarrassment, depression, anxiety or guilt after eating......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 25, 2009, 11:39 PM CT

Promising New Path For Treating Traumas

A discovery by researchers at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation could help save lives threatened by traumatic injuries like those sustained in car crashes or on the battlefield. The work also holds potential for treating severe infectious diseases and diabetes.

In a paper published online today in the advance edition of the scientific journal Nature Medicine, OMRF researcher Charles Esmon, Ph.D., with co-authors Florea Lupu, Ph.D., and Jun Xu, Ph.D., has cast new light on how proteins called histones can enter the bloodstream and begin to kill the lining of blood vessels, resulting in uncontrolled internal bleeding. Building on this work, Esmon and a team of collaborators have discovered an antibody that could counter this deadly process.

"This discovery could open the door to new ways to treat soldiers hurt in IED attacks, gunshot wound victims and people who suffer a traumatic injury," said Esmon, who holds the Lloyd Noble Chair in Cardiovascular Biology at OMRF. "When we realized that histones were so toxic, we immediately went to work looking for a way to stop their destructive tendencies."

Inside the cells, histones perform an important function, keeping DNA coiled and compressed inside the nucleus. But the OMRF scientists observed that when cells become damaged and burst-either through injury, infection or diseases such as diabetes-histones can enter the bloodstream and begin to kill the lining of blood vessels. This results in uncontrolled internal bleeding and fluid build-up in the tissues, which are life-threatening......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 25, 2009, 11:37 PM CT

Suboptimal vitamin D levels in millions of US children

Boston, Mass. -- Millions of children in the United States between the ages of 1 and 11 may suffer from suboptimal levels of vitamin D, as per a large nationally representative study reported in the recent issue of Pediatrics, accompanied by an editorial.

The study, led by Jonathan Mansbach, MD, at Children's Hospital Boston, is the most up-to-date analysis of vitamin D levels in U.S. children. It builds on the growing evidence that levels have fallen below what's considered healthy, and that black and Hispanic children are at especially high risk.

Both the optimal amount of vitamin D supplementation and the healthy blood level of vitamin D are under heated debate in the medical community. Currently, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children should have vitamin D levels of at least 50 nmol/L (20 ng/ml). However, other studies in adults suggest that vitamin D levels should be at least 75 nmol/L (30 ng/ml), and possibly 100 nmol/L (40 ng/ml), to lower the risk of heart disease and specific cancers.

Mansbach and collaborators from the University of Colorado Denver and Massachusetts General Hospital used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to look at vitamin D levels in a nationally representative sample of roughly 5,000 children from 2001-2006. Extrapolating to the entire U.S. population, their analysis suggests that roughly 20 percent of all children fell below the recommended 50 nmol/L. Moreover, more than two-thirds of all children had levels below 75 nmol/L, including 80 percent of Hispanic children and 92 percent of non-Hispanic black children......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 22, 2009, 7:09 AM CT

Fighting obesity with plant-based foods

The cheeseburger and French fries might look tempting, but eating a serving of broccoli or leafy greens first could help people battle metabolic processes that lead to obesity and heart disease, a new University of Florida study shows.

Eating more plant-based foods, which are rich in substances called phytochemicals, seems to prevent oxidative stress in the body, a process linked to obesity and the onset of disease, as per findings published online in advance of the print edition of the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics

To get enough of these protective phytochemicals, scientists suggest eating plant-based foods such as leafy greens, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes at the start of a meal. Using what is known as a phytochemical index, which compares the number of calories consumed from plant-based foods compared with the overall number of daily calories, could also help people make sure they remember to get enough phytochemicals during their regular meals and snacks, said Heather K. Vincent, Ph.D., the main author of the paper.

"We need to find a way to encourage people to pull back on fat and eat more foods rich in micronutrients and trace minerals from fruits, vegetables, whole grains and soy," said Vincent, an assistant professor in the UF Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine Institute. "Fill your plate with colorful, low-calorie, varied-texture foods derived from plants first. By slowly eating phytochemical-rich foods such as salads with olive oil or fresh-cut fruits before the actual meal, you will likely reduce the overall portion size, fat content and energy intake. In this way, you're ensuring that you get the variety of protective, disease-fighting phytochemicals you need and controlling caloric intake"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 20, 2009, 8:57 AM CT

Blood lead levels and test scores

Exposure to lead in early childhood significantly contributes to lower performances on end-of-grade (EOG) reading tests among minority and low-income children, as per scientists at Duke University and North Carolina Central University.

"We found a clear dose-response pattern between lead exposure and test performance, with the effects becoming more pronounced as you move from children at the high end to the low end of the test-score curve," said lead investigator Marie Lynn Miranda, director of the Children's Environmental Health Initiative (CEHI) at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.

"Given the higher average lead exposure experienced by African-American children in the United States, our results show that lead does in fact explain part of the observed achievement gap that blacks, children of low socioeconomic status and other disadvantaged groups continue to exhibit in school performance in the U.S. education system, in comparison to middle- and upper-class whites," Miranda said.

The study, published online in the peer-evaluated journal NeuroToxicology, linked data on blood-lead levels from the North Carolina Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program surveillance registry to EOG reading test scores for 4th graders in all 100 of the state's counties......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 20, 2009, 8:35 AM CT

Chronic illnesses go undiagnosed in uninsured

A newly released study shows uninsured American adults with chronic illnesses like diabetes or high cholesterol often go undiagnosed and undertreated, leading to an increased risk of costly, disabling and even lethal complications of their disease.

The study, published online today [Tuesday] in Health Affairs, analyzed data from a recent national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The researchers, based at Harvard Medical School and the affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance, analyzed data on 15,976 U.S. non-older adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a CDC program, between 1999 and 2006.

Respondents answered detailed questions about their health and economic circumstances. Then doctors examined them and ordered laboratory tests.

The study observed that about half of all uninsured people with diabetes (46 percent) or high cholesterol (52 percent) did not know they had these diseases. In contrast, about one-quarter of those with insurance were unaware of their illnesses (23 percent for diabetes, 29.9 percent for high cholesterol).

Undertreatment of disease followed similar patterns, with the uninsured being more likely to be undertreated than their insured counterparts: 58.3 percent vs. 51.4 percent had their hypertension poorly controlled, and 77.5 percent vs. 60.4 percent had their high cholesterol inadequately treated......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 20, 2009, 8:28 AM CT

Do you enjoy drinking vegetable juice?

Decades of studies have documented the link between eating a diet rich in vegetables and multiple health benefits, yet nearly eight out of 10 people worldwide fall short of the daily recommendation. Research presented at the International Symposium on Human Health Effects of Fruits and Vegetables suggests the best approach appears to be to focus on the factors that are often behind this vegetable gap: convenience and enjoyment.

Two studies presented at the symposium observed that the addition of vegetable juice in people's diets was a successful strategy to help them reach the vegetable guidelines (at least 4 servings per day). In fact, the addition of a portable drink, such as V8 100% vegetable juice, was more successful than an approach that focused solely on nutrition education, or offering dietary counseling on ways to increase vegetable intake.

Scientists at the University of California-Davis conducted a 12-week study among adults ages 40-65 years. All of the people in the study who drank at least two cups of vegetable juice met daily vegetable recommendations, yet only seven percent of the non-juice drinkers met the goal. The participants in the study with borderline hypertension who drank one to two servings of V8 juice lowered their blood pressure significantly......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 14, 2009, 7:16 AM CT

Transcendental meditation reduces stress

Women with breast cancer reduced stress and improved their mental health and emotional well being through the Transcendental Meditation technique, as per a newly released study reported in the current issue of the peer-evaluated Integrative Cancer Therapies (Vol. 8, No. 3: September 2009).

"A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effects of Transcendental Meditation on Quality of Life in Older Breast Cancer Patients" was a collaboration between the Center for Healthy Aging at Saint Joseph Hospital; the Institute for Health Services, Research and Policy Studies at Northwestern University; the Department of Psychology at Indiana State University; and the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University of Management.

"It is wonderful that physicians now have a range of interventions to use, including Transcendental Meditation, to benefit their patients with cancer," said Rhoda Pomerantz, M.D., co-author of study and chief of gerontology, Saint Joseph Hospital. "I believe this approach should be appreciated and utilized more widely".

One hundred thirty women with breast cancer, 55 years and older, participated in the two-year study at Saint Joseph Hospital. The women were randomly assigned to either the Transcendental Meditation technique or to a usual care control group. Patients were administered quality of life measures, including the Functional Evaluation of Cancer Therapy-Breast (FACT-B), every six months for two years. The average intervention period was 18 months......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

October 14, 2009, 7:05 AM CT

Information in hospital prescription records

A recent study led by Dr. Khaled El Emam, the Canada Research Chair in Electronic Health Information at the CHEO Research Institute, observed that the information in hospital prescription records can quite easily re-identify patients.

Information on drug prescriptions are a highly sought after commodity. Pharmaceutical companies like to access this data to fine tune their marketing and sales efforts. A number of retail pharmacies in Canada sell their prescription records to commercial data aggregators who perform analyses for pharmaceutical companies; the potential privacy risk with such a practice is if the patients can be re-identified from this data. There is now more demand for this data from hospital pharmacies as well.

Dr. El Emam's study, titled "Evaluating the Risk of Re-identification of Patients from Hospital Prescription Records", demonstrates the importance of ensuring the proper de-identification of patient records. The study demonstrates a methodology for deciding which data to keep and which to de-identify, since hospital prescription data contains details such as where patients live and when they were admitted to the hospital.

"A meaningful risk analysis requires an understanding of the nature of plausible re-identification scenarios" explained Dr. El Emam "and is typically performed with a hospital's privacy officer to ensure that the risk to patient re-identification remains as low as possible."........ Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 13, 2009, 8:22 AM CT

Teen smoking-cessation trial

For the first time, scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have demonstrated that it is possible to successfully recruit and retain a large number of adolescent smokers from the general population into a smoking intervention study and, through personalized, proactive telephone counseling, significantly impact rates of six-month continuous quitting. These findings, by Arthur V. Peterson Jr., Ph.D., Kathleen A. Kealey and his colleagues, are reported in a pair of papers in the Oct. 12 "Advance Access" online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute

"When this study started, despite decades of research and dozens of intervention trials, there was no proven way to reach teens from the general population and recruit them into smoking cessation programs, and there was no proven way to help these teens quit," said Peterson, a member of the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division and main author of the paper that reported the results of the Hutchinson Study of High School Smoking, the largest randomized trial of teen smoking cessation ever conducted.

The trial, funded by the National Institutes of Health, involved 2,151 teenage smokers from 50 high schools in Washington. Half of the schools were randomly assigned to the experimental intervention; teens in these schools were invited to take part in confidential, personalized telephone counseling designed to help motivate them to quit. The remaining 25 schools served as a comparison group; teen smokers from these schools did not participate in the telephone intervention. The study also included 745 nonsmokers to ensure that contacting students for participation in the trial would not reveal a participant's smoking status......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 13, 2009, 8:12 AM CT

Visual impairment and risk of death

Visual problems that cannot be corrected are linked to increased risk of death among individuals between the ages of 49 and 74, and all visual impairments appears to be linked to the risk of death in elderly adults, as per a report in the recent issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Visual impairment has been linked to a higher risk of death as well as factors that may lead to increased death such as unintentional injury, depression, lower body mass index (BMI), reduced walking speeds, increased risk of falls, self-reported difficulty in physical activity, cardiovascular disease, dementia and cancer, as per background information in the article. "Correction for these 'confounders' has been found to attenuate the association between visual impairment and mortality, but the mechanisms behind the association between visual impairment and mortality remain to be determined".

Michael J. Karpa, M.B.B.S., B.Sc., of Westmead Millennium Institute, Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues used data from the Blue Mountains Eye Study, which examined visual impairment in 3,654 participants age 49 and older between 1992 and 1994 and after five and ten years, to evaluate the relationship between visual impairment and death risk among older individuals......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 13, 2009, 7:46 AM CT

Wide gap in quality between hospitals

The largest annual study of patient outcomes at each of the nation's 5,000 nonfederal hospitals found a wide gap in quality between the nation's best hospitals and all others. As per the study, issued today by HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings organization, patients at highly rated hospitals have a 52 percent lower chance of dying compared with the U.S. hospital average, a quality chasm that haccording tosisted for the last decade even as mortality rates, in general, have declined.

The study also observed that hospitals that have received the Stroke Certification from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) had an eight percent lower risk-adjusted mortality rate than hospitals that have not received this certification.

The twelfth annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study examined nearly 40 million Medicare hospitalization records from the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. The study looks at trends in mortality and complication rates and also provides the foundation for HealthGrades' quality ratings of procedures and diagnoses at each individual hospital.

The new 2010 ratings for individual hospitals are available today at www.healthgrades.com, HealthGrades' public Web site designed to help patients compare the quality of care at their local hospitals for 28 different procedures and therapys, from hip replacement to bypass surgery......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 12, 2009, 7:17 AM CT

Clues to human disease from blood counts

A new genome-wide association study published recently in Nature Genetics begins to uncover the basis of genetic variations in eight blood measurements and the impact those variants can have on common human diseases. Blood measurements, including the number and volume of cells in the blood, are routinely used to diagnose a wide range of disorders, including anaemia, infection and blood cell cancers.

An international team of researchers measured haemoglobin concentration, the count and volume of red and white cells and the sticky cells that prevent bleeding - platelets, in over 14,000 individuals from the UK and Gera number of. They uncovered 22 regions of the human genome implicated in the development of these blood cells. Of the 22 regions, 15 had not previously been identified.

The study represents the first genome-wide association of blood measurements to be completed in cohorts with large sample sizes.

"This study has been made possible by a great collaboration of researchers from the UK and Gera number of, and the contribution of clinical colleagues working in the field of heart disease, diabetes and coeliac disease in the UK, Gera number of and the United States," explains Dr Nicole Soranzo, group leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and co-lead of the HaemGen consortium. "This unique collaboration has allowed us to discover novel genetic determinants of blood cell parameters, providing important insights into novel biological mechanisms underlying the formation of blood cells by the blood stem cells and their role in disease......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

October 12, 2009, 7:10 AM CT

Using imagination to reduce abdominal pain

Children with functional abdominal pain who used audio recordings of guided imagery at home in addition to standard medical therapy were almost three times as likely to improve their pain problem, in comparison to children who received standard therapy alone.

And those benefits were maintained six months after therapy ended, a newly released study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University Medical Center scientists has found.

The study is reported in the November 2009 issue of the journal Pediatrics The main author is Miranda van Tilburg, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology in the UNC School of Medicine and a member of the UNC Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders.

"What is particularly exciting about our study is that children can clearly reduce their abdominal pain a lot on their own with guidance from audio recordings, and they get much better results that way than from medical care alone," said van Tilburg. "Such self-administered therapy is, of course, very inexpensive and can be used in addition to other therapys, which potentially opens the door for easily enhancing therapy outcomes for a lot of children suffering from frequent stomach aches".

The study focused on functional abdominal pain, defined according tosistent pain with no identifiable underlying disease that interferes with activities. It is very common, affecting up to 20 percent of children. Previous studies have observed that behavioral treatment and guided imagery (a therapy method similar to self-hypnosis) are effective, when combined with regular medical care, to reduce pain and improve quality of life. But for a number of children behavioral treatment is not available because it is costly, takes a lot of time and requires a highly trained therapist......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source