Back Pain and Alternative Medicine

In a remarkable new set of guidelines, the prestigious American College of Physicians has recommended that doctors avoid opiods or any kind of medications for lower back pain as a first option, a departure from previous guidelines.

Instead, the guidelines suggest alternatives: yoga, acupuncture, massage therapy and cognitive behavior therapy, among others.

Lower back pain is incredibly common. It is in the top ten reasons why patients visit their doctors. Yet no is quite sure what causes it. Besides structural reasons, it is associated with smoking, obesity depression and anxiety. It can also be more complicated than that. “Our best understanding of low back pain is that it is a biopsychosocial condition—meaning that structural or anatomic causes play some role, but psychological and social factors also play a big role,” says Roger Chou, a professor at Oregon Health and Science University.

The report recommends over-the-counter medications only if the patient requests it. Opiods, now commonly prescribed, are discouraged as they have a high risk for addiction and accidental overdose. Dr. Morton Tavel, a clinical professor of medicine at the Indiana School of Medicine, recommends avoiding opiates entirely, as they don’t speed up recovery anyway.

This is not news to Nancy Servine of Moline, Illinois. She is seventy-six years old and uses her yoga practise to prevent pain. “The stretches like this are like you would get in therapy,” she says. “So my doctor says keep doing what you’re doing.”

Her instructor, Tricia Fuelling says that while it helps prevent pain, it also helps treat it. “You don’t get groggy side effects from yoga, you don’t have nausea or any of those, you can drive after doing yoga, where you can’t necessarily do that after taking medication.”

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of "The Yoga Zapper-A Novel," published by Books We Love Ltd.

www.yogazapper.com

Was Valentine a romantic hero? by Sheila Claydon

For more information about Sheila Claydon's books, or to purchase, visit her 

  Books We Love Author Page

As someone who writes romantic fiction, I thought it beholden upon me to write about St Valentine's Day when I realised it was my turn to blog on 14 February. After all, who doesn't secretly hope to receive a token of love on the one day of the year reserved for lovers. When I realised I didn't actually know much about St Valentine, I decided I had better find out. The result was not quite what I expected.

February has long been celebrated as a month of romance but why? Although the truth is hidden in the mists of time, the modern tradition of St Valentine’s Day is linked to christianity and ancient Rome. So who was Valentine and why was he made a saint? 

There are at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. One was a priest who lived in third century Rome at a time when Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage for young men because he thought single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families.  Valentine defied Claudius and continued to perform secret marriages for young lovers. When Claudius found out he ordered that he be put to death.

There is also the legend that Valentine was killed for helping Christians escape from harsh Roman prisons to rescue them from beatings and torture.

My favourite, however, is that an imprisoned Valentine sent the first valentine greeting himself when he fell in love with a young girl who visited him in jail, and who it is rumoured was his jailer's daughter. Before his death he supposedly wrote her a letter signed From your Valentine, the very same expression modern lovers use today. 

Whatever the truth behind the legends, they all describe Valentine as a sympathetic, heroic and romantic figure, and by the Middle Ages he was one of the most popular saints in England and France.

So is Valentine’s Day celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the St Valentine’s death or was the choice of date an attempt by the church to christianize the pagan celebration of Lupercalia, which took place on February 15 every year. Lupercalia was a pagan fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. 

Young women today wouldn't find being slapped with strips of goat's hide that had been dipped into sacrificial blood very romantic, but it worked for young Roman women who believed it would make them fertile for the rest of the year. According to legend, once slapped each girl would place her name in a community urn and wait for one of the city's bachelors to choose her to be his partner for the year. This didn't always end in marriage! 

When Lupercalia was finally outlawed at the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day. It was a long time before it became associated with love, however. In the Middle Ages, France and England believed that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which is definitely not the same.

The oldest known written valentine was penned in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. It is now part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England.

I am already sick of love, My very gentle Valentine,

Since for me you were born too soon,

And I for you was born too late.

God forgives him who has estranged

Me from you for the whole year.

I am already sick of love,

My very gentle Valentine.

Well might I have suspected that such a destiny,

Thus would have happened this day,

How much that Love would have commanded.

I am already sick of love, My very gentle Valentine.

In the UK Valentine’s Day gained popularity during 17th century, and by the  

middle of the 18th century the exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten 

notes was common.  Now, of course, printed cards are the usual way of sending  

Valentine’s Day greetings, but they are no less welcome for that.

Bride of my novel Romancing the Klondike by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

For more about Joan Donaldson-Yarmey's novels and to purchase visit her Books We Love author page

http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

www.joandonaldsonyarmey.com

 To celebrate Canada’s 150^th birthday Books We Love Ltd is publishing twelve historical novels, one for each of the ten provinces, one for the Yukon Territory, and one combining the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. We Canadian authors were asked to pick one of the provinces or territories to write about or to do the research on for a non-Canadian author. I chose the Yukon because I have been there twice and love the beauty and history of the territory. The following is a quick introduction to the bride of Romancing the Klondike.

Bride of Romancing the Klondike

It is 1896 and nineteen-year-old Pearl Owens is a modern young woman. She has given up the long, full skirts that were heavy and cumbersome, the corsets and petticoats that further limited her movement and the high-collared the dresses that forced her to hold her head high or even tilted back. She wears bloomers, styled after Turkish trousers, and ankle-length skirts.

     Pearls idols are Anna Leonowens and Annie “Londonderry” Choen Kopchovsky. In the 1860s, Anna Leonowens taught the wives, concubines, and children of the King of Siam, while during the years 1894-1895, Annie “Londonderry” Choen Kopchovsky became the first woman to travel around the world on a bicycle. She was testing a woman’s ability to look after herself.

     Pearl wants adventure just like her idols so she and her cousin, Emma, are on their way up the Yukon River to Fortymile. Pearl is on a trip to the north where she will be writing articles about the area for her hometown newspaper. The two women meet up with Sam Owens, Emma’s brother, and his two friends, Donald and Gordon, in Fortymile. The men, who have been searching for gold in the north for five years, have just returned from staking a claim on Rabbit Creek.

     Sam and his friends leave their cabin in Fortymile and move to their claims on what is now known as Bonanza Creek. Against Sam’s instructions Pearl and Emma follow them, setting up a tent on a bench at the mouth of the Klondike River overlooking the Yukon River.

     Pearl meets Joseph Ladue, the first man to ever set her heart aflutter, while Emma’s teenage feelings for Donald are rekindled. Pearl spends her time speaking with the men and women of the north and sketching the scenery for her articles. She writes about what it is like to be in the middle of a gold strike. She also describes the early development and growth of a town eventually known as Dawson.

     During the ten months they live in the north Pearl and Emma make friends, celebrate holidays, and suffer through tragedy. One of them finds love, one does not. Of the three men two get rich, one does not.