Meditative and Mindfulness-Focused Interventions in Neurology: Principles, Science, and Patient Selection.

A growing body of research suggests that meditative- and mindfulness-focused interventions may improve neuropsychiatric symptoms that commonly occur in a range of neurological disorders. In this article, the principles of meditation and mindfulness are first defined, as well as briefly describing the neurobiological mechanisms implicated in these interventions. Thereafter, a range of meditative- and mindfulness-focused interventions are detailed, along with their supporting evidence to treat neuropsychiatric symptoms in neurological conditions (e.

SEAttle-based Research of Chinese Herbs for COVID-19 Study: A Whole Health Perspective on Chinese Herbal Medicine for Symptoms that may be Related to COVID-19.

Introduction: East Asian Medicine (EAM) is a Whole System medicine that includes Chinese herbal medicine (CHM). Chinese herbal medicine has been utilized to reduce symptom burden in infectious disease, with notable theoretical reformulations during pandemics of the 3rd, 13th, and 17th centuries. Today, Licensed Acupuncturists trained in CHM have utilized it to treat symptoms and sequelae of COVID-19.

The 1-Year Economic Impact of Work Productivity Loss Following Severe Lower Extremity Trauma.

Background: Severe lower extremity trauma among working-age adults is highly consequential for returning to work; however, the economic impact attributed to injury has not been fully quantified. The purpose of this study was to examine work and productivity loss during the year following lower extremity trauma and to calculate the economic losses associated with lost employment, lost work time (absenteeism), and productivity loss while at work (presenteeism).

Methods: This is an analysis of data collected prospectively across 3 multicenter studies of lower extremity trauma outcomes in the United States.

Stress Measurement in Primary Care: Conceptual Issues, Barriers, Resources, and Recommendations for Study.

Objective: Exposure to stressors in daily life and dysregulated stress responses are associated with increased risk for a variety of chronic mental and physical health problems, including anxiety disorders, depression, asthma, heart disease, certain cancers, and autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorders. Despite this fact, stress exposure and responses are rarely assessed in the primary care setting and infrequently targeted for disease prevention or treatment.

Method: In this narrative review, we describe the primary reasons for this striking disjoint between the centrality of stress for promoting disease and how rarely it is assessed by summarizing the main conceptual, measurement, practical, and reimbursement issues that have made stress difficult to routinely measure in primary care.

Streamlining Trauma Research Evaluation With Advanced Measurement (STREAM) Study: Implementation of the PROMIS Toolbox Within an Orthopaedic Trauma Clinical Trials Consortium.

Prognostic Level II.

Early Advanced Weight-Bearing After Periarticular Fractures: A Randomized Trial Comparing Antigravity Treadmill Therapy Versus Standard of Care.

In current clinical practice, weight-bearing is typically restricted for up to 12 weeks after definitive fixation of lower extremity periarticular fractures. However, muscle atrophy resulting from restricting weight-bearing has a deleterious effect on bone healing and overall limb function. Antigravity treadmill therapy may improve recovery by allowing patients to safely load the limb during therapy, thereby reducing the negative consequences of prolonged non-weight-bearing while avoiding complications associated with premature return to full weight-bearing.

Cognitive-Behavioral-Based Physical Therapy for Improving Recovery After Traumatic Orthopaedic Lower Extremity Injury (CBPT-Trauma).

Physical and psychological impairment resulting from traumatic injuries is often significant and affects employment and functional independence. Extremity trauma has been shown to negatively affect long-term self-reported physical function, the ability to work, and participation in recreational activities and contributes to increased rates of anxiety and/or depression. High pain levels early in the recovery process and psychosocial factors play a prominent role in recovery after traumatic lower extremity injury.

From Self-Esteem to Selflessness: An Evidence (Gap) Map of Self-Related Processes as Mechanisms of Mindfulness-Based Interventions.

Self-related processes (SRPs) have been theorized as key mechanisms of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), but the evidence supporting these theories is currently unclear. This evidence map introduces a comprehensive framework for different types of SRPs, and how they are theorized to function as mechanisms of MBIs (target identification). The evidence map then assesses SRP target engagement by mindfulness training and the relationship between target engagement and outcomes (target validation).

Beyond Professional Licensure: A Statement of Principle on Culturally-Responsive Healthcare.

This work calls on healthcare institutions and organizations to move toward inclusive recognition and representation of healthcare practitioners whose credibility is established both inside and outside of professional licensure mechanisms. Despite professional licensure's advantages, this credentialing mechanism has in many cases served to reinforce unjust sociocultural power relations in relation to ethnicity and race, class and gender. To foster health equity and the delivery of culturally-responsive care, it is essential that mechanisms other than licensure be recognized as legitimate pathways for community accountability, safety and quality assurance.

A brief screening tool for depression in psoriasis patients: The Two Questions Test in clinical practice.

Patients suffering from chronic inflammatory diseases such as psoriasis are prone to develop depressive symptoms. However, within the time constraints of dermatological clinics, depressive symptoms in psoriasis patients are often overlooked and thus underdiagnosed. The Two Questions Test may serve as a quick screening tool for an initial assessment of depressive burden in these patients.

Using 360-degree videos for virtual reality exposure in CBT for panic disorder with agoraphobia: a feasibility study.

Background: Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for panic disorder with agoraphobia (PDA). However, implementation of some of the procedures involved, particularly in vivo exposure, can be time consuming and taxing for routine health care services. CBT with exposure taking place in virtual reality (VR-CBT) is a more time-efficient option and has shown promising results in the treatment of PDA.

"Housing Is Health Care": Treating Homelessness in Safety-net Hospitals.

As medicine integrates social and structural determinants into health care, some health workers redefine housing as medical treatment. This article discusses how health workers in two U.S.

Back to the future of psychoneuroimmunology: Studying inflammation-induced sickness behavior.

What do we know about sickness behavior? In this article, I guide you through some of the complexity of sickness behavior occurring after an immune challenge. I highlight the many features of behavioral and affective changes induced during experimental endotoxemia in humans, and describe how little we know about many of these features. I argue that we need to dismantle the components of inflammation-induced sickness behavior, and study each component in detail.

A Preliminary Investigation of ERP Components of Attentional Bias in Anxious Adults using Temporospatial Principal Component Analysis.

Threat-related attention bias is thought to contribute to the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Dot-probe studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have indicated that several early ERP components are modulated by threatening and emotional stimuli in anxious populations, suggesting enhanced allocation of attention to threat and emotion at earlier stages of processing. However, ERP components selected for examination and analysis in these studies vary widely and remain inconsistent.

Hypnosis for Chronic Neuropathic Pain: A Scoping Review.

Objective: Neuropathic pain is complex and often refractory. Clinical hypnosis has emerged as a viable treatment for pain. This scoping review is the first comprehensive review of hypnosis for chronic neuropathic pain.

[The effect of treatment expectations on pruritus and skin pain].

Background: Patients' expectations in terms of the benefit of a treatment are key determinants of placebo responses and can affect the development and course of medical conditions as well as the efficacy and tolerability of active medical treatment. The mechanisms mediating these placebo and nocebo effects have been best described in the field of experimental pain and placebo analgesia. However, also in dermatology experimental and clinical studies demonstrate that different skin symptoms such as itch, skin pain and dermatologic diseases can be modulated by patients' expectations.

Assessment of Childbirth-Related PTSD: Psychometric Properties of the German Version of the City Birth Trauma Scale.

About 3-4% of women in community samples suffer from childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Surprisingly, the recently developed City Birth Trauma Scale (City BiTS) was the first diagnostic tool for childbirth-related PTSD covering DSM-5 criteria for PTSD. Since no questionnaire on childbirth-related PTSD is available in German, we aimed to validate a German translation of the City BiTS and to provide information on its psychometric properties.

Design of the Spine Pain Intervention to Enhance Care Quality And Reduce Expenditure Trial (SPINE CARE) study: Methods and lessons from a multi-site pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial.

Background: Low back and neck pain (together, spine pain) are among the leading causes of medical visits, lost productivity, and disability. For most people, episodes of spine pain are self-limited; nevertheless, healthcare spending for this condition is extremely high. Focusing care on individuals at high-risk of progressing from acute to chronic pain may improve efficiency.

Glioma: molecular signature and crossroads with tumor microenvironment.

In patients with glioblastoma, the average survival time with current treatments is short, mainly due to recurrences and resistance to therapy. This insufficient treatment success is, in large parts, due to the tremendous molecular heterogeneity of gliomas, which affects the overall prognosis and response to therapies and plays a vital role in gliomas' grading. In addition, the tumor microenvironment is a major player for glioma development and resistance to therapy.

Alternative Dietary Patterns for Americans: Low-Carbohydrate Diets.

The decades-long dietary experiment embodied in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) focused on limiting fat, especially saturated fat, and higher carbohydrate intake has coincided with rapidly escalating epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) that are contributing to the progression of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and other diet-related chronic diseases. Moreover, the lack of flexibility in the DGA as it pertains to low carbohydrate approaches does not align with the contemporary trend toward precision nutrition. We argue that personalizing the level of dietary carbohydrate should be a high priority based on evidence that Americans have a wide spectrum of metabolic variability in their tolerance to high carbohydrate loads.

Feasibility and acceptability of a Whole-Body hyperthermia (WBH) protocol.

Background: Whole-body hyperthermia (WBH) has shown promise as a non-pharmacologic treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD) in prior trials that used a medical (infrared) hyperthermia device. Further evaluation of WBH as a treatment for MDD has, however, been stymied by regulatory challenges.

Objective: We examined whether a commercially available infrared sauna device without FDA-imposed limitations could produce the degree of core body temperature (101.

Profile of subjective-objective sleep discrepancy in patients with insomnia and sleep apnea.

Study Objectives: Although subjective-objective sleep discrepancy has long been observed in patients with insomnia, the profiles of this discrepancy are poorly understood. Further, sleep discrepancy in insomnia with sleep comorbidities remains underexplored. We sought to better characterize sleep discrepancy among patient groups with and without insomnia and comorbid conditions such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).