FELDENKRAIS METHOD® IMPROVES BALANCE

CSC has a weekly Feldenkrais Method® class free of charge for all those affected by cancer.  Thursdays, 1:30 - 2:30pm with Marci Spiegler, MS, GCFP. Call 310-314-2555 or visit www.cancersupportcommunitybenjamincente.org

There is growing research evidence that the Feldenkrais Method is effective for improving balance.

The ability to balance is a fundamental requirement for safe mobility. People suffer from difficulties with balance due to a variety of causes. The results of this can be falls, injuries from falls and a loss of confidence.

The Feldenkrais Method helps improve balance with gentle movements which:

• Improve coordination
• Improve body awareness
• Improve flexibility
• Improve confidence
•  Improve dynamic stability

Research studies indicate that the Feldenkrais Method uses the neurological plasticity of the brain to teach clients how to move more easily and more efficiently.

Three research studies investigating the Feldenkrais Method and balance have been published recently in international peer.reviewed journals. These studies were all concerned with balance in older people. Each study found that people attending Feldenkrais balance classes improved in balance and mobility when compared with Control groups who did not attend the classes. These studies are summarised over the page.

Other research studies have found improvements in balance in people with Multiple Sclerosis (Bateson and Deutsch 2005) and Stroke (Stephens et al 2001).
hod® improves balance
Feldenkrais Method balance classes are based on principles of motor learning and postural control retraining: a qualitative study. Physiotherapy Dec 2010, Connors K, Galea M, Said, C, Remdios L

Background: Feldenkrais Method® balance classes have been found to be effective in improving balance in recent studies, but there has been little research into possible mechanisms behind the effectiveness of these classes. Indeed there has been little research into the content of any balance training classes. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to analyse the content of a series of Feldenkrais Method balance classes to gain an understanding of how the results in these studies may have been achieved and the principles through which it may be effective. Design: A

qualitative research approach (content analysis) was used. Key findings were the extensive involvement of trunk flexibility and control in the balance activities and also the intensive attention to internal feedback, which was linked to body awareness training.

Conclusion: The Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons contained many elements consistent with current theories of motor skill acquisition and postural control, providing a sound theoretical basis for the effectiveness of the Feldenkrais approach in improving balance.

Effects of Feldenkrais Exercises on balance, mobility, balance confidence and gait performance in community-dwelling adults age 65 and older. Journal of Complementary and Alternative Therapies, 16: 97-105, 2010, Ullmann G, Williams H, Hussey J, Durstine J, McClenaghan B

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine effects of Feldenkrais exercises in improving balance, mobility, and balance confidence in older adults.Methods: Participants (N = 47, mean age 75.6) were randomly assigned to a Feldenkrais group (FG, n = 25) or to a control group (CG, n = 22). Results: After completion of the program, balance (p = 0.030) and mobility (p = 0.042) increased while fear of falling (p = 0.042) decreased significantly for the FG group. Participants of the FG group showed improvements in balance confidence (p = 0.054) and mobility while performing concurrently a cognitive task (p = 0.067).

Conclusions: These results indicate that Feldenkrais exercises are an effective way to improve balance and mobility, and thus offer an alternative method to help offset age-related declines in mobility and reduce the risk of falling among community-dwelling older adults.

Getting Grounded Gracefully: effectiveness and acceptability of Feldenkrais in improving
balance. Journal of Aging and Physical Activity 17(1): 57-76, 2009; Vrantsidis F, Hill K, Mooree K,Webb R, Hunt S, Dowson L

The Getting Grounded Gracefully program, based on the Awareness Through Movement lessons of the Feldenkrais Method, was designed to improve balance and function in older people. Fifty five participants (mean age 75, 85% female) were randomised to the intervention (twice weekly group classes over 8 weeks) or the control group (continued with their usual activity). Significant improvement was identified for the intervention group relative to the control group for the Modified Falls Efficacy Scale score (p = 0.003) and gait speed (p = 0.028), and a strong trend evident in the Timed Up and Go (p = 0.056). High class attendance (88%) and survey feedback indicate that the program was viewed positively by participants and may therefore be acceptable to other older people.

 
Feldenkrais Method balance classes improve balance in older adults: a controlled trial. Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Advance access published online 24 June 2009. Connors K, Galea M, Said C

Objective: To investigate the effects of Feldenkrais Method balance classes on balance and mobility in older adults. Design: Prospective non-randomized controlled study with pre/post measures. Participants: Convenience sample of 26 community-dwelling older adults (median age 75 years) attending Feldenkrais Method balance classes formed the Intervention group. Thirty-seven volunteers were recruited for the Control group (median age 76.5 years. Results: At re-testing, the Intervention group showed significant improvement on all of the measures (ABC, p=0.016, 4SST, p=0.001, gait speed, p<0 .001="" 4sst="" a="" abc="" and="" compared="" control="" gait="" group="" improved="" improvement="" in="" intervention="" made="" measure="" o:p="" on="" one="" p="0.022)." score="" significant="" significantly="" speed="" the="" their="" time="" to="">

Conclusions: These findings suggest that Feldenkrais Method balance classes may improve mobility and balance in older adults.

Australian Feldenkrais Guild Inc
Freecall: 1800 001 550
E: database@feldenkrais.org.au
www.feldenkrais.org.au

To view article go to: http://feldenkraisfoundation.org/feldenkrais-method-improves-balance/


 

DOES MEDICAL MARIJUANA HELP WITH PAIN, MS AND APPETITE LOSS?

Los Angeles Times Health
By Chris Woolston
February 15, 2014

While recreational marijuana is legal in just two states (for now), 20 states plus the District of Columbia already allow marijuana for medicinal uses, and up to nine other states may soon follow suit. Many patients swear that cannabis helps ease their symptoms, but the drug has never gone through anything close to the testing required for prescription drugs. One reason: Marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug (a federal classification of the most dangerous drugs, including heroin and LSD), so researchers have to jump through a lot of hoops to even get it into their labs.

So just how medicinal is medical marijuana? Here's a look at the current evidence.

Pain: Marijuana is a proven pain reliever. Studies show that it works against pains of many sorts, including neuropathic pain, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and cancer-related pain. However, the relief can be underwhelming compared with prescription medications, and many users report side effects such as dry mouth, dizziness and sleepiness.

Multiple sclerosis: Several studies over the years have shown that marijuana and its compounds can offer at least some relief for muscle spasticity in patients with multiple sclerosis. Sativex, a mouth spray that combines two compounds from marijuana, is already available for MS patients in Europe and Canada and is undergoing studies in the U.S.

Appetite: Marijuana's well-known tendency to induce the "munchies" could potentially be helpful for patients who have lost their appetite because of cancer, chemotherapy or infection with HIV. Few studies have looked at smoked marijuana to improve appetite, but Marinol, a synthetic drug that mimics one of the compounds in marijuana, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating weight loss in patients with HIV and relieving nausea and vomiting in cancer patients.
 

To see article in original source go to:http://lat.ms/1o1agkG

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CANCER

Los Angeles Times: L.A. AFFAIRS

By Jim Cox

February 14, 2014, 10:30 a.m.

 

Facing breast cancer with love and hope

A diagnosis of breast cancer led to a marriage, bonding during painful cancer treatments, support groups, walks filled with small wonders and hope in a hummingbird's arrival.

 

I have to make sure when I get hold of happiness to seize the moment and soar to heights with it. I am grateful that I can still be joyful at times with simple and new things that were not significant to me before.

— Bien Cox, journal entry

The "new normal" arrived April 9, 2008. The painful lump in Bien's left breast was malignant.

The phone, the unholy messenger, was put back in its cradle, and we sat on the couch for a few moments. Tears came and went. Disbelief remained. We hugged and hugged and hugged. Perhaps this would make the cancer go away?

Nine days later, Bien and I stood in a small chapel in downtown Los Angeles and repeated the words "In sickness and in health" through tear-filled eyes to a minister who must have thought we were the most emotional couple to ever participate in the sacrament of holy matrimony.

That May, I watched as my small, fragile Bien was wheeled back from the recovery room, drainage bags weighing down her small chest, which was now missing a breast but left room for an enormous heart. I embraced my brother Walter and cried tears that seemed to come from the depths of my soul. Thank God for family.

The mastectomy left a scar that has turned beautiful. It also revealed lymph nodes that were cancerous. The chemotherapy would be of the aggressive variety and last for six months. There was one three-to-four-hour treatment a week.

The poison was delivered weekly via IV. She would be OK for a couple of days, and then the side effects would kick in: exhaustion, intestinal pain, insomnia, hot flashes, joint and muscle pain.

I shared in my support group … last week that "learning to be friends" with your pain would maybe lessen the burden. I have to accept the fact that pain is part of who I am now, and maybe that will make living easier for me.
— Bien Cox

We were told to monitor blood pressure and temperature daily. The night was filled with restless, painful bouts of sleep, peppered with nightmares that are thankfully forgotten.
On one of these nights, as I held Bien close and massaged her painful joints and looked into her beautiful eyes, touching the now-bald head ever so lightly, the epiphany arrived. I realized that we were no longer a couple. We were one. Two bodies yet one soul. We had transcended what most beings have on this Earth. The cancer, in trying to destroy one body, had created, instead, one magnificent, glorious soul made out of pure love.

Bien and I started attending participant and caregiver support groups at the Cancer Support Community in Pasadena. We don't know where we would be without this wonderful organization.
Through workshops there she has discovered art. When we take walks we take the time to see things that have always been there but we never had "time" for before. A squirrel "speaking" to another squirrel. The peculiar yet beautiful color of the flowers along the way. In my group, we laugh and we cry, and when we leave each meeting we know we are alive and that every moment is precious and every day is but one at a time.

The other day the radio played Michael Jackson's "Rock With You." That song takes me back to my college days when I was young and carefree. I danced to it, careful with my leg and hand movements. There will be days where we despair, yet some days we can be happy too.
— Bien Cox

It was a few days before Valentine's Day when the hummingbird appeared. Bien was no longer on chemotherapy but was taking cancer drugs, which caused intense joint and muscle pain.
The drugs were doing their worst the night the hummingbird arrived. Before the journey with cancer, the small bird lying wounded in the stair alcove outside our apartment might have been mistaken for a leaf, it being so small and motionless. Bien noticed it, of course. The wing hurt. Crying at times but mainly silent, breathing lightly.

We put it in a box carefully, and I took it to the humane society. The attendant said they would do the best they could. I thanked her and got in my car and I cried. I cried because I realized that the fragile yet magnificent hummingbird with the damaged wing was my Bien.

Valentine's Day arrived, and after I gave Bien a card and flowers, she — with a mischievous look that I have come to love — presented me with a hand-drawn card. On its cover, she had drawn a beautiful likeness of a small hummingbird resting in two hands cupped together to form a nest.

Bien just passed the five-year mark free of cancer. She is now a breast cancer survivor. We also celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary.

From time to time, I still foray into those dark paths, but now when I do, I recognize myself getting entangled and I try to disconnect from it and be myself again. I am more at peace with who I am now, I acknowledge my limitations and am grateful for every new day.
— Bien Cox

Jim Cox is a Pasadena-based actor and writer.

L.A. Affairs chronicles romance and relationships. Past columns and submission guidelines are at latimes.com/laaffairs. If you have comments to share or a story to tell, write us at home@latimes.com.

To see article in its original source:
http://www.latimes.com/home/laaffairs/la-hm-affairs-20140215,0,5307202.story#ixzz2tnJmsAg9

INSIGHT INTO WHY CANCER INCIDENCE INCREASES WITH AGE

Thursday 6 February 2014 - 12am PST
The accumulation of age-associated changes in a biochemical process that helps control genes may be responsible for some of the increased risk of cancer seen in older people, according to a National Institutes of Health study.

Scientists have known for years that age is a leading risk factor for the development of many types of cancer, but why aging increases cancer risk remains unclear. Researchers suspect that DNA methylation, or the binding of chemical tags, called methyl groups, onto DNA, may be involved. Methyl groups activate or silence genes, by affecting interactions between DNA and the cell's protein-making machinery.

Zongli Xu, Ph.D., and Jack Taylor, M.D., Ph.D., researchers from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of NIH, identified DNA methylation sites across the human genome that changed with age. They demonstrated that a subset of those sites - the ones that become increasingly methylated with advancing age - are also disproportionately methylated in a variety of human cancers. Their findings were published online in the journal Carcinogenesis.

"You can think of methylation as dust settling on an unused switch, which then prevents the cell from turning on certain genes," Taylor said. "If a cell can no longer turn on critical developmental programs, it might be easier for it to become a cancer cell."

Xu and Taylor made the discovery using blood samples from participants in the Sister Study, a nationwide research effort to find the environmental and genetic causes of breast cancer and other diseases. More than 50,000 sisters of women who have had breast cancer are participating in the study.

The researchers analyzed blood samples from 1,000 women, using a microarray that contained 27,000 specific methylation sites. Nearly one-third of the sites showed increased DNA methylation in association with age. They then looked at three additional data sets from smaller studies that used the same microarray and found 749 methylation sites that behaved consistently across all four data sets. As an additional check, they consulted methylation data from normal tissues and seven different types of cancerous tumors in The The Cancer Genome Atlas, a database funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Taylor said that DNA methylation appears to be part of the normal aging process and occurs in genes involved in cell development. Cancer cells often have altered DNA methylation, but the researchers were surprised to find that 70-90 percent of the sites associated with age showed significantly increased methylation in all seven cancer types. Taylor suggests that age-related methylation may disable the expression of certain genes, making it easier for cells to transition to cancer.

The research also determined how fast these methylation events accumulate in cells. They occur at a rate of one per year, according to Xu.

"On your 50th birthday, you would have 50 of these sites [from the subset of 749] that have acquired methyl groups in each cell," Xu said. "The longer you live, the more methylation you will have."

For future work, Xu and Taylor want to examine more samples, using a newer microarray that will explore methylation at 450,000 genomic methylation sites. The additional samples and larger microarray, which will provide 16 times more genomic coverage, will allow them to address whether environmental exposures during adulthood or infancy affect methylation profiles. These additional studies will help scientists better understand why methylation happens as people march toward their retirement years.

DNA methylation is one of several epigenetic mechanisms that can control gene expression without changes in DNA sequence. This study is part of a broader research effort, funded by NIEHS, to understand how environmental and other factors affect epigenetic mechanisms in relation to health.

To view in original source http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/272187.php

 

World Cancer Day: Share your Story

 

The eighth annual World Cancer Day is focusing on debunking the four key myths shown above. (Union for International Cancer Control )

 

By Michelle Maltais

February 4, 2014, 12:37 p.m.

"Cancer" is still one of those words that can steal your breath, ring so loudly in your ears that your surroundings go silent, and simultaneously make your mind race and time slow to a crawl.

On this World Cancer Day, The Times invites you to share with our community how cancer has touched your life.

The disease crept into my home when I was in second grade. After an exhausting day at a preteen roller-skating birthday party, my mom felt something like a tiny stone in her breast.
The discovery paralyzed my mother, who was typically composed and stoic, with overwhelming uncertainty and fear. I was too young to share in any of her fear; she kept it from me. Still, that was the beginning of our world being turned upside down and sideways.

A scheduled biopsy led immediately to surgery. And when she came out of the fog, to her shock, her breast was gone. But so was the cancer.

Sure, she lost her breast that morning in the 1980s, but she gained more than 30 years of life, experiences and memories with her daughter. We were lucky.

Today, cancers collectively are the biggest cause of death worldwide with 8.2 million deaths a year, and that's expected to rise 75% over the next 20 years, according to a report from the United Nation's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

In fact, over the past couple of years, the incidence of cancer rose globally by 11% to about 14.1 million cases. That's comparable to the population of Mumbai, India.  

"These new figures and projections send a strong signal that immediate action is needed to confront this human disaster, which touches every community worldwide, without exception," said Dr. Christopher Wild, director of IARC, in a statement.

There are steps that you can take to potentially decrease your risk of cancer, says Dr. Alice Bender, associate director of nutrition programs at the American Institute for Cancer Research
About 374,000 cases of the most common cancers don't have to happen, she told The Times.

Eating a colorful plant-based diet, maintaining a healthy weight, reducing alcohol consumption and increasing physical activity, Bender said, can decrease your risk of breast and colorectal cancers.
"A lot of people are just not aware ... that taking these steps can really make a difference," she said.
This year's observance of the eighth annual World Cancer Day is focused on dispelling myths and reducing the stigma that leads some people to keep silent about the disease.

"We believe that the impact of our work will take time," Cary Adams, chief executive of Union for International Cancer Control, told The Times in an email, adding, "By reaching a broader audience which hopefully becomes familiar and not as timid about discussing cancer in an open and honest way, we hope to change the way cancer is viewed globally."

Whether you are viewing cancer globally or extremely locally, we want to hear from you.
Share with us how cancer has touched your life -- your story, the name of your loved one who has battled cancer, a photo illustrating cancer's impact on your life -- here in the comments below or via Twitter using the hashtag #LATcancerstories.

To view source:  http://www.latimes.com/nation/shareitnow/la-sh-world-cancer-day-20140204,0,849741.story#ixzz2sOzcTscb