Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol 4 Issue 81 i The Art of Healing

I used to try to be Good. Good was my go-to in everything. But Good got me nowhere. Not like Truth. Truth, she tore me to shreds, devoured me whole and spat me out shaking and new. Truth keeps a box of matches in my pocket While Good made me afraid of transformative fire. Truth keeps me real, even if it makes everyione in the room uncomfortable. And Truth is a queen and a humanitarian while Good, she 's silent scared little sheep. Truth knows that Good dulls my already radiant, fierce and loving sold. Good showed me how to hide my wings, my words and angel vision. Truth taught me to he brave. Truth taught me how to respect myself. Truth allows me to hold impenetrable space for any…

While broader research indicates that about a third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or thrown away, co-authors Hongbo Liu (Anhui University, China) and Breda McCarthy (James Cook University, Australia) focussed on the motivations of a particular segment of the food market: those who self-identify as supporting sustainable living. “While we didn't identify any who could be described as highly wasteful, these levels are significant in a group that supports sustainability,” Dr McCarthy said. “This might be explained partially by what is often called the green gap, which is the discrepancy between people's expressed values and their actions.” The 334 people surveyed were predominantly female, relatively affluent, and well-educated. The researchers identified six distinct market segments: freshness lovers, vegetarian and organic food lovers, recycle/reuse advocates, waste-conscious consumers,…

Spirituality should be incorporated into care for both serious illness and overall health, according to a new study that represents the most rigorous and comprehensive systematic analysis of modern day literature regarding health and spirituality. The study found that attention to spirituality in serious illness and in health should be a vital part of whole personcentred care. “Focusing on spirituality in healthcare means caring for the whole person, not just their disease,” said Tyler VanderWeele, Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Harvard Chan School. In the study, the researchers systematically identified and analysed the highest-quality evidence on spirituality in serious illness and health published between January 2000 and April 2022. A structured, multi-disciplinary group of experts called a Delphi panel then reviewed the strongest collective…

WELLNESS | physical health Terpenes are a large class of organic compounds produced by plants. They are the scent-bearing constituents of essential oils. When you stop to smell the delightful aroma of a rose or lavender you are smelling terpenes! Touted as Mother Nature's medicine cabinet, these little understood compounds are the subject of increasing interest by researchers with respect to their potential therapeutic and medicinal applications. Anti-inflammatory Inflammation is the body's natural defence against further damage from pathogens, injury or irritants. However, over-active inflammation is the cause of many diseases, ranging from arthritis to irritable bowel syndrome. These conditions can be severely debilitating and tend to gradually worsen with age. Although many inflammation agents exist now (such as common aspirin), the challenge is finding a medicine that does not…

WELLNESS | workplace health Have you ever had a really bad boss? Think Alec Baldwin as Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross, who announces that “coffee's for closers only” and then threatens the salesmen he supervises with a number of choice terms not suitable to repeat here. Few leaders use quite so much verbal abuse, profanity, and fear to motivate employees. But plenty of leaders use similar, if less extreme, tactics. Deborah Gruenfeld would like to know why so many people put up with them. Gruenfeld, a professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford Graduate School of Business and an expert on the psychology of power, is interested in ‘dominant actors’ like Blake … leaders who assert power by being the most competitive, most aggressive, and most controlling person in the room.…

Why do you think there are still so many people (70% of Australians at last count) who don't eat the recommended daily allowance of two serves of fruit and five serves of vegetables per day? It's actually worse than that - 9 out of 10 Aussies aren't meeting their fruit and vege recommendations, and there are many reasons for this. The biggest three reasons why I believe are that (1) people lack knowledge on HOW to eat well (2) fruit and vege are not easily accessible to everyone in our community, and (3) parents/ caregivers and educators actually don't know how to help children foster a positive relationship with food, which includes normalising vegetables. So how can we change our thinking so we become more aware of what we eat?…

AGED CARE FEATURE Eight years ago, when my father was very ill, I promised him that I would do all I could to keep my mother out of aged-care for as long as possible. She had always said that she wanted to live at home for as long as she could. So as my mother grew more frail, I arranged home care for her (three people on shifts, supporting her 24/7) at a cost of $5,000 per week. It was very stressful, as well as a very expensive time. Often I received phone calls in the middle of the night, and occasionally I had to take her to hospital in an ambulance. One day the doctor at hospital told me she would not be able to go home, and that…

A new study involving a big cohort of 21,000 men and women across the U.S. investigated whether taking a daily cocoa extract supplement or a daily multivitaminmineral supplement reduced the risk of developing heart disease, stroke, cancer and other health outcomes. In the trial researchers tested whether the daily administration of cocoa extract compared to a placebo, and a muitivitamin-mineral compared to a placebo, improved cognition in older adults. 2,200 participants from the cohort aged 65 or older completed tests over the telephone at the beginning and annually to evaluate memory and other cognitive skills. “Our study showed that although cocoa extract did not affect cognition, daily multivitamin-mineral supplementation resulted in statistically significant cognitive improvement,” said Dr. Baker, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine. “This is the first evidence…

Veterinary neuroimaging researcher Erica Andrews of Cornell University and colleagues have mapped domestic dogs’ (Cards familiaris) olfactory brain pathways using diffusion MRI scans. This technique uses differences in the flow of molecules, such as water, to create a complex map of tissue structures. With the data the team built 3D maps of the dogs’ brain nerve tracts, and traced extensive white matter linking olfactory brain regions, revealing a huge, previously unknown, information highway between dogs’ olfactory and visual systems. “We've never seen this connection between the nose and the occipital lobe, functionally the visual cortex in dogs, in any species,” Cornell University neuroimaging researcher Pip Johnson explains. “It was really consistent. And size-wise, these tracts were really dramatic compared to what is described in the human olfactory system, more like…

HEALING | emotional health But results from new research suggest we should rethink that choice. We are probably underestimating how enjoyable and interesting it is to do nothing but pay attention to wherever our thoughts take us. In a series of experiments, researchers brought Japanese university students into a lab and told them that they would soon be going into a room without their belongings to wait and do nothing but sit for 20 minutes. They were further instructed that while waiting, they could think about anything they wanted to, but were not allowed to sleep, walk, or exercise; look at a smartphone; or consult a watch. Before entering the room, they were asked to predict how much they'd enjoy waiting, to think about how interesting or boring it would…

WELLNESS | nutrition 1. HYDRATE Most mornings can benefit from a cup of coffee, but that doesn't mean every morning should start with a cup of coffee. “Something that's become a big game-changer for me is starting the morning with two large glasses of water,” Bulsiewicz says. “I have not given up coffee. I will not give up coffee. I've just found that my body responds better when I reach for water first.” Think about it. Urologist Vannita SimmaChiang, M.D. says. About 11 hours will have passed overnight without any source of hydration. “Your body needs that water to start working properly,” Bulsiewicz says. “My brain, my gut, and my kidneys all seem to function better when I start with water instead of coffee.” 2. DRINK (AND ENHANCE) A CUP…

Associate Professor Anne Abbott is a neurologist from the Monash University Central Clinical School, and has been at the forefront of medical research regarding how to best prevent stroke, particularly associated with carotid arterial disease. She has analysed more than four decades of data relating to common treatments for advanced carotid artery stenosis, one of the leading causes of stroke, and found surgery and stents have very limited impact, if any, in preventing stroke. Carotid artery stenosis is a disease caused by the build-up of fatty deposits (plaques) in the main artery that delivers blood to the brain. The disease affects one in 10 people by age 80 and it is a major cause of stroke - the third-biggest cause of death, occurring when blood supply to the brain is…

AGED CARE FEATURE Aged Care Royal Commission Findings The recent Aged Care Royal Commission states that the ‘Foundations of a New Aged Care System’ should define aged care as: “Support and care for people to maintain their independence as they age, including support and care to ameliorate age-related deterioration in the social, mental and physical capacities to function independently.” Recommendations include: (33) Social support category, the commission calls for; a) the facility to provide supports that reduce and prevent social isolation and loneliness among older people d) and that these services are grant funded (37) Residential care category asks facilities to; b) ensure care is available for people who can no longer live at home due to their frailty, vulnerability or behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia or other reasons, c)…

HEALING | kindness The hypothesis of crowdhealing is that simply being an active member of a kind community is an effective way to heal from the stresses of everyday life. In other words, when it comes to improving your own individual wellbeing, the more kind people doing kind things that you surround yourself with, the better. Of course crowdhealing is not intended as a replacement for formal or clinical therapy, but instead aims to provide nurturing social and emotional enrichment in a person's life. In an increasingly-connected world, the cruel contradiction is that we often feel even more alone. It's our experience that modern issues like doomscrolling and languishing make day-to-day living feel isolating and stressful. We believe that crowdhealing can be one remedy to that issue. We aren't the…

Are we losing the “experience of experience itself“ asks Polish-born writer Eva Hoffman? How can we enter into the … “textures or sensations of the moment, to relax enough so as to give oneself over to the rhythms of an episode or a personal encounter, to follow the thread of feeling or thought without knowing where it leads, or to pause long enough for reflection or contemplation. Ultimately, what we are distracted from is living.” In the book The Myth of Normal, along with his son Daniel Mate, Gabor Mate explores “how our society might right itself and chart a course toward maximum health.” He suggests this will take key shifts, and elaborates on the importance of biopsychosocial medicine, disease as a teacher, the primacy of both attachment and authenticity,…

The items for the scale were identified from responses to a questionnaire, in which participants were asked how strongly they agreed with 107 statements such as: “I felt understood;” “I felt compassion for others,” and “my heart rate felt steady.” Using statistical methods, the researchers established which statements were most associated with feeling safe, leading to the 29-item scale. The measure, which has been named the Neuroception of Psychological Safety Scale (NPSS), is the first of its kind, combining psychological, physiological and social components. The scale has the potential to be used in a broad range of settings, such as tracking progress in psychological therapy or assessing whether a sense of psychological safety enhances learning or improves hospital outcomes. It can also be applied to psychological safety in the wake…

WELLNESS | physical health There is no pill that can cure the phantom ringing inside the ear, and tinnitus has so far defied treatments. Many people experience tinnitus to such a distressing degree that they have trouble sleeping, difficulty car lying out daily tasks, and depression. However a team from the University of Auckland in New Zealand has developed a new treatment that has 65 percent of participants reporting an improvement. For some people this has been life-changing, because tinnitus was taking over their lives and attention. The new treatment begins with an initial assessment by an audiologist who combines a range of digital tools, based on the individual's experience of tinnitus, “This is quick and effective, taking 12 weeks rather than 12 months.” Thirty-one of sixty-one study participants had…

The use of prescribed steroids, including inhalers, is linked to changes in the structure and volume of white and grey matter in the brain, suggests the findings of the largest study of its kind, published in the open access journal BMJ Open. The associations findings might help explain the neuropsychiatric effects such as anxiety, depression, mania, and delirium frequently seen after long term use say the researchers. Their immunosuppressive properties and glucocorticoids are a class of synthetic steroids which are among some of the most frequently prescribed drugs used to treat a wide variety of medical conditions. While very effective, both systemic and inhaled steroids are associated with many potentially serious metabolic, cardiovascular, and musculoskeletal side effects, as well as neuropsychiatric effects. The researchers drew on data from the U.K.…

HEALING | emotional health The negative and violent side of envy causes us to hate and deride, criticise and blame. We do this when we feel only the lack, maybe even the regret and remorse, for not having what we wish we did and are unable to integrate these feelings. As a result, we may lash out by shaming or ridiculing. To prevent envy from getting the best of you, challenge yourself to see all accomplishments or advantages by others as inspiration, as a signal from your soul to expand your horizons. Especially notice the subtle ways that envy operates, such as when you judge or lambast someone else for something they have or are doing - like going on holiday, having a nap, buying a new pair of shoes,…

How do older people sleep differently? Most older people sleep between 7 and 9 hours each day, however they may not get all their sleep at night. Around 4 in 10 older people have at least one 30-minute nap every day. Most people over the age of 80 nap for more than one hour each day. At night, some older people take more than half an hour to get to sleep. This is the case for about 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men. Older people also tend to sleep lightly. They wake up more often and spend less time in deep, refreshing sleep. Why does sleep change as we age? After middle age, our body clock gradually changes. As we get older, the hormones that help us…

Facing Fear is a film that discusses the biology of fear, the culture of fear, whether love is the antidote to fear, how fear is shaping our world, and how we can get to understand our fears - and even befriend them, so that they cease to become a destructive force in our lives. Shot in stunning remote areas of Tasmania, the broad and diverse range of interviews in Facing Fear cumulatively provide a unique insight into the mechanics and metaphysics of fear. Ultimately the film provides hope and inspiration, and shows there's no need to fear our fear. In fact, if fear is properly understood and managed, it can become a powerful agent for transformation. Bill Bennett began thinking about making a movie on fear while he was editing…