Life Changes
Healing Through Storytelling: Lessons from The Odyssey
The journey of Odysseus in Homer's 'The Odyssey' offers profound insights into healing...
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- Written by: Marla Paul
Researchers have developed a way to reliably predict which chronic pain patients will respond to a sugar placebo pill based on brain anatomy and psychological characteristics. Doctors may one day prescribe placebos that work as effectively as any painkiller for certain patients, the researchers’ new study suggests
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- Written by: Melissa De Witte
Researchers have discovered evidence of the earliest brewmasters to date, a finding that might stir an old debate: What came first, beer or bread? In a cave in what is now Israel, scientists found beer-brewing innovations that they believe predate the early appearance of cultivated cereals in the Near East by several millennia.
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- Written by: Natalie Wood
Two of every three US consumers surveyed report eating less of at least one type of meat, according to new research. “Many Americans continue to have strong preferences for meat,” says Roni Neff, an assistant professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
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- Written by: David Hill
Walking significantly lowers the risk of heart failure in older women, a new study shows. The study of more than 137,000 postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 is the largest and most comprehensive to date that has evaluated physical activity within the context of heart failure prevention.
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- Written by: Andres Pumariega
Suicide rates in the United States have increased by 25-30 percent since 1999. This is particularly true for youth ages 12-24, with increases of approximately 30 percent over the same period. In Alachua County, Florida, where I teach and practice at the University of Florida, the base rate for suicides among youth ages 12-17 had been about five per 100,000 for many years, below the base national rate of 13 per 100,000. However, in the year 2017 that rate of completed suicides increased to 27 per 100,000, and for 2018 we are at a pace that will likely equal 2017.
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- Written by: Hui-Fern Koay and Jesseka Chadderton
No matter how much we try to minimise our exposure to respiratory viruses, it’s far more difficult in winter when we spend so much time in close proximity to other people.
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- Written by: Greta Guest
Leftovers may be throwing off your sense of how much you’ve actually eaten and how much you need to exercise, particularly as portion sizes—and therefore leftover portions—increase, according to a new study.
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- Written by: Janet Bultitude
The brain has no nociceptors – the nerves that detect damage or threat of damage to our body and signal this to the spinal cord and brain. This has led to the belief that the brain feels no pain. A belief that has entered popular culture.
In the 2001 movie Hannibal, there is a gut-twisting scene in which the eponymous Hannibal Lecter cuts out part of the brain of an FBI agent who is fully awake, though drugged, and seated at a dinner table.
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- Written by: Andrea LaFerle
People with low muscle strength don’t typically live as long as their stronger peers, according to a new study. After adjusting for sociodemographic factors, chronic health conditions, and smoking history, researchers found that people with low muscle strength are 50 percent more likely to die earlier.
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- Written by: Andrew Lavender
Many older people find they’re not able to move as freely as they did when they were younger. They describe their movements as feeling stiff or restricted. In particular, feeling stiff when getting out of bed first thing in the morning or after sitting for a long period. The feeling does eventually ease with movement as the muscles “warm up”, but it can be troublesome. There are a few reasons this happens.
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- Written by: Jim Dryden
It may be possible in the future to screen patients for Alzheimer’s disease using a simple eye exam, according to new research. Using technology similar to what is found in eye doctors’ offices, researchers have detected evidence indicating Alzheimer’s disease in older patients who had no symptoms.
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- Written by: Emanual Maverakis, Carlito Lebrilla and Jenny Wang
When you think of sugar, you probably think of the sweet, white, crystalline table sugar that you use to make cookies or sweeten your coffee. But did you know that within our body, simple sugar molecules can be connected together to create powerful structures that have recently been found to be linked to health problems, including cancer, aging and autoimmune diseases.
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- Written by: Vox channel
Not everyone will readily admit to peeing in swimming pools, but it does happen. An anonymous survey from 2012 found that 19 percent of adults admitted they had peed in a pool at least once. But when you use a pool as a giant toilet, that yellow trail contains some nasty bacteria and parasites.
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- Written by: Jim Dryden
A new study involved nearly 600 patients with depression that taking four or more antidepressants, taken either separately or in combination could not be alleviate. Researchers evaluated vagus nerve stimulators, which send regular, mild pulses of electrical energy to the brain via the vagus nerve. The nerve originates in the brain, passes through the neck and travels down into the chest and abdomen.
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- Written by: Richard Gunderman and Lily Wolf
Picture two different families, each dealing with a diagnosis of dementia in one of its members. In one case, the patient is a retired executive, whose family tries as long as possible to keep the diagnosis secret, relying primarily on professional caregivers and eventually a nursing home. In another case, the patient is a grandmother. As soon as the diagnosis is suspected, her family pulls together, bringing her into their home and surrounding her with affection.
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- Written by: Andrea LaFerle
Eating a diet that is rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and low in added sugar, sodium, and processed meats could help promote healthy cellular aging in women, according to a new study.
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- Written by: Corinne Asturias
Our mental and physical well-being suffer from the sonic overload of modern life. Once upon a time, a person could seek out silence and find it. But nowadays, silence has become a rare and elusive thing. Without humans protecting it, quiet appears and disappears like an endangered species. That which used to dominate the earth for miles at a stretch and days on end is on the run.
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- Written by: Joshua James Parfitt
Despite its environmental benefits, using local seaweed for food can be a tough sell. Some think the Dutch have finally cracked the code. “Is seaweed a vegetable?” a wide-eyed child asks a tall man chopping kelp at a “Taste the Nature” market in the Zuiderpark city farm in The Hague. “Well, it has lots of vitamins and minerals,” the cook, Jethro van Luijk, replies.
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- Written by: Megan Wildhood
Almost 40 percent of Americans can expect a cancer diagnosis in their lifetimes. As the number of new cancer cases per year is expected to rise to 23.6 million by 2030 worldwide, people are desperate for answers, turning to alternative therapies that fall outside the typical “slash, burn, poison” treatment model. A review of the documentary “The Food Cure,” which follows patients undergoing an intensive and controversial nutritional therapy.
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- Written by: Gillian Kiley
Hospice and palliative care patients who listen to live music in their rooms as part of their treatment report feeling better both emotionally and physically, a new study reports. They also request fewer opioid-based medications, according to the study.
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- Written by: Cecilia Sierra-Heredia
We’re very careful about what our kids eat, but what about the air they breathe?During recent summers, children living on the West Coast of Canada have been breathing some of the most polluted air on record. This is due to seasonal wildfires, which have burned through vast zones of North America and affected even larger areas with their smoke.
