I wanted to do a short article on the recent findings with respect to common anti-inflammatory medications (NSAIDs). You may or may not have heard that a number of these drugs have had warnings issued regarding their use after research discovered they had the potential to have serious side effects.
Talking to patients, I felt that not enough people were aware of the current state of affairs.
These are medications you may have had prescribed or bought over the counter for arthritis, back pain, headaches, sports injuries and many other everyday complaints.
Voltaren …

“Red Flags” are signs or symptoms you may be suffering from that can be indicators of serious conditions. If you or anyone you know experiences any of these you should consult a health care practitioner. The list includes, but is not limited to, the following:
Shortness of Breath
Loss of Consciousness
A Change in Bowel or Bladder Habits
A Persistent Cough
Pain on Breathing
Chest Pain
Pain or Difficulty on Urination
Tremors
Unexplained Weight Gain or Loss
Excessive Thirst
Swelling in your Throat
Altered Vision or Hearing
Balance Problems
Dizziness
Night Sweats
Fever
Continued numbness in any part of your body
Continued Tingling in any part of your …

I spent 5 years working at The Wholistic Medical Centre in Surry Hills, Sydney (Established 1982). I was part of a team of practitioners that included GPs, Chinese Medicine Practitioners, Acupuncturists, Naturopaths and Counsellors. Our clinic had a reputation for Womens Health and we regularly held forums to discuss different conditions. At one of these get togethers my colleagues and I sat down to discuss pregnancy related issues and I thought I would give you a summary of their many decades of experience in dealing with Morning Sickness.
Morning sickness afflicts …

In various articles, books and websites you will find lists of benefits from Meditation for pretty much every system of the body and facet of your life. Some use it as a way to relax from their busy lives or reduce stress, others to increase energy, mental strength, or to gain insight or enlightenment. Studies have proven many positive effects.
People who meditate regularly show increased blood flow to the left brain, which houses the parts of the brain responsible for feelings of joy, happiness and enthusiasm (and therefore away from …

I know, I know, you’re not mice. But hear me out. There are three types of injuries I see very regularly that take a lot longer to heal than others: Rib strains, injuries to nerves, and ligament strains.
And now two recent studies have shown that smokers are at risk of having even slower ligament healing. “Exposure to cigarette smoke delays the chondrogenic phase of fracture repair as well as ligament healing in mice”, according to two reports in the December 2006 issue of the Journal of Orthopaedic Research
In the first …

I am constantly being asked 2 questions. Actually, that’s not true, I get asked lots of questions. But these 2 are very common:
1. What position should I sleep in?
2. What’s the best pillow?
Now, let me start by saying that there is no answer that is definitively correct. Some postures/pillows work for some people, others work for others. But I’ll give you all the theory.
1. It should be obvious to all of you that Face Down is the worst. If you sleep face down you are rotating your neck hard for a long time. …

Recent surveys have found (68%) of women admit to sleeping less than recommended average of eight hours per night. 65% of people claim to lose sleep due to stress. Time to go back to the issue of Balance on meditation/relaxation techniques…
So what can we do about it? Participants with insomnia who reported using complementary or alternative medicine were asked if they thought their treatment had helped them sleep.
Nearly half of those who used herbal therapies or relaxation therapy said they felt that their therapy had helped their insomnia “a great …

Really bad it seems!
In the May 2nd 2009 edition of the Good Weekend Magazine there was an article about the hazards of excessive drinking. It was specifically looking at women, but it discussed the topic in general as well, and I was so surprised by some of the stats that I thought I should share them:
“The lifetime relative risk of death (that’s right, DEATH!) from an alcohol related disease MORE THAN TRIPLES when consumption goes from 2 to 3 standard drinks a day”.
“At 10 standard drinks a day, women have …

I’m going to be commenting on a couple of articles related to a bit of a fight going on in the UK between the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) and, well, a lot of people who are keen to have a bit of a go at them. The BCA recently sued a journalist for libel after he described chiropractic treatment as “bogus” ( http://bit.ly/h1Ux3). Ever since there’s been a bit of to and fro between the BCA and various journalists and scientists.
Recently New Scientist ( http://bit.ly/unO7B) published an article which cited …

Following on from my last post which compared the safety of visiting a Chiropractor vs visiting a GP, I will not attempt to summarise the findings of the other study cited in the New Scientist article. If you just want the bullet points, Richard Brown wrote ( http://bit.ly/unO7B) that the conclusion of this study was that the authors “found no causative association between chiropractic manipulation and stroke.”
Let’s go through what they did find.
In this study they looked at the outcome of treatment for nearly 20,000 patients, and found that in …