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: Caron Lett, University of York
Plaque on prehistoric human teeth offers a whole new perspective on our ancestors’ diet and their relationship with plants. The research suggests that prehistoric people living in Central Sudan may have understood both the nutritional and medicinal qualities of many plants, including the purple nut sedge (Cyperus rotundus), regarded as a nuisance weed today.
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- Written by: Carol Peppe Hewitt
We all need to eat, and whenever we do, we make choices. We make these choices all day long. Cook at home or eat out? Fresh or frozen? Raw or cooked? Sweet or savory? Cheap or expensive? Healthy or maybe not-so-healthy? Real or decaf? Cream or sugar? Tall or grande?
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- Written by: Mark Liponis, M.D.
The Farmer needs more frequent meals and snacks compared with the Hunter. The varying dietary needs of Farmers and Hunters also means they are different when it comes to their most common health problems and diseases.
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- Written by: Nick Inman
There is a process going on inside me all the time that I don’t like to talk about, but which must be mentioned for the sake of completion. This is my identity of pain: the pattern of suffering that marks me out from everyone else as definitively as my fingerprints....
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- Written by: Deb White and Lisa Schafranek, The Conversation
Can you imagine being so desperate for food that you would eat yourself to survive? Our cells do exactly this. When cells are deprived of energy and nutrients from their external environment, they look internally, packaging up and consuming their own components to survive until an energy source becomes available...
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- Written by: Stephanie Bender & Treacy Colbert
Today is the day you can ease your alarm about sudden memory gaps and quiet your fear that you’re on the cusp of dementia. Changes in memory and concentration at midlife are very common, but you don’t have to live with them. You can improve your...
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- Written by: Jenifer Madson
Before I got sober, just shy of my twenty-fourth birthday, the last thing I felt was the freedom and happiness that the promises speak of. I was sick: not just physically sick from the amount of chemicals in my system, but soul-sick, completely bereft of a sense of...
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- Written by: Finley Eversole, PhD.
The prevailing industrial age view of the human body as a machine whose parts occasionally break down, requiring repair only to that part without regard to the whole human being and the sources of the problem, is a health model that will increasingly be replaced by a more unified theory of what a human being truly is.
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- Written by: Tom Sanders, The Conversation
Our understanding of fats – including which ones are actually good for us – is evolving. We know for example that red meat and meat products, cakes and biscuits, which are rich sources of saturated fatty acids, are associated with an increased number of cardiovascular deaths.
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- Written by: Gayle MacDonald, MS, LMT
At the end of the day, less pain, anxiety, and nausea, better sleep and more energy add to quality of life. That is what people with cancer seek. Researchers measure this variable usually with a written questionnaire and sometimes an oral interview...
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- Written by: David Hoffmann FNIMH AHG with Diana DeLuca
There is nothing mysterious or even particularly clever or skillful about making healing formulations from plants. Intimidated by the pharmaceutical elite, we think that to be of any use a medicine must be made by a Ph.D. wearing a white lab coat. Not so! If you can make a cup of tea or cook a simple meal...
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- Written by: Fronscesca Jackson-Webb
Some obese people may be able to remain metabolically healthy despite their size because their bodies produce low levels of a certain molecule. High levels of the molecule, called heme oxygenase-1 or HO-1, are linked to metabolic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as high blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol...
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- Written by: Jo Adetunji, The Conversation
“It was believed that since fat is the most ‘calorie-dense’ of the macro-nutrients, a reduction in its consumption would lead to a reduction in calories and a subsequent decrease in the incidence of obesity,” he said. But turning to carbohydrates such as sugar and corn syrup has led to a parallel increase in diabetes and obesity in the US.
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- Written by: National Cancer Institute
Most American adults say that they believe in God and that their religious beliefs affect how they live their lives. However, people have different ideas about life after death, belief in miracles, and other religious beliefs...
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- Written by: Mark Griffiths, ND
“Sunshine can be addictive like heroin.” The claim comes via a study published in Cell based on an experiment carried out on mice at Harvard Medical School. Researchers found that ultraviolet light exposure leads to elevated endorphin levels – the body’s own “feel good” internal morphine...
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- Written by: Jason Bittel, OnEarth
The question of whether to eat fish while pregnant has long been a slippery one. On the one hand, expecting mothers are told that eating fish regularly is good for fetal brain development. And on the other, they’re warned that fish contain mercury, which can cause birth defects.
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- Written by: Matthew Swayne, Penn State
Teen smokers are better at getting friends to start than nonsmokers are at getting friends to quit.“What we found is that social influence matters, it leads nonsmoking friends into smoking and nonsmoking friends can turn smoking friends into nonsmokers,
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- Written by: Nathan Heflick
An awareness of our own death is potentially extremely distressing. Go ahead and contemplate your own mortality. How does it feel? Would you be surprised to learn that it can potentially improve your mental health to think about your death more often?
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- Written by: Peter Bongiorno, ND, LAc.
Could a simple cold shower improve your mood and energy? Discover how hydrotherapy revives the body, relieves fatigue, and soothes the mind.
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- Written by: Pam Montgomery
We can work with plant spirits for our own personal guidance and healing, but when we call upon plant spirits to engage in the healing of another, a particular type of dynamism is added to the healing process. Plants are community beings that are here to serve the community as a whole so that when we step beyond our own personal needs...
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- Written by: Sarah Yang, University of California Berkeley
Oxytocin is released with a warm hug, a grasped hand, or a loving gaze, and it increases libido. The hormone kicks into high gear during and after childbirth, helping new mothers bond with and breastfeed their new babies. While oxytocin is found in both young boys and girls, it is not yet known when levels of the hormone start to decline in humans, and what levels are necessary for maintaining healthy tissues.
