Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol 3 Issue 84 i The Art of Healing

We struggle, we grow weary, we grow tired We are exhausted We are distressed, we despair We give up, we fall down, We let go, we cry We are empty We grow calm, we are ready We wait quietly. Like a mirror, like a bell, like a flame, like rain in summer A previous truth arrives and is born within us A small, shy truth arrives Arrives from without and within us Arrives and is born Simple, steady, clear A small, shy truth arrives Arrives from without and within us Arrives and is born Simple, steady, clear Within our emptiness We accept it, we observe it We absorb it We surrender to our bare truth We are nourished, we are changed We are blessed We rise up A small, shy truth arrives Arrives from without and within us Arrives and is born Simple, steady, clear A small, shy truth arrives Arrives from without and within us Arrives…

Taking a holistic view of the impact of a patient’s lifestyle and economic status, healthcare providers are going beyond traditional prescriptions to fight illness as the links between health and healthy eating have never been clearer. Affordability is a key barrier to accessing fresh fruit and vegetables for many people. About Fresh’s Fresh Connect is a food prescription program in the U.S. that uses prepaid debit cards to buy fruit and vegetables which healthcare providers prescribe to low-income patients. In 2022, the Boston-based non-profit partnered with grocery retailers to expand access to the program across the retailers’ locations. The American College of Lifestyle Medicine also plans to donate 5.5 hours of nutrition education to 100,000 healthcare providers, while the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation announced the…

Until Enya (aged 15) began boxing, she had anxiety so severe, she was unable to eat for fear of choking. Her anxiety manifested in an eating disorder which left her severely underweight. “The doctors warned me that if I didn’t start eating, I could lose my eyesight and my hearing, and my organs would just shut down. They said I had a couple of weeks left because it was that severe,” she said. Enya is one of an estimated 8 million people in the U.K. who are currently suffering from an anxiety disorder, and the number of young people experiencing eating disorders is on the rise. Following a year of treatment with the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Service -run by England’s National Health Service – Enya was referred…

Scientists are continuing to make advances in electronics that can safely monitor and treat our health from inside the body, but powering these miniature medical gadgets isn’t always straightforward. However a prototype device outlined in a new study operates at a harmless 0.65 volts and provides a current of 48 microamperes for 12 minutes – within the range needed to give tiny electronics a power supply. “Future potential uses range from edible circuits and sensors that can monitor health conditions, to the powering of sensors for monitoring food storage conditions,” says senior author Mario Caironi, a molecular electronics researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology. “Moreover, given the level of safety of these batteries, they could be used in children’s toys, where there is a high risk of ingestion.” Built…

According to Tiffany Weir, researcher and associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Colorado State University, cricket-derived chitin may increase positive prebiotic effects on individuals with irritable bowel syndrome. Co-author on the study, Valerie Stully says that although edible insects and insect fibres are unusual in the Western diet, they are commonplace around the globe and are part of many traditional cuisines. A previous study estimates 3,000 ethnic groups in 130 countries eat insects - mostly harvested in the wild. They are also gaining attention as an environmentally friendly source of animal protein. “Insect farming is growing in popularity as it uses less water, land and feed, and emits fewer greenhouse gases.” But although reduced environmental impacts of insect rearing compared to traditional livestock have…

A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, is the first to construct machine learning models with genetic risk scores, non-genetic information, and electronic health record data from nearly half a million individuals to rank risk factors in order of how strong their association is with eventual development of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers used the models to rank predictive risk factors for two populations from the U.K. Biobank - white individuals aged 40 and older, and a subset of those adults who were 65 or older. Results showed that age (which constitutes onethird of total risk by age 85, according to the Alzheimer’s Association), was the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer’s in the entire population. But for the older adults, genetic risk as determined by a polygenic risk score was…

HEALING | Trauma I’d have scoffed if someone had told me during my journalism career that a spiritual care worker in her early 30s would help heal my broken soul. Natural remedies weren’t my balm. I didn’t practice yoga or meditate. I was a lapsed Catholic. When in pain, I’d go to a doctor. I was a methodical news agency journalist who did one story after another across Southeast Asia and the Middle East. I believed in what I could see. In mid-2005, I drove from the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh to the town of Meulaboh on the west coast of Sumatra. It was six months after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami had killed 166,000 people in Aceh province. The 250km journey took many days. Some roads were virtually…

Only about 3.5 percent of the participants who took around 4,500 steps per day suffered a cardiovascular event, compared to 11.5 percent of those who took less than 2,000 steps per day over the 3.5-year study period. “Steps are an easy way to measure physical activity, and more daily steps were associated with a lower risk of having a cardiovascular diseaserelated event in older adults,” says lead researcher Dr. Erin Dooley, assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Alabama. “Most studies have focused on early-to-midlife adults with daily goals of 10,000 or more steps, which may not be attainable for older individuals.” Participants were part of a larger study group of more than 15,700 adults originally recruited for the ongoing Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study. The research team…

Dr Graeme Mattison from UQ’s Faculty of Medicine said using smartwatches for a comprehensive analysis of a patient’s health could enable personalised care for those diagnosed with diseases including obesity, diabetes and arthritis. “One in three Australians own a smartwatch and they have become a popular accessory to monitor health and wellbeing,” Dr Mattison said. “However, there are five challenges preventing the health sector from using smartwatches in clinical decision-making, including data accuracy and interoperability.” The roadmap focuses on three themes to address the challenges; building digital health prevention foundations, transforming preventive care using data and analytics, and harnessing learning systems to enable precise disease prevention. Dr Mattison said smartwatches track health metrics such as step count, heart rate, sleep quality and blood oxygen levels, but the data has varying…

There is an old challenge though, that has taken on a new form: cyberbullying, which is in some ways worse than traditional bullying because the attacks can live forever on the internet and can reach a much broader audience. And it’s especially urgent to address at a time when teen mental health has already taken such a hit since the pandemic. But there’s some encouraging news from a new study suggesting that nurturing gratitude in students could reduce this online abuse. The study included almost five hundred 11-17 year olds from three different schools in Spain. The students within each school participated in either a four-week gratitude program, a four-week cyberbullying education program, or neither. Across four one-hour sessions in the gratitude program, the students learned about gratitude, they practised…

WELLNESS | Type 2 Diabetes One of those issues is likely to be diet, according to a new study into type 2 diabetes – which accounts for 95 percent of overall cases. Researchers analysed data from 184 countries collected between 1990 and 2018, pulling in statistics from public health databases, previous studies, and population demographic records. A poor diet could account for up to 14.1 million type 2 diabetes cases identified in 2018, the team found, which is around 70 percent of new diagnoses globally. Of the 11 different dietary factors considered, three were shown to be most significant: insufficient whole grains, too much refined rice and wheat, and too much processed meat. Other factors, such as not eating enough nuts or non-starchy vegetables, seemed to have less of an…

At 10:00 a.m. on December 14, 1970, the first batch of volunteers arrived for a psychology experiment to Princeton, New Jersey. The participants were seminary students at Princeton Theological, studying religion in preparation for a life of spiritual service. Upon arrival at the study administrator’s office, the participants were told that the experiment would examine career paths of seminarians. Each was asked to prepare a short talk on the topic and given some reading material for inspiration. Half the participants received a sheet of paper with questions and ideas about the best use of a seminary education. The other half received a copy of the famous New Testament parable of the Good Samaritan, who stops on the road to help someone in need. All of this, unbeknownst to the volunteers,…

HEALING | Creativity Studies have shown that creativity enhances our sense of wellbeing, making it an important part of our everyday lives. Sometimes bad experiences cause us to keep going and inspire us to try even harder. But sometimes they stop us in our tracks - for good. I’ve had my fair share of mortifying moments, but I’d never heard the term creative mortification until I happened upon it in author Peggy Orenstein’s newest book, Unravelling. While others were making sourdough during the pandemic, Orenstein learned how to shear a sheep, spin wool, dye wool, and knit a multi-coloured jumper with rustic, waxy yarn. When it came to sketching a pattern, however, she froze. “My husband can draw. My daughter can draw,” she writes. “But … I freeze. I can’t…

Policy is key the report outlines, discussing how with the wakeup call of the pandemic, more governments are tackling loneliness as a runaway public health issue with staggering costs. There are suddenly more policy conversations and some concrete action - with Japan and Australia appointing ministers of loneliness in 2021, and the U.K. increasing its spend on new ‘social prescription’ programs. In the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD also issued an advisory on the ‘epidemic of loneliness and isolation’ and laid out a framework for a National Strategy to Advance Social Connection. Murthy has called for new social infrastructure policies, from school-based programs that teach healthy relationships, to workplace design that drives connection, to far more community programs. With the pandemic creating a growing population of young people who…

The authors of the paper point out that a sort of layman’s understanding of genetics and their importance in human health and wellbeing is a poor marker for the truth. They cite studies which show that genes related to physical fitness had no bearing on the normal association between physical activity and coronary artery disease, and another that showed relationships between physical activity and cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s were not influenced by a person’s APOE-4 status – APOE-4 being a genetic mutation that is known to be commonly present in Alzheimer’s patients. Perhaps with the advent of gene-modification technology like CRISPR, and the greatly reduced cost of doing genetic analysis along with the extension of this technology to the general population for familial history through products like 23 and Me…

WELLNESS | Technology The study, which was conducted over 20 months, comprised the views of 26 international experts who had diverse backgrounds in AI technology. “These challenges call for the creation of human-centred artificial intelligence technologies that prioritise ethics, fairness, and the enhancement of human wellbeing,” Garibay says. “The challenges urge the adoption of a human-centred approach that includes responsible design, privacy protection, adherence to human-centred design principles, appropriate governance and oversight, and respectful interaction with human cognitive capacities.” “Overall, these challenges are a call to action for the scientific community to develop and implement artificial intelligence technologies that prioritise and benefit humanity,” she says. The group of experts included National Academy of Engineering members and researchers from North America, Europe and Asia who have broad experiences across academia, industry…

The link between diet and health is undeniable, but the good news is that our food choices are to a large extent, under our control. There are limitations of course, depending on your personal circumstances, food availability and affordability; but if we are honest, most of us choose what goes into our mouths every day. However many of us are confused as to what constitutes a healthy diet, because there’s lots of conflicting information out there. The media is somewhat to blame for the confusion by pedaling constant arguments over whether fat, carbohydrate or sugar is the real villain, and there are also some dark forces pulling the strings of media. In addition, clever food scientists have created a multitude of foods that hijack our brains’ reward systems to make…

HEALING | Chronic Pain Paul, could you start by explaining central sensitisation? As soon as we get injured our body responds by amplifying pain signals that travel along nerves from the injury site to the spinal cord and up to the brain. This is called central sensitisation and it’s part of the body’s agenda to protect us by making sure we do something about the injury, like rest it. When the injury heals, those sensitised nerves should go back to their normal state. In chronic pain (technically pain that lasts longer than around 10 weeks), the nerves can stay sensitised. You say that chronic pain doesn’t necessarily mean you have an ongoing injury – can you elaborate? One upshot of central sensitisation is that even though an injured part has…