When it comes to neck pain the best medicine is no medicine at all according to a new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, tracked 272 patients with recent-onset neck pain who were treated using three different methods:

• Medication
• Exercise
• A Chiropractor

After 12 weeks the patients who used a chiropractor or exercised were more than twice as likely to be pain free compared to those who relied on medicine.

The patients treated by a chiropractor experienced the highest rate of success with 32 percent saying they were pain free, compared to 30 percent of those who exercised. Only 13 percent of patients treated with medication said they no longer experienced pain.

“Doesn’t surprise me a bit,” Dr. Lee Green, professor of family medicine at the University of Michigan told ABC News. “Neck pain is a mechanical problem, and it makes sense that mechanical treatment works better than a chemical one.”

Dr. John Messmer who specializes in family medicine at Penn State College of Medicine agrees.

“I always prescribe exercises and/or physical therapy for neck pain,” he wrote. “I also tell patients that the exercises are the treatment and the drugs are for the symptoms.”

Dr. Stephanie Maj has a thriving family practice in the heart of Chicago. Her clinic is located at 1442 W. Belmont Ave., 1E, Chicago, IL 60657. 773.528.8485. www.communitychiropractic.net

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A recent story in the news has my head buzzing. Did you know there is a shortage of ADHD drugs out there. The problem is not a manufacturing issue, it is supply and demand. We as a society are demanding more and more of these mind altering drugs to function in our lives. Is anyone other than me disturbed about this fact? The mainstream media is not.

The United States buys and uses 90 percent of the world’s Ritalin!

I have been scouring the web looking for someone to wave a flag that says “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!”  I have seen noone do that. Plenty of concern for those poor children yet where are the bigger questions? Below I am reprinting an article from 1999 that talks about the long term affects of these drugs on our children.

Did you know that the spree of school shootings were done by children that were prescribed these psychotropic drugs? Both the shooters at Columbine were on drugs.

All I am saying is someone needs to be asking bigger questions than …”Where are my drugs?!”  Enjoy!  Dr. Stephanie

Doping Kids with Ritalin for ADHD

Though shocked by bizarre shootings in schools”, default”, few Americans have noticed how many shooters were among the 8 million kids now on psychotropic drugs.

INSIGHT Magazine

June 28,1999 Kelly Patricia O’Meara

Though shocked by bizarre shootings in schools, few Americans have noticed how many shooters were among the 6 million kids now on psychotropic drugs.

Just three weeks after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on their April 20 killing spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., President Clinton hosted a White House conference on youth violence. The president declared it a strategy session to seek “the best ideas from people who can really make a difference: parents and young people, teachers and religious leaders, law enforcement, gun manufacturers, representatives of the entertainment industry and those of us here in government.”

. . . . There was, however, complete silence from the president when it came to including representatives from the mental-health community, whom many believe can provide important insight about the possible connection between the otherwise seemingly senseless acts of violence being committed by school-age children and prescription psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin, Luvox and Prozac.

. . . . There are nearly 6 million children in the United States between the ages of 6 and 18 taking mind-altering drugs prescribed for alleged mental illnesses that increasing numbers of mental-health professionals are questioning.

. . . . Although the list of school-age children who have gone on violent rampages is growing at a disturbing rate — and the shootings at Columbine became a national wake-up call — few in the mental-health community have been willing to talk about the possibility that the heavily prescribed drugs and violence may be linked. Those who try to investigate quickly learn that virtually all data concerning violence and psychotropic drugs are protected by the confidentiality provided minors. But in the highly publicized shootings this spring, information has been made available to the public.

–April 16: Shawn Cooper, a 15-year-old sophomore at Notus Junior-Senior High School in Notus, Idaho, was taking Ritalin, the most commonly prescribed stimulant, for bipolar disorder when he fired two shotgun rounds, narrowly missing students and school staff.

–April 20: Harris, an 18-year-old senior at Columbine High School, killed a dozen students and a teacher before taking his own life. Prior to the shooting rampage, he had been under the influence of Luvox, one of the new selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI, antidepressants approved in 1997 by the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, for children up to the age of 17 for treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD.

–May 20: T.J. Solomon, a 15-year-old at Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga., was being treated with Ritalin for

depression when he opened fire on and wounded six classmates.

. . . . Two other high-profile cases from last year show a similar pattern:

–May 21, 1998: Kip Kinkel, a 15-year-old at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., murdered his parents and then proceeded to school where he opened fire on students in the cafeteria, killing two and wounding 22. Kinkel had been prescribed both Ritalin and Prozac. Although widely used among adults, Prozac has not been approved by the FDA for pediatric use.

–March 24, 1998: Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, opened fire on their classmates at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark. Johnson had been receiving psychiatric counseling and, although information about the psychotropic drugs that may have been prescribed for him has not been made public, his attorney, Val Price, responded when asked about it: “I think that is confidential information, and I don’t want to reveal that.”

. . . . A great deal has been written about all of these cases. There have, however, been no indications that all of these children watched the same TV programs or listened to the same music. Nor has it been established that they all used illegal drugs, suffered from alcohol abuse or had common difficulties with their families or peers. They did not share identical home lives, dress alike or participate in similar extracurricular activities. But all of the above were labeled as suffering from a mental illness and were being treated with psychotropic drugs that for years have been known to cause serious adverse effects when given to children.

. . . . At the top of the list of so-called “mental illnesses” among children is attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, which is diagnosed when a child meets six of the 18 criteria described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, published by the American Psychiatric Association, or APA.

. . . . ADHD was determined by a vote of APA psychiatrists to be a “mental” illness and added to the DSM-IIIR in 1987. By definition, children with ADHD exhibit behaviors such as not paying attention in school, not listening when spoken to directly, failing to follow directions, losing things, being easily distracted and forgetful, fidgeting with hands or feet, talking excessively, blurting out answers or having difficulty awaiting turn. The most common ADHD remedy among pediatricians and representatives of the mental-health community is, as noted, Ritalin.

. . . . First approved by the FDA in 1955, Ritalin (methylphenidate) had become widely used for behavioral control by the mid-1960s. It is produced by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, the United States buys and uses 90 percent of the world’s Ritalin. A U.N. agency known as the International Narcotics Control Board, or INCB, reported in 1995 that “10 to 12 percent of all boys between the ages of 6 and 14 in the U.S. have been diagnosed as having ADD [attention-deficit disorder, now referred to as ADHD] and are being treated with methylphenidate.”

. . . . But opponents are concerned about evidence they say confirms a close relationship between use of prescribed psychotropic drugs and subsequent use of illegal drugs, including cocaine and heroin. While the United States has spent more than $70 billion on the war on drugs, says Bruce Wiseman, president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a California-based organization that investigates violations of human rights by mental-health practitioners, “if you think the Colombian drug cartel is the biggest drug dealer in the world, think again. It’s your neighborhood psychiatrist … putting our kids on the highest level of addictive drugs.”

. . . . This complaint is not new and there is a lengthy list of government agencies connecting the prescribed psychotropic drugs to use of illegal substances.

. . . . Twenty-eight years ago the World Health Organization, or WHO, concluded that Ritalin was pharmacologically similar to cocaine in its pattern of abuse and cited Ritalin as a Schedule II drug — the most addictive in medical usage. The Department of Justice followed the WHO by citing Ritalin in Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act as having a very high potential for abuse. As a Schedule II drug, Ritalin joins morphine, opium, cocaine and the heroin substitute methadone.

. . . . According to a report in the 1995 Archives of General Psychiatry, “Cocaine is one of the most reinforcing and addicting of the abused drugs and has pharmacological actions that are very similar to those of Ritalin.” In the same year the DEA also made the Ritalin/cocaine connection, saying, “It is clear that Ritalin substitutes for cocaine and d-amphetamine in a number of behavioral paradigms,” expressing concern that “one in every 30 Americans between 5 and 19 years old has a prescription for the drug.”

. . . . Despite decades of warnings about the potential for abuse of Ritalin, experts continue to argue that the benefits far outweigh the consequences. Yet the INCB has reported that “Methylphenidate’s [Ritalin] pharmacological effects are essentially the same as those of amphetamine and methamphetamine. The abuse of methylphenidate [Ritalin] can lead to tolerance and severe psychological dependence. Psychotic episodes [and] violent and bizarre behavior have been reported.”

. . . . These are, in fact, some of the same symptoms exhibited by Eric Harris.

. . . . David Fassler, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and chairman of the APA group on Children, Adolescents and Their Families, says he is unaware of any research to suggest a correlation between the recent cases of violent behavior in school-age children and the widespread prescription of psychotropic drugs. Fassler argues that the number of school-age children suffering from mental illnesses such as depression is “more than earlier believed and it is important that there be a comprehensive evaluation by a mental-health clinician trained in this area.” He stresses that “treatment should be multimodal — not left to medications alone.”

. . . . Mike Faenza, president and chief executive officer of the National Mental Health Association, the country’s oldest and largest mental-health group, notes that “there is little known about how the drugs affect brain function.” Faenza adds that “we do know that a hell of a lot of kids commit suicide because they aren’t getting the help they need. It’s irresponsible not to give them the help just because we don’t know what causes the mental illness.”

. . . . Opponents are quick to capitalize on this admission. “There is no such thing as ADHD,” declares Wiseman. “It’s not a deficiency of ‘speed’ that makes a kid act out. If you look at the criteria listed in the DSM-IV for ADHD, you’ll see that they are taking normal childhood behavior and literally voting it a mental illness. This is a pseudoscience, entirely subjective. Unlike medical conditions that are proved scientifically, with these mental illnesses the only way you know you’re better is if the psychiatrist says you’re better. That’s not science.”

. . . . Pediatric neurologist Fred Baughman not only agrees that there is no such illness as ADHD, but says: “This is a contrived epidemic, where all 5 million to 6 million children on these drugs are normal. The country’s been led to believe that all painful emotions are a mental illness and the leadership of the APA knows very well that they are representing it as a disease when there is no scientific data to confirm any mental illness.”

. . . . Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist and director of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology and author of Talking Back to Prozac, Toxic Psychiatry and Talking Back to Ritalin, for years has waged a war with the APA about what he regards as its cavalier diagnoses of mental illnesses. “Psychiatry has never been driven by science. They have no biological or genetic basis for these illnesses and the National Institutes of Mental Health are totally committed to the pharmacological line.” He is concerned that “there is a great deal of scientific evidence that stimulants cause brain damage with long-term use, yet there is no evidence that these mental illnesses, such as ADHD, exist.”

. . . . Breggin points out that the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, admitted as much at their 1998 Consensus Development Conference on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Thirty-one individuals were selected by NIH to make scientific presentations to the panel on ADHD and its treatment. The panel made the following observations and conclusions: “We don’t have an independent, valid test for ADHD; there are no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction; existing studies come to conflicting conclusions as to whether use of psychostimulants increases or de-creases the risk of abuse, and finally after years of clinical research and experience with ADHD, our knowledge about the cause or causes of ADHD remains speculative.”

. . . . If so, there is little evidence to support a scientific basis for classifying ADHD as a mental illness. On the other hand, there is an abundance of evidence that stimulants such as Ritalin can produce symptoms such as mania, insomnia, hallucinations, hyperactivity, impulsivity and inattention. And the DEA’s list of potential adverse effects of Ritalin includes psychosis, depression, dizziness, insomnia, nervousness, irritability and attacks of Tourette’s or other tic syndromes.

. . . . While Ritalin is the drug of choice for treating ADHD, other mental illnesses such as depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, from which Columbine shooter Harris suffered, are being treated with new SSRI antidepressants. Harris’ autopsy revealed that he had used Luvox (Fluvoxomine), an SSRI, prior to the shooting spree. And days earlier he had been rejected by the Marine Corps because he was taking the psychotropic drug.

. . . . Luvox, a cousin of Prozac, has been approved by the FDA for pediatric use, although research shows that a small percentage of patients experience adverse effects such as mania, bouts of irritability, aggression and hostility. But many physicians still prescribe it to children.

. . . . More disturbing to those who believe sufficient evidence exists that prescription psychotropic drugs may play a role in the violence being carried out by school-age children is the response of physicians to the issue. Rather than erring on the side of caution by reducing the number of kids on mind-altering drugs, physicians instead are prescribing psychotropic drugs even to infants and toddlers. The warning label states that “Ritalin should not be used in children under 6 years, since safety and efficacy for this age group has not been established” and “sufficient data on safety and efficacy of long-term use of Ritalin in children are not yet available.”

. . . . A report in the July 1998 issue of the Clinical Psychiatric News revealed that in Michigan’s Medicaid program, 223 children 3 years old or younger were diagnosed with ADHD as of December 1996. Amazingly, 57 percent of these children, many of whom are not yet capable of putting together a complete sentence, were treated with one or more psychotropic drugs including Ritalin, Prozac, Dexedrine, Aventyl and Syban. Thirty-three percent were medicated with two or more of these drugs.

. . . . But it is Ritalin that is being prescribed to 6 million American children. Children’s Hospital in Washington has been running television advertisements expressing concern. According to its spokeswoman, Lynn Cantwell, the ads were part of a series covering many medical issues. “We wanted to advocate that children get a comprehensive evaluation because we are finding that children were coming in who were taking Ritalin who actually did not have ADHD.”

. . . . Wiseman has suggested that the only way to gain control of the situation is to expose widespread “fraudulent diagnoses” of psychiatrists. “Without the diagnoses, you can’t get the drugs,” he says. Baughman’s answer isn’t too far from Wiseman’s. He says, “A big-time class-action lawsuit needs to be filed.”

Dr. Stephanie Maj has a thriving family practice in the heart of Chicago. Her clinic is located at 1442 W. Belmont Ave., 1E, Chicago, IL 60657. 773.528.8485. www.communitychiropractic.net

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Enjoy an article about me written in 2010 that is equally as relevant today!

PRLog (Press Release) – Jan 12, 2010 -

Chicago – New Year’s resolutions, love them or hate them, bring new energy to people’s yearning to improve their health. In her book, You Can Be Well, Dr. Stephanie Maj focuses on helping people with these changes to aid them in recapturing the health and vitality that has slowly been eroding away people’s lives.

“I have always used New Years to help my patients set health goals.” Dr. Maj said. “It amazes me that people are so unhealthy that on all the Top 10 Resolution lists, health related items account for over half the resolutions.”

This general lack of health in our society is one of the reasons she wrote the book; to help people find the critical steps necessary for success. There are thousands of books on wellness yet Dr. Maj has found all these books are missing the most vital step of all.

“It is the elimination of nerve interference that NO ONE is talking about and I feel can no longer be ignored. As a chiropractor, I focus on removing the interference in the nervous system, the master controller of all the organ systems of body. Without removing this nerve interference, no other steps will get the patient to their desired health goal.”

“I find that people misunderstand what health and wellness really are to them. Most people want to be healthier yet have no idea what health really is and exactly how to go about achieving it.” In her book, Dr. Maj talks about the 5 critical steps to wellness, four of which are action steps that every self-help health book talks about: Eating right, stress relief, exercise and eliminating toxins.

Dr. Maj has noticed that others are out there speaking and writing about wellness and what it means and yet fail to address the interference in the nerve system that Chiropractic corrects. The reason this is so important is that the body is a self-healing organism and the nerve system is what controls that healing. When there is interference in the nerves, there is interference in the body’s ability to heal properly or fight disease (like cancers and viruses). Chiropractic removes interference in the nerves so the body’s own natural defense systems can be restored.

Research shows that when you have interference in the nerve’s function at the spinal level, this leads to a cascade of harmful results. Some of those results include: Increased blood pressure, increased cholesterol, increased triglycerides, insulin resistance (pre-diabetes), increased stress hormones, decreased immunity (cancer & infections), decreased sense of well being and a decrease in complex learning abilities.

“I understand that achieving health and wellness is not as simple as only getting a Chiropractic adjustment. I address other steps in my book, “You Can Be Well.” Eating right, exercising, combating stress and eliminating toxins are needed as well.”

Dr. Maj states, “The mission at Community Chiropractic is to check as many people as possible for hidden health problems and to save them from a life of drugs and surgery. We do this in Chicago everyday yet if you aren’t in my practice; there is no way of knowing these vital steps.”

The biggest promise I have for people is that You Can Be Well, too!

Dr. Stephanie Maj is the clinic director for Community Chiropractic, a full service wellness center offering family health care, acupuncture, massage, orthotics and nutritional counseling. Dr. Maj has been practicing in the Lakeview area for 14 years. Her book You Can Be Well, can be purchased on Amazon.com or on her website, youcanbewell.net.

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Probably one of the most common questions I get as a Chiropractor is the knuckle “cracking” causing arthritis question.  I remember my Uncle George telling me it didn’t and I believed my orthopedic surgeon God-father.  For others, even with the  popularity of this practice, most known knuckle crackers have probably been told by some expert—whose advice very likely began, “I’m not a doctor, but …”—that the behavior would lead to arthritis.  Scientific America has taken on this age old question very scientifically.  Enjoy! Dr. Steph

One M.D. convincingly put that amateur argument to rest with a study published back in 1998 in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism entitled “Does Knuckle Cracking Lead to Arthritis of the Fingers?” The work of sole author Donald Unger was back in the news in early October when he was honored as the recipient of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine. The Igs, for the uninitiated, are presented annually on the eve of the real Nobel Prizes by the organization Improbable Research for “achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” In Unger’s case, I thought about whether his protocol might be evidence that he is obsessive-compulsive. From his publication: “For 50 years, the author cracked the knuckles of his left hand at least twice a day, leaving those on the right as a control. Thus, the knuckles on the left were cracked at least 36,500 times, while those on the right cracked rarely and spontaneously.” Unger undertook his self and righteous research because, as he wrote, “During the author’s childhood, various renowned authorities (his mother, several aunts and, later, his mother-in-law [personal communication]) informed him that cracking his knuckles would lead to arthritis of the fingers.” He thus used a half-century “to test the accuracy of this hypothesis,” during which he could cleverly tell any unsolicited advice givers that the results weren’t in yet. Finally, after five decades, Unger analyzed his data set: “There was no arthritis in either hand, and no apparent differences between the two hands.” He concluded that “there is no apparent relationship between knuckle cracking and the subsequent development of arthritis of the fingers.” Evidence for whether the doctor himself was cracked may be that he traveled all the way from his California home to Harvard University to pick up his Ig Nobel Prize in person. Actually other scholarly studies of the phenomenon had been done. Responding to the Unger paper, Robert Swezey, M.D., wrote to the journal to report that his own 1975 study—co-authored by his then 12-year-old son in an apparent attempt to get the kid’s grandma to stop the kvetching over the cracking—also found no crack case for arthritis. Swezey further consulted Rand Corporation statistician John Adams, who noted that “it appears that the [Unger] study was not blinded. Blinding would only be possible if the investigator didn’t know left from right. This is not likely since studies indicate that only 31 percent of primary care physicians don’t know left from right.” The knuckle kerfuffle reminded me that Stanford University bone development expert David Kingsley got dragged into this field a few years back when his son’s fourth grade class asked him if cracking was bad for you. He challenged them to come up with ways to find out while he searched the medical literature. “One kid said that we could divide the room in half,” he recalled, “and some of us could really crack our knuckles a lot and the others couldn’t, and we could see whether we end up with arthritis—an intervention experiment. I said that this was a great idea. The only problem was that it might take 20 years.” Or even 50.

Crack Research: Good news about knuckle cracking.  One man’s long, noisy, asymmetrical adventure gets him a high five By Steve Mirsky  | December 15, 2009 | 30

Dr. Stephanie Maj has a thriving family practice in the heart of Chicago. Her clinic is located at 1442 W. Belmont Ave., 1E, Chicago, IL 60657. 773.528.8485. www.communitychiropractic.net

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To learn more about how exercise affects the brain, scientists in Ireland recently asked a group of sedentary male college students to take part in a memory test followed by strenuous exercise.

First, the young men watched a rapid-fire lineup of photos with the faces and names of strangers. After a break, they tried to recall the names they had just seen as the photos again zipped across a computer screen.

Afterward, half of the students rode a stationary bicycle, at an increasingly strenuous pace, until they were exhausted. The others sat quietly for 30 minutes. Then both groups took the brain-teaser test again.

Notably, the exercised volunteers performed significantly better on the memory test than they had on their first try, while the volunteers who had rested did not improve.

Meanwhile, blood samples taken throughout the experiment offered a biological explanation for the boost in memory among the exercisers. Immediately after the strenuous activity, the cyclists had significantly higher levels of a protein known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which is known to promote the health of nerve cells. The men who had sat quietly showed no comparable change in BDNF levels.

For some time, scientists have believed that BDNF helps explain why mental functioning appears to improve with exercise. However, they haven’t fully understood which parts of the brain are affected or how those effects influence thinking. The Irish study suggests that the increases in BDNF prompted by exercise may play a particular role in improving memory and recall.

Other new studies have reached similar conclusions, among both people and animals, young and old. In one interesting experiment published last month, Brazilian scientists found that after sedentary elderly rats ran for a mere five minutes or so several days a week for five weeks, a cascade of biochemical processes ignited in the memory center of their brains, culminating in increased production of BDNF molecules there. The old, exercised animals then performed almost as well as much younger rats on rodent memory tests.

Another animal study, this one performed by researchers in the Brain Injury Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and published in September in the journal Neuroscience, showed that if adult rats were allowed to run at will for a week, the memory center of their brains afterward contained more BDNF molecules than in sedentary rats, and teemed with a new population of precursor molecules that presumably would soon develop into fully functioning BDNF molecules.

Perhaps the most inspiring of the recent experiments is one involving aging human pilots. For the experiment, published last month in the journal Translational Psychiatry, scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine asked 144 experienced pilots ages 40 to 65 to operate a cockpit simulator three separate times over the course of two years.

For all of the pilots, performance declined somewhat as the years passed. A similar decline with age is common in all of us.

Many people find it more difficult to perform skilled tasks — driving an automobile, for instance – as they grow older, says Dr. Ahmad Salehi, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford and lead author of the study.

But in this case, the decline was especially striking among one particular group of men. These aging pilots carried a common genetic variation that is believed to reduce BDNF activity in their brains. The men with a genetic tendency toward lower BDNF levels seemed to lose their ability to perform complicated tasks at almost double the rate of the men without the variation.

While the pilot experiment wasn’t an exercise study, it does raise the question of whether strenuous exercise could slow such declines by raising BDNF levels, thereby salvaging our ability to perform skilled manual tasks well past middle age.

“So many studies have shown that exercise increases levels of BDNF,” says Dr. Salehi. While he notes that other growth factors and body chemicals are “upregulated” by exercise, he believes BDNF holds the most promise.

“The one factor that shows the fastest, most consistent and greatest response is BDNF,” he says. “It seems to be key to maintaining not just memory but skilled task performance.”

Dr. Salehi plans next to examine the exercise histories of the pilots, to see whether those with the gene variant, which is common among people of European or Asian backgrounds, respond differently to workouts.

In people who have the variant and less BDNF activity, “exercise is probably even more important,” he says. “But for everyone, the evidence is very, very strong that physical activity will increase BDNF levels and improve cognitive health.”

From NYT http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/how-exercise-benefits-the-brain/

Dr. Stephanie Maj has a thriving family practice in the heart of Chicago. Her clinic is located at 1442 W. Belmont Ave., 1E, Chicago, IL 60657. 773.528.8485. www.communitychiropractic.net

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This article caught my interest due to the amount of trauma I see in my practice as it relates to heading a soccer ball. Enjoy! Dr. Maj

Soccer players who use their head to work the ball may be at risk for white matter abnormalities similar to those seen in traumatic brain injury (TBI) — but only beyond a certain threshold, researchers said here.

In a small study of amateur soccer players, those who headed the ball more than 1,320 times per year had a greater likelihood of tiny changes in white matter as measured on diffusion tensor imaging, Michael Lipton, MD, PhD, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., reported at the Radiological Society of North America meeting here.

“These are changes in the brain that are similar to those we see with a concussion or TBI,” Lipton said during a press briefing. “I’m not advocating banning heading, but there may be a threshold level, which we defined, that indicates a safe range of heading.”

Lipton explained that after heading the ball, patients have reported symptoms such as headache and feeling dazed or confused, and some studies have shown that cognitive performance may also be affected.

Still, there have not been many imaging studies of its potential neurological consequences, he said.

So he and his colleagues used diffusion tensor MRI to look at tiny changes in white matter — the fibers that make up the brain’s network wiring, he said — in 38 amateur soccer players in the New York City area who’ve been playing the game their whole lives.

Over the preceding year, the number of times the patients headed the ball ranged from none to 5,600, and Lipton said the upper quartile was 1,320.

Compared with the other soccer players, those in the upper quartile of heading had lower fractional anisotropy — uniform diffusion of water across white matter — in six regions of the brain.

That included five regions in temporooccipital white matter and one in frontal white matter.

The researchers noted that the relationship between heading and fractional anisotropy followed a reverse “S” shape, indicating that white matter abnormalities rise as the frequency of heading rises.

Although further study is needed — particularly to assess whether these changes in white matter correspond with changes in cognitive performance — Lipton said the findings suggest there may be room for public health intervention, given that more than 250 million people worldwide play soccer regularly. In the U.S. alone, that estimate is 18 million people, he said.

Lipton noted that more soccer players need to be assessed over a longer period of time to see if their threshold stands up, but still, he said, players should try to minimize heading, especially during practice drills, when balls are repeatedly headed back and forth.

According to guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, there are not enough data to recommend against heading altogether, but the organization similarly encourages children to minimize the number of times they do so.

Max Wintermark, MD, of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who was not involved in the study, cautioned that the results are preliminary and that given the small number of participants, “we have to be careful not to generalize findings that have been obtained in just a few patients.”

Still, he said it’s “worth more study,” particularly among children — although such a study would involve practical limitations, such as the need for sedation.

Primary source: Radiological Society of North America

Source reference:

Kim N, et al “Making soccer safer for the brain: DTI-defined exposure thresholds for white matter injury due to soccer heading” RSNA 2011; Abstract SSK12-04.

Dr. Stephanie Maj has a thriving family practice in the heart of Chicago. Her clinic is located at 1442 W. Belmont Ave., 1E, Chicago, IL 60657. 773.528.8485. www.communitychiropractic.net

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A new study adds more reason to why our bodies employ fevers as a defense against sickness.

Researchers from Roswell Park Cancer Institute found that a higher body temperature can help our immune systems to work better and harder against infected cells. The finding was published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology.

“Having a fever might be uncomfortable, … but this research report and several others are showing that having a fever is part of an effective immune response,” John Wherry, Ph.D., deputy editor of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, said in a statement.

Before, researchers thought that fevers worked by hindering dangerous microbes from multiplying, Wherry said.

But “this new work also suggests that the immune system might be temporarily enhanced functionally when our temperatures rise with fever,” he said in the statement, though he noted that the finding should only prompt people to reconsider how they treat mild fevers, and not fevers that are dangerously high.

The secret is in a kind of immune cell, or lymphocyte, called a CD8+ cytotoxic T-cell. This kind of lymphocyte is able to destroy cells infected with viruses and even tumor cells, researchers said. Researchers found that a higher body temperature (like one achieved in a fever) raises the number of these CD8+ cytotoxic T-cells, which means a greater body response against infection.

To find this, researchers injected mice with an antigen and saw how the CD8+ cytotoxic T-cells activated to react to the antigen. Then, they raised the body temperatures of half the mice by 2 degrees centigrade, while leaving the temperatures of the other = mice alone. They found that the mice whose body temperatures were raised had more of the CD8+ cytotoxic T-cells than the mice without raised body temps.

The rise in mouse’s body temperature is “similar to that that happens in fever,” study researcher Elizabeth Repasky told the Toronto Star.

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center clinical associate professor Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, who wasn’t involved with the study, told MSNBC that the finding shouldn’t mean a fever should never be treated because too-high fevers can lead to brain cell damage. Parents should still take care to lower fevers in children, particularly if the fever is above 102 degrees Fahrenheit, since high fever can lead to seizures, Adalja told MSNBC.

Adalja also warns it”s also not worth the risk to your own health if you have heart disease, have suffered a stroke or endure other medical complications. “This is not a blanket recommendation,” he says. “Secondary consequences to the fever can cause other conditions in the patient to occur or worsen. If someone has a persistent fever of 104, it’s a sign of infection, and it”s not just some viral thing you are going to get over.”

This is certainly not the first research to suggest that fevers ramp up our body’s immune responses. Discover magazine reported in 2007 on another Roswell Park Cancer Institute mouse study, which showed that mice that were heated up produced more immune cells to fight disease than mice that weren’t heated.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/03/fever-immune-system-cells_n_1074445.html

Dr. Stephanie Maj has a thriving family practice in the heart of Chicago. Her clinic is located at 1442 W. Belmont Ave., 1E, Chicago, IL 60657. 773.528.8485. www.communitychiropractic.net

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