Tagging along with winter come ailments that challenge most Western doctors: stress, back and joint pain, head colds, heart attacks, anxiety, depression, upset stomachs and insomnia.

Is it time to try acupuncture, hypnosis, meditation, guided imagery and massage?
Surprisingly, even the most conservative mainstream research hospitals now answer “yes!”

Twenty years ago, the mind-body connection was largely dismissed by U.S. doctors as a wacky concept in healing. Today it’s a staple of integrative medicine, the discipline that blends complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM, with conventional treatments and places more emphasis on treating the whole person.

About 75 percent of medical schools have CAM courses in the curriculum, and the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine includes 39 academic health centers, including Mayo Clinic as well as Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Duke and Yale universities.

To help doctors catch up on the growing body of evidence-based research on CAM therapies, the University of Chicago’s Tang Center for Herbal Medi-cine Research and the Mayo Clinic co-hosted the annual Conference on Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

“The encouraging thing is that CAM treatments require self-care,” said Brent Bauer, director of the Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program at the Mayo Clinic. “It’s a supplement to what the doctor is doing; the patient is working together with the doctor in a partnership. This is not ‘Let’s wait till it breaks and then fix it.’”

The three-day seminar, which drew more than 250 doctors, nurses and other health practitioners to Chicago focused on herbal, food and dietary supplements and CAM therapies for common medical conditions, including obesity, stress and heart disease.

Here are some highlights:

WEIGHT LOSS: CAM treatments are popular weight-loss options, but only chitosan, chromium, conjugated linoleic acid and calcium have shown positive effects, and these were modest, said Todd Brown, a specialist in endocrine and metabolic diseases at Johns Hopkins University. There is no data on the cactus Hoodia gordonii.

HEART DISEASE: A Mediterranean-style diet is the best eating plan for patients with coronary heart disease. It includes fruits and vegetables, at least two servings of fish per week, the use of liquid vegetable oils, such as flaxseed, and a decreased intake of saturated fat, said Matthew Sorrentino, a noninvasive preventive cardiologist at the University of Chicago. A Mediterranean diet in conjunction with statin therapy has been shown to be more effective than statin therapy alone.

If you have had heart trouble, supplement your diet with omega-3 fatty acids, Sorrentino said. Though more evidence is needed for the optimal dose, the American Heart Association recommends getting 1 gram of eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid per day, either by eating fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, herring and trout or taking fish-oil supplements. If the supplement causes fish burps, try freezing the capsules, Sorrentino said.

IRRITABLE-BOWEL SYNDROME: Doctors have long considered irritable-bowel syndrome to be a noninflammatory disease, but “that’s wrong,” said Gerald Mullin, director of Integrative Gastrointestinal Nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, who adds that stress is the trigger for many gut diseases. Mullin suggests a combination treatment approach including exercise, probiotics, some herbs and ginger. Mind-body approaches, including yoga, meditation, hypnosis and behavioral therapy, are backed by the strongest data. Melatonin and herbs can cut down on stress and should be considered. “It would also help to have a better attitude and not be so angry at the world,” Mullin said.

STRESS: Doctors should respect stress and its link to illness, said Brent Bauer, director of the Complementary and Integrative Medicine Program at the Mayo Clinic. Up to 80 percent of the doctor visits in the U.S. are triggered by a stress-related illness, but several CAM therapies have good efficacy and low risk, including yoga, acupuncture, massage, spirituality, meditation and music therapy and hypnotism. “Hypnotism has gotten a bad rap, but when you look at the data, it’s actually pretty good,” he said.

SMOKING CESSATION: Hypnotism also is worth considering if you’re trying to quit smoking. Mayo Clinic researchers are looking at whether chocolate enriched with theanine, an amino acid commonly found in tea, can help people break the habit. Another study will examine whether paced-breathing meditation can be used as adjunct therapy for smoking cessation. Studies have shown that taking just six long breaths per minute has a positive physiological effect.

LOCAL CLASSES

Mindfulness: A session on mindfulness and practicing compassionate presence will be Jan. 19 at English Lutheran Church in La Crosse. Tom Roberts, psychotherapist and owner of Innerchange Counseling in Onalaska, Wis., will present the free session from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. To register, call (608) 784-9335.

Enneagram and spirituality for couples: Eric Wheeler will discuss the use of enneagram for couples from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Feb. 23 at English Lutheran Church. To register for this free session, call (608) 784-9335.

Spiritual guidance and meditation: Sister Mary Kathryn Fogarty will present a free program on spiritual guidance and meditation from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Feb. 7 at the Center for Health and Healing in the Franciscan Skemp Onalaska Clinic. For more information or to sign up, call (608) 392-4172 or 1-800-362-5454.

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