The Cochrane Reviews: The newest, strongest and the least biased reviews on acupuncture

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The Cochrane Reviews: The newest, strongest and the least biased reviews on acupuncture

Just this year the Cochrane Collaborative updated three of their reviews on acupuncture, this group now states that acupuncture is a valuable option for: tension type headaches, neck pain and episodic migraines. The Cochrane collaborative are not alone in support of acupuncture, a number of recent peer review articles published in high impact journals support the use of acupuncture.


Photo Credit : By Jacknunn - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49168037

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The link between chronic pain and depression: which comes first?

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The link between chronic pain and depression: which comes first?

 "like so much to do with persistent pain, it becomes harder to unravel exactly what the relationship is when one digs a little further. For instance, it has been repeatedly shown that people with increased emotional distress going in to surgery use more painkillers and generally fare worse afterwards."

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No giant leap for mankind.

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No giant leap for mankind.

"Understanding exactly how and why humans evolved is clearly one of the most important goals in science. But despite a significant amount of research to date, these questions have remained a bit of a mystery. Of course, there is no shortage of theories – it has even been suggested that humans are just visiting aliens. However, most of the credible models tend to take something that is unique to humans – such as language – and show how all the other bits of being human derive from that."

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Raise a cup – of coffee; WHO no longer says it can cause cancer

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Raise a cup – of coffee; WHO no longer says it can cause cancer

"Since 1991, coffee has been saddled with the label, “possibly causes cancer.” As of June 15, coffee got a clean bill of health."

 

"The International Agency for Research on Cancer – or IARC – is the WHO agency that evaluates evidence and scientific research on cancer. In 1991 the agency classified coffee as a category 2B carcinogen, which, in effect, labeled it as “possibly causing cancer” in the human bladder."

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Have massage therapists been putting too much of an emphasis on orthopedic assessment?

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Have massage therapists been putting too much of an emphasis on orthopedic assessment?

Traditionally the role of orthopedic testing is to define a treatable pathology (e.g. Lachman's for ACL), this has a role in orthopedic medicine and acute injuries, but as massage therapists we are often seeing injuries in the chronic phase. These injuries cannot as easily be defined solely by tissue damage, patients often suffer from multiple ongoing issues, such as post traumatic arthritis of the knee, anterior hip impingement, disc herniation, which is often compounded with peripheral and central sensitization.

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