About six years ago, Debbie Turner was feeling completely worn down. The director of group ads for IPC Media, a magazine publisher in London, said her career had been satisfying. But after climbing the corporate ladder for nearly 20 years, she found her full-time workload to be increasingly stressful. On top of that, she was pregnant with her second child.

To deal with the stress, Turner tried a technique that initially she was skeptical of: reflexology, an ancient practice of stimulating points on the feet to benefit other parts of the body.

"I found it so relaxing it was as though I was on another planet," said Turner, 45. But it was more than just an exercise in serenity; it was educational, too. "The therapist would say things like, 'Your kidney reflexes are under a lot of pressure and you need to drink more water,' and I figured out she was right," Turner said. "In the end, the treatments wound up giving me energy and making me feel healthier."

HARDLY 10 minutes into the session, Thomas Lim, 45, was already fully relaxed. Eyes closed, head rested comfortably on the retractable sofa and arms on the armrest, Lim was having traditional foot reflexology treatment.

By applying pressure using a fingertip, the therapist pressed on various points from one toe to another. Then she moved onto the sole before applying pressure in long strokes along the calf. She ended the treatment by gently punching along the leg and moved onto the right foot. By this time Lim was snoring, only to be awakened by the masseur upon the end of the session an hour later.

As the ice caps of the North Pole begin to melt, some scientists have postulated the possibility of transporting the polar bears – which live only around the Arctic Circle – down to the South Pole.

Sadly, it’s a non-starter because the bears are not bi-polar. Ouch!

(Source: The Guardian, 20 February 2007).

LA Times - February 19, 2007
WHEN Thousand Oaks artist Beverly Schlechter was looking for a new dentist last year, one particular mailer caught her eye. It was a glossy brochure printed in soothing greens and taupes, with beautiful smiling women on fluffy white towels strewn with fresh leaves, and with phrases such as "complimentary juice bar," "massage chair" and "paraffin hand wax."

At first she assumed the brochure was announcing the opening of yet another day spa. But upon closer inspection, she noticed that those women had beautiful white teeth and that the mailer was advertising the services of a dentist, Dr. Kamyar Nouri, who recently had opened a private practice nearby.

"This was all new to me. I'd been with the same dentist for 30 years and had never heard of a dental office with spa amenities," Schlechter says. Foot reflexology, aromatherapy and paraffin hand dips may be far from standard fare in the nation's dental offices, but some dentists are finding that such services not only comfort patients but create a buzz about their practice as well.

The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall have heard from cancer sufferers in Manchester about the benefits of complementary therapy treatments.

The royal couple toured the city’s Christie Hospital, a specialist cancer hospital which won an award from the Prince’s Foundation of Integrated Health in 2003 for its growing complementary therapy service.

The royal couple spent more than 20 minutes in the hospital’s Relaxation Room, talking to patients receiving therapies such as reflexology and acupuncture to help ease the nausea, pain, anxiety and insomnia associated with cancer.

David Battersby, 39, who is battling leukaemia, told Camilla reflexology seemed to be having an impact on the liver problems associated with his cancer.

Mr Battersby, from Milnthorpe, Kendal, said: “From what she said to me, it seems both her and Charles have had complementary therapy treatments themselves, including reflexology. They’re big fans, I think. She said it had been benefited them.”

150 years ago - February 1st 1857 - Vladimir Mikhaylovich Bekhterev, famous Russian neurophysiologist and psychiatrist, who studied the formations of the brain and investigated conditioned reflexes, was born.

To the lay public Vladimir Bekhterev is known for Bekhterev's disease, pelvospondylitis. Bekhterev's most important work, however, was in the study of reflexes and the morphology of the brain. He is the founder of psycho reflexology, transmitting to humans the same pattern of thinking that Pavlov had developed in his work on conditioned reflexes in dogs, and he used similar experiments. Bekhterev is thus a forerunner of behaviourism. His works are epoch-making, but at first received little attention as they were published in Russian.

Acupuncture can speed labour, a new study of pregnant women has revealed.

It dramatically reduced the active phase of labour, although the women did not deliver the baby any sooner.

In a study of 100 pregnant women who were about to give birth, 48 were given acupuncture while the remainder had standard care. Those given acupuncture had an average active phase of 4.4 hours compared with 6.1 hours in the standard-care group.

Exercise is good for us – up to a point. The vast majority of women who exercise excessively – usually because they’re athletes or sportswomen – suffer menstrual dysfunction and bone problems, a new study has found.

It’s been known for a while that women who train hard suffer from a syndrome known as ‘female athletic triad’ – menstrual dysfunction, low bone mass and a deficiency in energy – but a new report suggests that it may be far more extensive a problem than was first thought.

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a mysterious condition that usually baffles doctors. Nobody is sure why it starts, how to treat it, or to even guess its course.

A new study has discovered one part of the puzzle, and it all goes back to our childhood. Researchers have found that people are up to eight times more likely to suffer from CFS if they experienced some trauma – such as sexual, emotional or physical abuse, or neglect, or depression – when they were children.

If you suffer from heavy menstrual bleeding – and it’s something that affects one in four women sometime in their life – your doctor will probably recommend a hysterectomy.

A hysterectomy – in which a woman’s womb is removed – is one of the more traumatic surgical operations, and yet it is one of the most common.

One-third of American women and one-fifth of British women will have had their womb removed by the time they reach the age of 60, and most have the procedure in order to stop heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB).

Despite its frequency, the advice is just plain wrong, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Evidence (NICE) has announced this week.