Two of my favourite wellness warriors get together to discuss Lissa Rankin’s new book ‘Mind over Medicine’.
Both of these ladies are very much on my page when it comes to health.
This interview is well worth listening to.
Important points raised during the interview are;
What does your body need to heal? What prescription does your body need you to prescribe for yourself? What would you do if you could do anything you wanted, to make yourself better?
– Leave your abusive relationship?
– Leave your horrible job?
– Go to college?
– Move countries?
– Get married?
– Do something you always wanted to do?
– Get a new job with a better employer? 🙂
Lissa’s idea about letting the patient write the prescription for themselves is really liberating.
In the context of epilepsy research I think it is relevant to the epilepsy research project what treatment would you prefer?:
National Epilepsy Week this week and there is a reason to celebrate, because this month Epilepsy Action magazine published an article about an epilepsy research project titled; ‘Which treatment would you prefer?’.
A very sensible question, its always nice to be asked what you want!
Global Advances in Health and Medicine is – Improving Healthcare Outcomes Worldwide; is a progressive, systems based Journal that is based at the site above.
I got a link to it today and was very excited about articles within it such as ‘Chinese Scalp Acupuncture’by Drs Hao and Hao, review by Honora Lee Wolfe. She suggestes this book ‘would be very interesting reading for neurologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, veterans hospital administrators, and any other specialists who work in any capacity with patients suffering from brain injuries, neurological diseases, chronic debilitating pain, or neuro-psychological disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).’
You may need to register to read the journal,but links on the homepage, such as ‘Evaluating the Economics of Complementary and Integrative Medicine’, are very constructive.
I came accross this article in the Independent about how Paul Mckenna is currently using hypnosis techniques to ease trauma and health problems. The journalist said that he had one session with Mckenna and although he wasn’t ‘Cured’ he slept better and felt more confident driving. He had been traumatized by being run over. He was still a bit sceptical but I thought it wasn’t bad for one session!
For anyone that has ever thought that DSM was just a manual for prescription pharmaceuticals;
The British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology have been busy formulating a less than politically correct opinion about DSM-5!
‘Dr Lucy Johnstone, a consultant clinical psychologist who helped draw up the DCP’s statement, said it was unhelpful to see mental health issues as illnesses with biological causes.
“On the contrary, there is now overwhelming evidence that people break down as a result of a complex mix of social and psychological circumstances – bereavement and loss, poverty and discrimination, trauma and abuse,” Johnstone said. The provocative statement by the DCP has been timed to come out shortly before the release of DSM-5, the fifth edition of the American Psychiatry Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.’
NEXT they may suggest that ‘a complex mix of social and psychological circumstances – bereavement and loss, poverty and discrimination, trauma and abuse’ can’t be fixed by pills! But that would be REALLY far out.
I would also add that the human body made up of its billions of cells, and billions of neurons is not something that can be put into the latest version of ‘windows’. Trying to put the body and mind into boxes or categories is only useful if you look at the relationships between the categories (ie anatomy and physiology, psychology and physiology etc in a similar way to Chinese Medicine).
Until we look at the whole picture healthcare will continue to perform like a broken record, which is tragic because so many lives would not be needlessly wasted, all because of our failure as human beings to look outside of the box of an outdated, mechanistic model of the mind, body and spirit.
Looks like lots of people are beginning to step out of the box and ask questions about our health care and beliefs.
I have been wanting…..okay attempting…..to write a post about the internship I was doing in neurotherapy. Specifically, a post that would explain what neurofeedback is and its use in treating brain disorders of any kind. The post would be easy to understand, comprehensive without being overwhelming, with a bit of humor thrown in for good measure. I was on draft number four of writing said post when a peer emailed me the article below and I thought, “Wow,this guy just took the words right out of my mouth…..and did it better than what I was imagining!” So, of course I have to share it with all of you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and that it spurs you on to learn more and share with others.
Neurofeedback: Alternative Health Care for Robots?
Following in the brain cooling tips of ‘The Lazarus Effect’(1) for cardiac arrest Dr Sirven of ETP (see link above) this week gives us the lowdown on brain cooling research for epilepsy treatment.
This excerpt says:
‘In the early view version of the journal, Epilepsia, Drs. Motamedi and colleagues from the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at Georgetown University School of Medicine present a critical review and opinion article. It is known that brain cooling, otherwise known as therapeutic brain hypothermia, is already a standard of care for a condition such as cardiac arrest in adults, or in neonates in the situation of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. However, there has been an increasing number of research papers that have looked at the concept of utilizing hypothermia to help control seizures that might be used as part of an implantable device to cool the brain in a specific region. In this well written review, Drs. Motamedi and colleagues discuss research innovations in developing cooling as a viable option for the treatment of drug resistant epilepsy.’
So should we all be booking holidays in Iceland or heading for our refrigerator’s frozen broccoli and bags of peas to get out of the heat?
Well it is a bit soon to tell, but as this article from Kaitllyn Roland (2) emphasises the importance of being sensible about the type of exercise you do, and how to take care about body temperature in particular if you are prone to seizures.
I for one won’t be booking my trip to Spain in the middle of August or trying to navigate the Sahara desert, but everyone has their limits!
I hope this article finds you chilling out with some sunny weather keeping cool in the shade, spring may have finally arrived in the UK, or is it our summer?. 🙂
The quote relates to gaps in our knowledge about consciousness. It is taken from this short 3 minute film from the BBC which is a lovely introduction to the work of Dr Oliver Sacks, by himself, and his thoughts on the study of consciousness.
Now I know that people who read this blog are interested in some really diverse mind and body matters.
For whatever reason, one of the defining things about humanity is its infectious curiosity about the nature of existence and consciousness.
My recent readings around brain and heart have also included books by people on out of body experiences, epilepsy and spirituality.
Anything about these subjects is currently sparkly and eye-catching, so this week I was captivated by a BBC report on ‘The Lazarus Effect’. (1)
‘The Lazarus Effect’ (2) is a book about the heart and heart attacks, where new discoveries are changing the way that patients are being resuscitated.
When I was little, my mum had to go away to see my Granny after one of her many heart attacks.
Granny told mum that during the heart attack she was in a long tunnel, with what seemed to be a light at the end of it. Mum doesn’t know how long this experience lasted , but apparently Granny became aware that she may be very near leaving when she became conscious of people talking about how they had called my mum. My Granny thought that if my mum had been called then she would have to be there to see her. Somewhere in my Granny’s mind the seed of urgency to not slip away was planted. She came back to see my mum.
I was always really interested in this, and from reading around the subject I understand that a lot of people whose hearts stop report similar experiences.
‘Bringing people back from the Dead’, (1) BBC news report by William Kremer, links to a radio interview on the World service programme ‘Outlook’. This programme was about Carol Brothers who had a heart attack and was resuscitated after 45 minutes of CPR.(3)
It interviews Dr Sam Parnia Director of resuscitation research in a New York hospital and author of ‘The Lazarus Effect’. Cooling the body from 37C to 32C causes Brain cells to remain intact for up to 8 hours before they begin to deteriorate. The tricky stages of resuscitation are when oxygen is reintroduced to the brain, the cells become inflamed and cause swelling in the brain. Cooling the brain down causes the brain to slow down to such an extent that people can look brain dead for a long time, but actually be in stasis. This means that resuscitating the heart has now been possible for up to 4 to 5 hours after the heart stopping.
In relation to out of body experiences, Dr Parnia has collected many examples of people’s OBE’s (out of body experiences ) which range from tunnels of light, relatives coming to meet them, reliving their lives, re-living events that inflicted pain on others. Dr Parnia says that often when the patient returns to consciousness they have determined to live their lives in a different, changed and often fearless way. He says he believes that most people experience these types of experiences but that they are unlikely to remember due to the brain trauma or inflammation wiping their memory.
Interestingly these experiences have different meanings in different cultures or religious contexts so are interpreted in the context of the beliefs of each individual.
‘Proof of Heaven’ by Dr Eben Alexander (4) is a neurosurgeon’s Journey into the afterlife. Dr Alexander contracted bacterial E. coli meningitis and was in a coma for 7 days. He was not expected to survive but against the odds he woke up to recount his journey (which was quite a trip!) in his book. Dr Alexander was a complete sceptic until he experienced this for himself.
‘The Body Electric’ by Robert O. Becker and Gary Selden (5) was published in 1985 and challenged the notions of mechanistic medicine, in particular in its views around regeneration. Within this book there is a chapter titled ‘The Lazarus Effect’. This chapter describes the discovery in 1973 that a Salamander can regenerate its heart if it is cut in half or wounded from 30% to 50%. Such a large wound sparks a massive healing response in the salamander. The findings were published in Nature in 1974.
The cover of ‘The Body Electric’ says the book ‘explores new pathways in our understanding of evolution, acupuncture, psychic phenomena and healing.’
Back to heart resuscitation.
So to summarise, the medical model is changing in relation to heart resuscitation, the cooler the better.
I leave you with the thoughtful CPR intervention skills of Vinnie jones and the question- have you ever had an out of body experience?
I recently had cause to dig out my copy of Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia and lend it to a friend, because she has started to volunteer for an organisation that is using singing to help people with Alzheimer’s. This improves memory, health and wellbeing.
For those of you that are interested the Alzheimer’s society project link is very interesting.
I know a lot of people who have said sound effects their epilepsy, I found this newspaper review that explains what Musicophilia has to say about Alzheimers and epilepsy.
If anyone wants to borrow my copy just let me now and I can lend it to you when it gets back to me!
‘Sacks tells some very moving stories about those with terrifyingly profound amnesia, or Alzheimer’s disease, for whom music can “restore them to themselves”. People with aphasia can be taught to speak again through singing. On the other hand, previously healthy people begin to have “musical hallucinations”, blasted by intrusive ghostly music during every waking second; and others have seizures in response to music, or “musicogenic epilepsy” – which, intriguingly, can be selective. One woman Sacks cites “had seizures only in response to ‘modern, dissonant music,’ never in response to classical or romantic music” – and her husband was a composer of the type of music that gave her seizures, which one suspects may be a hint. But such a violent response to certain music might be more common than suspected: “Many people, [one researcher thought], might start to get a queer feeling – disturbing, perhaps frightening – when they heard certain music, but then would immediately retreat from the music, turn it off, or block their ears, so that they did not progress to a full-blown seizure.” Indeed, certain styles of free jazz have always made me physically nauseous.’
The Real Lord of The Flies A True Life Story 