Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol 1 Issue 86 i The Art of Healing

Liver disease doesn't usually cause any symptoms until the damage to the liver is fairly advanced. Some signs your liver may be struggling include: Fatigue and Tiredness Doctors are not sure exactly how liver damage causes tiredness, but it's a common symptom. Nausea Nausea occurs because toxins build up in the bloodstream due to the liver's decreased ability to do its job of filtering out toxins. Pale Stools Stools are given their dark colour by the bile salts that the liver normally releases. If the stools are pale, it may indicate a problem with the liver or other part of the biliary drainage system. Black tarry stools can happen in advanced liver disease and are caused by blood passing through the gastrointestinal tract which needs urgent medical attention. Jaundice Jaundice…

One in three people over the age of 65 will experience a fall every year. Falls are a significant public health issue, contributing to mobility-related disability and loss of independence, and are the second leading cause of unintentional injury deaths worldwide. With a steadily ageing population, scalable and effective fall prevention strategies are needed to address the growing impact of falls in the community. “Regular balance-challenging exercise is effective at preventing falls, so we tried to make exercise fun and easy to do,” says Dr Daina Sturnieks, lead author of the study and Senior Research Scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) and UNSW Sydney. “It was really encouraging to see that smart±step, an exergaming console that anyone can enjoy at home completely unassisted from a therapist, brought a benefit to…

Infections are currently costing Australian hospitals over $21,000 per infection. Cefazolin is the drug that is used as an antibiotic at the time of surgery to prevent infection. However with the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, experts have debated whether adding a second antibiotic vancomycin, would help prevent more infection. Vancomycin is a commonly used antibiotic for MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or “golden Staph.”) Now a new clinical trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine and led by Monash University researchers in collaboration with orthopaedic surgeons and infectious diseases doctors, has found that the addition of vancomycin did not protect against infection and may have led to more infections and more adverse reactions for patients. In the study, the Australian Surgical Antibiotic Prophylaxis (ASAP) trial looked at 4239…

When researchers at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children, and the Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil, analysed 30 placentas donated to the Hawai'i Reproductive Biospecimen Repository between 2006 and 2021, they found plastic contamination had increased significantly over time. In 2006, only six of the ten donated placentas contained microplastics. By 2013, nine out of ten placentas were found to be contaminated. In 2021, each of the ten placentas analysed showed plastic pollution, and the sizes of the microplastic particles were bigger than ever. “We believe that the plastics may be floating around in food or being inhaled. It's coming through our digestive fluids or lungs. The particles are getting absorbed through the gut, traveling through the bloodstream, and then somehow collecting…

Holistic health, which encompasses the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit, is becoming increasingly entwined with fitness as people recognise the importance of a more comprehensive approach to wellness. While traditional fitness often emphasises high-intensity workouts and achieving specific physical goals, holistic health encourages individuals to focus on overall wellbeing. Research backs up these positive effects of mind-body practices on mental health. For instance, an analysis published in 2020 found that yoga interventions significantly improved symptoms of anxiety and depression. Mindfulness practices, often included in holistic fitness approaches, have also been linked to improved emotional balance, as evidenced by another 2020 study. Consequently, in 2024 you will see the fitness industry place a greater emphasis on workouts that not only improve physical strength but also consider emotional and mental health.…

Belinda Martinella is a Clinical Nutritionist (BHSc – NutDMed) and is nationally accredited with the Australian Natural Therapists Association (ANTA). She is a qualified Nutritional Counsellor and has over 10 years professional experience in the health and fitness industry. With so many of us confused about diets and what to eat, and so much confusing and conflicting information in the market, The Art of Healing spoke with Belinda and asked her to clarify a few things for us. Belinda, you have a few balls in the air, with 3 growing kids at home and a travelling nutritionist clinic, plus you have speaking engagements in the corporate sector and workshops in schools. So with respect to your clinic work, you say a lot of people are still wanting help with weight…

If there is one generalisation we can hazard about those who end up mentally unwell, we could say that they are masters at being very nasty to themselves. The worst kind of nastiness doesn't have to involve shouting at oneself or calling oneself an idiot, though this might happen too. It means that one part of us continually drives the other toward self-doubt, fear, paranoia, shame, and despair, without revealing that it is doing this, or that there might be other options available. Panic and self-flagellation become identified with safety and virtue. No attention is drawn toward the partiality of the choices that are being made internally, otherwise the game would be up. Self-loathing may be the order of the day but it is never presented as such. We just…

4 TYPES OF POWER POWER OVER This type of power is built on force, coercion, domination and control, and motivates largely through fear. It is built on a belief that power is a finite resource that can be held by individuals, and that some people have power and some people do not. POWER WITH Power with is shared power that grows out of collaboration and relationships. It is built on respect, mutual support, shared power, solidarity, influence, empowerment and collaborative decision making. Rather than domination and control, power with leads to collective action and the ability to act together. POWER TO Power to refers to the “productive or generative potential of power and the new possibilities or actions that can be created.” It is built on the “unique potential of…

A new study that looked at the motivations of 2,600 retreat-goers from more than 60 countries has found that the main reason for going to a retreat/spa is still to relax and have a holiday. However, more people went to manage a disease, with forty-one percent of respondents having one or more medical conditions and of those, forty-five per cent experiencing considerable relief from symptoms during their stay, including those suffering from stress, fatigue, back pain and arthritis.…

Intermittent fasting (IF) or restricting your food consumption to a set window is a popular weight loss regime. A ten-hour window means limiting your daily eating schedule to ten hours and fasting for the remaining 14 hours. For example, if you start eating at 9am, you would finish eating by 7pm. Some IF advocates commonly promoting restrictive eating windows say that even eating within a less restrictive window of ten hours still has positive health benefits, such as changes in mood, energy and hunger. Further, those who were consistent with their eating window had greater benefits than those who varied their eating day-to-day. Dr Sarah Berry from King's College London said: “This is the largest study outside of a tightly controlled clinic to show that intermittent fasting can improve your…

While the AI chatbot is appealing to many people who struggle with face-to-face conversations, the technology may foster bad habits that could lead to further social isolation. That's the view of University of South Australia and Flinders University researchers in an essay published in the Journal of Behavioural Addictions. The researchers say that chatbots, now integrated into social networking platforms like Snapchat, could perpetuate communication difficulties for people with autism, anxiety and limited social skills. Lead researcher, UniSA Psychology Honours student Andrew Franze, says the rapid development of social chatbots has pros and cons which need investigating. “Young people with social deficiencies tend to gravitate towards companionship with online social chatbots in particular,” Franze says. “They offer a safe means of rehearsing social interaction with limited or no risk of…

Importantly, the study also found that increasing exposure to daytime light can act like a non-pharmacological means for reducing psychosis risk. In those exposed to high amounts of light at night, the risk of depression increased by 30 per cent – while those who were exposed to high amounts of light during the day reduced their risk of depression by 20 per cent. Similar patterns of results were seen for self-harm behaviour, psychosis, bipolar disorder, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, and PTSD. These findings indicate that the simple practice of avoiding light at night and seeking brighter light during the day could be an effective, non-pharmacological means of reducing serious mental health issues. Associate Professor Sean Cain from the Monash School of Psychological Sciences and the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental…

The joint study by scientists from the Marine Mammal Foundation, RMIT and Melbourne University has found alarming concentrations of the chemicals – widely used in food packaging, firefighting foam and non-stick cookware and notoriously known as ‘forever chemicals’ for not breaking down – in Victoria's critically endangered Burrunan dolphins. Samples were taken from 38 dolphins of various species found stranded along Victoria's coastline, but especially high PFAS liver concentrations were found among the Burrunan dolphin populations of Port Phillip Bay and Gippsland Lakes. Average concentrations of some chemicals in these populations were more than 10 times higher than what scientists believe causes liver toxicity and a range of health issues. One juvenile Burrunan dolphin from Port Phillip Bay had a PFAS liver concentration of 19,500 nanograms per gram – the…

According to Accenture's (NYSE: ACN) 17th annual Life Trends report, this shift in mindset – brought on in part by the rapid advance of technology – is putting society in flux and creating a level of uncertainty and fragility for businesses as people try to figure out their place in the world. “We're entering a decade of deconstruction spurred on by changing consumer values, AI's explosive growth and the relentless speed of change,” said Mark Curtis, global sustainability lead for Accenture Song. “This is causing business leaders to ask, ‘where do we begin?’ in the face of these challenges. It starts with a clarion call for excellence and giving the pursuits of human ingenuity and creativity space to flourish.” These insights helped Accenture identify five global macro-cultural trends forecasted to…

HEALING | Personal Story I am a naturopath and acupuncturist who has been in practice since 2001, and I attribute my passion for natural medicine to my mother, my very first client. When I was in my early twenties, Mum's breast cancer diagnosis changed my life, beginning my journey toward becoming a naturopath. Over three and a half years we nursed her with naturopathic practices like fasting, juicing, herbs and diet, researched in classics like Return to Eden by Jethro Kloss and Herbal Home Healthcare by Dr John R Christopher. I saw wounds heal with the power of herbs. I saw massage preserve and improve mobility, drain swelling and speed circulation. I watched Mum recover strength and even get off morphine using a clean diet, juices and buckets of red…

The origin of the ‘10,000-steps-a-day’ standard is a little murky, but researchers believe the number can be traced back to 1965, when a Japanese company made a pedometer named Manpo-kei, or the “10,000 steps metre” in English. However, as Shawn Arent, PhD, CSCS, Professor and Chair of the Department of Exercise Science and Director of the Sport and Science Lab at the University of South Carolina in Columbia believes, the rationale behind 10,000 steps has always been more about marketing than science. Clearly that marketing has been wildly successful, as the recommendation to take 10,000 steps a day has become ingrained in many users of wearable fitness technology. It has also inspired researchers to check if reaching this number actually offers any real health benefits. The Scientific Research on the…

The study, led by Associate Professor Matthew Pase, from the Monash School of Psychological Sciences and the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health in Melbourne, looked at 346 participants over 60 years of age enrolled in the Framingham Heart Study who completed two overnight sleep studies from 1995-1998, and 2001-2003. The participants were carefully followed for dementia from the time of the second sleep study through to 2018. The researchers found, on average, that the amount of deep sleep declined between the two studies, indicating slow wave sleep loss with ageing. Over the next 17 years of follow-up, there were 52 cases of dementia. Even adjusting for age, sex, cohort, genetic factors, smoking status, sleeping medication use, antidepressant use, and anxiolytic use, each percentage decrease in deep sleep each…

The technology being used for the study could also provide a solution to a recommendation of the 2021 Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety which identified a lack of adequate resources to meet the growing demand for aged care facilities and hospitals. “Using sensor-driven technology in the home can help support Australia's rapidly ageing population and alleviate the burden on hospitals and aged care resources,” Professor Jason Prior from the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures says. The project comes as the Australian population over 65 is rapidly increasing. More than 1.3 million people were using aged care services in Australia in 2019-2020, and there is an increasing preference for people to stay in their homes. NSSN MedTech Theme Leader Catherine Oates Smith says, “Sensors can collect data on…

Children aged 3-5 years display selective trust based on the informant's past accuracy when faced with both humans and robots, according to a study published in the journal Child Development. “Children do not just trust anyone to teach them labels. They trust those who were reliable in the past. We believe that this selectivity in social learning reflects young children's emerging understanding of what makes a good (reliable) source of information,” explained Li Xiaoqian, a research scholar at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). “The question at stake is how young children use their intelligence to decide when to learn and whom to trust.” In the study, participants from Singapore preschools such as ChildFirst, Red SchoolHouse and Safari House, aged between 3-5, were split below and above the median…

New research however, has found that even short periods of exercise – 20 to 25 minutes per day – can make a major dent in the risk of death for those who sit for long stretches. “The effect of doing physical activity on a regular basis is astonishing – you could say exercise is both prevention and medicine, like brushing your teeth to avoid cavities,” says Edvard Sagelv, PhD, an author of the study and a researcher in the school of sport sciences at the UiT the Arctic University of Norway. A Little Exercise Goes a Long Way The analysis, presented in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, drew on four major datasets from Norway, Sweden, and the United States that recorded health information on nearly 12,000 adults ages 50…

In healthy relationships, both the romantic kind and platonic connections with friends or family members, people approach conflict as a catalyst for positive change, rather than something to avoid, says Maria Thestrup, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Washington, DC. “Conflict is an opportunity for two people to actually grow and understand themselves better. It's better to see conflict as a catalyst rather than something to avoid.” The science backs this up. One study found that happily married couples don't argue less than couples in distress, but they do argue differently. Happy couples tend to be good at problem-solving in their disputes, while avoiding “negative and coercive exchanges,” the research showed. In other words, it's not arguing that's the problem. “The problem is that most of us…

The magnificent Ulumpawarru mountain in the Northern Territory (NT), that was featured in many of Albert Namatjira's watercolour paintings (and was made into a popular print in a lot of Australian family homes during the ‘50s and ‘60s) was the backdrop for my work in the ‘90s when I was living at the Haasts Bluff/Ikuntji community, 230 kilometres west of Alice Springs and just across the mountain from Papunya. The Papunya Tula Artists Company was formed in 1972 after a group of men found a new form of artistic expression. Linked inextricably to the life they had led prior to “first European contact,” this art form of acrylic paint on boards (and then linen) was a movement that would be a catalyst to many First Nations communities in Australia taking…