Integrative medicine interventions found to significantly reduce pain, improve quality of life

New study points to sustainable effects of patient-centered care

2013-07-22

(Press-News.org) An integrative approach to treating chronic pain significantly reduces pain severity while improving mood and quality of life, according to a new study from the Bravewell Practice-Based Research Network (BraveNet) published last month in BioMed Central Complementary and Alternative Medicine journal. Researchers found a reduction in pain severity of more than 20 percent and a drop in pain interference of nearly 30 percent in patients after 24 weeks of integrative care. Significant improvements in mood, stress, quality of life, fatigue, sleep and well-being were also observed.

"Chronic pain is very difficult to treat," said lead researcher Dr. Donald Abrams, a cancer and integrative medicine specialist at the University of California San Francisco Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. "While there have been some therapeutic advances, many patients with chronic pain become resistant to conventional medical treatments or suffer adverse effects from widely used prescription medications with high addictive potential. The results from this study are particularly encouraging as chronic pain is the number one condition for which patients seek care at integrative healthcare clinics."

Chronic pain affects nearly 116 million American adults, with estimated costs tallying up to $635 billion annually. The prospective, observational study tracked patients' measures of pain, quality of life, mood, stress, sleep, fatigue, sense of control, overall well-being, and work productivity in 252 patients at nine different clinical sites.

In keeping with the integrative medicine philosophy of individualized, patient-centered care, no standardized pre-specified clinical intervention for chronic pain was prescribed for all study participants. Instead, practitioners at each of the network sites devised integrative treatment plans for participating chronic pain patients. All BraveNet sites include integrative physicians, acupuncturists, mindfulness instructors, and yoga instructors; some also incorporate massage therapists, manual medicine therapists, fitness/movement specialists, dietician/nutritionists, psychologists, healing touch therapists, and other energy practitioners.

The results of the study were consistent over the 24-week duration of the trial, suggesting the possibility of sustainable effects of the integrative interventions.

### The full study is available at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/13/146

About BraveNet BraveNet was established by The Bravewell Collaborative in 2007. The first practice-based research network in integrative medicine, BraveNet is comprised of ten leading centers in integrative medicine, with the Duke Clinical Research Center acting as the coordinating center. More information is available at https://bravenet.dcri.duke.edu.

About The Bravewell Collaborative Formed in 2002, The Bravewell Collaborative is a community of philanthropists in the United States dedicated to bringing about optimal health and healing for individuals and society. An operating foundation, Bravewell develops and manages strategic initiatives that support integrative approaches to healthcare. Embracing rigorous research and scientific approaches in the entirety of its work, The Bravewell Collaborative's key initiatives include programs to educate the general public, change the way physicians are educated, develop leading clinical centers as models for change, acknowledge and support leaders in the field, and promote translational and outcomes-based research. Most recently, The Bravewell Collaborative established the first practice-based research network in integrative medicine and worked with the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Science to produce a National Summit on Integrative Medicine. For more information about The Bravewell Collaborative, please visit http://www.bravewell.org.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Greening of the Earth pushed way back in time

2013-07-22

EUGENE, Ore. -- (July 22, 2013) -- Conventional scientific wisdom has it that plants and other creatures have only lived on land for about 500 million years, and that landscapes of the early Earth were as barren as Mars. A new study, led by geologist Gregory J. Retallack of the University of Oregon, now has presented evidence for life on land that is four times as old -- at 2.2 billion years ago and almost half way back to the inception of the planet. That evidence, which is detailed in the September issue of the journal Precambrian Research, involves fossils the size ...

Sea level rise: New iceberg theory points to areas at risk of rapid disintegration

2013-07-22

ANN ARBOR—In events that could exacerbate sea level rise over the coming decades, stretches of ice on the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland are at risk of rapidly cracking apart and falling into the ocean, according to new iceberg calving simulations from the University of Michigan. "If this starts to happen and we're right, we might be closer to the higher end of sea level rise estimates for the next 100 years," said Jeremy Bassis, assistant professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the U-M College of Engineering, and first author of a paper on the new ...

Ancient ice melt unearthed in Antarctic mud

2013-07-22

Global warming five million years ago may have caused parts of Antarctica's large ice sheets to melt and sea levels to rise by approximately 20 metres, scientists report today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The researchers, from Imperial College London, and their academic partners studied mud samples to learn about ancient melting of the East Antarctic ice sheet. They discovered that melting took place repeatedly between five and three million years ago, during a geological period called Pliocene Epoch, which may have caused sea levels to rise approximately ten metres. Scientists ...

Sex chromosome shocker: The 'female' X a key contributor to sperm production

2013-07-22

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Painstaking new analysis of the genetic sequence of the X chromosome—long perceived as the "female" counterpart to the male-associated Y chromosome—reveals that large portions of the X have evolved to play a specialized role in sperm production. This surprising finding, reported by Whitehead Institute scientists in a paper published online this week in the journal Nature Genetics, is paired with another unexpected outcome: despite its reputation as the most stable chromosome of the genome, the X has actually been undergoing relatively swift change. ...

Study links mental illness to early death in people with epilepsy

2013-07-22

People with epilepsy are ten times more likely to die early, before their mid-fifties, compared with the general population, according to a 41 year study in Sweden published today in the Lancet and part-funded by the Wellcome Trust. The findings reveal a striking correlation between premature death and mental illness in these patients and people with epilepsy were four times more likely to have received a psychiatric diagnosis in their lifetime compared with the general population. The figures are considerably higher than previously thought and have important implications ...

Making big 'Schroedinger cats'

2013-07-22

Since Erwin Schroedinger's famous 1935 cat thought experiment, physicists around the globe have tried to create large scale systems to test how the rules of quantum mechanics apply to everyday objects. Researchers at the University of Calgary recently made a significant step forward in this direction by creating a large system that is in two substantially different states at the same time. Until this point, scientists had only managed to recreate quantum effects on much smaller scales. Professor Alex Lvovsky and associate professor Christoph Simon from the Physics and ...

A bad alliance: Rare immune cells promote food-induced allergic inflammation in the esophagus

2013-07-22

PHILADELPHIA – Food is an integral part of life; but, for some, it can be harmful. Allergic inflammation caused by inappropriate immune responses to some types of food has become a major public health issue. Over the past ten years, the prevalence of food allergies has increased by nearly 20 percent, affecting an estimated six million people in the U.S. Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is a food allergy-associated disease that affects children and adults and is caused by inflammation in response to such trigger foods as eggs, nuts, milk, wheat, and soy. Inflammation of ...

Common stem cell in heart and lung development explains adaption for life on land

2013-07-22

PHILADELPHIA – The evolution of adaptations for life on land have long puzzled biologists – are feathers descendents of dinosaur scales, how did arms and legs evolve from fins, and from what ancient fish organ did the lung evolve? Biologists have known that the co-development of the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems is a recent evolutionary adaption to life outside of water, coupling the function of the heart with the gas exchange function of the lung. And, the lung is one of the most recent organs to have evolved in mammals and is arguably the most vital for terrestrial ...

A flip of the mitotic spindle has disastrous consequences for epithelial cells

2013-07-22

VIDEO: Stowers investigators use genetics and live cell imaging to illuminate molecular mechanisms that position the cell division machinery in growing tissues. Click here for more information. KANSAS CITY, MO—Constructing a body is like building a house—if you compromise structural integrity, the edifice can collapse. Nowhere is that clearer on a cellular level than in the case of epithelial sheets, single layers of cells that line every body cavity from the gut to mammary ...

Current efforts will not save the world's most endangered cat

2013-07-22

Almost 100 million euros has been spent so far on conservation efforts for the last 250 remaining Iberian lynxes in the wild. But the charismatic species is likely to go extinct within 50 years because the current management plans do not account for the effects of climate change. If they did, the population might increase instead concludes a new international study with participation from the Centre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at the University of Copenhagen. The study highlights the importance of integrating climate models in management plans for biodiversity. "Our ...

Integrative medicine interventions found to significantly reduce pain, improve quality of life

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: