It feels like spring already in the Valley, but don’t let thewarm, sunny weather fool you.

Flu season isn’t over yet, according to local health experts,and good hygiene practices and a flu vaccination can still go along way toward prevention.

“From everything that I’ve seen so far, it looks like a typicalinfluenza year,” said Dr. Michael Mac Lean, Kings County’s healthofficer. “You might say this might be a little bit late for it topeak, compared to past years.”

Historically, the seasonal flu outbreak starts in October and lastsuntil April each year, with the season typically peaking inFebruary, Mac Lean said. The season could, however, peak anytimebetween December and March.

As in the rest of the country, the flu is widespread in California.Mac Lean says it still remains in the realm of normalcy.

“What we are seeing right now is what we see every year … I thinkwhat’s different about this year is it’s peaking a little laterthan normal, but not outrageously late,” Mac Lean said.

Dr. Elinor Zorn, a pediatrician with Adventist Health PhysiciansNetwork, agreed with Mac Lean. Zorn said she is seeing morepatients coming in over the past week with complaints of flusymptoms.

“We’re definitely seeing a lot of flu,” Zorn said. “We had a littlepeak, and it seemed for a week or two to go away. And now it hassort of come back more full-blown. I haven’t had a lot of reallysick kids with the flu, but I’ve definitely seen a lot offlu.”

The number hasn’t been overwhelming, and she had not been testingbecause she had run out of test kits, Zorn said. But she said shehad probably seen up to 10 children over the past week who came inwith clear signs of flu.

Mac Lean as well as Zorn said it’s not too late for people toprotect themselves by getting a flu shot.

Kings County Health Director Keith Winkler urged people -especially those at risk of complications from flu – to getvaccinated.

High-risk groups include adults older than 65, people with chronichealth conditions, pregnant women and young children under age5.

Rite Aid, Walgreens and CVS pharmacies as well as a pharmacies inthe Hanford Target store or the Save Mart store in Lemoore arestill offering flu shots. The Centers for Disease Control andPrevention has an online locator for places with flu vaccine:flu.gov/whereyoulive/index.html.

The reporter can be reached at 583-2429.

Chronic fatigue syndrome has been controversial ever since 1984, when a cluster of cases in an upscale Nevada resort town attracted national attention.

Now a British study in the Lancet is likely to open another chapter in the medical saga.

Comparing four different treatments for CFS, researchers find that psychotherapy and gradual increases in exercise were clearly better than specialist care or an approach favored by many CFS advocates called “adaptive pacing,” which helps patients live within their limits.

The results were quite clear,” Dr. Michael Sharpe of the University of Edinburgh told Shots. “When a therapist worked with the patient to help them do better over time, it produced better function and less fatigue.” Sharpe is the paper’s senior author.

The two therapies that proved superior in the study are:

• Twice-a-week cognitive behavior therapy to change the way CFS patients think about their devastating fatigue, or to reduce their fear of exertion; or
• Similarly frequent sessions that gradually increase a patient’s activity level, within the patient’s ability.

The 641 patients in the study — the largest ever in the treatment of chronic fatigue — were randomly assigned to different treatments, got six months of therapy, and then were evaluated for fatigue and level of function six months after that.

In a surprise to the researchers, adaptive pacing — teaching CFS patients to live within their energy limits — didn’t reduce fatigue or improve patients’ ability to walk longer distances, climb stairs, or engage in daily activities of life, such as grocery shopping.

“It achieved nothing more than just seeing a doctor,” Sharpe says. And just seeing a doctor — a specialist in CFS — wasn’t very effective. For what it’s worth, all the patients in the study got specialist care, but only one-quarter of them had no other therapy.

All patients rated their own symptoms and how well they were functioning, which were translated into scientifically validated scores. the researchers say they were careful to screen out candidates who didn’t meet accepted definitions of CFS, sometimes called myalgic encephalomyelitis.

Study authors point out that psychotherapy and graded exercise came out on top even though patients were less confident in them at the outset.

“I hope the results of this trial will go some way to reassuring some of those people that if this treatment is done by skilled people in an appropriate way, it actually is safe and can stand a very good chance of benefiting them,” Sharpe says. But he acknowledges the findings are sure to be controversial.

“There will be some who will be straightforwardly pleased,” Sharpe says. “But I think there will be those who are more concerned and suspicious about it.”

It might seem strange that people suffering from a lingering, devastating disease like CFS, whose cause remains unknown, would be upset by results that show some treatments actually work better. But people with CFS have learned from bitter experience that any suggestion their symptoms have a psychological component leads many to leap to the conclusion that it’s all in their head.

“If you have a condition that people decry and criticize you for, saying it’s not really real, it’s just psychological, then someone tells you, ‘You need a psychological treatment,’ it seems like rubbing it in, that people don’t believe they’re ill,” says Sharpe, a professor of psychological medicine.

And indeed, CFS advocates on this side of the Atlantic immediately raised that concern. “The issue with cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy…have to do with the impression that if these things are effective then it must mean that the condition is all in my head,” Kim McCleary, president of the Chronic Fatigue and Immunodeficiency Syndrome Association of America, told Shots. “If you can make it better by changing my illness beliefs, what you’re saying to me that I don’t have a real illness or a physical illness.”

People with CFS and their advocates are also very wary of “graded exercise therapy” – partly, it seems, because it may suggest that people with the disorder could get out of bed and push themselves. But a bigger concern is that CFS patients are afraid the approach can backfire, sending them to bed exhausted by post-exertional malaise.

“Far and away the bigger danger is overdoing,” says Bruce Campbell, a CFS sufferer who counsels others with the disease. “The number of patients that I’ve known who were afraid of activity and did too little, I could count them on the fingers of my hands, and I’ve known several thousand patients.”

The British researchers say the rate of serious adverse reactions, such as worsening of fatigue, was no higher among patients in the study who got graded exercise than in those who were counseled to stay within their limits. And no more people in the exercise group dropped out of the study than those in the adaptive pacing group.

The study was funded by Britain’s Medical Research Council, a government agency. the U.K.’s National Health Service favors the use of cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise for CFS.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavior therapy bested adaptive pacing
• Study lasted 52 weeks and included 640 participants
• Treatments are called "effective," but their impact "moderate"

(CNN) — British researchers reported Friday that two controversial treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome appear to be more effective than a third, more commonly accepted treatment, and none of them appears to be linked to major safety problems.

In the clinical trial, whose results were published in the British journal The Lancet, 640 patients with CFS were randomized to one of four treatment groups. for 52 weeks, all of them got specialist medical care.

A quarter of them got nothing more than that; a quarter also got cognitive behavior therapy; another quarter also got graded exercise therapy; and the final quarter also got adaptive pacing therapy.

The study was carried out because previous trials supporting cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy were small and controversial: Two British patients’ organizations had surveyed their members and concluded the interventions were not only ineffective, but were harmful, said Dr. Michael Sharpe, professor of psychological medicine at the University of Edinburgh and one of the study’s authors.

As an alternative, he told reporters in a news conference posted on the internet, the patient groups were expressing a preference for CFS patients to see specialists and undergo another intervention, called adaptive pacing therapy.

The non-rehabilitative pacing treatment helps patients live within the limits imposed by the illness rather than attempting to break through those limits.

It considers CFS to be an organic disease process that cannot be reversed by changing behavior and that leaves patients with a finite amount of energy. Advocates of the treatment urge patients to pace themselves to avoid fatigue. A therapist advises patients on how to prioritize what they do, but urges them not to try to over do it.

The other two therapies push patients to try to overcome the limits of the illness: cognitive behavior therapy considers CFS to be reversible and recommends changes in behavior and cognition to gradually increase physical and mental activity. Advocates of graded exercise therapy seek to help patients gradually increase their energy level by challenging themselves to boost their exercise and other activity.

But the patient groups’ anecdotal conclusions that cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy were detrimental did not hold up when subjected to the scrutiny of the rigorously designed study, which was carried out at six centers.

Over the course of a year, 59% of the cognitive behavior therapy group and 61% of the graded exercise therapy group improved a given amount for fatigue and physical function versus 42% of the adaptive pacing therapy group and 45% of the the group that got only specialist medical care.

There was no statistical difference among the groups in serious adverse reactions, which ranged from 1% to 2%.

"We suggest that these findings show that either CBT(cognitive behavior therapy) or GET (graded exercise therapy), when added to SMC (specialist medical care), is an effective treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome, and the size of this effect is moderate," the authors wrote.

"This is something which has a useful effect for a substantial proportion of the people, but it’s clearly not the final solution to the illness," Sharpe said.

The need for reliable treatment data is undisputed. in Britain, CFS is estimated to affect about 250,000 people. Symptoms typically include severe fatigue so disabling that it prevents patients from leading normal lives. It is commonly also associated with difficulties in concentration and memory as well as other symptoms, such as disturbed sleep and widespread pain.

"If people are left untreated, the prognosis is very poor," said Professor Trudie Chalder, professor of cognitive behavioral therapy at Kings College London and another author of the study.

Fewer than 10% of patients recover without treatment, said Sharpe.

The British government was the primary funder of the study, which had limitations, since it excluded patients who were too sick to get to the hospital, the authors acknowledged. in addition, they noted, measurement of outcomes was subjective.

Though the trial shows that recovery from CFS is possible, "there is clearly room for improvement with both interventions," wrote researchers Sijs Bleijenberg and Hans Knoop of the Expert Centre for Chronic Fatigue at Radbourd University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands.

In an accompanying commentary, they called for more work to come up with better interventions.

The president and CEO of the Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome Association of America, Kim McCleary, said the study focused on treatments that many in the United States have no access to.

"I think it would be challenging, at least in the U.S. system, to purchase the services that they’ve tested in this trial," she told CNN in a telephone interview.

The alphabet soup of acronyms that represent the interventions used in Britain is "just not something that our health care service offers, is reimbursable, or is really available here," McCleary said.

The report comes as researchers have been making progress on the possible role of viruses in causing the disease, she noted. "It’s kind of a shame that we’re still limited to talking about approaches to coping mechanisms as the only therapy that’s available," she said.

A 2007 study by the Centers for Disease Control estimated that approximately 2.5% of the adult population of Georgia suffers from CFS.

McCleary said national estimates put the number of Americans with CFS at 1 million to 4 million.

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Nov 16, 2010 17:27 ET

OTTAWA, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Nov. 16, 2010) – Four Ottawa scientists got a boost for their research into the causes of Parkinson’s disease today from Parkinson Society Canada at a celebration hosted by Parkinson Society Ottawa at The Ottawa Hospital. Also honoured were volunteers and donors who raise money through Parkinson SuperWalk. The grants totaling $120,000 were awarded to local researchers Dr. David Park, Dr. Mohammad Parsanejad, Dr. Michael Schlossmacher and Dr. Julianna Tomlinson. The monies will help to identify the causes of Parkinson’s and how to improve the quality of life for Canadian’s living with this progressive brain disease. Over 600 Ottawans raised $147,906 this September in the annual Parkinson SuperWalk. Nationally, $2.8 million was raised in 89 walk sites across Canada.

Dr. Schlossmacher, a clinician and researcher, best known for his scientific breakthroughs in movement disorders including identifying genetic risk factors for Parkinson’s, and Dr. Julianna Tomlinson, a post doctoral fellow in the division of neurosciences with Dr. Schlossmacher, received funding to screen existing drugs to see if they can lower the amount of alpha-synuclein, a protein common in the brain cells of people with Parkinson’s. if so, by repositioning these drugs, they can treat people with Parkinson’s earlier to slow the disease.

Dr. David Park, Assistant Dean of Research and a Professor in the Department of Cellular Molecular Medicine at the University of Ottawa received a one year $45,000 grant for his pilot project unravelling the interaction between a critical protein called CDK-5, and a second protein called JIP1 in order to better understand what causes brain cells to die. CDK-5 is what Park calls a master signal, which acts like a switch to regulate the death of dopamine-producing neurons. 

Dr. Mohammad Parsanejad, a PhD neuroscience candidate in Dr. Park’s lab, received a two year $30,000 Graduate Student Award to investigate DJ-1, a gene which, when mutated, can cause Parkinson’s disease.

“We are very proud of the record-breaking results we achieved from this year’s Parkinson SuperWalk,” said Dennise Taylor-Gilhen, Executive Director, Parkinson Society Ottawa. “People with Parkinson’s are encouraged by the fact that monies they and their friends, families and teammates raise, will fund research in our community and this means renewed hope that we will find the clues to this devastating disease.”

Parkinson SuperWalk has been held in Ottawa for the past 15 years. while the quest for a cure continues, earlier diagnosis and identifying new therapies that will halt or slow the progression of Parkinson’s are two key priorities for Canada’s Parkinson’s research community.

“Ottawa is home to some of Canada’s leading Parkinson’s researchers,” said Joyce Gordon, President & CEO, Parkinson Society Canada. “Each new biomarker, each new drug therapy, each new protein gets us closer to a better life for people with Parkinson’s. we continue to progress one step closer to finding a cure with every project funded through our national research program,” added Gordon.

This year, Parkinson Society Canada will contribute $1.3 million to over 30 research and pilot grants, new investigator awards, basic research and clinical fellowships as well as graduate awards to encourage innovative ideas and foster emerging Canadian scientists who choose careers to further understand Parkinson’s disease.

Currently there is no cure for Parkinson’s disease. Movement is normally controlled by dopamine, a chemical that carries signals between the nerves in the brain. When cells that normally produce dopamine die, the symptoms of Parkinson’s appear. 

Since 1965, Parkinson Society Canada has been dedicated to education, support, research and advocacy on behalf of Canadians living with Parkinson’s. There are 235 chapters and support groups in Canada.

Babies and Infants (Scroll down for section on children and adolescents)

Click on the video above to listen to Dr. Michael Stott explain how chiropractic can help your baby or infant to grow into a healthy and strong adult.

There are a lot of reasons parents take their baby or infant to a chiropractor: colic, allergies, irritability, sleeping and feeding problems, flu-like symptoms, middle ear infections, fevers, asthma, stomach aches and bed-wetting to name a few.

But in reality, the biggest reason to bring your baby or infant to a chiropractor is not dependent on whether they have a health problem or are healthy and well.  The biggest reason for your baby or infant to have chiropractic treatment is to maximise the function of their body, their natural healing processes and their immune system.  when you do this, it allows your child to grow into a healthy adult and help prevent illnesses that older people are predisposed to.

In fact, many illnesses and conditions we have as adults have their route in those first integral years of development.  Some times when a child goes through the birthing process, has a fall or has unnecessary strain on the back, the spine can be put out of place and the nervous system (housed in the spine) can be impaired. 

The nervous system is integral in the functioning of your child’s body as it is responsible for carrying the instructions from the brain to each part of the body.  With improper messages or incomplete messages being carried around the body, illnesses can easily manifest in the future.  Some of these resulting conditions and illnesses can over time become irreversible if not dealt with at an early age.

So it is important to have your child treated early so that their spine can be corrected and thereby allowing them to grow healthy and strong.

*Chiropractic treatment on babies and infants is gentle and unobtrusive, and has been used safely on children for almost 100 years.

Click here to learn about how chiropractic can treat colic on babies

Children and Adolescents

Click on the video above to listen to Dr. Michael Stott explain how children and adolescents can benefit from chiropractic.

Just like in babies and infants, the effects of stresses or strains on the back, no matter how minor they may seem, may develop into illnesses or conditions five, ten, fifteen years later, if they are not corrected early by a chiropractor. 

It could, for example, be as simple as a fall of a bike that could affect the back, thereby interfering or distorting the messages being sent through the nervous system housed in the back.  The messages sent through the nervous system from the brain tell the rest of the body how to function. 

And although it may not affect your child for a long time afterwards, if the body isn’t functioning properly symptoms and illnesses can be allowed to manifest.  after all, symptoms and illnesses are simply the body’s way of telling you something is not functioning as it should.

Some parents choose to take their child or adolescent to a chiropractor if they have flu-like symptoms, ear infections, fevers, colic, asthma, tonsillitis, allergies, bed-wetting, infections, pains, had a fall, stomach-aches or growing pains.  Although chiropractors do not treat these conditions, many find that once their child’s body’s functioning and immune system is corrected through chiropractic, that their child experiences notable improvement.

*Chiropractic treatment on children and adolescents is gentle and unobtrusive, and has been used safely on children for almost 100 years.