How Hospitals Are Nurturing the Mind, Body & Spirit

Massage therapy…Reiki…spiritual counseling…acupuncture…music therapy…guided imagery…sounds like a New Age spa retreat. In actuality, these are alternative therapies you can now find in an increasing number of hospitals across the country. Numerous hospitals now incorporate a holistic vision of treating the whole person — mind, body, and spirit — into their mission statements.

Such therapies are used to help treat anxiety, depression, and chronic pain, and reduce the need for medication, lower blood pressure, improve stroke patients’ memories, aid sleep, and speed recovery.

Many patients, who are demanding such added services to their treatment and recovery experience, feel a deeper level of personal healing when receiving such patient-centered care; this has added to overall patient satisfaction. It is so successful that 93 percent of patients feel they benefited from the complementary therapies.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) acknowledges that approximately 37 percent of hospitals across the U.S. have now added such offerings because of high patient demand and the lucrative potential of tapping into the $19 billion spent on complementary medicine each year, even though these services are paid out-of-pocket by patients.

Some of the therapies now include:

• Acupuncture
• Music Therapy
• Art Therapy
• Spiritual Counseling
• Touch Therapy
• Massage
• Chiropractic
• Homeopathy
• Reiki
• Herbal Medicine

It is likely some of the personal benefits can be attributed to the placebo effect, but the perspective regarding this possibility is positive — what matters is that it provides the sought-after benefits. And patient satisfaction is the primary way these alternative therapies are judged on their effectiveness.

The downside is the AHA claims that 44 percent of such hospitals do not have enough interest from their staff physicians in their holistic healing programs.

AHA Study: Latest Survey Shows More Hospitals Offering Complementary and Alternative Medicine Services

Another Reason Not to Drink Soda

Besides the extra 136 calories (35 g of carbs) from the eight teaspoons of sugar products added to each 12-oz can, there’s another reason to avoid drinking soda and other similar carbonated beverages.

A new study by researchers at Loyola University in Chicago noticed that women of normal weight and who drank at least two sodas per day were at twice the risk of showing early signs of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). The National Kidney Foundation cites an increase of CKD by 30 percent in the last 10 years, now affecting approximately 26 million Americans.

Upon studying the findings of 9000 adults, the data led Loyola University researchers to believe the ingredient in the soda that may contribute to the disease is either high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or phosphorus. Men who took part in the study or those who drank diet soda did not show the same early signs.

Continue reading »

Can People Think Themselves Sick?

Psychiatrist Simon Wessely of London focuses his career on treating people based on the effects of the mind on the body. He says a lot of people reject his unorthodox beliefs and successive treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and Gulf war syndrome.

Dr. Wessely explains that negative experiences going on around you can affect your body, producing such physical symptoms as sleeplessness and anxiety. These psychological factors, over time, can eventually trigger chronic disease within the body. He has developed psychiatric treatment for these types of diseases using cognitive behavioral therapy and tailored programs of gradually increasing the individual’s activity levels. Dr. Wessely helps about one-third of his patients completely recover and another third make good improvement.

Even more controversial is his theory that these conditions are basically the same illness. His reasoning is that the display of the key symptoms, such as stomach pain, are all similar. While treating Gulf war syndrome patients he recognized they had very similar symptoms as those patients with chronic fatigue syndrome.

Dr. Wessely now primarily conducts military medical research based on his observations of the health of troops. Some of his findings include recognizing that alcohol is a greater problem among troops compared to post-traumatic stress disorder. Additionally he found that extending tours of duty has a bad effect on people’s morale and mental health.

He’s also provided research on individuals who claim that cell phone usage makes them ill, but they actually experience illness because of their belief in the use of the technology, and not from the effects of electromagnetic radiation.

Recession Gardening

Have a green thumb but not enough green in your wallet? According to a 10-year study by Burpee Seeds completed last year, a $50 investment in gardening supplies will save you $1250 a year in produce. It is for these savings in food costs that there’s been a recent “bloom” in the number of people buying seeds and deciding to start up their own gardens.

Seed companies have been one of the few industries to thrive during this recession. The National Gardening Association predicts an increase of 19 percent in home garden production for this year, and community gardens across the U.S. have become so popular there’s a long waiting list to get your own plot.

Despite the fact that it takes at least several extra hours a week invested in tending your own, that hasn’t deterred many from making the decision to begin a new gardening project. Experiencing sticker shock in the grocery store is incentive enough. Even though the price of vehicle fuel has dropped considerably — a factor in determining consumer food prices — the U.S. Department of Agriculture foresees a 2.5 to 3.5 percent increase this year, which is added to the 6.4 percent increase we experienced in 2008. It’s a catch-up game — crop producers still haven’t recovered from their losses incurred last season, so they will continue to pass the financial burden onto the consumer.

Packaged goods may not appear to be more expensive because the price may be the same as last year, but in reality, consumers are being tricked into paying more with shrinking packaging and less actual product. Slightly more narrowed containers, more water and less food in cans, and shorter boxes are all used to deliver less product without much notice or protest.

But some people are taking notice and have decided the solution is producing their own food. Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, stresses you need only a small amount of growing space — his plot is only 10′ x 20′ — to grow a large enough supply. Many city dwellers, who have only a balcony, grow the more expensive types of produce — tomatoes, peppers, and herbs — out of containers.

The experience of gardening can provide an opportunity for exposure to sunshine, fresh air, and outdoor exercise; control over the safety of the fertilizers and other vital elements needed to properly cultivate the plants (and ultimately what goes into your family’s mouths); and the chance to experience the wondrous, intelligent cycles of nature and the satisfaction of seeing its beautiful fruit borne from the labor and love you and Mother Nature put into it.

Eating Cheaply Can Be Costly in the Long Run

When money gets tight and drastic budget changes need to be made, people can eliminate their cable TV, their nights-out, cell phone, or internet. But people can’t eliminate food from their monthly expenses, so they’re forced to resort to cheaper alternatives of their regular meals. And since a lot of people lead such busy lifestyles, both of these factors mean that people choose value items from fast-food restaurants as their alternative.

There are quite a few chains now offering the Dollar Menu — fast food to go for only a buck an item. These items, however, tend to be overloaded with calories, animal fat, salt, and carbs, and of very low nutritional value.

The Cancer Project, an organization whose aim is cancer prevention and cancer survival, analyzed these value menu offerings from the nation’s largest fast-food chains and came up with the Top Five worst selections based on unhealthy ingredients (and lack of healthy ones).

Continue reading »

Do Exceptionally Cold Winters Disprove Global Warming?

The average person may look at the extreme wintry weather going on in certain parts of the world and declare this to be proof that there is no such thing as global warming.

Most scientists agree, however, that extreme deviations in weather patterns from year to year cannot be taken into account when attempting to validate the actuality of climate change. What is more important, rather, is looking at average global temperatures over an extended period of years and analyzing long-term trends.

NASA reports the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. Likewise, according to NOAA, these past few decades have been the warmest since 1000 AD. The year 2005 has been the warmest since the late 1800s, when valid measurements began.

With warmer patterns over certain areas, this tends to cause greater evaporation of water from large lakes, seas, and oceans. Subsequently, this causes a greater amount of precipitation to fall in other areas. In those regions that are experiencing freezing or near-freezing temperatures, all this excess precipitation in the atmosphere will cause greater amounts of snowfall.

Scientists on both sides of the global warming debate agree that we shouldn’t take into consideration either an unusually warm or cold season to determine if it’s a real phenomenon, but rather they tend to cancel each other out as an indicator of the larger climate picture.

Related website: NOAA Global Warming FAQ

The Shifting of U.S. Religion

Over a period of seven years there’s been a slight downshift in the number of Americans who attach themselves to a Christian religion and an upswing in the number of those who don’t profess to any religion at all.

A recently released report by The Program on Public Values at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut surveyed 54,461 adults across America, which highlighted religious trends in the U.S. compared to previously released statistics.

Here’s a list of its most significant findings:

• 15 percent claim no religion, up from 14.2 percent in 2001
• Catholics are still the largest religious group in the U.S. at 25 percent of the population
• 76 percent of the U.S. population are Christians, down from 77 percent in 2001 and 86 percent in 1990
• 3.5 percent of Christians now prefer to be referred to as evangelical or born-again rather than associated with a particular denomination, compared to 0.1 percent in 1990
• Evangelical/born-again Christians make up 34 percent of the U.S. population and 45 percent of the total number of Christians
• The least religious area of the U.S. is Northern New England at 34 percent
• The number of Catholics grew in California, Florida, and Texas due to an increase in the number of Latinos
• 12 percent believe in a higher power but not the God of traditional monotheistic religions
• The study noted a slight increase in the number of people who profess adherence to nontraditional organizations such as Scientology, Wicca, and Santeria
• The Muslim population showed a slight increase
• Interest in Buddhism and other Eastern-oriented religions slowed slightly
• Mormon population stayed about the same at 1.4 percent
• The number of Jewish followers dropped from 1.8 percent to 1.2 percent

Non-denominational Christian numbers are growing partly due to the influences of megachurches considered “seeker sensitive” who attract a greater number of young followers with their rock style music and less-structured prayer.