New research suggests that 1/3 of patients with a cancer diagnosis use complementary and alternative medicine. This includes areas, such as meditation, yoga, acupuncture, and herbal medicine and supplements.  Dr. Nina Sanford, assistant professor of radiation oncology (specializing in cancers of the gastrointestinal tract) at the UT Southwestern Medical Center, presented these findings in the JAMA Oncology journal. Continue reading

Do you have back pain that consistently bothers you?  Have you ever hurt your back and a few chiropractic adjustments just did not help to curb the pain?  For the past year, I have been battling Stage 3 Rectal cancer.  Step 1 was the radiation and chemo treatment to reduce the size of the tumor. Step 2 was an operation and learning how to live with a temporary ilieostomy bag.  Step 3 was working through heavy doses of chemo to make sure the the tumor never returns.  And then, came... the side effects from all of the activity that had been focused on one area of the body, THE RECTUM.  Specifically, one morning, I awoke with excruciating pain in my back and I was hardly able to get out of the bed.  I was crippled, hardly able to walk.  A friend brought me a cane and I learned to hobble around my home in pain.  The scariest was learning how to get up in the middle of the night, using the cane to go to the bathroom. Then, I went to my chiropractor, but she was not able to help me.  It had become apparent that this was not a problem that could be fixed with a few adjustments. The pain returned the moment I left the lobby of my doctor’s office.     Continue reading

Over 5 million people currently suffer from the Alzheimer's disease. Statistics estimate that 1 in 10 people over the age of 65 years are affected by it. The disease process takes approximately 8-10 years to work from detection to death. It starts out slowly as two abnormal protein fragments called 'plaques' and 'tangles' accumulate in the brain, consistently killing off brain cells. Continue reading

We’ve read about new strides in the field of stem cell research.  We’ve learned that when cells grow, they divide and develop into replicas of the specialized 'parent' cells that had divided in order to form them. By contrast, Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that have not yet formed into a certain type of cell in the body. They have the ability to remain as stem cells or to differentiate and form into another type of cell with a specialized function in the body. Continue reading

We have learned how sleep helps the brain to retain and store memories.  For example, our brains fast-forward the memories of the day in the hippocampus, which is the brain's central memory-filing system.  This strengthens the nerve cell connections and in sleep, specific activities are replayed, sorted, and selectively retained.  During sleep, this memory information is transferred from the hippocampus to the cerebral cortex for long term memory.  Continue reading

Did you know that Macular Degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss?  In fact, it accounts for half of all vision impairment, affecting more than 10 million Americans, particularly those who are over 50 years old. Although TODAY, Macular Degeneration (AMD) is considered to be incurable, a few areas of research are giving hope to many patients who are suffering from this disease. Continue reading

Over the past year, the Foundation has posted several Blog articles about eye health.  With the increased exposure to computer screens, tablets, and I-phones, eye problems and issues have increased in importance.  Continue reading

Science is moving at light-speed down the bio-engineering and cloning path.  In addition to creating the first cloned sheep, dogs, mice, horses, and kittens, scientists have finally and successfully cloned the first (macaques) monkeys.  They were named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, and they lived for 50 days and 40 days, respectively.                                                                                                                 Continue reading

Isn't aging fun!?! But, if there were a time to be aging, it is now because of all of the discoveries and developments in the anti-aging area.  One of the key people behind many of these anti-aging discoveries is Elizabeth Blackburn.  Elizabeth Blackburn is President of the Salk Institute and New York Times best-selling author of the book, The Telomere Effect.  Not only that, but she shares a Nobel Prize for her groundbreaking research in telomeres and telomerase.   Continue reading

  Over 5 million people currently suffer from the Alzheimer's Disease. Statistics estimate that 1 in 10 people over the age of 65 years are affected by it. The disease process takes approximately 8-10 years to work from detection to death. It starts out slowly as two abnormal protein fragments called 'plaques' and 'tangles' accumulate in the brain, consistently killing off brain cells. The ‘plaques’ are formed when sticky protein pieces called ‘amyloid-beta’ (sometimes called ‘’beta-amyloid”) clump together to form the plaques.   Continue reading