December 14, 2012

Knockin' On Heaven's Door


Having grown up with rock legend Bob Dylan, Rob Borsellino always wanted to shake the hand of his favorite artist. With the help of a friend those hands finally met out west near a corn field.

On April 21, 2006, legendary musicians Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard traveled to Des Moines, Iowa to perform a concert in Borsellino's honor, raising over $100,000 for the ALS Association.

Rob received the Voice of Courage Award accepted by Sen. Tom Harkin at ALSA’s Celebration of Excellence Reception and Awards Presentation in Washington, D.C.

Columnist for Des Moines Registry, Rob testified before the Senate Subcommittee 2005.

The ALS community has many Legends - Rob Borsellino was just that.


December 9, 2012

Complementary and Alternative Medicine Facts (CAM)


More than 70% to 90% of physicians consider CAM therapies, such as diet and exercise, behavioral medicine, counseling and psychotherapy, and hypnotherapy, to be legitimate medical practices.

Approximately 80% of medical students and 70% of family physicians are interested in receiving training in multiple areas of CAM therapies.

In any given year, 69% of Americans use at least one type of CAM therapy.

Due to high market demand, at least 67% of health insurers and HMOs, such as Blue Cross, Kaiser Permanente, Mutual of Omaha, Prudential, California Pacific, Catholic HealthCare West, HealthNet, and Oxford Health Plans, cover CAM therapies.

Chiropractic, acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal therapies, and mind-body techniques, among other CAM therapies, are offered at 64% of U.S. medical schools.

Approximately 57% of physicians have referred patients to CAM professionals.

It has been shown that 56% of Americans believe their health plans should cover CAM therapies.

Estimates place the size and value of the CAM market at $24 billion, a figure projected to increase at a rate of 15% per year.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) currently invests about $40 million per year in CAM-related research.

Based on the popularity and growth of CAM therapies in the U.S., the American Medical Association (AMA) ranked alternative medicine among the top 3 subjects (out of 86) for mainstream medical journals to address in the coming years.11 In response, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), a highly renowned medical journal, identified alternative medicine as the 7th (out of 73) most important topic for future publication.

Chiropractors are licensed in all 50 states, and 12 states require that health plans include chiropractic benefits.

There are nearly 40,000 doctors of osteopathic medicine (D.O.) throughout the country.

Acupuncturists are licensed in 34 states.

There are currently 21 schools in the U.S. that offer certification in homeopathic medicine.

Naturopathic professionals are licensed in 12 states.

MedausPharmacy

December 2, 2012

Dr. Gabor Maté: “When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection”

The Vancouver-based Dr. Gabor Maté argues that too many doctors seem to have forgotten what was once a commonplace assumption—that emotions are deeply implicated in both the development of illness and in the restoration of health. Based on medical studies and his own experience with chronically ill patients at the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital, where he was the medical coordinator for seven years, Dr. Gabor Maté makes the case that there are important links between the mind and the immune system. He found that stress and individual emotional makeup play critical roles in an array of diseases.

It’s also typical for people that develop ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. I talk about the example of Lou Gehrig, if I may tell you about that. Lou Gehrig was this great baseball player, a teammate of Babe Ruth’s on the New York Yankees. And he set a record for consecutive games played that stood for nearly sixty years. Now, Gehrig wasn’t just a great athlete. He was also dutiful. He—it’s not that he was never hurt. At one point, his hands were x-rayed. It turns out his fingers had been fractured seventeen separate times. And his teammates described him as grimacing like a mad monkey in agony when he fielded the ball. But he never took himself out of a game, because he was too dutiful to his own self-image and also to the fans and to the owners. Now, that sense of responsibility, and not looking after yourself, is totally typical of everybody who develops ALS. And it goes back to their childhoods, because, just like with the woman with rheumatoid arthritis, she was a failure the moment she was born, because her mother conceived her to keep the marriage together with the father. The marriage broke up, and she never had the feeling that she was accepted and liked for who she was, therefore she had to become this dutiful caregiver. Lou Gehrig’s father was an alcoholic, and Gehrig learned very early in life that he had to take care of others, as the children of alcoholics often do. And that then became his pattern until he could no longer drag himself around the baseball diamond because of the ALS, which in North America, of course, is known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Democracy Now Feb. 15, 2010