Reviews
Bad Decisions – Due to Fatigue/Loss of Willpower?
No matter how we approach decisions and how careful we are, some bad ones are made, and others are unnecessarily delayed – organisation, procrastination and fear dominate the thoughts of many paralysed by the thought of completing the decision making task.
To complicate this further, there is the little understood effect of ‘decision fatigue’, the act of making so many decisions in a day that eventually even the best trained start to do things that in the cold light of day are difficult to justify.[1]
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Asthma Management
The incidence of asthma and allergy are on the rise with ever increasing understanding of the role of unique genetic changes to epithelial tissues and environmental impacts including nutrition and bacteria.[1]
But aside from the choices f intervention, asthma management is all about limiting the triggers managing the symptoms and helping to maintain function. Helping the individuals to avoid hospital visits, experience adverse effects of medication are also important.
You should keep in mind that there are a small number of steps that it is worth either undertaking directly with your patient or referring them to their GP or specialist.
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Evidence Informed Decisions
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In clinical practice we are encouraged (often stridently) to pursue evidence based strategies in the management of our patients and clients. This it is claimed is to provide us with the best outcomes and minimise risk – suggesting that the role of the individual clinician should be confined to Data sets and then squeezing the patient to fit this model.
IBS Succesfully Managed by Nutritional Therapy
It will be of no real surprise to know that the incidence of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is common. Around the world it is estimated that some 10-20% of the population suffer from it. This is not an inconsequential number, and apart from the miserable statistics, it comes with loss of function, misery, anxiety, pain, bloating, altered bowel habits and loss of quality of life.
Whilst a clear explanation of the cause remains somewhat elusive, there is an increasing acceptance that the relationship between the brain-gut axis, central nervous system, peripheral stress response, infection, dysbiosis, barrier defects, inflammation and immune imbalance play significant roles in the causation.
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C. albicans, does it really have a sweet tooth?
Michael Ash BSc. DO. ND. Dip ION – First published in 2007 in the Nutrition Practitioner Journal.
C. albicans (A fungus, first isolated in 1844 from the sputum of a tuberculous patient[1]) infections are undoubtedly a problem of growing clinical importance in general medicine and are frequently encountered in nutritional practice – or are they?
Of the 500 or so species representing 60 genera of yeasts, only a few are capable of causing human infections. These species must possess specific factors or mechanisms of pathogenesis that enable them to cause infection.
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Probiotics and Safety
The use of probiotics and saccharomyces Boulardii as part of a Nutritional Therapists strategic intervention with many of their patients is very common, and with good reason, they address and correct many functional health problems that involve the mucosal immune system.
A recent review from The Agency For Health Care Research and Quality (a USA organisation) undertook a comprehensive look at probiotics.
According to this review on the safety of probiotics, safety aspects seem to have been forgotten or have been addressed in general terms only in the majority of the large volume of studies on the subject. This review only looks at safety rather than application and concludes:
There is a lack of assessment and systematic reporting of adverse events in probiotic intervention studies, and interventions are poorly documented. The available evidence in RCTs does not indicate an increased risk; however, rare adverse events are difficult to assess, and despite the substantial number of publications, the current literature is not well equipped to answer questions on the safety of probiotic interventions with confidence.
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Laboratory Assessment of GI Terrain and Function
Culture-based methods offer overall superiority to molecular diagnostic testing
Dr Chuck Masur MD from Drs Data laboratory in the USA contributed this article to their in house e news letter in spring 2011. Chuck has kindly agreed that we may reproduce here.
The terrain of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract is vast and varied. Villi and microvilli in the small intestine along with the absorptive cells of the large intestine contribute an effective absorptive surface area of about 200 m2 (equivalent to about 10 times the surface area of the human body or an area the size of a singles’ tennis court playing surface). This terrain is occupied by about 10 x 1013 micro-organisms (the microbiota) – by comparison the microbiota exceed by 10-fold the total number of cells comprising the human body. More than 1000 different species and sub-species contribute to the population of human GI micro-organisms; about 500 of these species are bacteria.
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Probiotics and Lecithin cause heart disease?
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Diet, intestinal bacteria and liver metabolism to the generation of a chemical that promotes the build-up of arterial plaque and cardiovascular disease is the proposal in the alarmingly interesting paper published in the internationally respected Journal; Nature.[1] What we shout, how can two not simply innocuous but beneficial agents gang up to contribute to the cause of the world’s leading promoter of disease and death? Read on to find out..
Pass the POO/Medicine
Faecal Bacteria
As many will know if they read the reviews I compile, I have an over 20 year interest in the role of the mucosal immune system (mainly in the gut) and its effects on human health, beyond the local tissues and organs.
The gastrointestinal tract is rooted in what is gently chided by the dedicated science/medical community as ‘folk medicine’, and for thousands of years healers, shaman and other practitioners have applied their best efforts to securing the gut as the seat of all disease.
In Asian medicine the abdomen is recognised as the seat of the soul the “Honoured Middle” (onaka) and the centre of spiritual and physical strength (Hara) is how the Japanese describe the intestine. [1] Yet for many Europeans and North Americans it is largely a tube which simply has to function albeit increasingly less efficiently.
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Is this a Perfect Functional Meal for Mucosal Tolerance?
Stewed apples as medicine
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