Veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder are routinely pumped full of antipsychotic drugs. And as most of them will tell you (in language I can’t use here), those drugs aren’t doing a darn thing for them.

And now there’s research to back them up — and it’s not all in their head.

Researchers randomly assigned 247 combat vets who were suffering from PTSD to either the antipsychotic medication Risperdal (aka risperidone), or a placebo, for six months.

In both groups, only 5 percent of veterans had a complete recovery. In both groups, between 10 percent and 20 percent showed some modest improvement. And in both groups, the vets reported similar scores for depression, anxiety, and quality of life.

In other words, the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that this “powerful” drug has all the power of a sugar pill.

But while the vets who took the drug didn’t get any relief, they did get a few other things: side effects such as weight gain and fatigue, including an extreme level of fatigue known as somnolence.

While the study only involved Risperdal, the researchers say they believe similar antipsychotic drugs — including Seroquel, Geodon, and Abilify — will prove to be every bit as useless.

Fortunately, our soldiers don’t have to wait for Big Pharma to answer the call when it comes to PTSD. The U.S. military itself has been quietly investigating some of the best alternative treatments, including hyperbaric oxygen therapy, fish oil, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and acupuncture.

And the early word from many veterans who’ve tried these treatments has been encouraging (and printable).

Some of the most promising research involves acupuncture, with medics in the field even using the needles to treat the traumatic brain injuries.

Back on the homefront, research on the technique for PTSD itself is under way right now.

In one small recent study, veterans suffering from PTSD who were given either acupuncture or group cognitive-behavioral therapy for 12 weeks had significant improvements when compared to a control group. The benefits lasted for full three months after treatment.

Obviously, we need more studies to ensure these treatments really do work — but since we now know for sure that drugs don’t, let’s stop wasting time and give veterans the real thanks they deserve.

Let’s get them healed.

Who’s responsible for the antidepressant frenzy that’s led to 10 percent of all Americans taking these dangerous meds?

If you guessed shrinks, you’re only partly right. Fact is, there’s been a stunning rise in the number of non-psychiatrists dishing out mood drugs.

The worst part about it is that they’re not just prescribing them for depression. Family doctors are giving these meds out as a cure-all for practically everything under the sun.

A recent study found that the number of family doctors and other non-shrinks prescribing antidepressants more than doubled between 1996 and 2007, from 4 percent to 9 percent.

At the same time, the number of antidepressants given without any mental diagnosis at all — no depression, no anxiety, none of it — shot up at an even faster rate, from 2.5 percent to 6.4 percent, according to the study in Health Affairs.

Doctors were prescribing them for conditions like smoking, sexual dysfunction, sleep disorders and more — despite the fact that they’re approved for exactly none of those conditions.

Not only that, but long-term antidepressant use has been linked to sex problems and sleep disorders. Talk about ironic!

And while those drugs won’t do much for you, they can do plenty to you. Studies have linked long-term antidepressant use to weight gain, diabetes, cognitive decline, and cataracts… not to mention some pretty serious withdrawal issues when you eventually do stop taking them.

But what’s even worse than what we know about these drugs is what we don’t. There’s simply not enough research out there on the long-term use of antidepressants.

Or, as lead researcher Dr. Ramin Mojtabai of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore told HealthDay News: “Pharmaceutical companies aren’t interested in long-term effects because they don’t need that for FDA approval.”

Ain’t that the truth.

Score one more for yoga!

Researchers say light stretching can do what a pharmacy full of drugs often cannot: Bring real relief to women suffering from fibromyalgia, the mystifying and often debilitating pain condition.

Researchers from York University in Toronto asked 22 women to take 75-minute hatha yoga classes twice a week. After just eight weeks, the women reported less pain than they did at the start of the study.

They also felt better about their condition, reporting less helplessness and more acceptance, and they were less likely to focus on the worst possible outcomes of the disease.

Although those responses were based on a questionnaire given before and after the study, there were also noticeable changes on a much more objective level. The researchers say the women had higher levels of the “stress hormone” cortisol after eight weeks of yoga lessons.

Now, that might sound bad. “Stress hormone” sounds like trouble, and you definitely don’t want too much of it hanging around.

But too little can be even worse, because the stress hormone is needed to help control inflammation and regulate blood pressure. More importantly, it also keeps the immune system in check — the same immune system that often goes haywire in fibromyalgia patients.

And not so coincidentally, fibro patients usually have very low levels of cortisol.

Since the study was small, it’ll take more research before anyone can say for sure whether yoga can boost cortisol levels in the long run — but other studies have been encouraging, at least when it comes to pain relief.

In one I told you about last year, yoga actually brought as much relief as drugs, with none of the risks. (Read about it here.)

Now, if you’re suffering from fibro, I know you might think the pretzel-like contortions of yoga are the last things your body could handle.

In reality, the hatha form of yoga used in the new study is one of the most basic — and the most gentle.

And in addition to helping to beat pain and regulate your cortisol levels, yoga has been shown to boost physical strength and energy levels, lower blood pressure, and even improve mental health.

You can often find inexpensive or even free lessons through your local library, park, or senior center — or even try it on your own with a book or video.

Happy stretching.

Sit, speak, and play dead — dogs can learn plenty of tricks, if you’re willing to take a little time to teach them.

But the best trick of all comes naturally: Pets can chase away asthma and allergies the way a guard dog can scare off burglars — and it doesn’t take a loud bark or a lot of teeth.

In fact, even a lazy old cat has this power — because kids born to mothers who had pets during pregnancy have lower levels of the IgE antibodies linked to allergies and asthma.

Researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit tested those antibody levels in 1,187 babies at birth, six months, and two years, and found that the kids who had prenatal pet exposure had up to 33 percent fewer than children from petless homes.

The biggest benefit went to children of European, Asian, or Middle Eastern descent, who got the full 33 percent drop.

For black children, the difference was only 10 percent — but still enough to put them at least a baby step ahead of asthma and allergies, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Babies born vaginally to women with pets also got a bigger boost, with IgE levels 16 percent lower than C-section infants.

In other words, pets don’t always cause allergies and asthma — and they might even prevent them.

But while that means Spot can “stay” in homes with a new baby, there is one threat even the roughest, toughest Rottweiler can’t chase away: mold.

Having this stuff around the house could lead to a childhood of breathing misery.

Researchers examined data on 176 children who were believed to be at high risk for asthma because of a family history of the disease. They also used a test called the environmental relative moldiness index, which measures levels of 36 different types of mold to create an overall “mold burden.”

And that mold brings some burden. Kids from homes with the highest mold burdens were three times more likely to come down with asthma during the seven-year study period than kids with little mold exposure.

The researchers wrote in Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology that parents of kids at risk for asthma should make sure they find and fix water damage and get rid of all the mold — which is pretty good advice for everyone else, too.