Positive Health Online

This Sept 2010 Issue 174 of Positive Health PH Online publishes significant information regarding important health issues.

The groundbreaking feature How Heavy Metals Affect Neurotransmitters Production and Balance by Manuela Malaguti Boyle ND and Geoff Beaty DN MNHAA details the worrying rapid increase in incidence of neurotoxic or immune reactive conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, ADD, dyslexia and learning disabilities. The authors have done a great service to the entire community concerned about the toxic effects of heavy metals, including mercury, cadmium, lead, aluminium, and tin. This article is extensively referenced to the published scientific literature.

"Much of the developmental effects of mercury and other toxic metals are due to prenatal and neonatal exposures damage to the developing endocrine system. A recent study found that prenatal Hg exposure is correlated with lower scores in neurodevelopmental screening, but more so in the linguistic pathway. Prenatal and neonatal toxic metal exposure to mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, nickel, and aluminium have been documented in medical publications and medical texts to cause common and widespread neurological and psychological effects, including depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorders, social deficits, other mood disorders, schizophrenia, anorexia, cognitive impairments, ADHD, autism, seizures, etc. Children with autism had significantly higher levels of mercury in baby teeth, but similar levels of lead and similar levels of zinc.[2, 5] Children with autism also had significantly higher usage of oral antibiotics during their first 12 months of life. Baby teeth are a good measure of cumulative exposure to toxic metals during foetal development and early infancy."

Vivienne Bradshaw-Black's Expert Column Immune Health and Efficiency discusses numerous factors which affect and assault the immune system, particularly in children.

"This innately superb protection mechanism can become inefficient and not up to scratch, or become over-zealous and confused, turning on cells with a 'self' label (auto-immune conditions). This is an abnormal condition; something causes this confusion. A matter for great concern is when cells are invaded with toxic materials, and the cell and the toxins, as a unit, are labelled 'non-self'."

Anne McIntyre's Expert Column in PH Online Sept Issue 174 - Helpful Herbs Following Surgery discusses herbs which have helped her recovery from recent surgery:

"I have recently had to undergo knee surgery which involved a half knee replacement. I thought I would take this opportunity to share information with others who may have to have surgery of one kind or another about some of the herbs I found helpful in my healing process...One of the mixtures I prescribed for myself included Gotu kola, meadowsweet, comfrey leaf and sariva."

In Part I of Neurolinguistic Psychotherapy for the Treatment of Depression Nancy Blake describes Representational Systems and Eye Accessing Cues which can be of assistance:

"Think about the severely depressed person you might see, just walking down the street. Looking down. Muttering. Now look at your depressed client, sitting curled over, looking down. Ask her how she feels and she will say "depressed". Ask her what she is saying to herself, and you can be sure her response will be self-critical. The answer to the question "how are you doing that" addressed to a depressed person, is "thinking very self-critical thoughts - and believing them - then feeling bad".

"Now ask your client (or yourself, if it is you who are depressed) to sit up straight, and direct their gaze to a point near the ceiling, and try to feel depressed without letting the direction of their gaze drop. There will be a great deal of surprise when it is discovered that it isn't actually possible."

The attitude of many people who have either never heard of nor used non-drug treatment approaches is that to them only the doctor's drug prescriptions constitute real medicine. This is somewhat reminiscent of spiritual endeavours of people belonging to an organization and who refer to the rest of the world as the 'outside world', as though the world consisted of 'inside' and 'outside'. There is only one world - conventional and complementary medicines are merely different treatment approaches

In her Expert Column Natural Childbirth: Maternal Expectations Versus the Reality Denise Tiran MSc RM RGN ADM PGCA, who works with both Conventional and Complementary Medicine states that:

"Complementary therapies may be used, either singly or in combination, to ease pain, anxiety and fear, to facilitate progress and to prevent or manage complications. Any therapy which assists in relaxing the mother, thereby reducing cortisol levels, will influence release of oxytocin, the hormone required to regulate conception, pregnancy, birth and lactation. Research has shown that using complementary therapies to aid wellbeing during pregnancy, and in labour, facilitates women to tackle the demands of childbirth, leads to greater maternal satisfaction, a reduction in the incidence of both short- and long term sequelae of childbearing and, consequently, safer and more cost effective maternity services."

As with each issue, the Editorial features, Research Updates, Letters and Brief Takes and Short Features provide information by and about international leading authors, clinicians and events. We have been developing PH Online so that visitors will, in the near future, arrive at their own country's 'landing page', which will overlay the main PH Online site, and provide facilities to save your own Favourite Articles list and book reviews and view advertisements promoting courses, books, products in your own country. Chicken or egg - which comes first: the overlay landing page or the country-specific advertisements? Watch this space.