Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol 1 Issue 78 i The Art of Healing

Towards the end of 2021 the Global Wellness Summit put out their trends for 2022, which included the suggestion there was going to be a convergence of healthcare meeting wellness. They argue “a new era is upon us, one where the complementary yet often combative relationship between medicine and wellness gets rethought, leading to new conversations and convergences between these two worlds.” Their reasoning? That the pandemic has provided the shock that has forced healthcare to finally focus on prevention and more holistic models of medicine. I really like to think this is true. I have often thought that it really does take a crisis before people will change – this is what sickness is often about, and we are currently going through a collective crisis – finally. Because, well,…

Penn State researchers used data on diet and mental health collected from more than 24,000 U.S. adults between 2005 and 2016. “Mushrooms are the highest dietary source of the amino acid ergothioneine - an anti-inflammatory which cannot be synthesised by humans,” said lead researcher Djibril Ba, who recently graduated from the epidemiology doctoral program at the College of Medicine. “Having high levels of this may lower the risk of oxidative stress, which could also reduce the symptoms of depression.” White button mushrooms, which are the most commonly consumed mushroom variety in the U.S., contain potassium, which is believed to lower anxiety. In addition, certain other species of edible mushrooms, especially Hericium erinaceus, also known as Lion’s Mane, may stimulate the expression of neurotrophic factors such as the nerve growth factor…

“Insomnia and obstructive sleep apnoea are the two most common sleep disorders, affecting 10 to 30% of the population, but people can often suffer from both at the same time,” says Dr Bastien Lechat from Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute: Sleep Health. “Previously, little was known about the impact of co-morbid insomnia and obstructive sleep apnoea (COMISA) but what we did know is that for people with both conditions, health outcomes are consistently worse than those with neither condition or those with either condition alone.” Now, in a new study published in the European Respiratory Journal, Flinders researchers have studied a large US-based dataset of over 5000 people to understand the risks of COMISA. The participants, aged around 60 years of age at the beginning of the study and 52%…

The Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study is a long-standing, Seattle-based observational study conducted at the Kaiser Permanente Washington of more than 5,000 participants older than 65. This lowered risk persisted for at least a decade after surgery. Cataract surgery was also associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer disease dementia specifically. The results were reported on December 6, 2021 in JAMA Internal Medicine. Lead researcher Dr. Cecilia S Lee, associate professor and Klorfine Family Endowed Chair in ophthalmology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said the observational study adjusted for a number of potential confounders, yet still yielded a strong association. “This kind of evidence is as good as it gets in epidemiology,” Lee said. “This is really exciting because no other medical intervention has shown such…

The pre-clinical study conducted by the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre suggests the makeup of our diet could be more powerful than drugs in keeping conditions like diabetes, stroke and heart disease at bay. Conducted in mice, the research showed nutrition (including overall calories and macronutrient balance) had a greater impact on ageing and metabolic health than three drugs commonly used to treat diabetes and slow down ageing. The research builds on the team’s pioneering work in mice and humans demonstrating the protective role of diet and specific combinations of proteins, fats and carbohydrates against ageing, obesity, heart disease, immune dysfunction and risk of metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes. Senior author and Academic Director of the Charles Perkins Centre, Professor Stephen Simpson said drugs can also target…

We impose our ‘shoulds’ on what we perceive as ‘the world out there’, and then when it fails to live up to our arbitrary and abstract standards, we pout, mope, grumble and complain that it ‘should’ have been different. Rather than tweaking our perception, we demand that the thing we perceive should tweak itself! When people fail to conform to our whimsy, we often then fall into yet another error: we replay upsetting events (events that we perceived as upsetting) and our emotional response to them in our heads over and over, further upsetting ourselves! Many people like to imagine how they would have responded differently to an unpleasant scenario: perhaps some pithy and scathing repartee to put the aggressor in their place, or some supremely composed nonchalance in the…

But a recent study suggests that retreating from compassion in the name of safety may not protect us as we hope. Shutting off our compassionate response may threaten our mental health, the research team found, and fray the social connections that sustain our wellbeing. This research shows the corrosive effect of suppressing our instinct to connect with others, says Leah Weiss, a founding faculty member of Stanford University’s compassion cultivation training program. “When we get into a fear-based, anxiety-driven perspective, we’re going to withdraw and isolate. When we withdraw and isolate, we have even more anxiety, so it leads to a negative loop,” Weiss says. “The whole thing ramps us up, and then our resilience and our resources go down.” How Retreating From Compassion Can Backfire To explore how attitudes toward compassion were…

This earlier detection by the Self-Administered Gerocognitive Examination (SAGE test) is critical to effective treatment, especially as new therapeutics for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are being developed and approved. “New disease modifying therapies are available and others are currently being evaluated in clinical trials, and we know that the earlier cognitive impairment is detected, the more treatment choices a patient has and the better the treatments work,” said Dr. Douglas Scharre, director of the Division of Cognitive and Memory Disorders in the Department of Neurology at Ohio State and lead author of the study published in the journal Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy. While the test does not definitively diagnose problems like Alzheimer’s, it allows doctors to get a baseline of their patients’ cognitive functioning, and repeat testing allows them to follow their memory and thinking…

In this latest study, Yale researchers used one such clock, appropriately named GrimAge, to ask two questions: (1) How much does chronic stress accelerate your biological clock? (2) Are there ways to slow it down and extend a healthy lifespan? According to their findings published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, stress does indeed make life’s clock tick faster - but individuals can help manage the effects by strengthening their emotion regulation and self-control. Rajita Sinha, a professor of neuroscience and professor at the Yale Child Study Center, and one of the authors of the study, has spent decades studying stress and the myriad and pernicious ways that it erodes our mental and physical health. Prolonged stress for instance, increases the risk of heart disease, addiction, mood disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder, said…

In the last 10 years, workers aged 18-34 have begun reporting worse mental health symptoms, which has spiked during the COVID-19 period. Around 15 per cent of young workers were reporting high levels of psychological distress in 2017. That figure doubled to more than 30 per cent during the pandemic. The findings come in a new white paper by the Black Dog Institute, called Modern work: how changes to the way we work are impacting Australians’ mental health, which looked at the changing world of work over the last 20 years and its impacts on our workforce. Black Dog Institute researchers looked at three sources of evidence to explore changes in workers’ mental health: 1. Mental health-related incapacity claims and benefits 2. Nationally representative data capturing levels of mental health symptoms…

Using a unique, new intervention study design, an international team of experts led by Professor Carlo Leifert (Southern Cross University, Australia; University of Oslo, Norway) and Professor Chris Seal (Newcastle University, UK) compared the effect of a healthy diet (Mediterranean type) with a habitual Western diet. They also compared the effect of conventionally produced foods with organic food on the intake of pesticides, a group of environmental pollutants with known negative health effects. The study was carried out with higher degree students during an agricultural field course in Crete, Greece and lasted five weeks. The conventional group consumed the Mediterranean diet made entirely from conventional foods, while the intervention group consumed the same diet made entirely from certified organic foods. The study’s main findings, published in The American Journal for…

Like everyone alive today, I was born into existence. I have no recollection of being alive before and I’m not sure what’s going to happen when I die. At times I’ve been forced to fully appreciate the reality of existence. At a deep and fundamental level, our lives are an experience built upon a moving platform of change and instability, upon which we often project our desire for predictability and permanence. I am often in awe of the fascinating, elegant and ultimately unfathomable Universe in which we all live and frequently am grateful to be alive at this time in human history. Like many people, I know that every moment we each experience is a ‘one off’, a unique pivot point in space and time, around which a vast number…

With the traditional breathing group, the functional connection with the brain’s frontal regions increased, because this region was focused on the body’s internal sensory details called interoception (the conscious refocusing of the mind’s attention to the physical sensation of an internal organ function). Lead researcher and associate professor at the School of Dentistry Alexandre DaSilva says this competed with the external pain signals and inhibited the ability of the somatosensory cortex to process pain. In the virtual reality group, subjects wore special glasses and watched a pair of virtual reality 3D lungs, while breathing mindfully. The technology was developed in-house and the lungs synchronised with the subjects’ breathing cycles in real time. This provided an immersive visual and audio external stimulus. Pain decreased when the sensory regions of the brain…

You can load up your plate with kale, quinoa, salmon, avocado, and all kinds of other incredibly nutritious food, but if you’re in an anxious state of mind when you sit down to eat, then your body will not receive all the nourishment from that meal. Here’s how it works. When you feel agitated, worried, or tense while eating, this stressed-out mood actually changes your body’s physiology. Any guilt or judgement about health, or shame about your food choices is perceived as a stressor by the brain and turns on your sympathetic nervous system, triggering your body’s stress response. To your body, any kind of stress means, “Danger!” which kicks off a series of events to get you primed to deal with it. How Your Body Reacts To Stressors What happens?…

1. Time On Pause Burnout is a very real thing and can come from taking on too much responsibility at once, without setting up healthy boundaries. Taking a breather is so crucial: You have to give yourself time to refill your own cup so that you have something to pour into others. A break from responsibility can look different for everyone. It may be blocking out certain days of the week, taking a whole week’s pause, or going an entire season with nothing on your plate. The thing is, you can’t beat burnout until you let yourself rest. 2. Time Alone Within the grind of the day-to-day, setting time aside to be alone and enjoy your own company can leave you feeling more refreshed than you might expect. Spending time by yourself gives you the…

The company, Exlterra announced in November 2021 that radioactive pollution in the soil decreased by 47%, and in the air above the ground by an average of 37%, one year after the installation of its NSPS technology (Nucleus Separation Passive System). The company believes total remediation of the area is “seriously conceivable within four years” without moving any earth or using any chemicals. Sustainability is what it’s all about at Exlterra, which was co-founded in 2013 by Polish-American Andrew Niemczyk. So far, its novel technologies are not only able to safely clean radiation-scarred landscapes (with promising prospects for the treatment of radioactive waste), but also transform hydraulic power and boost the nutrition levels of trees. The NSPS underground technology was installed at Chernobyl between November 2019 and September 2020, and…

Try the following suggestions any time you want a greater dose of self-love in your day.  1. Get To Know Your Inner Critic We all have a little voice in our head that loves to point out our mistakes and shortcomings, judge us, and even shame us. Just being aware of this voice and recognising when it’s active helps a lot. Your inner critic might remind you of someone, like a very critical guardian from your childhood or a hypercritical teacher or manager. Remember that your inner critic might just be trying to keep you safe through perfectionism. But instead of just listening to your inner critic, dialogue with it. Ask your inner critic if it can give you helpful information in a more loving, balanced way. Or even poke fun at your…

Good friends teach you about yourself and challenge you to be better. They encourage you to keep going when times get tough and celebrate your successes with you. Having strong social ties can also decrease feelings of loneliness, which evidence shows can take a toll on your longevity. Friendships can help you make lifestyle changes that can have a direct impact on your wellbeing. Everyone has self-doubts and insecurities every now and then. But having friends who support you plays a big role in building your self-esteem, or how much you appreciate and love yourself. Supportive friends can help you feel more confident by offering praise and reassurance when you're feeling unsure. They'll shine a light on just how amazing you are and how much you have to offer others.…