BIOTHERAPY

Biotherapy is the use of living animals for medical treatment or as an adjunct to medical diagnosis.

Biotherapy encompasses ,among other things, maggot therapy (maggot debridement therapy, larva therapy), leech therapy (hirudotherapy), honey bee therapy (apitherapy), ichthiotherapy (fish therapy), pet therapy, detection dogs, medical response dogs, phage therapy, and helminthic therapy (worm therapy).

Maggots, leeches & fish have been used to save limbs & lives. Dogs can detect cancer, alert to medical problems, and raise the spirits. Bee venom has been reported to help in neurological and musculoskeletal diseases.

Maggot Therapy

Maggot therapy (also known as Maggot Debridement Therapy (MDT), larval therapy, larva therapy, or larvae therapy) is a type of biotherapy involving the intentional introduction by a health care practitioner of live, disinfected maggots (fly larvae) into the non-healing skin and soft tissue wound(s) of a human or animal for the purpose of selectively cleaning out only the necrotic (dead) tissue within a wound in order to promote wound healing.

History of Maggot Therapy

Written records have documented that maggots have been used since antiquity as a wound treatment.There are reports of the successful use of maggots for wound healing by Mayan Indians and Aboriginal tribes in Australia. There also have been reports of the use of maggot treatment in the Renaissance times. During warfare, many military physicians observed that soldiers whose wounds had become colonized with maggots experienced significantly less morbidity and mortality than soldiers whose wounds had not become colonized. These physicians included Napoleon’s surgeon general, Baron Dominique Larrey, who reported during France's Egyptian campaign in Syria, 1829, that certain species of fly destroyed only dead tissue and had a positive effect on wound healing.

Dr. Joseph Jones, a ranking Confederate medical officer during the American Civil War, is quoted as follows, "I have frequently seen neglected wounds ... filled with maggots ... as far as my experience extends, these worms only destroy dead tissues, and do not injure specifically the well parts." The first therapeutic use of maggots is credited to a second Confederate medical officer Dr. J.F. Zacharias, who reported during the American Civil War that, "Maggots ... in a single day would clean a wound much better than any agents we had at our command ... I am sure I saved many lives by their use. " He recorded a high survival rate in patients he treated with maggots.

Clinical Experience of Maggot Therapy

With the advent of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, Dr. Ronald Sherman, a physician presently at the University of California, Irvine, successfully re-introduced maggot therapy into the armamentarium of modern medical care as a safe and effective therapy. In 1989, he set up fly breeding facilities at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Beach, California, in order to use maggots for the treatment of wounds. That year, he initiated the first prospective controlled clinical trial of maggot therapy in spinal cord patients with pressure ulcers using a Paralyzed Veterans of America grant. The successes of this clinical trial in patients who had failed two or more courses of conventional wound care were published and generated significant international attention to maggot therapy. The therapeutic maggot used by Dr. Ronald Sherman is a strain of the green bottle fly (Phaenicia sericata) and marketed as "Medical Maggots".

Hirudotherapy(leech therapy)

Medicinal leeches are any of a group of several species of leeches but most commonly Hirudo medicinalis or the European Medical Leech.
Other species sometimes referred to as Medical Leeches include (but are not limited to): Hirudo verbana, Macrobdella decora (North American Medical Leech), Hirudo troctina, Hirudo orientalis and Hirudinaria manillensis (Asian Medicinal Leech).

Morphology

General morphology follows that most other leeches. Fully mature adults can be up to 20cm in length and are green, brown or greenish brown with a darker tone on the dorsal side and a lighter ventral side, the dorsal side also has a thin red stripe. These organisms have two suckers, one at each end, called the anterior and posterior sucker. The posterior is mainly used for leverage while the anterior sucker, consisting of the jaw and teeth, is where the feeding takes place. Medicinal leeches have three jaws (tripartite) that look like little saws, and on them are about 100 sharp teeth used to incise the host. The incision leaves a mark which is an inverted Y inside of a circle. After piercing the skin and injecting anti-coagulants (Hirudin) and anaesthetics they suck out blood. Large adults can consume up to 15 grams of blood in a single meal. Medicinal leeches are hermaphrodites which reproduce by sexual mating, laying eggs in clutches of up to 50 near (but not under) water, and in shaded, humid places.

Apitherapy

Apitherapy is the medical use of honey bee products. This can include the use of honey, pollen, propolis, royal jelly, and bee venom.
Most claims of apitherapy have not been proved to the scientific standards of evidence-based medicine and are anecdotal in nature. A wide variety of conditions and diseases have been suggested as candidates for apitherapy, the most well-known being bee venom therapy for autoimmune diseases and multiple sclerosis.

History of Apitherapy

The exact origins of apitherapy are difficult to pinpoint and can be traced back, in a general sense, to ancient Egypt, Greece and China. Use of honey and other bee products can be traced back thousands of years and healing properties are included in many religious texts including the Veda, Bible and Quran. These are mostly attributed to nutritional benefits of consumption of bee-products and not use of bee venom.
The more modern study of apitherapy, specifically bee venom, was initiated through the efforts of Austrian physician Phillip Terc in his published results "Report about a Peculiar Connection Between the Beestings and Rheumatism" in 1888. More recent popularity can be drawn to Charles Mraz (1905-1999) a beekeeper from Vermont, United States over the past 60 years.(Also see Bodog Beck, M.D.)

Clinical Practice of Apitherapy

While 'Apitherapy' encompasses use or consumption of bee products, the most commonly associated is bee venom therapy and not the consumption of honey or other bee products.
Bee venom therapy is claimed to be of use in arthritis, bursitis, tendonitis, dissolving scar tissue (e.g. keloids), Herpes zoster (shingles), etc.
The most abundant active component of the venom is melittin, which has a powerful anti-inflammatory action. However, bee venom is a complex mix of a variety of peptides and proteins, some of which have strong neurotoxic and immunogenic effects.
There is no standardized practice as some proport the location of the sting is important and is likely a combination of acupuncture. Others report the location is not important. Number of stings also varies wildly from a few to hundreds and some are administered by live bees and others by injection. Extreme caution should be used before considering this, as anaphylactic shock can be fatal.

Pet Therapy

A medical response dog is a specific type of service dog specifically trained to help mitigate an individual's medical disability. Typically, they are dogs whose job does not handle primarily epilepsy or psychiatric-based conditions, though some seizure response dogs or psychiatric service dogs may also be referred to as medical response.
Many medical response dogs "alert" their handlers to conditions before they occur. For example, service dogs partnered with diabetic persons may be trained to detect when the handler's blood sugar becomes too high or low . In addition to or in the absence of this training, medical response dogs are also often trained skills to help in their handlers' symptoms, such as bringing medications or a telephone, providing bracing and other mobility assistance, or any other number of tasks .

A detection dog is a dog that is trained to and works at using its senses (almost always the sense of smell) to detect substances such as explosives, illegal drugs or blood. They are often known as sniffer dogs. Hunting dogs that search for game and search dogs that search for missing humans are generally not considered detection dogs. There is some overlap in cases like cadaver dogs that detect human remains.

Phage Therapy

Phage therapy is the therapeutic use of lytic bacteriophages to treat pathogenic bacterial infections. Bacteriophages, or "phages" are viruses that invade only bacterial cells and, in the case of lytic phages, cause the bacterium to burst and die, thus releasing more phages. Phage therapy is a potential alternative to antibiotics. After having been extensively used and developed mainly in former Soviet Union countries for about 90 years, some phage therapies are now becoming tested on an experimental basis in other countries such as USA for a variety of bacterial and poly-microbial biofilm infections. Phage therapy has many potential applications in human medicine as well as dentistry, veterinary science and agriculture.

An important theoretical benefit of phage therapy is that bacteriophages can be much more specific than more common drugs, so can be chosen to be harmless to not only the host organism (human, animal or plant), but also other beneficial bacteria, such as gut flora, reducing the chances of opportunistic infections. They also have few if any side effects as opposed to drugs, and do not stress the liver. Because they replicate in vivo, a single, small dose is sometimes sufficient.On the other hand this specificity is also a disadvantage, a phage will only kill a bacterium if it is a match to the specific subspecies; thus phage mixtures are often applied to improve the chances of success, or samples can be taken and an appropriate phage identified and grown.

History of Phage Therapy

Following the discovery of bacteriophages by Frederick Twort and Felix d'Hérelle in 1915 and 1917, phage therapy was immediately recognized by many to be a key way forward for the eradication of bacterial infections. A Georgian, George Eliava, was making similar discoveries. He travelled to the Pasteur Institute in Paris where he met d'Hérelle, and in 1926 he founded the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia devoted to the development of phage therapy.
In neighbouring countries including Russia, extensive research and development soon began in this field. In the USA during the 1940s, commercialization of phage therapy was undertaken by the large pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly.
Whilst knowledge was being accumulated regarding the biology of phages and how to use phage cocktails correctly, early uses of phage therapy were often unreliable. When antibiotics were discovered in 1941 and marketed widely in the USA and Europe, Western scientists mostly lost interest in further use and study of phage therapy for some time.

Isolated from Western advances in antibiotic production in the 1940s, Russian scientists continued to develop already successful phage therapy to treat the wounds of soldiers in field hospitals. During World War II, the Soviet Union used bacteriophages to treat many soldiers infected with various bacterial diseases e.g. dysentery and gangrene. The success rate was as good as, if not better than any antibiotic.Russian researchers continued to develop and to refine their treatments and to publish their research and results. However, due to the scientific barriers of the Cold War, this knowledge was not translated and did not proliferate across the world.

Benefit of Phage Therapy

A clear benefit of phage therapy is that it does not have the potentially very severe adverse effects of antibiotics. Also it can be fast-acting, once the exact bacteria are identified and the phages administered. Another benefit of phage therapy is that although bacteria are able to develop resistance to phages the resistance is much easier to overcome. The reason behind this is that phages replicate and undergo natural selection and have probably been infecting bacteria since the beginning of life on this planet. Although bacteria evolve at a fast rate, so too will phages. Being smaller, they can mutate faster. Bacteria are most likely to modify the molecule that the phage targets, such as a cell surface glycoprotein, which is usually a bacterial receptor. In response to this modification, phages will evolve in such a way that counteracts this change, thus allowing them to continue targeting bacteria and causing cell lysis. As a consequence phage therapy is devoid of problems similar to antibiotic resistance.
Bacteriophages are often very specific, targeting only one or a few strains of bacteria. Traditional antibiotics usually have more wide-ranging effect, killing both harmful bacteria and useful bacteria such as those facilitating food digestion. The specificity of bacteriophages reduces the chance that useful bacteria are killed when fighting an infection.

Helminthic Therapy

Helminthic therapy is the treatment of autoimmune diseases and immunological disorders by means of deliberate infection with a helminth or with the ova of a helminth. Helminths are parasitic worms, or nematodes, such as hookworms. Helminthic therapy is currently being studied as a promising treatment for several (non-viral) auto-immune diseases including Crohn's disease,Multiple Sclerosis, asthma, and Ulcerative colitis.Autoimmune liver disease has also been demonstrated to be modulated by active helminth infections.

In addition to the treatment of autoimmune disorders the anti inflammatory effects of helminth infection are creating interest and research into diseases that involve inflammation but that are not currently considered to include autoimmunity as a component. Heart disease and arteriosclerosis both have similar epidemiological profiles as autoimmune diseases and both involve inflammation. Nor can their increase be solely attributed to environmental factors. Recent research has focused on the eradication of helminths to explain this discrepancy.

The therapy involves inoculation of the patient with specific parasitic intestinal nematodes (helminths). There are currently two closely related treatments available, either inoculation with Necator americanus, commonly known as hookworms, or Trichuris Suis Ova, commonly known as Pig Whipworm Eggs.

Relative efficacy and side effects of Helminthic Therapy

The potential benefits of Helminthic Therapy are even more startling when taken in the context of the success rates and side-effects experienced by people on currently accepted medications that are immune-modulating and or anti-inflammatory. Success rates for helminthic therapy, as measured by the number of people achieving remission range from 56% for Ulcerative Colitis using TSO as the helminth, 72% for Crohn's using TS, and 100% for Crohn's disease using hookworm. Contrast that with the remission rates for the new biologicals as described below, in one study sponsored by the drug maker, Humira achieved only a 52% remission rate in Crohn's patients. As well, side effects of helminthic therapies are not universal and are temporary, usually lasting only two to four weeks. They consist of abdominal pain, cramping, gas, diarrhea and fatigue. The side effects of conventional immune-modulating drugs, such as Beta-interferon and Remicade, or of anti-inflammatories such prednisone, are much more severe and potentially harmful. As with any immunosuppressive therapies patients using helminthic therapy are likely to be more susceptible to certain infectious diseases.

Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive Therapy (CT) is a type of psychotherapy developed by psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck in the 1960s. Becoming disillusioned with long-term psychodynamic approaches based on gaining insight into unconscious emotions and drives, Beck came to the conclusion that the way in which his clients perceived and interpreted and attributed meaning—a process known scientifically as cognition—in their daily lives was a key to therapy. Albert Ellis was working on similar ideas from a different perspective, in developing his rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT). Beck initially focused on depression and developed a list of "errors" in thinking that he proposed could cause or maintain depression, including arbitrary inference, selective abstraction, over-generalization, and magnification (of negatives) and minimization (of positives). Cognitive therapy seeks to identify and change "distorted" or "unrealistic" ways of thinking, and therefore to influence emotion and behaviour.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

A Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a psychotherapy based on modifying cognitions, assumptions, beliefs and behaviors, with the aim of influencing disturbed emotions. The general approach, developed out of behavior modification, Cognitive Therapy and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, has become widely used to treat various kinds of neuroses and psychopathology, including mood disorders and anxiety disorders. The particular therapeutic techniques vary according to the particular kind of client or issue, but commonly include keeping a diary of significant events and associated feelings, thoughts and behaviors; questioning and testing cognitions, assumptions, evaluations and beliefs that might be unhelpful and unrealistic; gradually facing activities which may have been avoided; and trying out new ways of behaving and reacting. Relaxation and distraction techniques are also commonly included. CBT is widely accepted as an evidence- and empiricism-based, cost-effective psychotherapy for many disorders and psychological problems. It is sometimes used with groups of people as well as individuals, and the techniques are also commonly adapted for self-help manuals and, increasingly, for self-help software packages.

Group Psychotherapy

Group psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy during which one or several therapists treat a small group of clients together as a group. Although initially adopted to decrease costs and increase efficiency, practitioners soon recognized a number of positive therapeutic benefits that could not be gained from one-on-one therapies. Group therapy often consists of "talk" therapy, but may also include other therapeutic forms than such as expressive therapy, psychodrama, and even non-"talk" types of therapy, such as the TaKeTiNa Rhythm Process.

In group therapy the interactions between the members of the group and the therapists become the material with which the therapy is conducted, alongside past experiences and experiences outside the therapeutic group. These interactions are not necessarily as positive as reported as above, as the problems which the client experiences in daily life will also show up in his or her interactions in the group. Nevertheless, this allows such problems to be worked through in a therapeutic setting, generating experiences which may be translated to "real life." Group therapy is not based on a single psychotherapeutic theory, but takes from many what works.

Occupational Therapy

Occupational therapy refers to the use of meaningful occupation to assist people who have difficulty in achieving a healthy and balanced lifestyle; and to enable an inclusive society so that all people can participate to their potential in daily occupations of life.Occupational Therapists & Occupational Therapy Assistants work with a variety of individuals who have difficulty accessing or performing meaningful occupations.

Most commonly, Occupational Therapists & Occupational Therapy Assistants work with people with disabilities to enable them to maximize their skills and abilities. Occupational therapy gives people the "skills for the job of living" necessary for living meaningful and satisfying lives.

History of Occupational Therapy

Occupational therapy began as a profession in the United States in 1917 with the founding of the Society for the Promotion of Occupational Therapy (now, The American Occupational Therapy Association, Inc.). The creation of the society was impelled by a belief in the curative properties of human occupation (or everyday purposeful activity). It had previously been employed as part of the moral treatment movement in the large state supported institutions for mental illness that were widespread in the United States. Occupational therapy has played a prominent role in epidemics, providing treatment for patients with tuberculosis, polio, and HIV/AIDS. In 1975, following the enactment of legislation known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142), thousands of occupational therapists were employed by public schools to provide therapeutic services (known as related services) to enable children with disabilities to participate in regular school settings. Originally, therapists from approved training programs were certified, or registered by the American Occupational Therapy Association. A baccalaureate degree was required for certification beginning in the 1940s. Fifty years later, accredited programs were required to be at the Master's degree level. The 1990s saw the evolution of doctoral programs in occupational therapy. Educational programs in occupational therapy are now accredited by the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education, and national certification is granted under the auspices of the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy. More recently, a new discipline within occupational therapy has opened up known as occupational science. Many students in 5-year masters program now receive their undergraduate degree in this discipline and go on to receive a Masters degree in occupational therapy during their 5th year.

Rehabilitation(neuropsychology)

Rehabilitation of sensory and cognitive function typically involves methods for retraining neural pathways or training new neural pathways to regain or improve neurocognitive functioning that has been diminished by disease or traumatic injury.

Methods of Rehabilitation
Speech therapy, occupational therapy, and other methods that "exercise" specific brain functions are used. For example eye-hand coordination exercises may rehabilitate certain motor deficits, or well structured planning and organizing exercises might help rehabilitate certain frontal lobe "executive functions" of the brain following a traumatic blow to the head.
Brain functions that are impaired because of traumatic brain injuries are often the most challenging and difficult to rehabilitate. Much work is being done in nerve regeneration for the most severely damaged neural pathways.

Stroke Recovery

Stroke rehabilitation, or, in more optimistic terms, stroke recovery, is the process by which patients with disabling strokes undergo treatment to help them return to normal life as much as possible by regaining and relearning the skills of everyday living. It is multidisciplinary in that it involves a team with different skills working together to help the patient. These include nursing staff, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and usually a physician trained in rehabilitation medicine. Some teams may also include psychologists and social workers and pharmacists. Patients may demand access to state of the art treatment with the help of their own doctor.
For most stroke patients, the rehabilitation process includes nursing, occupational therapy (OT), physical therapy (PT), therapeutic recreation (TR) and speech therapy (or speech language therapy, SLP). OT involves exercise and training to help the stroke patient relearn everyday activities, sometimes called the Activities of daily living (ADLs), such as eating and drinking, dressing, bathing, cooking, reading and writing, and toileting. Therapeutic recreation works on several areas including problem solving, improving movement and re-entry into the community through familiar, new, and adaptive leisure skills. Speech and language therapy is appropriate for patients who have problems understanding speech or written words, or problems forming speech. Speech therapists also assess a person's ability to safely swallow after a stroke.
The rehabilitation team have regular meetings at which the patient and family may be present to discuss the current situation and to set goals and to ensure effective communication. In most cases the desired goal is to enable the patient to return home to independent living, although this is not always possible.
Stroke rehabilitation can last from a few days up to several months. Most return of function is seen in the first few days and weeks and then falls off, if only traditional OT, PT, TR and SLP are used. In contrast, brain repair, neurogenesis, and neural rewiring can eventually be enhanced significantly medically long after this short therapeutic window.

Therapy

Therapy is the attempted remediation of a health problem, usually following a diagnosis. In the medical field, it is synonymous with the word "treatment".

Therapeutic Effect

A therapeutic effect is a consequence of a medical treatment, of any kind, the results of which are judged to be desirable and beneficial. This is true whether the result was expected, unexpected, or even an unintended consequence of the treatment.
What constitutes a therapeutic effect vs. a side effect is a matter of both the nature of the situation in which a treatment is used and the goals of treatment.

Adverse Effects

In addition to (or in place of) the intended therapatizing effect of a treatment, a therapatizer may cause undesired (adverse) effects as well. When an adverse effect is weaker than the therapeutic effect, it is commonly referred to as a "side effect". An adverse effect may result from an unsuitable or incorrect dosage or procedure (which could be due to medical error). Some adverse effects occur only when starting, increasing or discontinuing a treatment. Using a drug or other medical intervention which is contraindicated may increase the risk of adverse effects. Patients sometimes quit a therapy because of its adverse effects. The severity of adverse effects ranges from nausea to death. Common adverse effects include alteration in body weight, change in enzyme levels, loss of function, or pathological change detected at the microscopic, macroscopic or physiological level.
Adverse effects may cause a reversible or irreversible change, including an increase or decrease in the susceptibility of the individual to other chemicals, foods, or procedures.

Lists of Therapies

Adventure therapy
Animal-assisted therapy
Aromatherapy
Art therapy
Authentic Movement
Chemotherapy
Cognitive analytic therapy
Cognitive therapy
Coherence therapy
Colour therapy
Counseling
Craniosacral therapy
Dance therapy
Destructotherapy
Dialectical behavioral therapy
Diversional therapy
Drug therapy
Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy
Electroconvulsive therapy
Equine-assisted therapy
Family therapy
Gestalt therapy
Grief therapy
Group therapy
Hippotherapy‎
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy
Hypnotherapy
Immunosuppressive therapy
Information therapy
Interpersonal therapy
Intravenous therapy
Life enrichment therapy
Light therapy
Logotherapy
Magnet therapy
Manual therapy
Martial arts therapy
Massage therapy
Mesotherapy
Molecular reform therapy
Music therapy
Neurosis therapy
Occupational therapy
Phage therapy
Pharmacotherapy
Physical therapy
Physiotherapy
Play therapy
Psychotherapy
Psychosis therapy
Radiation therapy
Respiratory therapy
Recreational therapy
Reparative therapy
Sand play therapy
Sand tray therapy
Sex therapy
Shock therapy
Sociotherapy
Spasm therapy
Speech therapy
Therapeutic Lifestyle Change
Ventilation therapy

Medication

Medication is a medicine, drug or other substance used to prevent or cure disease or to relieve pain. Medication is often used to mean the act of administering medicine. Other synonyms include pharmacotherapy, pharmacotherapeutics and clinical pharmacology.

Types of Medication

For the gastrointestinal tract or digestive system
For the cardiovascular system
For the central nervous system
For pain & consciousness (analgesic drugs)
For musculo-skeletal disorders
For the eye
For the ear, nose and oropharynx
For the respiratory system
For endocrine problems
For the reproductive system or urinary system
For contraception
For obstetrics and gynecology
For the skin
For infections and infestations
For immunology
For allergic disorders
For nutrition
For neoplastic disorders
For diagnostics
For euthanasia

Nutraceutical

Nutraceutical, a portmanteau of nutrition and pharmaceutical, refers to extracts of foods claimed to have a medicinal effect on human health. The nutraceutical is usually contained in a medicinal format such as a capsule, tablet or powder in a prescribed dose.
More rigorously, nutraceutical implies that the extract or food is demonstrated to have a physiological benefit or provide protection against a chronic disease.
Functional foods are defined as being consumed as part of a usual diet but are demonstrated to have physiological benefits and/or reduce the risk of chronic disease beyond basic nutritional functions.

Examples of claims made for nutraceuticals are resveratrol from red grape products as an antioxidant, soluble dietary fiber products, such as psyllium seed husk for reducing hypercholesterolemia, broccoli (sulforaphane) as a cancer preventative, and soy or clover (isoflavonoids) to improve arterial health. Such claims are being researched and many citations are available via PubMed to ascertain their foundation of basic research.
However, among the above examples, only the effect provided by psyllium as a fiber product has been sufficiently documented in human clinical trials to receive approval by the United States Food and Drug Administration for health claim statements on product labels.

Other nutraceutical examples are flavonoids antioxidants, alpha-linolenic acid from flax seeds, beta-carotene from marigold petals, anthocyanins from berries, etc. With the US Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), several other compounds were added to the list of supplements originally mentioned in FDA notification. Thus, many botanical and herbal extracts such as ginseng, garlic oil, etc. have been developed as nutraceuticals.

Nutrification

Enriching or fortifying foods with nutrients is called nutrification. Food enrichment is the restoration of the natural nutritive value of a food before it was processed, while fortification is the adding of vitamins or minerals to a food at levels higher than it originally possessed, though "fortification" is commonly used to refer to both processes.

Functional foods, designer foods, and techno-foods, are foods that are manufactured by food companies in collaboration with sellers of dietary supplements, in order to produce products that they can promote as healthy. Techno-foods “refer to foods and beverages that have been fortified in some way to confer health benefits beyond the original nutritional value of the foods themselves."
Initially, fortification was used as a public health strategy in the United States to eradicate vitamin and mineral deficiencies. For example, through the addition of iodine to table salt, goiter, a thyroid gland dysfunction, is now very uncommon. Other examples include the addition of vitamin D to milk and fluoride to tap water.

Nutrition

Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary (in the form of food) to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with good nutrition.
The diet of an organism refers to what it eats. Dietitians are health professionals who specialize in human nutrition, meal planning, economics, preparation, and so on. They are trained to provide safe, evidence-based dietary advice and management to individuals (in health and disease), as well as to institutions.
Poor diet can have an injurious impact on health, causing deficiency diseases such as scurvy, beriberi, and kwashiorkor; health-threatening conditions like obesity and metabolic syndrome, and such common chronic systemic diseases as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. This usually includes increasing individual sense of well-being and reducing subjective discomforting experience. Psychotherapists employ a range of techniques based on experiential relationship building, dialogue, communication and behavior change and that are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships (such as in a family).

Forms of Psychotherapy

Most forms of psychotherapy use only spoken conversation, though some also use various other forms of communication such as the written word, artwork, drama, narrative story, music, or therapeutic touch. Psychotherapy occurs within a structured encounter between a trained therapist and client(s). Purposeful, theoretically based psychotherapy began in the 19th century with psychoanalysis; since then, scores of other approaches have been developed and continue to be created.
Therapy is generally used to respond to a variety of specific or non-specific manifestations of clinically diagnosable crises. Treatment of everyday problems is more often referred to as counseling (a distinction originally adopted by Carl Rogers) but the term is sometimes used interchangeably with "psychotherapy".
Psychotherapeutic interventions are often designed to treat the patient in the medical model, although not all psychotherapeutic approaches follow the model of "illness/cure". Some practitioners, such as humanistic schools, see themselves in an educational or helper role. Because sensitive topics are often discussed during psychotherapy, therapists are expected, and usually legally bound, to respect client or patient confidentiality.

System of Psychotherapy

There are several main systems of psychotherapy:

• Cognitive behavioral
• Psychodynamic
• Existential
• Humanistic/supportive
• Brief therapy (sometimes called "strategic" therapy, solution focused brief therapy)
• Systemic Therapy (including family therapy & marriage counseling)
• Integrative Psychotherapy
• Somatic Psychotherapy
• Transpersonal Psychotherapy
• Hypno-Psychotherapy
  
  

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. This usually includes increasing individual sense of well-being and reducing subjective discomforting experience. Psychotherapists employ a range of techniques based on experiential relationship building, dialogue, communication and behavior change and that are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships (such as in a family).

History

Albert Ellis, founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
See also: History of psychotherapy and Timeline of psychotherapy
In an informal sense, psychotherapy can be said to have been practiced through the ages, as individuals received psychological counsel and reassurance from others. Purposeful, theoretically-based psychotherapy was probably first developed in the Middle East during the 9th century by the Persian physician and psychological thinker, Rhazes, who was at one time the chief physician of the Baghdad psychiatric hospital. In the West, however, serious mental disorders were generally treated as demonic or medical conditions requiring punishment and confinement until the advent of moral treatment approaches in the 18th Century. This brought about a focus on the possibility of psychosocial intervention - including reasoning, moral encouragement and group activities - to rehabilitate the "insane".
Psychoanalysis was perhaps the first specific school of psychotherapy, developed by Sigmund Freud and others through the early 1900s. Trained as a neurologist, Freud began focusing on problems that appeared to have no discernible organic basis, and theorized that they had psychological causes originating in childhood experiences and the unconscious mind. Techniques such as dream interpretation, free association, transference and analysis of the id, ego and superego were developed.