Positive Health Online

During this transition period around the New Year 2009, the contents of the PH Online Jan Issue 154 provide us with substantive yet contemplative material upon which to reflect.

We are practitioners and users of approaches which at times are or appear to be in conflict with mainstream healthcare, although in reality I never have seen this schism-like dichotomy as so stridently portrayed by the media and the medical establishment. There are an array of features in this issue which will really provide us with invaluable advice.

Words of wisdom from Get a Hobby – Save Your Soul by Karen Charnock:

"... I started to notice the amazing ability 'these people' seemed to have at 'switching off', their sense of ease, their ability to rise above the normal day-to-day work life fray. All the things, in fact, I found annoyingly difficult to achieve! Looking back, considering my outstanding abilities at mentally re-living each day, and projecting tomorrow, it's hardly surprising. To put it bluntly – I had nothing else to think about, no other demands upon my time. I was, long before the term was coined, the original 24/7 kind of gal!"

And a short Extract from In Search of Solace by Kay Zega:

"One course of action is to seek solace through counselling and other holistic approaches to wellness.

"The definition of solace is to find comfort and to alleviate grief, pain and anger.
Counselling serves a wide range of client groups, with an even wider range of emotional issues. Good counselling is about connection – helping someone connect back into life. A great therapist is both a great teacher and a healer – someone with wisdom and perspective.

"Talking in confidence to someone trained and experienced in real listening, and skilful in encouraging honest introspection, articulation of feelings and objective examination of issues, can be enormously empowering. It can help achieve greater clarity so that you can devise your own ways of addressing your problems and be assisted to implement strategies for therapeutic change."

Additionally, How to Stop Anxiety from Spoiling Your Life by Caroline Carr, NLP Talking Therapies – The Brooklyn Program by Frances Coombes and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) in Business by David Molden, discuss various effective self-help and therapeutic approaches to improved mental and emotional wellbeing, techniques to counter Anxiety, provide Solace, counter addiction  and improve business performance.

The Nutrition features including Food Addiction by Nicki Woodward and Chinese Nutrition – Energetics Rather than Chemical Constituents of Food by Neil Kingham, discuss informative and effective ways to better balance our health and wellbeing. Because without health and wellbeing, life can't be very joyful.

In the Bodywork section, Su Fox's Letter to a Newly Qualified Practitioner from a Massage Elder provides authoritative yet potentially transformative information for our personal and professional lives.

"First and foremost, if you still want to be massaging when you get to sixty, you must look after your body. It's the tool on which your livelihood depends.   "Massage is one of the easiest professions in which to strain your body and wear yourself out" says Darien Pritchard in Dynamic Bodyuse...

"He suggests you treat your body as if you were a world-class athlete, with respect and dedication to its well being and efficiency. Train to use it properly, never omitting warm up and cool down exercises and doing all you can to prevent injuries..."

Meggan Brummer passionately describes the many benefits of Yoga in her feature Yoga for Weight Loss.

"To name a few of the many benefits, yoga improves circulation, metabolism and our endocrine/hormone functions, eliminates toxins, and strengthens the immune system and the heart.  The list goes on ... it also increases lung capacity, enhances digestion and elimination, and stretches and tones the muscles and ligaments.  A study from Yale, presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in November 2004 found that people who practised yoga with meditation at least three times weekly reduced their blood pressure and the risk of heart disease.  However, it's not just the body that yoga affects, but all levels of our being.  While it certainly brings balance flexibility to the body, one of the most beautiful effects is that it also brings flexibility and clarity to our mind."

I have been reflecting upon the past decades since the 1950s and 1960, where there was such optimism that medicine and science would herald cures for diseases, conquer cancer and generally hold the answer for many of the world's social ills. These hopes were in reality the aspirations of my parents' generation who had lived through the horrors of the Second World War; it is understandable that they saw a better future in education – the adage that history must not be allowed to repeat itself.

However, it is absolutely clear to all that knowledge and education have not eliminated the scourges of poverty, disease, war and hunger. What happens now is that the global community of humanity can now witness and view via television and the internet man's inhumanity to man, such as has occurred and is occurring all around the world including Rwanda, Cambodia, Burma, Bosnia, Darfur, Somalia and Zimbabwe.

In medicine and science, scholars of cancers and heart disease are able to cite research and clinical evidence from the twentieth century regarding the efficacy of vitamins, herbs and other approaches. Certain individual proponents including Abram Hoffer are still around; other such as Linus Pauling and Max Gerson are deceased.

The Letters to the Editor in this issue  discuss some of the more important discoveries exploring, at the molecular level, the mechanisms behind the formation, development and metastasis of cancer cells:

"The spreading of cancer cells from one part of the body to another, called metastasis, is one of the biggest causes of death from cancer.  By explaining a key part of that process, our research brings new hope for future therapies to fight cancer.

"The research has found the constant competition between two proteins called 'Rac' and 'Rho' is responsible for allowing the cancer cells to change shape and spread through the body.

"We have shown that cells from melanoma (an aggressive type of skin cancer) are able to rapidly alternate between two different forms of movement where cells have either a round shape or a more stretchy "elongated" shape."

Additionally in the Cancer Research Updates, Crispen and colleagues, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA 19111, USA have studied the interaction with and modulation of Vitamin E succinate upon transcriptional factors involved in the development and progression of prostate cancer. 

If one is a somewhat phlegmatic character, as I am prone to be, cynicism creeps in when so much evidence has been published over the past 50-100 years regarding the clinical therapeutic efficacy of vitamins and minerals against heart disease, cancer; read also the letter in this issue about vitamin B3 nicotinamide and Alzheimer's disease:

"Researchers at the University of California at Irvine gave the human dose equivalent of 2,000 to 3,000 mg of vitamin B3 to mice with Alzheimer's.[2] It worked. Kim Green, one of the researchers, is quoted as saying, "Cognitively, they were cured. They performed as if they'd never developed the disease."

Having contributed to Positive Health over many years, Barbara Payne has now decided to retire from her PH Expert Regular Column after this Jan 2009 Issue 154. We wish her a much deserved tranquil retirement. We also acknowledge in this issue the life and huge contribution of Chris Jarmey, who recently died. A brief obituary is published in this issue: and many of his books have been reviewed on PH Online:  

In these momentous and turbulent times, we all need to live according to our deepest felt beliefs and continue to fight the good fight. Best wishes for a Happy New Years.