DAAN Chinese Herbs and Acupuncture

A research institute in Shanghai is developing drugs based on traditional Chinese medicine:

“Next month, the Shanghai Innovative Research Center of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a research and development institution for the modernization of traditional medicine, will apply to conduct clinical trials in Finland for its new antidepressant medicine extracted from herbs.

If the drug is approved, the center will be among a handful of companies that are launching therapeutic drugs derived from TCM onto the global market. “After seven years of study, we have extracted a single active ingredient from ginseng herbs. The pre-clinical trial has showed that this drug is safe and effective,” says Jiang Hongquan, an official with the center.

“The efficacy of this drug is very close to Eli Lilly’s Prozac, or fluoxetine, but the cost is much lower,” notes Jiang, adding that the active ingredient, extracted from ginseng herbs, is a brand-new ingredient that had not been previously identified. The development is a breakthrough for herbal medicine innovation and modernization, according to Jiang, who says that the center is also considering applying to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for clinical trial approval. Meanwhile, given the renewed global interest in TCM-derived drugs, the new medicine remains a closely guarded business secret.

The Shanghai Innovative Research Center is not alone in its effort to introduce Chinese herbal medicines into the mainstream market. Other companies have been doing the same thing for years, including Hutchison MediPharma (the R&D subsidiary of London AIM-listed Hutchison China MediTech), and Tasly Pharmaceutical Co., one of China’s largest TCM manufacturers.”

Tags: East and West, Herbs by DAAN
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British Columbia start to offer public funds for acupuncture treatments.

“B.C.’s new health program began on April Fool’s Day but it was no joke.

The province will be the first in Canada to offer public funds for acupuncture treatments for its Medical Services Plan (MSP) recipients, announced the health minister on Sunday

Acupuncture, the practice of inserting needles into the skin to treat pain, will be available to anyone earning less than $28,000 per year, said George Abbott.”

Tags: Acupuncture, East and West by DAAN
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Scientists are studying whether traditional medicines for possible treatments for cancer:

“Curing cancer with natural products — a case for shamans and herbalists? Not at all, for many chemotherapies to fight cancer applied in modern medicine are natural products or were developed on the basis of natural substances. Thus, taxanes used in prostate and breast cancer treatment are made from yew trees. The popular periwinkle plant, which grows along the ground of many front yards, is the source of vinca alkaloids that are effective, for example, against malignant lymphomas. The modern anti-cancer drugs topotecan and irinotecan are derived from a constituent of the Chinese Happy Tree.

Looking for new compounds, doctors and scientists are increasingly focusing on substances from plants used in traditional medicine. About three quarters of the natural pharmaceutical compounds commonly used today are derived from plants of the traditional medicine of the people in various parts of the world. The chances of finding new substances with interesting working profiles in traditional medicinal plants are better than in common-or-garden botany.

Tags: East and West, Disease by DAAN
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Two well known doctors debate the alternatives to western medicine:

“In separate interviews, the doctors gave a preview of what’s to come:

Weil: We spend more per-capita on health care than any people in the world, yet by every measure of health outcomes, we’re at or near the bottom compared to other developed countries. What we call health care is intervention and dependent on expensive technology … that’s why our health care system’s on the verge of collapse.

The integrative medicine I teach is really training doctors and other health professionals to focus on health maintenance, prevention of disease and low-tech intervention such as dietary adjustments.

Everybody should take 2 to 3 grams of fish oil a day – it’s a protection against depression, cancer, heart disease all the diseases of aging and optimizes mental function. I also recommend vitamin D-3 (to help prevent many cancers and multiple sclerosis).

Reduce consumption of refined, processed and manufactured foods. Practice stress management, exercise and breathing. Inhale through the nose for the count of four, hold the breath for the count of seven, exhale through your mouth for the count of eight, four cycles twice a day. You can do it sitting at a red light.

Breathing changes the tone of the involuntary nervous system and other imbalances at the root of disease, This affects cardiovascular function, blood circulation, digestion, mood and energy.

Wilkes: I’m skeptical. There may be a placebo effect, but if breathing actually resulted in people being healthier and living longer, we would have evolved in a way that allowed us to breathe that way. Let’s have an independent group study where half get taught to breathe the way Weil does it and see how they do after three months or six years.

And there’s no data that vitamin D does anything for most people. In the absence of data that show it would work, save your money. He’s gotten to be such a wealthy man, put some of that money into clinical trials and see if that stuff works or not.

Medical schools have done a systematically poor job acknowledging this whole field of complementary alternative medicine. Americans spend billions on this. Patients go to see complementary doctors for all of our failures – for needs we can’t meet with Western medicine, and if they don’t feel listened to.”

Tags: East and West by DAAN
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Celebrate Chinese New Year!

“Thursday, Feb. 7, marks the Chinese New Year. This year is the year of the rat. According to www.infoplease.com, the Chinese New Year is the longest and most important celebration in the Chinese calendar. The Chinese year 4706 begins on Feb. 7, 2008.

Legend has it that in ancient times, Buddha asked all the animals to meet him on Chinese New Year. Twelve came, and Buddha named a year after each one. He announced that the people born in each animal’s year would have some of that animal’s personality. Those born in rat years tend to be leaders, pioneers, and conquerors. They are charming, passionate, charismatic, practical and hardworking. Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson, William Shakespeare, and Mozart were all born in the year of the rat.”

Tags: East and West, Culture by DAAN
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Traditional Chinese medicine is gaining recognition in the mainstream:

“Once the domain of sinsehs, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is now going mainstream and can even be paid for through medical insurance in the US, writes EU HOOI KHAW.
MORE scientific formulations in powder extracts, following the golden rules of safety, efficacy and stability, have uplifted the status of traditional Chinese medicine or TCM.

It’s a medical discipline that’s more than 5,000 years old, now going mainstream.

It has already gained acceptance in the West: in the United States such treatment can be paid for through medical insurance.

The Singapore General Hospital has a TCM division set up at considerable cost, some S$28 million (RM63.5 million). Now the Penang General Hospital has opened a TCM clinic and a TCM centre has recently opened in Johor Baru.
Called We Care TCM, it has on board a western-trained doctor who is its CEO and medical director, and doctors from China trained in and practising both western and Chinese medicine.”

Tags: General, East and West by DAAN
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Modern science is looking the traditional Chinese medicine for clues to fighting cancer:

“A Houston hospital known for seeking the most advanced cancer therapies that modern science can develop is turning its attention to a centuries-old Chinese treatment: toad venom.

Scientists from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center are investigating whether the stuff that some types of toads use to sicken their natural predators can also be a healer, as doctors of traditional Chinese medicine have long believed.

“Without hesitation, toad venom was the No. 1 drug (Chinese) doctors mentioned when we asked them to suggest the best natural cancer medicines to test,” Lorenzo Cohen, director of M.D. Anderson’s integrative medicine program, said from China. “It may sound wild to Americans, but it’s accepted as a standard of care here.”

It also appears to hold promise. In clinical trials Cohen is leading in Shanghai, the venom secreted by the Asiatic toad has shown some benefit and no apparent side effects in patients with advanced liver, pancreatic and lung cancer — which are not easy cancers to fight.”

Tags: East and West, Disease by DAAN
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Herbal Medicine spending has reached 85 Billion US Dollars in 2007

“Herbal Medicines reached 85 billion US Dollar worldwide 2007. China increased marketshare to 24 %

Growth rate over 10 % for Herbal Medicine and 15 percent for Traditional Chinese Medicine worldwide. Over 60 percent of the markets are only 150 different herbs. World Market Conference for TCM in March 2008 in Beijing lead by hkc22.com new Study The market for Herbal Medicine will grow with 8 to 12 percent up to 2015 and for Traditional Chinese Medicine with mor then 15 percent per year up to 2015.”

Tags: Acupuncture, East and West by DAAN
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Psychiatrists in Taiwan are working to bridge the gap between western and traditional Chinese medicine

“The Taipei City Chinese Medicine Association, in association with the department of psychiatry at National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH), held a conference in Taipei yesterday on psychiatric medicine designed to give Chinese medicine practitioners a Western perspective on mental illnesses.

The conference is the first in a series to “build bridges” between traditional and Western medicine, the conference’s organizers said.

Western medical diagnoses of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, oppressive-compulsive disorder and anorexia nervosa do not have equivalents in Chinese medicine. However, it is important for practitioners of Chinese medicine to know and recognize the disorders, psychiatrists who spoke at the conference told an audience of Chinese medicine practitioners, who also gained some education credits necessary for them to be able renew their licenses with the Department of Health.”

Tags: Uncategorized, General, East and West by DAAN
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Couples trying to conceive are looking to Chinese medicine in addition to western methods to help them in their quest:

“Acupuncture, improved diets, herbal supplements and lifestyle changes associated with traditional Chinese medicine have increased the probability of pregnancy for many infertile couples.

Amy Teeters, 33, believes it is not only a key factor in her getting pregnant and carrying the baby, but also in her body being able to function normally.

When she and her husband, Chuck, decided to have a baby about five years ago, her doctor found her hormone levels were so low she could not produce eggs. As a teenager, she had suffered with anorexia that stopped her menstrual cycles, unless she took birth control pills.

Teeters, who is now almost 30 weeks pregnant, spent five years trying to conceive. Her journey led to several miscarriages and failed IVF attempts, emergency hospitalization from side effects of

hormone treatments and incredible emotional anguish.

At the suggestion of a friend, she went to see Dr. Judi Harrick of Acupuncture Healing Arts Medical Group. Harrick, a former critical care nurse, has extensive training in oriental medicine, including a doctoral degree from Samra University of Oriental Medicine in Los Angeles.

While in Harrick’s care, Teeters continues seeing her obstetrician, who prescribed the drug heparin to counteract her tendency to miscarry due to clotting in the placenta.

But she credits Harrick with getting her healthy enough to have her first nondrug-induced menstrual cycle in 16 years last summer.

Harrick uses acupuncture to restore the flow of “Qi,” (pronounced “chee”), which is your body’s essence and energy. Needles are placed at key points practitioners say are linked to reproductive and other organs.

Although they are not sure how it happens, many doctors of Western medicine now believe acupuncture increases blood flow to the uterus and ovaries and also stimulate hormones involved in conception.”

Tags: Acupuncture, Women's Health, East and West by DAAN
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