Green Tea for Oral Cancer Prevention?
Green tea may help guard against oral cancer, according to recent research.
For the study, researchers focused on 41 people with oral leukoplakia, a precancerous sore that develops on the tongue or the inside of the cheek in response to chronic irritation. For three months, study members took either green tea extract at one of three doses – 500 mg per meter squared of body mass (mg/m2), 750 mg/m2, or 1,000 mg/m2 – or a placebo daily. Of those taking the two highest doses of the extract, 58.8 percent had a clinical response, compared with 36.4 percent in the lowest-extract dose and 18.2 percent in the placebo group.
The green tea extract also led to an improvement in a number of biomarkers that may play a crucial role in predicting cancer development. What’s more, the green tea extract was well tolerated, although it did produce some side effects (including insomnia and nervousness) in the high-dose group.
Green Tea for Oral Cancer Prevention? originally appeared on About.com Alternative Medicine on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 06:00:59.
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When it comes to easing chronic low back pain in minority populations, yoga may make for a sound alternative to standard treatment. That’s the key finding from a recent study of 30 back-pain-plagued adults, all of whom were recruited from community health centers that serve racially diverse, low-income neighborhoods. Use of yoga and other complementary therapies for low back pain is fairly uncommon among minorities and low-income individuals, possibly due to lack of access to such treatments, according to the study’s authors.
For 12 weeks, participants either took part in weekly, 75-minute yoga classes (focusing on meditation and breathing in addition to yoga poses) or received standard treatment for their back pain. Members of the yoga group were also given yoga CDs, mats, and props in order to keep up a daily yoga practice at home.
By the study’s end, pain had decreased by one-third among those practicing yoga (compared to just 5 percent in the participants receiving standard care). What’s more, pain medication use in the yoga group dropped by 80 percent, but remained the same among the other study members.
Yoga Banishes Back Pain originally appeared on About.com Alternative Medicine on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 06:00:18.
