Age is supposed to bring wisdom, but sometimes we can learn important life lessons from children.

A study by researchers at Jacksonville University and the University of California, Davis, published in the journal Child Development, showed that even kindergarteners know that thinking positively will make you feel better.

In the study, researchers looked at 90 kids from five to ten years of age. The children listened to six illustrated stories in which two characters feel the same emotion after experiencing something positive (getting a new puppy), negative (spilling milk), or ambiguous (meeting a new teacher).

Following each experience, one character has a separate optimistic thought, framing the event in a positive light, and the other has a separate pessimistic thought, putting the event in a negative light. Researchers described the subsequent thoughts verbally, then asked the children to judge each character’s emotions and provide an explanation for those emotions. They were most interested in the degree to which children predicted different emotions for two characters in the same situation.

Children as young as five predicted that people would feel better after thinking positive thoughts than they would after thinking negative thoughts. They showed the strongest insight about the influence of positive versus negative thoughts on emotions in ambiguous situations. And there was significant development in the children’s understanding about the emotion-feeling link as they grew older.

The researchers gave a similar test to the subject’s parents and found that while the children’s innate level of hope and optimism played a role in their ability to understand the power of positive thinking, their parents’ views on the topic played an even larger part.

“The strongest predictor of children’s knowledge about the benefits of positive thinking – besides age – was not the child’s own level of hope and optimism, but their parents’,” reported Christi Bamford, assistant professor of psychology at Jacksonville University, who led the study when she was at the University of California, Davis.

The findings point to parents’ role in helping children learn how to use positive thinking to feel better when things get tough, Bamford noted. “In short, parents should consider modeling how to look on the bright side.”

No chiropractor – or any other wellness provider for that matter – can deny the fact that stress is probably the single greatest deterrent to good health and long life. Ample research has been done to show that chronic stress (and even some incidents of short-term acute stress) can affect nearly every system in the body and suppress cellular immunity.

Last year, a study found that stress can also wreak havoc on the trillions of bacteria that work and thrive inside the digestive system – bacteria which play a significant role in triggering the innate immune system to stay slightly active, and thereby prepared to quickly spring into action in the face of an infection.

“Since graduate school, I’ve been interested in how stress affects the bacteria naturally in our bodies,” explained Michael Bailey, an assistant professor of dentistry and member of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University. “Even though we’ve known that stress changes these bacteria, we didn’t really understand what that meant or if there was any sort of biological function associated with effects on these bacteria.”

The new study appeared in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity.

Bailey and colleagues turned to mice to better understand the roles that bacteria play in immune balance. They ran a series of experiments using a common stressor for these animals. For two hours daily for six days, an aggressive mouse was placed in a cage of a group of more docile mice.

At the end of the string of experiments, blood samples were taken from both stressed animals and matched mice from a control group, along with samples of material from inside each animal’s intestine. The blood samples were analyzed to detect the levels of two biomarkers used to gauge stress: a cytokine called interleukin-6 (IL-6) and a protein called MCP-1 that summons macrophages, or scavenger cells, to the site of an infection.

From the intestinal samples, Bailey’s team could determine the relative proportion of at least 30 types of bacteria residing there.

Compared to the control mice, the stressed animals showed two marked differences: The proportion of one important type of bacteria in the gut – Bacteroides – fell by 20-25% while another type – Clostridium – increased a similar amount. Also, levels of the two biomarkers, IL-6 and MCP-1, jumped 10-fold in the stressed mice, compared to controls.

The researchers then treated stressed mice with broad-spectrum antibiotics that could kill as much as 90% of the intestinal bacteria for a short period. When they again looked at the two immune biomarkers in the stressed mice, they saw only a doubling of IL-6 and MCP-1 – an increase only one-fifth as much.

“We know now that if we knock the population of bacteria down with antibiotics, we don’t have the same innate immune response,” Bailey said. “That showed that the bacteria are involved in the ability of stress to prime the innate immune system.”

He said that the research shows that some of the changes in systemic immunity in the body can be influenced by changes in these bacterial colonies, a result that reinforces the idea that they have a broader effect on the immune response.

The next step, the researchers say, is to better understand the roles that the bacteria play in activating the immune system, and to determine if other factors are playing a key role in the process.

For the medical community, that step will likely involve the development of new drugs but for chiropractors and other wellness providers the next step is (as always) to get to the root of the problem: addressing the stress itself and the subluxations caused by that stress. Regular adjustments – along with patient education and other wellness approaches like massage, yoga, and meditation – will go a long way to helping patients reduce the physical, mental and emotional stress that impacts so negatively on their health. By making sure we provide that education and access to the proper care, we’ll help them avoid the use of drugs that can exacerbate the problem.

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FYI:

To learn about a new online assessment tool that can measure stress along with other indicators of wellness, visit IOMwellness.com. IOM is helping doctors around the country attract new patients, evaluate their total well-being, and perform accurate outcome measurements. It’s been endorsed by leading chiropractic coaches, including Drs. Dennis Nikitow (Certainty Practice), CJ Mertz (Full Potential Leadership), Jason Lord (Housecall), Mike Reid (Chiropractic Masters), Tedd Koren (Koren Publications), Kevin Pallis and Ed Plentz (The New Renaissance), and many others.

Americans’ medicines are increasingly manufactured in developing countries, where oversight is lower than in the US, according to a white paper by the Pew Health Group. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates 40% of finished drugs and 80% of active ingredients and bulk chemicals used in US drugs come from overseas.

The white paper, “After Heparin: Protecting Consumers from the Risks of Substandard and Counterfeit Drugs,” finds that increased outsourcing of manufacturing, a complex and globalized supply chain and criminal actors create the potential for counterfeit or substandard medicines to enter the supply chain and reach patients. For economic reasons, the migration of manufacturing abroad is likely to continue. At the same time, industry and government agencies have failed to adapt to the changing environment.

“Today’s prescriptions are being produced under last century’s oversight,” said Allan Coukell, director of medical programs at the Pew Health Group. “Compared with a decade ago, pharmaceutical supply lines stretch around the world and out to a complex web of suppliers.

Regulators and industry must modernize supervision of the manufacturing process to ensure the drugs we consume are safe. The “After Heparin” white paper indentifies links in the supply chain that government and business should strengthen,” Coukell added.

Substandard or adulterated pharmaceutical materials from abroad have entered the US on multiple occasions. Additionally, the risks of domestic counterfeiting and diversion of stolen drugs are well documented. The white paper presents several case studies, including incidents involving heparin, a blood thinner adulterated during its manufacture in China, counterfeit vials of the anemia drug Epogen and stolen vials of insulin to illustrate the threats and suggest solutions.

“After Heparin” is based on public information, including FDA documents, US Government Accountability Office reports, congressional testimony, peer-reviewed journals and interviews with more than 50 supply chain experts and stakeholders. The findings and recommendations were discussed during a two-day convening on the white paper that included a diverse group of industry representatives, ranging from ingredient manufacturers to community pharmacists.

SOURCE: Press Release, Pew Prescription Project.

by Terry A. Rondberg, DC, president, World Chiropractic Alliance

I’ve written often before about the many physical, mental and emotional benefits of meditation (see list of previous posts below), so it’s of great interest that another research study has added to the mountain of evidence.

The latest, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that being able to focus on the present moment triggers specific brain activity that can impact on health and well-being.

“Many philosophical and contemplative traditions teach that ‘living in the moment’ increases happiness,” the investigators concluded. “However, the default mode of humans appears to be that of mind-wandering, which correlates with unhappiness, and with activation in a network of brain areas associated with self-referential processing.”

They studied brain activity in experienced meditators who engaged in different forms of meditation (Concentration, Loving-Kindness, Choiceless Awareness).

“We found that the main nodes of the default-mode network (medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices) were relatively deactivated in experienced meditators across all meditation types,” they stated. “Furthermore, functional connectivity analysis revealed stronger coupling in experienced meditators between the posterior cingulate, dorsal anterior cingulate, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (regions previously implicated in self-monitoring and cognitive control), both at baseline and during meditation. Our findings demonstrate differences in the default-mode network that are consistent with decreased mind-wandering. As such, these provide a unique understanding of possible neural mechanisms of meditation.”

The research generated quite a bit of online interest, including a report on a CNN Health blog.

“The study does not address the issue of cause: Is meditation changing the brain, or do people who already have these brain patterns get interested in meditation?

‘Emerging data from our group and others suggests that some things thought to be result of meditation might be cause of meditation,’ said Dr. Charles Raison, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

If some people are just better at keeping their minds from wandering, that would also be consistent with the Buddhist idea that your capabilities are the result of your Karmic path, so meditation may be better suited to some people than others, Raison said.

Someday, if brain scans become cheap enough, one day there might be a test to see who can benefit most from mindfulness training, Raison said.

In the meantime, scientists should explore these open questions by doing longitudinal studies, Raison said. That would involve assigning some people to meditate and some people to not meditate, and following the groups over time to see whether a change in brain activity patterns is visible.”

SOURCE: Published online before print November 23, 2011, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1112029108 PNAS November 23, 2011 abstract online

Previous TCJ/WCA Health Update posts on meditation include:

Hypertension patients rejecting medicine in favor of alternatives

Effects of meditation on brain function explored

MDs using ‘mindfulness’ to relieve pain

UCLA focusing on ‘mind-body’ connections

by Terry A. Rondberg, DC, President of the World Chiropractic Alliance

I’ve been hearing more and more comments about the Integrative Outcomes Measurements (IOM) Wellness Assessment tool and I wanted to share this video by Jason Lord, DC, founder and CEO of HouseCall Rehab.

As Dr. Lord notes, the IOM system really is revolutionary. Doctors can have individuals take the evaluation online for free, on their own home or work computers. It’s all Internet based, so providers don’t have to install any new programs on your computer. The people get their overall score, then return to the doctor for a “report of findings” and the more detailed scores. They retake the test after receiving care, and they and their provider get to see specifically the areas and extent of improvement for each intervention.

One thing I was really impressed with is the low cost — just $97 a month for unlimited access (you could have 10,000 people take the evaluation!) There’s no contract so members can quit at any time (although, apparently, very few do!)

Take a minute to hear what Jason has to say: