Propolis, the honeybee hive resin used by bees to patch up holes in hives, has been used for centuries as a natural remedy for conditions ranging from sore throats and allergies to burns and cancer. But its use has not gained widespread acceptance in the clinic due to scientific questions about its effect on cells.

Now, researchers have found that caffeic acid phenethyl ester, or CAPE, the compound isolated from bee propolis, halts early-stage prostate cancer.

“If you feed CAPE to mice daily, their tumors will stop growing. After several weeks, if you stop the treatment, the tumors will begin to grow again at their original pace,” said Richard B. Jones, PhD, assistant professor in the Ben May Department for Cancer Research and Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology and senior author of the study. “So it doesn’t kill the cancer, but it basically will indefinitely stop prostate cancer proliferation.”

Once proven safe and effective, it could be used alongside other therapies used to kill the tumor cells. But, more importantly, the CAPE experiments offer a precedent to unlock the biological mechanisms of other natural remedies as well, perhaps allowing these compounds to cross over to use in a clinic setting.

“A typical problem in bringing some of these herbal remedies into the clinic is that nobody knows how they act, nobody knows the mechanism, and therefore researchers are typically very hesitant to add them to any pharmaceutical treatment strategy,” Jones said. “Now we’ll actually be able to systematically demonstrate the parts of cell physiology that are affected by these compounds.”

Over the past decade, the use of music as medicine has been evolving into an accepted part of recovery programs at hospitals and clinics nationwide. As an adjunct to standard medical treatment, it is used primarily to reduce stress, ease pain, and reduce nausea. Now, researchers are linking certain types of music with enhancing the immune system.

Although the underlying mechanism of the effects of music on the immune system is not fully understood, researchers from Japan found that playing opera and classical music influenced the survival of heart transplants in mice. Both types of music increased the time before the transplanted organs failed, but single frequency monotones and new age music did not.

Some evidence points to music’s healing effects originating with the parasympathetic nervous system, which regulates the bodily functions that we have no conscious control over, including digestion. In this Japanese study, the research team pinpointed the immune system’s source of this protection specifically to the spleen.

Source: Auditory stimulation of opera music induced prolongation of murine cardiac allograft survival and maintained generation of regulatory CD4+CD25+ cells; Masateru Uchiyama, Xiangyuan Jin, Qi Zhang, Toshihito Hirai, Atsushi Amano, Hisashi Bashuda and Masanori Niimi; Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery

According to Heaton’s research, Shakespeare was a master at portraying profound emotional upset in the physical symptoms of his characters, and many modern-day doctors would do well to study the Bard to better understand the mind-body connection, concludes an analysis of Dr. Heaton’s works, published in Medical Humanities.

Shakespeare focused on portraying psychosomatic symptoms in characters expressing profound emotions significantly more common than in works by other authors of the time.

For instance, fatigue brought about by emotional distress was exhibited by numerous characters, most notably in “Hamlet”, “The Merchant of Venice”, “As You Like It”, “Richard II” and “Henry IV” part 2.

“Shakespeare’s perception that numbness and enhanced sensation can have a psychological origin seems not to have been shared by his contemporaries, none of whom included such phenomena in the works examined,” writes Dr. Heaton.

“Many doctors are reluctant to attribute physical symptoms to emotional disturbance, and this results in delayed diagnosis, overinvestigation, and inappropriate treatment,” he writes.

The hypnosis was performed on breast cancer and thyroid patients. ”In all of these procedures local anaesthesia is feasible but not, on its own, sufficient to ensure patient comfort,” says Professor Roelants from the Department of Anaesthesiology at the Cliniques Universitaires St. Luc, UCL, Brussels, Belgium.

“In addition to reducing drug use and hospital stay time, being able to avoid general anaesthesia in breast cancer surgery is important because we know that local anaesthesia can block the body’s stress response to surgery and could therefore reduce the possible spread of metastases,” said Professor Roelants.

The anesthesiologists use eye fixation, progressive muscle relaxation, or the retrieval of a pleasant memory to focus a patient’s attention on one particular point, enabling a modified state of consciousness, with a different perception of the world.

“There is still a lot of debate around the exact mechanism that allows hypnosis to reduce pain perception,” said Professor Roelants,” but what it absolutely clear is that it does so. The result is that one third of thyroidectomies and a quarter of all breast cancer surgery carried out at the UCL hospital are performed under local anaesthetic with the patient under hypnosis.”

The anesthesiologists have confirmed that, regardless of sex or age, and if the patient is motivated, ready to co-operate, and trusts the doctors, hypnosis will work. It can also be applied to surgical patients who undergo carotid artery surgery, inguinal hernia, knee arthroscopy, gynaecological surgery, ophthalmology, ear nose and throat, plastic surgery and egg retrieval for fertility treatment.

The research findings were presented June 12, 2011 at the European Anaesthesiology Congress in Amsterdam.

The MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas provided findings on 163 women with breast cancer as part of a study to assess the benefits of yoga vs. simple stretching exercises. The study is part of an ongoing effort to scientifically validate the age-old belief that mind-body interventions have a beneficial impact on the health of cancer patients. The research was conducted in collaboration with India’s largest yoga research institution, Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana in Bangalore, India.

In the study of 163 breast cancer patients, those who completed radiation treatment and participated in the yoga and stretching groups were the only women to report a reduction in fatigue. They also had the steepest decline in their cortisol levels throughout the day. This is one of the more important findings, since higher stress hormone levels across the day, known as a blunted circadian cortisol rhythm, have been linked to worse outcomes in breast cancer.

According to Lorenzo Cohen, PhD, professor and director of the Integrative Medicine Program at MD Anderson, developing a yoga practice also helps patients after completing cancer treatment. “The transition from active therapy back to everyday life can be very stressful as patients no longer receive the same level of medical care and attention. Teaching patients a mind-body technique like yoga as a coping skill can make the transition less difficult.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s data used for the study suggest that praying increased among those not only with chronic health problems but also with an acute health issue to cope with their changing circumstances. The groups of people more likely to pray about their health included females, African-Americans, those of the lowest income status, the well educated, and people who exercise less.

While the study didn’t indicate which types of prayer people used, lead author Amy Wachholtz, PhD, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School said: “There is also a greater public awareness of Buddhist-based mindfulness practices that can include prayerful meditation, which individuals may also be using to address a variety of health concerns.”

“We’re seeing a wide variety of prayer use among people with good income and access to medical care,” Wachholtz said. “People are not exchanging health insurance for prayer.”

The article appears in the May issue of the APA journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.

“There’s good evidence to support using mind-body therapies clinically,” said lead author Aditi Nerurkar, MD, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Harvard Medical School and BIDMC. “Still, we didn’t expect to see provider referral rates that were quite so high.”

The study shows that attitudes about healing are changing and that the use of complementary medicine is on the rise. This is especially true for patients who are sicker and are seeking alternatives to their failed traditional treatments.

“What we learned suggests that providers are referring their patients for mind-body therapies as a last resort once conventional therapeutic options have failed. It makes us wonder whether referring patients for these therapies earlier in the treatment process could lead to less use of the health care system, and possibly, better outcomes for these patients,” said Nerurkar.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is currently evaluating a drug for its ability to protect against radiation sickness, but it is difficult to make in large amounts, and the drug has side-effects that prevent its use for cancer patients. To overcome these disadvantages, Michael Epperly, Kazunori Koide and colleagues originally studied whether resveratrol — a natural and healthful antioxidant found in many foods — could protect against radiation injuries, but found it didn’t offer the same level of protection that acetyl resveratrol does. The scientists caution that it has not yet been determined whether acetyl resveratrol is effective when orally administered. The report appears in ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters.

“Tai chi appears to be a safe alternative to low-to-moderate intensity conventional exercise training in patients with HF,” says Gloria Yeh, MD, MPH, a physician in Division of General Medicine And Primary Care at BIDMC and an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Research and Education in Complimentary and Integrative Medical Therapies at Harvard Medical School.

“Tai chi is safe and has a good rate of adherence and may provide value in improving daily exercise, quality of life, self-efficacy and mood in frail, deconditioned patients with systolic heart failure.”

The ancient Chinese exercise has already been suggested to be helpful for a variety of medical issues, including hypertension, balance, and musculoskeletal disease, including fibromyalgia.

The study’s results showed that daily consumption of green tea polyphenols (GTP), about 4-6 cups per day, and participation in tai chi independently enhanced markers of bone health by three and six months, respectively. A similar effect was found for muscle strength at the six-month time point. Participants taking tai chi classes also reported significant beneficial effects in quality of life in terms of improving their emotional and mental health. Perhaps most remarkable, however, was the substantial effect that both GTP and tai chi had on biological markers of oxidative stress. Because oxidative stress is a main precursor to inflammation, this finding suggests that green tea and tai chi may help reduce the underlying etiology of not only osteoporosis, but other inflammatory diseases as well.