Can vitamin D reduce the risk of a severe asthma attack?

In our day to day lives, during the times when we are deciding what to eat or whether to watch TV or take a walk, who is more likely to be around us, our family, friends, flat mates or a doctor?  Even for individuals living with a chronic condition who will probably only spend a few hours a year with medical professionals compared to the thousands of waking hours with family and friends. Recently researches discovered that women are more likely to survive breast cancer if they have a strong social network of friends and family, whereas those who are more isolated are twice as likely to die of the disease. University of Pennsylvania have found that good health is more likely if people see fewer doctors and more of their family and friends especially if they get their support and help.  They discovered that people are more likely to make healthier choices - like going for a walk over watching TV if they are around family and friends.  In addition people are more likely to go to the gym if they have someone to go with. Being part of a group e.g. family, friends, book club, tennis club, social group, religious/spiritual practice seems to aid our motivation to be healthier in terms of diet, exercise, smoking or drinking.  This could be because being part of a group enhances your sense of meaning in life, which in turn leads you to better take care of yourself.  Or it could be down to feeling a sense of responsibility towards other or even just wanting to fit in. References D A. Asch, and R Rosin, Engineering Social Incentives for Health, N Engl J Med 2016; 375:2511-2513 Kroenke, C. H., Michael, Y. L., Poole, E. M., Kwan, M. L., Nechuta, S., Leas, E., Caan, B. J., Pierce, J., Shu, X.-O., Zheng, Y. and Chen, W. Y. (2017), Postdiagnosis social networks and breast cancer mortality in the After Breast Cancer Pooling Project. Cancer, 123: 1228–1237. doi:10.1002/cncr.30440 Tarrant, M., Warmoth, K., Code, C., Dean, S., Goodwin, V. A., Stein, K., & Sugavanam, T. (2016). Creating psychological connections between intervention recipients: development and focus group evaluation of a group singing session for people with aphasia. BMJ Open, 6(2), e009652.  

Researchers in Iran conducted a randomised control trail to see if reflexology could assist patients undergoing haemodialysis with their nausea.  Haemodialysis is a way of replacing some of the functions of your kidney, if your kidneys have failed, by using a machine to filter and clean your blood. 72 patients were assigned to either an intervention group or control group.  The control group received a foot massage.  The intervention group received 30-minute reflexology treatments once per day for 12 days, one hour after haemodialysis.  The patients were asked to complete a questionnaire to assess the severity of the nausea 15 minutes after the intervention each day. The results showed differences between the groups after treatment, with the severity of the nausea significantly lower in the reflexology group. There are may different causes of nausea including viruses, medication, anxiety, pregnancy & haemodialysis. It is thought the reflexology may reduce the nausea indirectly by decreasing the related symptoms such as anxiety. Reference https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31383439

While in Part 2 we looked at the impact of healing (Reiki) energy on cells, yeast & animals, that is not the same as on human beings.  So in this post I want to share with you some of the research done on humans.  So I want to start with looking at physical factors... Krieger (1975) carried out four experiments with the intention of raising blood haemoglobin levels in patients. The technique of Therapeutic Touch (similar to Reiki) was used, with Oscar Estebany being the healer in the first three experiments and nurses trained in the method in the fourth. Significant differences in blood haemoglobin levels were obtained in:

• 43 healed patients as against 33 controls
• 46 healed patients as compared to 33 controls, where the groups were more carefully matched