Functional Medicine Quotes

There is no one way to salvation, whatever the manner in which a man may proceed. All forms and variations are governed by the eternal intelligence of the Universe that enables a man to approach perfection. It may be in the arts of music and painting or it may be in commerce, law, or medicine. It may be in the study of war or the study of peace. Each is as important as any other. Spiritual enlightenment through religious meditation such as Zen or in any other way is as viable and functional as any "Way."... A person should study as they see fit.

The brain-disease model overlooks four fundamental truths: (1) our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. Restoring relationships and community is central to restoring well-being; (2) language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know, and finding a common sense of meaning; (3) we have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving, and touching; and (4) we can change social conditions to create environments in which children and adults can feel safe and where they can thrive. When we ignore these quintessential dimensions of humanity, we deprive people of ways to heal from trauma and restore their autonomy. Being a patient, rather than a participant in one’s healing process, separates suffering people from their community and alienates them from an inner sense of self.

People are good medicine, but they can’t be your foundation of functionality. You must build that yourself.

For millennia, medicine has functioned on the assumption that male bodies can represent humanity as a whole. As a result, we have a huge historical data gap when it comes to female bodies, and this is a data gap that is continuing to grow as researchers carry on ignoring the pressing ethical need to include female cells, animals and humans, in their research. That this is still going on in the twenty-first century is a scandal. It should be the subject of newspaper headlines worldwide. Women are dying, and the medical world is complicit. It needs to wake up.

Americans see democracy as a remedy for all ills-to be taken three times daily like prescription medicine. It works for them. Ergo - it should work for the world. What America naïvely forgets is that for democracy to function, most of a populace must have something personally that is worth preserving.

The flowers inside your body are more beautiful than the flowers outside - full with fragrance and love. They are the sunshine and the medicine of your soul. Oh, the lost one come back to the source. You will be happier than ever before.

It is often thought that medicine is the curative process. It is no such thing; medicine is the surgery of functions, as surgery proper is that of limbs and organs. Neither can do anything but remove obstructions; neither can cure; nature alone cures. Surgery removes the bullet out of the limb, which is an obstruction to cure, but nature heals the wound. So it is with medicine; the function of an organ becomes obstructed; medicine so far as we know, assists nature to remove the obstruction, but does nothing more. And what nursing has to do in either case, is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.

Many a death was precipitated by the food, the job, or the medication whose main function was to postpone it.

At one time, the treatment for a certain kind of psychosis had been to push an ice pick up through the orbit of the eye, into the frontal lobe; the ice pick was then stirred around until it reduced the problematic brain tissue to non-functioning porridge.

The 114 chakras exchange information within the body and with the higher realms. They are like quantum information processing centers. When they are blocked, difficulties arise. When they are open and balanced, the joy of awakening arises.

The study of medicine consists on the one hand in storing up in the mind an enormous number of facts, which are simply memorized without any real knowledge of their foundations, and on the other hand in learning practical skills, which have to be acquired on the principle “Don’t think, act!” Thus it is that, of all the professionals, the medical man has the least opportunity of developing the function of thinking.

Healing is a biological process, not an art. It is as much a function of the living organism as respiration, digestion, circulation, excretion, cell proliferation, or nerve activity. It is a ceaseless process, as constant as the turning of the earth on its axis. Man can neither duplicate nor imitate nor provide a substitute for the process. All schools of healing are frauds.

For instance, it is not the function of medicine to restore a patient to health, but only to promote this end as far as possible; for even those whose recovery is impossible may be properly treated.

The power of healing is within you. All you need to do is give your body what it needs and remove what is poisoning it. You can restore your own health by what you do -- not by the pills you take, but by how you choose to live.

Under chronic stress, your body is more apt to enter a state of dis-ease. Unable to achieve its natural balance, it can’t function the way it should. The ripple effects can be profound. And yet Western medicine has trained us to focus on symptomsrather than root causes like stress. Page 71

Your immune systems are comprised of all parts of the eco-system you know as yourself, and include not only every part of you, from your conscious and subconscious thoughts to your physical body systems, but also how you live and function in relationship with the larger ecosystems that surround you.

The job of any doctor, Bludau later told me, is to support quality of life, by which he meant two things: as much freedom from the ravages of disease as possible and the retention of enough function for active engagement in the world.

I don't mind the term functional medicine -- I suppose it's better than dysfunctional medicine.

FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE: THE FUTURE My goal in medicine is to help provide a way to navigate and sort through health information based on an entirely new way of thinking about health and disease. I want to find the right treatment for each person, regardless of what that treatment might be. If a medicine is the best treatment, I will choose that; if a change in diet, supplements, herbs, or lifestyle works best, then I will choose that. We must learn to treat the person, not the disease; the system, not just the symptoms. This is personalized medicine, the medicine of the future.

Cognitive reality of an individual solely arises from the make-up of that individual’s brain structure. Any kind of damage, like stroke can alter this reality without the awareness of the individual.

The attention given to the side of the head which has received the injury, in connection with a specific reference to the side of the body nervously affected, is in itself evidence that in this case the ancient surgeon was already beginning observations on the localization of functions in the brain.

Much of the mystery surrounding drug action can be cleared up by recognizing that drugs affect only the rate at which biologic functions proceed; they do not change the basic nature of existing processes or create new functions.

Today when I see a patient with CML, I tell them that the disease is an indolent leukemia with an excellent prognosis, that they will usually live their functional life span provided they take an oral medicine, Gleevec, for the rest of their lives.

means of succeeding in the object we set before us. We must make as it were a fresh start, and before going further define what rhetoric is. Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art. Every other art can instruct or persuade about its own particular subject-matter; for instance, medicine about what is healthy and unhealthy, geometry about the properties of magnitudes, arithmetic about numbers, and the same is true of the other arts and sciences. But rhetoric we look upon as the power of observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject presented to us;

You, dear sister, may be the last bastion of sanity in a culture gone mad. In a world so toxic it cannot function, so numb it cannot even cry out for help, so disconnected it cannot heal. Except through the cells of our bodies. Our sisters are dying right now to tell you, Enough suffering, it is time to heal.

As the reader will discover in this book, problems that affect the mitochondria are the basic cause of disease; as Avicenna long ago stated in the 3rd Lesson, 2nd Art, “When the organ function becomes abnormal, then there is a problem with its energy, and a problem with organ’s energy causes a disease in the organ.

But when we reduce sex to a function, we also invoke the idea of dysfunction. We are no longer talking about the art of sex; rather, we are talking about the mechanics of sex. Science has replaced religion as the authority; and science is a more formidable arbiter. Medicine knows how to scare even those who scoff at religion. Compared with a diagnosis, what's a mere sin? We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.

Medicine labours to restore 'natural' structure or 'normal' function. But greed, egoism, self-deception,and self-pity are not abnormal in the same sense as astigmatism or a floating kidney. For who, in Heaven's name, would describe as natural or normal any man from whom these failings were wholly absent? 'Natural,' if you like, in a quite different sense; archnatural, unfallen. We have only seen one such Man. And he was not at all like the psychologist's picture of the integrated, balanced, adjusted, happily married, employed, popular citizen. You can't really be 'well adjusted' to your world if it says 'you havea devil' and ends by nailing you up naked to a stake of wood.

Your gut is not Las Vegas. What happens in the gut does not stay in the gut.

You are alive because your cells are self-correcting chemical factories. Your job is to facilitate that self-correction, not impede it.

Even the poorest and most squalid life is an Aeschylean drama, if you think about the tragedy of the bodily functions, the whispering of the secretions, the silence of the organs, the exertions of memory, the groping of the voice, the blood that courses, the mortal miasmas, the riots among microorganisms, the spermatic wars, the cellular eruptions, the pestilences of the nerves, the biochemical predestinations, and the fate that slowly but surely introduces you to the final infection, to the sores, the exploded boils, the snakes of madness, the furious bitches of Hunger.

Medicine labours to restore ‘natural’ structure or ‘normal’ function. But greed, egoism, self-deception, and self-pity are not unnatural or abnormal in the same sense as astigmatism or a floating kidney.

McKusick's belief in this paradigm-the focus on disability rather than abnormalcy-was actualized in the treatment of patients in his clinic. Patients with dwarfism, for instance, were treated by an interdisciplinary team of genetic counselors, neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, nurses, and psychiatrists trained to focus on specific disabilities of persons with short stature. Surgical interventions were reserved to correct specific deformities as they arose. The goal was not to restore "normalcy"-but vitality, joy, and function. McKusic had rediscovered the founding principles of modern genetics in the realm of human pathology. In humans as in wild flies, genetic variations abounded. Here too genetic variants, environments, and gene-environment interactions ultimately collaborated to cause phenotypes-except in this case, the "phenotype" in question was disease. Here too some genes had partial penetrance and widely variable expressivity. One gene could cause many diseases, and one disease could be caused by many genes. And here too "fitness" could not be judged in absolutes. Rather the lack of fitness-illness [italicized, sic] in colloquial terms- was defined by the relative mismatch between an organism and environment.

Environmental influences also affect dopamine. From animal studies, we know that social stimulation is necessary for the growth of the nerve endings that release dopamine and for the growth of receptors that dopamine needs to bind to in order to do its work. In four-month-old monkeys, major alterations of dopamine and other neurotransmitter systems were found after only six days of separation from their mothers. “In these experiments,” writes Steven Dubovsky, Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine at the University of Colorado, “loss of an important attachment appears to lead to less of an important neurotransmitter in the brain. Once these circuits stop functioning normally, it becomes more and more difficult to activate the mind.” A neuroscientific study published in 1998 showed that adult rats whose mothers had given them more licking, grooming and other physical-emotional contact during infancy had more efficient brain circuitry for reducing anxiety, as well as more receptors on nerve cells for the brain’s own natural tranquilizing chemicals. In other words, early interactions with the mother shaped the adult rat’s neurophysiological capacity to respond to stress. In another study, newborn animals reared in isolation had reduced dopamine activity in their prefrontal cortex — but not in other areas of the brain. That is, emotional stress particularly affects the chemistry of the prefrontal cortex, the center for selective attention, motivation and self-regulation. Given the relative complexity of human emotional interactions, the influence of the infant-parent relationship on human neurochemistry is bound to be even stronger. In the human infant, the growth of dopamine-rich nerve terminals and the development of dopamine receptors is stimulated by chemicals released in the brain during the experience of joy, the ecstatic joy that comes from the perfectly attuned mother-child mutual gaze interaction. Happy interactions between mother and infant generate motivation and arousal by activating cells in the midbrain that release endorphins, thereby inducing in the infant a joyful, exhilarated state. They also trigger the release of dopamine. Both endorphins and dopamine promote the development of new connections in the prefrontal cortex. Dopamine released from the midbrain also triggers the growth of nerve cells and blood vessels in the right prefrontal cortex and promotes the growth of dopamine receptors. A relative scarcity of such receptors and blood supply is thought to be one of the major physiological dimensions of ADD. The letters ADD may equally well stand for Attunement Deficit Disorder.

The mycelia provide immune enhancing compounds and various neurochemicals for the plants again in exchange for nutrients that supports the development and immune function of the plant body and root brain, just exactly as they do in us when we take them as herbal medicines.

It is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, and there may be a caster of state. How they use the salt, precisely--who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king's head is solemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his totality.

The job of any doctor, Bludau later told me, is to support quality of life, by which he meant two things: as much freedom from the ravages of disease as possible and the retention of enough function for active engagement in the world. Most doctors treat disease and figure that the rest will take care of itself.

Today especially, it is no longer the alliance of church and state that should be feared, that is, theocracy, but rather the alliance between medicine and the state, that is, pharmacracy.51 It is medicine that presently functions as the new secular religion, with the continuous aid of sustained government support.

Internal medicine doctors know the functions of the kidneys. They don’t confuse protective defenses such as cough and pain with diseases such as pneumonia and cancer. Psychiatrists lack a similar framework for the utility of stress, sleep, anxiety, and mood, so psychiatric diagnostic categories remain confusing and crude.

the following supplements are recommended specifically for MS. They’ll help reduce pain and protect your myelin sheath as you heal from EBV: EPA & DHA (eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid): omega-3 fats to help protect and fortify the myelin nerve sheath. Be sure to buy a plant-based (not fish-based) version. L-glutamine: amino acid that removes toxins such as MSG from the brain and protects neurons. Lion’s mane: medicinal mushroom that helps protect the myelin sheath and support neuron function. ALA (alpha lipoic acid): helps repair damaged neurons and neurotransmitters. Also helps mend the myelin nerve sheath. Monolaurin: fatty acid that kills virus cells, bacteria cells, and other bad microbes (e.g., mold) in the brain. Curcumin: component of turmeric that reduces inflammation of the central nervous system and relieves pain. Barley grass juice extract powder: contains micronutrients that feed the central nervous system. Also helps feed brain tissue, neurons, and the myelin nerve sheath.

By now, I hope you recognize this as one more example of the reductionist paradigm at work, even when it's couched in natural and alternative terms. As we saw in chapter ten, one of the major problems with modern medicine is its reliance on isolated, unnatural chemical pharmaceuticals as the primary tool in the war against disease. But the medical profession isn't the only player in the health-care system that has embraced this element of reductionism. The natural health community has also fallen prey to the ideology that chemicals ripped from their natural context are as good as or better than whole foods. Instead of synthesizing the presumed "active ingredients" from medicinal herbs, as done for prescription drugs, supplement manufacturers seek to extract and bottle the active ingredients from foods known or believed to promote good health and healing. And just like prescription drugs, the active agents function imperfectly, incompletely, and unpredictably when divorced from the whole plant food from which they're derived or synthesized.

Radionics was conceived as a diagnostic and treatment technology at a time when modern electronic theory and biomedicine had not become the dominant sciences they are today. Early radionic devices incorporated the new discoveries of radio and electronics into their design. During that period, the functional assumptions of radionic technology did not seem as implausible as it does today. However, it wasn't long before radionics became outmoded and completely non-scientific. As Mizrach has noted, radionics continued to appropriate the methods of orthodox science into its design and terminology, making the probability of understanding what it could accomplish even more difficult to assess. I will examine this appropriation in a spirit of tolerance, given the state of electronics and medicine circa 1910, when radionics was first discovered. I will do so in order to shift the focus of this interesting technology from the scientific to the metaphysical, where the reader not limited by a need for scientific approval can evaluate it. My aim is to provide a reasonable means of evaluating radionic technology as an artistic methodology.

your antioxidant levels with supplements that will help you detox and counter the negative effects of metals in the body. Focus on glutathione, alpha-lipoic acid, zinc orotate, and good old vitamin C. •​Regularly bind the metals you are exposed to by taking activated charcoal, 500 mg to 5 grams per day, and/or modified citrus pectin, 5 to 15 mg per day, both away from food or pharmaceuticals. Take some chlorella tablets when you eat fish. •​If you feel you are aging faster than you’d like or have a reason to believe you’ve been exposed to high levels of heavy metals, see a functional medicine doctor to get your urine levels tested. If they are indeed high, consider IV chelation therapy or suppository EDTA chelation therapy under a doctor’s supervision.

The good news is that these detox symptoms typically begin tapering within a couple of weeks for our clinical trial participants. In my clinical practice, I tell people to wind down the bad food as they wind up the good food over a week. When it is done that way, the detox symptoms are generally somewhat less bothersome. And remember what’s happening when you feel them: The bad stuff is coming out!

Consider taking L-tyrosine, vitamin D3, vitamin K2, vitamin A, and zinc supplements to achieve healthy hormone levels. If possible, get your vitamin D and zinc levels tested first to see if yours are low. •​Go through your toiletries and personal care products and get rid of everything containing phthalates and parabens, which mimic hormones in the body and disrupt your natural hormone function. •​If you can, see a functional medicine or anti-aging doctor for a full hormonal workup. If you are deficient in certain hormones and the above advice does not work, explore bioidentical hormone replacement therapy under the care of a trusted physician. •​If you are over forty and have clear signs of low sex hormones, it’s probably safe and likely beneficial to try 25 to 50 mg of DHEA without a lab test.

The conceptual problem at the center of contemporary healthcare is the confusion between disease processes and disease origins. Instead of asking why an illness occurs and trying to remove the conditions that led to it, medical researchers try to understand the mechanisms through which the disease operates, so that they can then interfere with them. These mechanisms, rather than the true origins, are seen as the causes of disease in current medical thinking. In the process of reducing illness to disease, the attention of physicians has moved away from the patient as a whole person. By concentrating on smaller and smaller fragments of the body – shifting its perspective from the study of bodily organs and their functions to that of cells and, finally, to the study of molecules – modern medicine often loses sight of the human being, and having reduced health to mechanical functioning, it is no longer able to deal with the phenomenon of healing. Over the past four decades, the dissatisfaction with the mechanistic approach to health and healthcare has grown rapidly both among healthcare professionals and the general public. At the same time, the emerging systems view of life has given rise to a corresponding systems view of health, as we discuss in Chapter 15, while health consciousness among the general population has increased dramatically in many countries. The

allopathic medicine is very good at managing trauma, acute bacterial infections, medical and surgical emergencies, and other crises. It is very bad at managing viral infections, chronic degenerative disease, allergy and autoimmunity, many of the serious kinds of cancer, mental illness, “functional” illness (disturbances of function in the absence of major physical or chemical changes), and all those conditions in which the mind plays an active role in creating susceptibility to disease.

What Positive Input Does Promotes overall balance, or homeostasis. Moves easily through the system, without obstruction or blockages. Generates new neural pathways. Promotes the production of new brain cells. Improves gene expression. Allows every cell to function normally, without anomalies or aberrant behavior. Supports the immune system, increasing resistance to disease. Counteracts the effects over time of entropy and aging. Increases a sense of wellbeing: The person feels healthy, vibrant, and alive.

Dear patient (first name, last name)! You are presently located in our experimental state hospital. The measures taken to save your life were drastic, extremely drastic (circle one). Our finest surgeons, availing themselves of the very latest achievements of modern medicine, performed one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten operations (circle one) on you. They were forced, acting wholly in your interest to replace certain parts of your organism with parts obtained from other persons, in strict accordance with Federal Law (Rev. Stat. Comm. 1-989/0-001/89/1). The notice you are now reading was thoughtfully prepared in order to help you make the best possible adjustment to these new if somewhat unexpected circumstances in your life, which, we hasten to remind you, we have saved. Although it was found necessary to remove your arms, legs, spine, skill, lungs, stomach, kidneys, liver, other (circle one or more), rest assured that these mortal remains were disposed of in a manner fully in keeping with the dictates of your religion; they were, with the proper ritual, interred, embalmed, mummified, buried at sea, cremated with the ashes scattered in the wind—preserved in an urn—thrown in the garbage (circle one). The new form in which you will henceforth lead a happy and healthy existence may possibly occasion you some surprise, but we promise that in time you will become, as indeed all our dear patients do, quite accustomed to it We have supplemented your organism with the very best, the best, perfectly functional, adequate, the only available (circle one) organs at our disposal, and they are fully guaranteed to last a year, six months, three months, three weeks, six days (circle one).

How the sadness is handled by the physician has a powerful impact on the medical care received by the patients. If the grief is relentlessly suppressed--as in Eva's experience during residency--the result can be a numb physician who is unable to invest in a new patient. This lack of investment can lead to rote medical care--impersonal at best, shoddy at worst. At the other end of the spectrum is the doctor who is inundated with grief and can't function because of the overwhelming sorrow. Burnout is significant in both these cases, and that erodes the quality of medical care.

Health professionals have a formal classification system for the level of function a person has. If you cannot, without assistance, use the toilet, eat, dress, bathe, groom, get out of bed, get out of a chair, and walk—the eight “Activities of Daily Living”—then you lack the capacity for basic physical independence. If you cannot shop for yourself, prepare your own food, maintain your housekeeping, do your laundry, manage your medications, make phone calls, travel on your own, and handle your finances—the eight “Independent Activities of Daily Living”—then you lack the capacity to live safely on your own.

My fellow resident Jeff and I worked traumas together. When he called me down to the trauma bay because of a concurrent head injury, we were always in sync. He'd assess the abdomen, then ask for my prognosis on a patient's cognitive function. "Well, he could still be a senator," I once replied, "but only from a small state." Jeff laughed, and from that moment on, state population became our barometer for head-injury severity. "Is he a Wyoming or a California?" Jeff would ask, trying to determine how intensive his care plan should be. Or I'd say, "Jeff, I know his blood pressure is labile, but I gotta get him to the OR or he's gonna go from Washington to Idaho---can you get him stabilized?

It is said,’ said the Aga Morat, ‘that blindness of the eyes is a lighter thing than blindness of the perceptive faculties of the mind. The sun is high: the perception is dazzled. One has made divers chambers available to us in these poor houses for an hour. Let us retire and, by giving ease to the flesh, bring new light also to the proper functions of the mind. There, for the Hakim’s servant Mr Blyth, and the lady. In this chamber, Crawford Efendi and I shall have much to discuss.… Sweet to be taken up, you say, as medicine is by the lip. Such a creature I enjoy, thin-skinned, tender and delicate, light of flesh and goodly in make, impulsive in walk and beautiful in the justness of stature. Communing thus, shall not our dreaming souls melt?’ For a moment, Lymond did not reply. Then he said, in the same level voice, ‘It is written before God, that after this hour we depart all four, in good health to Djerba?’ The Aga Morat had risen. Looking down, his heavy face creased in a smile. ‘It is written,’ he said. Slowly, Lymond rose also. He looked neither at Jerott nor at Marthe, but stepped straight out from under the awning and confronted the Aga. In the blinding white light, the fine lines of his skin were all suddenly visible, and his eyes by contrast quite dark. But his hair, uncut since Marseilles, shone mint-gold in the sun. ‘If it is so agreed,’ Lymond said, ‘I am solicitous for thee, as thou art for me.’ And without pausing, he followed the Aga Morat into the house.

The myths emphasized the relatedness of life, for in them plants and animals talked and exhibited other human characteristics. The myths taught young Curly that everything had its place and function and that all things and animals were important The stories also gave him a feeling of balance; one, for example, told how the animals got together one day and decided to get back at mankind for killing and eating them. Each animal decided on a different disease he would give to man in retribution. Upon hearing of this, the plants got together and each one decided to provide a remedy for a specific disease. The telling of this myth might lead to the handing down of ancient wisdom about the medicinal properties of various leaves, bark, roots, and herbs.

I have again been asked to explain how one can "become a Daoists..." with all of the sad things happening in our world today, Laozi and Zhuangzi give words of advice, tho not necessarily to become a Daoist priest or priestess... " So many foreigners who want to become “Religious Daoists” 道教的道师 （道士） do not realize that they must not only receive a transmission of a Lu 籙 register which identifies their Daoist school, and learn as well how to sing the ritual melodies, play the flute, stringed instruments, drums, and sacred dance steps, required to be an ordained and functioning Daoist priest or priestess. This process usually takes 10 years or more of daily discipleship and practice, to accomplish. There are 86 schools and genre of Daoist rituals listed in the Baiyun Guan Gazeteer, 白雲觀志, which was edited by Oyanagi Sensei, in Tokyo, 1928, and again in 1934, and re-published by Baiyun Guan in Beijing, available in their book shop to purchase. Some of the schools, such as the Quanzhen Longmen 全真龙门orders, allow their rituals and Lu registers to be learned by a number of worthy disciples or monks; others, such as the Zhengyi, Qingwei, Pole Star, and Shangqing 正一，清微，北极，上请 registers may only be taught in their fullness to one son and/or one disciple, each generation. Each of the schools also have an identifying poem, from 20 or 40 character in length, or in the case of monastic orders (who pass on the registers to many disciples), longer poems up to 100 characters, which identify the generation of transmission from master to disciple. The Daoist who receives a Lu register (給籙元科, pronounced "Ji Lu Yuanke"), must use the character from the poem given to him by his or her master, when composing biao 表 memorials, shuwen 梳文 rescripts, and other documents, sent to the spirits of the 3 realms (heaven, earth, water /underworld). The rituals and documents are ineffective unless the correct characters and talismanic signature are used. The registers are not given to those who simply practice martial artists, Chinese medicine, and especially never shown to scholars. The punishment for revealing them to the unworthy is quite severe, for those who take payment for Lu transmission, or teaching how to perform the Jinlu Jiao and Huanglu Zhai 金籙醮，黃籙齋 科儀 keyi rituals, music, drum, sacred dance steps. Tang dynasty Tangwen 唐文 pronunciation must also be used when addressing the highest Daoist spirits, i.e., the 3 Pure Ones and 5 Emperors 三请五帝. In order to learn the rituals and receive a Lu transmission, it requires at least 10 years of daily practice with a master, by taking part in the Jiao and Zhai rituals, as an acolyte, cantor, or procession leader. Note that a proper use of Daoist ritual also includes learning Inner Alchemy, ie inner contemplative Daoist meditation, the visualization of spirits, where to implant them in the body, and how to summon them forth during ritual. The woman Daoist master Wei Huacun’s Huangting Neijing, 黃庭內經 to learn the esoteric names of the internalized Daoist spirits. Readers must be warned never to go to Longhu Shan, where a huge sum is charged to foreigners ($5000 to $9000) to receive a falsified document, called a "license" to be a Daoist! The first steps to true Daoist practice, Daoist Master Zhuang insisted to his disciples, is to read and follow the Laozi Daode Jing and the Zhuangzi Neipian, on a daily basis. Laozi Ch 66, "the ocean is the greatest of all creatures because it is the lowest", and Ch 67, "my 3 most precious things: compassion for all, frugal living for myself, respect all others and never put anyone down" are the basis for all Daoist practice. The words of Zhuangzi, Ch 7, are also deeply meaningful: "Yin and Yang were 2 little children who loved to play inside Hundun (ie Taiji, gestating Dao). They felt sorry because Hundun did not have eyes, or eats, or other senses. So everyday they drilled one hole, ie 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, one mouth; and on the 7th day, Hundun died.

Huperzia serrata   Native to India and Southeast Asia, the Huperzia serrata is also called firmoss. It is used in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine as medicinal plants to treat different types of maladies. In recent studies, researchers have found out that it contains neuro-protective properties.   Benefits   Unlike other medicinal herbs in Asia, Huperzia serrata is not as common in Western folk medicine. This particular herb contains the compound called huperzine A which is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor and NMDA receptor antagonist. Below are the benefits of using this medicinal herb.   It is used to improve the brain and cognitive function.   It can also help prevent the occurrence of autoimmune neuromuscular diseases that can lead to muscle weakness and disability.   It has the potential of treating patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.   How to Use   This particular medicinal herb is prepared as tea or infusion. However, there are also dietary supplements available from the market that you can take.

Leonid Gavrilov, a researcher at the University of Chicago, argues that human beings fail the way all complex systems fail: randomly and gradually. As engineers have long recognized, simple devices typically do not age. They function reliably until a critical component fails, and the whole thing dies in an instant. A windup toy, for example, works smoothly until a gear rusts or a spring breaks, and then it doesn’t work at all. But complex systems—power plants, say—have to survive and function despite having thousands of critical, potentially fragile components. Engineers therefore design these machines with multiple layers of redundancy: with backup systems, and backup systems for the backup systems. The backups may not be as efficient as the first-line components, but they allow the machine to keep going even as damage accumulates. Gavrilov argues that, within the parameters established by our genes, that’s exactly how human beings appear to work. We have an extra kidney, an extra lung, an extra gonad, extra teeth.

But it is on occasions like this that I always think how different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science. Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of everyday gadgets, our medicines, the products of our industrial art - would they not have suited our national temper better than they do? In fact our conception of physics itself, and even the principles of chemistry, would probably differ from that of Westerners; and the facts we are now taught concerning the nature and function of light, electricity, and atoms might well have presented themselves in a different form. Of course I am only indulging in idle speculation: of scientific matters I know nothing. But had we developed independently at least the more practical sorts of inventions, this could not but have had profound influence upon the conduct of our everyday lives, and even upon government, religion, art, and business. The Orient quite conceivably could have opened up a world of technology entirely its own.

Western medicine’s love of drawing people into diagnostic categories and applying disease names to small differences and minor bodily changes is not specific to functional disorders – it is a general trend. Pre-diabetes, polycystic ovaries, some cancers and many more conditions have all been subject to the problem of over-inclusive diagnosis. My biggest concern in this regard is the degree to which many people are wholly unaware of the subjective nature of the medical classification of disease. If a person is told they have this or that disorder, they assume it must be right. The Latin names we give to things and the shiny scanning machines make it look as if there is more authority than actually exists. To a certain extent, Sienna pursued each diagnosis she was given, but other people have diagnoses thrust upon them, having no idea that there might be anything controversial about it – and having no idea that they have a choice. Western medicine’s hold on people, and its sense of being systematic and accurate, makes it a powerful force in the transmission of cultural concepts of what constitutes wellness or ill health. But Western medicine is just as enslaved to fads and trends as any other tradition of medicine.

As Mollie said to Dailey in the 1890s: "I am told that there are five other Mollie Fanchers, who together, make the whole of the one Mollie Fancher, known to the world; who they are and what they are I cannot tell or explain, I can only conjecture." Dailey described five distinct Mollies, each with a different name, each of whom he met (as did Aunt Susan and a family friend, George Sargent). According to Susan Crosby, the first additional personality appeared some three years after the after the nine-year trance, or around 1878. The dominant Mollie, the one who functioned most of the time and was known to everyone as Mollie Fancher, was designated Sunbeam (the names were devised by Sargent, as he met each of the personalities). The four other personalities came out only at night, after eleven, when Mollie would have her usual spasm and trance. The first to appear was always Idol, who shared Sunbeam's memories of childhood and adolescence but had no memory of the horsecar accident. Idol was very jealous of Sunbeam's accomplishments, and would sometimes unravel her embroidery or hide her work. Idol and Sunbeam wrote with different handwriting, and at times penned letters to each other. The next personality Sargent named Rosebud: "It was the sweetest little child's face," he described, "the voice and accent that of a little child." Rosebud said she was seven years old, and had Mollie's memories of early childhood: her first teacher's name, the streets on which she had lived, children's songs. She wrote with a child's handwriting, upper- and lowercase letters mixed. When Dailey questioned Rosebud about her mother, she answered that she was sick and had gone away, and that she did not know when she would be coming back. As to where she lived, she answered "Fulton Street," where the Fanchers had lived before moving to Gates Avenue. Pearl, the fourth personality, was evidently in her late teens. Sargent described her as very spiritual, sweet in expression, cultured and agreeable: "She remembers Professor West [principal of Brooklyn Heights Seminary], and her school days and friends up to about the sixteenth year in the life of Mollie Fancher. She pronounces her words with an accent peculiar to young ladies of about 1865." Ruby, the last Mollie, was vivacious, humorous, bright, witty. "She does everything with a dash," said Sargent. "What mystifies me about 'Ruby,' and distinguishes her from the others, is that she does not, in her conversations with me, go much into the life of Mollie Fancher. She has the air of knowing a good deal more than she tells.

We can all be "sad" or "blue" at times in our lives. We have all seen movies about the madman and his crime spree, with the underlying cause of mental illness. We sometimes even make jokes about people being crazy or nuts, even though we know that we shouldn't. We have all had some exposure to mental illness, but do we really understand it or know what it is? Many of our preconceptions are incorrect. A mental illness can be defined as a health condition that changes a person's thinking, feelings, or behavior (or all three) and that causes the person distress and difficulty in functioning. As with many diseases, mental illness is severe in some cases and mild in others. Individuals who have a mental illness don't necessarily look like they are sick, especially if their illness is mild. Other individuals may show more explicit symptoms such as confusion, agitation, or withdrawal. There are many different mental illnesses, including depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Each illness alters a person's thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors in distinct ways. But in all this struggles, Consummo Plus has proven to be the most effective herbal way of treating mental illness no matter the root cause. The treatment will be in three stages. First is activating detoxification, which includes flushing any insoluble toxins from the body. The medicine and the supplement then proceed to activate all cells in the body, it receives signals from the brain and goes to repair very damaged cells, tissues, or organs of the body wherever such is found. The second treatment comes in liquid form, tackles the psychological aspect including hallucination, paranoia, hearing voices, depression, fear, persecutory delusion, or religious delusion. The supplement also tackles the Behavioral, Mood, and Cognitive aspects including aggression or anger, thought disorder, self-harm, or lack of restraint, anxiety, apathy, fatigue, feeling detached, false belief of superiority or inferiority, and amnesia. The third treatment is called mental restorer, and this consists of the spiritual brain restorer, a system of healing which “assumes the presence of a supernatural power to restore the natural brain order. With this approach, you will get back your loving boyfriend and he will live a better and fulfilled life, like realize his full potential, work productively, make a meaningful contribution to his community, and handle all the stress that comes with life. It will give him a new lease of life, a new strength, and new vigor. The Healing & Recovery process is Gradual, Comprehensive, Holistic, and very Effective. www . curetoschizophrenia . blogspot . com E-mail: rodwenhill@gmail. com

A common problem plagues people who try to design institutions without accounting for hidden motives. First they identify the key goals that the institution “should” achieve. Then they search for a design that best achieves these goals, given all the constraints that the institution must deal with. This task can be challenging enough, but even when the designers apparently succeed, they’re frequently puzzled and frustrated when others show little interest in adopting their solution. Often this is because they mistook professed motives for real motives, and thus solved the wrong problems. Savvy institution designers must therefore identify both the surface goals to which people give lip service and the hidden goals that people are also trying to achieve. Designers can then search for arrangements that actually achieve the deeper goals while also serving the surface goals—or at least giving the appearance of doing so. Unsurprisingly, this is a much harder design problem. But if we can learn to do it well, our solutions will less often meet the fate of puzzling disinterest. We should take a similar approach when reforming a preexisting institution by first asking ourselves, “What are this institution’s hidden functions, and how important are they?” Take education, for example. We may wish for schools that focus more on teaching than on testing. And yet, some amount of testing is vital to the economy, since employers need to know which workers to hire. So if we tried to cut too much from school’s testing function, we could be blindsided by resistance we don’t understand—because those who resist may not tell us the real reasons for their opposition. It’s only by understanding where the resistance is coming from that we have any hope of overcoming it. Not all hidden institutional functions are worth facilitating, however. Some involve quite wasteful signaling expenditures, and we might be better off if these institutions performed only their official, stated functions. Take medicine, for example. To the extent that we use medical spending to show how much we care (and are cared for), there are very few positive externalities. The caring function is mostly competitive and zero-sum, and—perhaps surprisingly—we could therefore improve collective welfare by taxing extraneous medical spending, or at least refusing to subsidize it. Don’t expect any politician to start pushing for healthcare taxes or cutbacks, of course, because for lawmakers, as for laypeople, the caring signals are what makes medicine so attractive. These kinds of hidden incentives, alongside traditional vested interests, are what often make large institutions so hard to reform. Thus there’s an element of hubris in any reform effort, but at least by taking accurate stock of an institution’s purposes, both overt and covert, we can hope to avoid common mistakes. “The curious task of economics,” wrote Friedrich Hayek, “is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”8

AN ALKALINE DIET The pH level measures how acid or alkaline something is. Your blood is slightly alkaline, with a pH between 7.35 and 7.45, and your stomach is very acidic, with a pH of 3.5 or below, so it can break down food. Most of the foods we eat release either an acid or an alkaline base in the blood. Acidified body cells become weak, which can lead to unhealthy conditions and diseases. They are robbed of the oxygen and energy needed to support a strong and healthy immune system. I incorporate alkaline foods into my diet every day, and I feel like my energy is soaring. Food literally acts like a battery for the body. Every living thing on this planet is made up of energy, and this includes your food. This energy can be measured in megahertz. Chocolate cake only provides 1 to 3 MHz of energy, while raw almonds have 40 to 50 MHz and green vegetables have 70 to 90 MHz. So if you need 70 MHz of energy on a daily basis to function and you live off junk food and soda, you are creating an energy-deficit crisis in your body. People say it’s expensive to eat healthily. Here’s how I see it: you’re going to pay either way. Either you’re going to pay now for the good foods and feel alive and have a clear mind. Or you’ll save some money now and pay for medicine and hospital bills later. I used to make excuses: I’m getting older, that’s why I feel so tired all the time. But now I know it doesn’t have to be that way. You have to make the conscious decision to nourish your body. Value yourself enough to eat well.

Dr. Lydia Ciarallo in the Department of Pediatrics, Brown University School of Medicine, treated thirty-one asthma patients ages six to eighteen who were deteriorating on conventional treatments. One group was given magnesium sulfate and another group was given saline solution, both intravenously. At fifty minutes the magnesium group had a significantly greater percentage of improvement in lung function, and more magnesium patients than placebo patients were discharged from the emergency department and did not need hospitalization.4 Another study showed a correlation between intracellular magnesium levels and airway spasm. The investigators found that patients who had low cellular magnesium levels had increased bronchial spasm. This finding confirmed not only that magnesium was useful in the treatment of asthma by dilating the bronchial tubes but that lack of magnesium was probably a cause of this condition.5 A team of researchers identified magnesium deficiency as surprisingly common, finding it in 65 percent of an intensive-care population of asthmatics and in 11 percent of an outpatient asthma population. They supported the use of magnesium to help prevent asthma attacks. Magnesium has several antiasthmatic actions. As a calcium antagonist, it relaxes airways and smooth muscles and dilates the lungs. It also reduces airway inflammation, inhibits chemicals that cause spasm, and increases anti-inflammatory substances such as nitric oxide.6 The same study established that a lower dietary magnesium intake was associated with impaired lung function, bronchial hyperreactivity, and an increased risk of wheezing. The study included 2,633 randomly selected adults ages eighteen to seventy. Dietary magnesium intake was calculated by a food frequency questionnaire, and lung function and allergic tendency were evaluated. The investigators concluded that low magnesium intake may be involved in the development of both asthma and chronic obstructive airway disease.

FASCIA: THE TIES THAT BIND Imagine a collagen-rich, stretchy slipcover for every organ, nerve, bone, and muscle in our bodies, and you start to get a sense of how fundamental connective tissue—specifically fascia—is to the entire body. Suspending our organs inside our torso, connecting our head to our back to our feet, fascia protects, supports, and literally binds our body together. Fascia can be gossamer-thin and translucent, like a spider web, or thick and tough like rope. Ounce for ounce, fascia is stronger than steel. Other specialized types of connective tissue include bones, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and fat (adipose) tissue. Even blood, strictly speaking, is considered connective tissue. But to me, the most exciting aspect of the latest research on connective tissue relates to fascia. Fascia is the stretchy tissue that forms an uninterrupted, three-dimensional web within our body. Our body has sheets, bags, and strings of fascia of varying thickness and size, some superficial and some deep. Fascia envelops both individual microscopic muscle filaments as well as whole muscle groups, such as the trapezius, pectorals, and quadriceps. For example, one of the largest fascia configurations in the body is known as the “trousers,” a massive sheet of fascia that crosses over the knees and ends near the waist, giving the appearance of short leggings. This fascia trouser is thicker around the knees and thinner as it continues up the legs and over the hips, thickening again near the waist. When the fascia trouser is healthy, supple, and resilient, it acts like a girdle, giving the body a firm shape. Fascia helps muscles transmit their force so we can convert that force into movement. The system of fascia is bound by tensile links (think of the structure of a geodesic dome, like the one at Epcot in Disney World), with space and fluid between the links that can help absorb external pressure and more evenly distribute force across the fascial structure. This allows our bodies to withstand tremendous force instead of absorbing it in one local area, which would lead to increased pain and injury. Fascia is also a second nervous system in and of itself, with almost 10 times the number of sensory nerve endings as muscle. Helene Langevin, director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has done landmark studies on the function and importance of connective tissue and its impact on pain. One of the leading researchers in the field today, Langevin describes fascia as a “living matrix” whose health is essential to our well-being.

The first objection is that it is rubbish to talk about natural meanings and purposes, because we merely imagine such things. According to the objector's way of thinking, meanings and purposes aren't natural—they aren't really in the things themselves—they are merely in the eye of the beholder. But is this true? Take the lungs, for example. When we say that their purpose is to oxygenate the blood, are we just making that up? Of course not. The purpose of oxygenation isn't in the eye of the beholder; it's in the design of the lungs themselves. There is no reason for us to have lungs apart from it. Suppose a young man is more interested in using his lungs to get high by sniffing glue. What would you think of me if I said, “That's interesting—I guess the purpose of my lungs is to oxygenate my blood, but the purpose of his lungs is to get high?” You'd think me a fool, and rightly so. By sniffing glue, he doesn't change the purpose built into his lungs, he only violates it. We can ascertain the purposes of the other features of our design in the same way. The purpose of the eyes is to see, the purpose of the heart is to pump blood, the purpose of the thumb is to oppose the fingers so as to grasp, the purpose of the capacity for anger is to protect endangered goods, and so on. If we can ascertain the meanings and purposes of all those other powers, there is no reason to think that we cannot ascertain the meanings and purposes of the sexual powers. Natural function and personal meaning are not alien to each other. They are connected. In a rightly ordered way of thinking, they turn out to be different angles of vision on the same thing. The second objection is that it doesn't make any difference even if we can ascertain the meanings or purposes of the sexual powers, because an is does not imply an ought. This dogma too is false. If the purpose of eyes is to see, then eyes that see well are good eyes, and eyes that see poorly are poor ones. Given their purpose, this is what it means for eyes to be good. Moreover, good is to be pursued; the appropriateness of pursuing it is what it means for anything to be good. Therefore, the appropriate thing to do with poor eyes is try to turn them into good ones. If it really were impossible to derive an ought from the is of the human design, then the practice of medicine would make no sense. Neither would the practice of health education. Consider the young glue-sniffer again. How should we advise him? Is the purpose of his lungs irrelevant? Should we say to him, “Sniff all you want, because an is does not imply an ought”? Of course not; we should advise him to kick the habit. We ought to respect the is of our design. Nothing in us should be put into action in a way that flouts its inbuilt meanings and purposes.

The trends speak to an unavoidable truth. Society's future will be challenged by zoonotic viruses, a quite natural prediction, not least because humanity is a potent agent of change, which is the essential fuel of evolution. Notwithstanding these assertions, I began with the intention of leaving the reader with a broader appreciation of viruses: they are not simply life's pathogens. They are life's obligate partners and a formidable force in nature on our planet. As you contemplate the ocean under a setting sun, consider the multitude of virus particles in each milliliter of seawater: flying over wilderness forestry, consider the collective viromes of its living inhabitants. The stunnig number and diversity of viruses in our environment should engender in us greater awe that we are safe among these multitudes than fear that they will harm us. Personalized medicine will soon become a reality and medical practice will routinely catalogue and weigh a patient's genome sequence. Not long thereafter one might expect this data to be joined by the patient's viral and bacterial metagenomes: the patient's collective genetic identity will be recorded in one printout. We will doubtless discover some of our viral passengers are harmful to our health, while others are protective. But the appreciation of viruses that I hope you have gained from these pages is not about an exercise in accounting. The balancing of benefit versus threat to humanity is a fruitless task. The viral metagenome will contain new and useful gene functionalities for biomedicine: viruses may become essential biomedical tools and phages will continue to optimize may also accelerate the development of antibiotic drug resistance in the post-antibiotic era and emerging viruses may threaten our complacency and challenge our society economically and socially. Simply comparing these pros and cons, however, does not do justice to viruses and acknowledge their rightful place in nature. Life and viruses are inseparable. Viruses are life's complement, sometimes dangerous but always beautiful in design. All autonomous self-sustaining replicating systems that generate their own energy will foster parasites. Viruses are the inescapable by-products of life's success on the planet. We owe our own evolution to them; the fossils of many are recognizable in ERVs and EVEs that were certainly powerful influences in the evolution of our ancestors. Like viruses and prokaryotes, we are also a patchwork of genes, acquired by inheritance and horizontal gene transfer during our evolution from the primitive RNA-based world. It is a common saying that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder.' It is a natural response to a visual queue: a sunset, the drape of a designer dress, or the pattern of a silk tie, but it can also be found in a line of poetry, a particularly effective kitchen implement, or even the ruthless efficiency of a firearm. The latter are uniquely human acknowledgments of beauty in design. It is humanity that allows us to recognize the beauty in the evolutionary design of viruses. They are unique products of evolution, the inevitable consequence of life, infectious egotistical genetic information that taps into life and the laws of nature to fuel evolutionary invention.

The traditional hospital practice of excluding parents ignored the importance of attachment relationships as regulators of the child’s emotions, behaviour and physiology. The child’s biological status would be vastly different under the circumstances of parental presence or absence. Her neurochemical output, the electrical activity in her brain’s emotional centres, her heart rate, blood pressure and the serum levels of the various hormones related to stress would all vary significantly. Life is possible only within certain well-defined limits, internal or external. We can no more survive, say, high sugar levels in our bloodstream than we can withstand high levels of radiation emanating from a nuclear explosion. The role of self-regulation, whether emotional or physical, may be likened to that of a thermostat ensuring that the temperature in a home remains constant despite the extremes of weather conditions outside. When the environment becomes too cold, the heating system is switched on. If the air becomes overheated, the air conditioner begins to work. In the animal kingdom, self-regulation is illustrated by the capacity of the warm-blooded creature to exist in a broad range of environments. It can survive more extreme variations of hot and cold without either chilling or overheating than can a coldblooded species. The latter is restricted to a much narrower range of habitats because it does not have the capacity to self-regulate the internal environment. Children and infant animals have virtually no capacity for biological self-regulation; their internal biological states—heart rates, hormone levels, nervous system activity — depend completely on their relationships with caregiving grown-ups. Emotions such as love, fear or anger serve the needs of protecting the self while maintaining essential relationships with parents and other caregivers. Psychological stress is whatever threatens the young creature’s perception of a safe relationship with the adults, because any disruption in the relationship will cause turbulence in the internal milieu. Emotional and social relationships remain important biological influences beyond childhood. “Independent self-regulation may not exist even in adulthood,” Dr. Myron Hofer, then of the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, wrote in 1984. “Social interactions may continue to play an important role in the everyday regulation of internal biologic systems throughout life.” Our biological response to environmental challenge is profoundly influenced by the context and by the set of relationships that connect us with other human beings. As one prominent researcher has expressed it most aptly, “Adaptation does not occur wholly within the individual.” Human beings as a species did not evolve as solitary creatures but as social animals whose survival was contingent on powerful emotional connections with family and tribe. Social and emotional connections are an integral part of our neurological and chemical makeup. We all know this from the daily experience of dramatic physiological shifts in our bodies as we interact with others. “You’ve burnt the toast again,” evokes markedly different bodily responses from us, depending on whether it is shouted in anger or said with a smile. When one considers our evolutionary history and the scientific evidence at hand, it is absurd even to imagine that health and disease could ever be understood in isolation from our psychoemotional networks. “The basic premise is that, like other social animals, human physiologic homeostasis and ultimate health status are influenced not only by the physical environment but also by the social environment.” From such a biopsychosocial perspective, individual biology, psychological functioning and interpersonal and social relationships work together, each influencing the other.

How Aging Stems from Trade-Offs Aging occurs because our body must make a trade-off between reproducing and staying in good repair, according to the author’s “disposable soma” theory. Given a limited supply of energy, the amount that goes to making and protecting sperm and eggs tips the scale away from ensuring that “somatic” cells—skin, bone, muscle, and so on—remain in good condition. As a result, cells accumulate damage over time, which ultimately causes some organ or another to become diseased. If bodily functioning is sufficiently compromised, death ensues.

State sponsored medicine and science can function as ideology, inspiring blind commitment, fanatical defensiveness and denial, particularly of outcomes inconsistent with the preferred explanatory model. The social etiology of compromised health, insists on an understanding of these conditions and the way they impact the objectivity or neutrality of scientific and medical interpretation.

Although interpreted as nonreligious, chiropractic is premised on a vitalistic, harmonial philosophy and fulfills many of the same functions as religion. More than a medical service, chiropractic helps explain life’s struggles, cope with present stressors, and anticipate the future with hope.

This is also known as patient-centered health care, rather than disease-focused medicine, and it is a fundamental underpinning of functional medicine—a revolutionary new way to understand the underlying causes of disease and how our genes, our environment, and our lifestyle interact to determine health or disease.

The purpose of our book,

Here is my procedure for a saliva test: Prepare 7 strips of pH paper. Take a baseline pH reading. Have the patient drink 10cc of lemon juice mixed with 10cc of water. Swish the solution for 10 seconds before swallowing. Test the saliva pH immediately after swallowing and every minute for the next 5 minutes.

Dr. Bowden: Let’s go back in time. If you went to a health fair around 1950, you’d see people sitting there with little pin pricks on their fingers that were used test your blood for cholesterol. The nurse would say, "Oh, Mr. Jones, your cholesterol is 175." She would give you just one number. In the early 1960’s, researchers realized that cholesterol travelled in the body in two distinct packages. One of them is called HDL or high density lipoprotein. The other one is called LDL or low density lipoprotein. They discovered that LDL and HDL functioned and behaved somewhat differently in the body, and we began to nickname HDL "good cholesterol" and LDL "bad cholesterol."  

Clip This Article on Location 1397 | Added on Monday, September 1, 2014 4:10:39 PM REVIEW & OUTLOOK An $8.3 Billion Rebuke to the FDA Roche buys a drug approved in Europe but not in America. 359 words Amid this summer's M&A fever, Roche's agreement Monday to buy the San Francisco biotech InterMune deserves special notice. The tie-up is an $8.3 billion guided missile into the fortified bunker that is the Food and Drug Administration. InterMune has never turned a profit in 16 years of existence and other than its clinical expertise the company holds a single asset: an idea for treating a lethal lung disorder called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis with no known cause, cure or approved therapy—at least in the U.S. An InterMune drug called pirfenidone that slows the progression of irreversible lung scarring is on the market in Europe, Japan, Canada and even China. Bloomberg News But the FDA refused to approve pirfenidone in 2010, despite the 40,000 Americans who are killed annually by lung fibrosis and a positive recommendation from its outside scientific advisory committee. The agency brass claimed the evidence was statistically unsatisfactory, when one clinical trial was inconclusive but another showed strong benefits such as improved lung function. The results of the third trial the FDA ordered were reported earlier this year and confirmed that pirfenidone is even more of a treatment advance than it seemed in 2010, and may prolong life. The agency is expected, finally, to approve the medicine in November. Roche is paying a 38% premium over Friday's closing share price, and 63% over trading before the news of InterMune's corporate suitors broke a few weeks ago. The deal is a big vote of confidence in pirfenidone, not least because a rival lung fibrosis drug is awaiting U.S. approval. Then again, maybe that drug's maker, the German pharmaceutical consortium Boehringer Ingelheim, will have the same FDA experience as InterMune. The Roche deal is a tacit reprimand to the FDA's unscientific and uncompassionate—and wrong—2010 defenestration. Amid medical ambiguity about effectiveness, the humane option is to allow a drug to come to patients and follow on with more research, in particular for a drug with few side effects. Pulmonary fibrosis is a protracted death sentence of three to five years. The FDA denied tens of thousands of dying people better and possibly longer lives in the time they had left. ==========

Cortisol regulates cell function by binding to glucocorticoid receptors which regulate the transcription of many genes. It can also activate mineralocorticoid receptors, but it does not normally do so because most cells containing mineralocorticoid receptors also express an enzyme, 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 2 (11β-HSD2), which converts cortisol to its inactive metabolite, cortisone. Loss of the protection of mineralocorticoid receptors by inhibition of 11β-HSD2 (e.g. by liquorice or as a result of an inherited enzyme defect) results in cortisol acting like aldosterone as a potent sodium-retaining steroid (see Box 20.49, p. 777).

There are two major patterns of bleeding: 1. Mucosal bleeding Reduced number or function of platelets (e.g. bone marrow failure or aspirin) or von Willebrand factor (e.g. von Willebrand disease) • Skin: petechiae, bruises, post-surgical bleeding • Gum and mucous membrane bleeding • Fundal haemorrhage 2. Coagulation factor deficiency (e.g. haemophilia or warfarin) • Bleeding into joints (haemarthrosis) or muscles • Bleeding into soft tissues • Intracranial haemorrhage • Post-surgical bleeding

4R program.

Professor of Biophysics at Iowa State University Dr. Yeon-Kyun Shin is a noted authority on how cholesterol functions within neural networks to transmit messages. He put it bluntly in an interview for a ScienceDaily reporter:28 If you deprive cholesterol from the brain, then you directly affect the machinery that triggers the release of neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters affect the data-processing and memory functions. In other words—how smart you are and how well you remember things. If you try to lower the cholesterol by taking medication that is attacking the machinery of cholesterol synthesis in the liver, that medicine goes to the brain too. And then it reduces the synthesis of cholesterol, which is necessary in the brain. Our study shows there is a direct link between cholesterol and the neurotransmitter release, and we know exactly the molecular mechanics of what happens in the cells. Cholesterol changes the shape of the proteins to stimulate thinking and memory.

Aging and dying are still enigmatic on the molecular scale to modern sciences. However, Avicenna had the broad concept figured out, and his explanation is congruent with our recent knowledge, and with new facts at hand we now can explain his reasoning at the cellular and biochemical levels. Avicenna states, “After the period of youth heat starts to diminish due to the decline in moisture, and in agreement with the internal innate heat and support of physical and psychological actions that are needed, therefore, in the absence of a natural reversal, all bodily functions reach their end

Emissions of carbon dioxide reasonable commercial For those who do not know each other with the phrase "carbon footprint" and its consequences or is questionable, which is headed "reasonable conversion" is a fast lens here. Statements are described by the British coal climatic believe. "..The GC installed (fuel emissions) The issue has directly or indirectly affected by a company or work activities, products," only in relation to the application, especially to introduce a special procedure for the efforts of B. fight against carbon crank function What is important? Carbon dioxide ", uh, (on screen), the main fuel emissions" and the main result of global warming, improve a process that determines the atmosphere in the air in the heat as greenhouse gases greenhouse, carbon dioxide is reduced by the environment, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs more typically classified as). The consequences are disastrous in the sense of life on the planet. The exchange is described at a reasonable price in Wikipedia as "...geared a social movement and market-based procedures, especially the objectives of the development of international guidelines and improve local sustainability." The activity is for the price "reasonable effort" as well as social and environmental criteria as part of the same in the direction of production. It focuses exclusively on exports under the auspices of the acquisition of the world's nations to coffee most international destinations, cocoa, sugar, tea, vegetables, wine, specially designed, refreshing fruits, bananas, chocolate and simple. In 2007 trade, the conversion of skilled gross sales serious enough alone suffered due the supermarket was in the direction of approximately US $ 3.62 billion to improve (2.39 million), rich environment and 47% within 12 months of the calendar year. Fair trade is often providing 1-20% of gross sales in their classification of medicines in Europe and North America, the United States. ..Properly Faith in the plan ... cursed interventions towards closing in failure "vice president Cato Industries, appointed to inquire into the meaning of fair trade Brink Lindsey 2003 '. "Sensible changes direction Lindsay inaccurate provides guidance to the market in a heart that continues to change a design style and price of the unit complies without success. It is based very difficult, and you must deliver or later although costs Rule implementation and reduces the cost if you have a little time in the mirror. You'll be able to afford the really wide range plan alternatives to products and expenditures price to pay here. With the efficient configuration package offered in the interpretation question fraction "which is a collaboration with the Carbon Fund worldwide, and acceptable substitute?" In the statement, which tend to be small, and more? They allow you to search for carbon dioxide transport and delivery. All vehicles are responsible dioxide pollution, but they are the worst offenders? Aviation. Quota of the EU said that the greenhouse gas jet fuel greenhouse on the basis of 87% since 1990 years Boeing Company, Boeing said more than 5 747 liters of fuel burns kilometer. Paul Charles, spokesman for Virgin Atlantic, said flight CO² gas burned in different periods of rule. For example: (. The United Kingdom) Jorge Chavez airport to fly only in the vast world of Peru to London Heathrow with British Family Islands 6.314 miles (10162 km) works with about 31,570 liters of kerosene, which produces changes in only 358 for the incredible carbon. Delivery. John Vidal, Environment Editor parents argue that research on the oil company BP and researchers from the Department of Physics and the environment in Germany Wising said that about once a year before the transport height of 600 to 800 million tons. This is simply nothing more than twice in Colombia and more than all African nations spend together.

But it seems that it is modern medicine in particular that reflects best the religious heritage of our culture: its ideology, myths, dogmas, symbols, beliefs, gestures, practices, hopes and fears. Although it presents itself as rational, i.e. scientific, objective and neutral, its organisation and functioning are typical of religion. Thus, while defining itself as a secular enterprise, medicine is deeply waterlogged with the spirit of the old religion. Even more, for many, medicine becomes a new, secularised religion (Berger 1991; Clerc 2004; Dworkin 2000 [2008]; Szasz 1977; Szczeklik 2012; Tatoń 2003) and takes up its social functions. It is present in people’s life from the womb to the tomb, provides a response to the same fears and angsts of humanity as the Church, and the pursuit of ‘eternal’ health, youth and beauty has substituted the religious zeal for salvation. Medicine’s war on diseases and death is similar to a religious war against sin, as viruses and bacteria have replaced devils and demons, and the structure and functioning of the World Health Organization (WHO) is similar to that of the Church. Physicians have replaced priests and old, religious morality is being substituted by a new moral code: healthism; even though the object of faith and its expression are different, their religious nature persists.

• Brain Computer Interface Race: Contestants will be equipped with brain–computer interfaces that will enable them to control an avatar in a racing game played on computers. • Functional Electrical Stimulation Bike Race: Contestants with complete spinal cord injuries will be equipped with Functional Electrical Stimulation devices, which will enable them to perform pedaling movements on a cycling device that drives them on a circular course. • Leg Prosthetics Race: It will involve an obstacle course featuring slopes, steps, uneven surfaces, and straight sprints. • Powered Exoskeleton Race: Contestants with complete thoracic or lumbar spinal cord injuries will be equipped with actuated exoskeletal devices, which will enable them to walk along a particular race course. • Powered Wheelchair Race: A similar obstacle course featuring a variety of surfaces and environments. • Arm Prosthetics Race: Pilots with forearm or upper arm amputations will be equipped with actuated exoprosthetic devices and will have to successfully complete two hand–arm task courses as quickly as possible.

One of the most important resiliencies for adoptive parents of toddlers is nurturing their own sense of humor and playfulness. Laughter is medicine for the soul; it serves a restorative function; it helps people keep their perspective; and it even enhances attachment. One of my most prized possessions is a poem my daughter wrote for Mother’s Day when she was 11. In her poem, titled, “Why I Love My Mother,” she describes me as having “laughing eyes filled with love.” I can’t think of a better compliment.

The most important of these functions are those of governing Blood and housing the Mind (Shen). Most

Joint pain - Aloe vera contains polysaccharides and amino sugars; these sugars have  preventative and mitigating properties on joint functions. They support synovial fluid renewal. Aloe vera can be used topically (gel applied directly on the joints) or internally (ingestion of gel). Liver Maladies - Over a five-to-six-week period, drinking three to five glasses of water mixed with aloe vera gel aids the liver in its detoxification process. This cure is helpful  when you’ve gone through a period of excessive alcohol consumption. Neurodermatitis - The cooling effect combined with the substances within aloe vera has been a popular treatment for patients suffering

[...] So large was the universe of things called Oriental: roots, rugs, religions, noodles, hairstyles, hordes, healing arts, herbs and spices, fabrics, medicines, modes of war, types of astronomy, spheres of the globe, schools of philosophical thought, and salads. It applied to me, women, gum, dances, eyes, body types, chicken dishes, societies, civilizations, styles of diplomacy, codes of behaviour, fighting arts, sexual proclivities, and a particular kind of mind. Apparently, the Orient produced people with a singular way of thinking. There was no way, wrote Jack London, for a Westerner to plumb the Oriental mind - it was cut from different cloth, functioned in an alien way.

you want a smaller brain that thinks poorly, eat more antinutrients like the trans fat–laden processed foods. Eat fast food daily or even just three times a week and you are well on the way to early dementia!

I don't mind functional medicine. I suppose it has to be better than dysfunctional medicine.

study after study has shown that diet, toxin exposure, and activity level account for 70 to 95 percent of the risk for autoimmune disease, mental health issues, cancer, and, in fact, most chronic diseases.

disease begins at the cellular level, when cells are starved of the building blocks they need to conduct the chemistry of life properly, and that the root of optimal health begins with taking away the things that harm and confuse our cells while providing the body with the right environment in which to thrive.

The report gives the strong impression that if you fired those forty-four cops, the LAPD would suddenly become a pretty well-functioning police department. But the report also suggests that the problem is tougher than it seems, because those forty-four bad cops were so bad that the institutional mechanisms in place to get rid of bad apples clearly weren’t working. If you made the mistake of assuming that the department’s troubles fell into a normal distribution, you’d propose solutions that would raise the performance of the middle — like better training or better hiring — when the middle didn’t need help. For those hard-core few who did need help, meanwhile, the medicine that helped the middle wouldn’t be nearly strong enough.

Multiple studies, including a 2007 analysis from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, found that a person’s chance of getting chronic PTSD is in great part a function of their experiences before going to war. Statistically, the 20 percent of people who fail to overcome trauma tend to be those who are already burdened by psychological issues, either because they inherited them or because they suffered abuse as children.

The popular way of consuming marijuana is by smoking it in a joint. This is when you roll the dried and grounded weeds on a special paper and light the end of the joint, similar to smoking a cigarette. While this is the most practiced method of marijuana usage, there are many other methods such as consuming it through bongs and blunts, dabbing and can even be mixed in food and drink, which are called “edibles”. However, one of the least common ways that people use marijuana is by eating the raw weed seeds. Many people avoid eating these seeds for the reason that they might get high. Making weed seeds part of the diet is also not as popular as smoking it. Did you know that eating the seeds have health benefits? In this article, we discuss the sweet science behind eating cannabis seeds as well as some of the health benefits that these seeds provide. Cannabis seeds that are best eaten comes from the hemp plant, a variety of the cannabis sativa strain. Unlike other marijuana species, the hemp plant has been subject to less controversy regarding it legalization with less attention about their cultivation. In addition, contrary to what many people believe, the consumption of marijuana seeds does not get you high. Yes, you read that right. Unlike the marijuana buds of a cannabis plants, the seeds do not contain any cannabinoids such as tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol, so making them a part of your diet would not cause you any mind-altering effects. People eat these hemp seeds solely for the nutritional benefits that it gives. Often sprinkled on top of dishes or just eaten straight out of a bowl, eating hemp seeds from cannabis plants are gaining popularity by people who carefully look after their health and conscious in their food intake. HEALTH BENEFITS OF EATING MARIJUANA SEEDS The consumption of hemp seeds promotes a healthier lifestyle for people who look to improve their diet. Hemp seeds are extremely rich in healthy fats and nutrients that allow the body to function properly during the day. These healthy fats also contain enough nutrients to promote healthy muscles and the growth of cells and organs. Alpha-linoleic and gamma linoleic are some of the nutrients found in the hemp plant. If you are also looking for a quick protein boost before heading to the gym, a spoonful of hemp seeds mixed in your morning breakfast can provide you with plenty of healthy plant-based protein. Hemp seeds give people a very healthy amount of omega fatty acids. This is important because the human body does not naturally produce omega acids so hemp seeds are great source and the right amount of it. Although marijuana seeds do not contain the exact same cannabinoids that you find in the flowers of the cannabis plant, they still have some medicinal properties. Some examples of these are mental conditions like depression and anxiety. Like marijuana flowers, marijuana seeds help relax the body and mind when eaten. It contains some compounds that help induce relaxation when consumed, similar to smoking marijuana buds. Marijuana seeds also allow the body to reduce levels of anxiety, which helps treat patients who suffer insomnia. Lastly, many people eat marijuana seeds mainly because of the ability to avoid numerous cardiovascular diseases. Amino acids and nitric oxide are some compounds found in hemp seeds used consistently to reduce the risk of heart attacks, hypertension, blood clots and many more. They also free the nerves and allow an improved flow of blood throughout the whole body. From cannabis seeds, buds to flowers, the health benefits we can get from this wonderful plant is limitless. And the best part is that it is plant-based which is far better than relying on chemical and artificial based products shown in tv commercials today.

The popular way of consuming marijuana is by smoking it in a joint. This is when you roll the dried and grounded weeds on a special paper and light the end of the joint, similar to smoking a cigarette. While this is the most practiced method of marijuana usage, there are many other methods such as consuming it through bongs and blunts, dabbing and can even be mixed in food and drink, which are called “edibles”. However, one of the least common ways that people use marijuana is by eating the raw weed seeds. Many people avoid eating these seeds for the reason that they might get high. Making weed seeds part of the diet is also not as popular as smoking it. Did you know that eating the seeds have health benefits? In this article, we discuss the sweet science behind eating cannabis seeds as well as some of the health benefits that these seeds provide. Cannabis seeds that are best eaten comes from the hemp plant, a variety of the cannabis sativa strain. Unlike other marijuana species, the hemp plant has been subject to less controversy regarding it legalization with less attention about their cultivation. In addition, contrary to what many people believe, the consumption of marijuana seeds does not get you high. Yes, you read that right. Unlike the marijuana buds of a cannabis plants, the seeds do not contain any cannabinoids such as tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol, so making them a part of your diet would not cause you any mind-altering effects. People eat these hemp seeds solely for the nutritional benefits that it gives. Often sprinkled on top of dishes or just eaten straight out of a bowl, eating hemp seeds from cannabis plants are gaining popularity by people who carefully look after their health and conscious in their food intake. HEALTH BENEFITS OF EATING MARIJUANA SEEDS The consumption of hemp seeds promotes a healthier lifestyle for people who look to improve their diet. Hemp seeds are extremely rich in healthy fats and nutrients that allow the body to function properly during the day. These healthy fats also contain enough nutrients to promote healthy muscles and the growth of cells and organs. Alpha-linoleic and gamma linoleic are some of the nutrients found in the hemp plant. If you are also looking for a quick protein boost before heading to the gym, a spoonful of hemp seeds mixed in your morning breakfast can provide you with plenty of healthy plant-based protein. Hemp seeds give people a very healthy amount of omega fatty acids. This is important because the human body does not naturally produce omega acids so hemp seeds are great source and the right amount of it. Although marijuana seeds do not contain the exact same cannabinoids that you find in the flowers of the cannabis plant, they still have some medicinal properties. Some examples of these are mental conditions like depression and anxiety. Like marijuana flowers, marijuana seeds help relax the body and mind when eaten. It contains some compounds that help induce relaxation when consumed, similar to smoking marijuana buds. Marijuana seeds also allow the body to reduce levels of anxiety, which helps treat patients who suffer insomnia. Lastly, many people eat marijuana seeds mainly because of the ability to avoid numerous cardiovascular diseases. Amino acids and nitric oxide are some compounds found in hemp seeds used consistently to reduce the risk of heart attacks, hypertension, blood clots and many more. They also free the nerves and allow an improved flow of blood throughout the whole body. From cannabis seeds, buds to flowers, the health benefits we can get from this wonderful plant is limitless. And the best part is that it is plant-based which is far better than relying on chemical and artificial based products shown in tv commercials today.

The power of healing is within you. All you need to do is give your body what it needs and remove what poisons it. You can restore your own health by what you do—not by the pills you take, but by how you choose to live.

Rhodiola rosea is a herbal medicine that was traditionally used as an energy and fertility tonic in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. How it works: It calms your HPA axis by sheltering your brain from cortisol and excitatory neurotransmitters. [92] In one Swedish placebo-controlled study, [93] participants given Rhodiola had measurably lower cortisol levels and scored better on scales of burn-out and cognitive function. Rhodiola can also relieve symptoms of depression. [94] What else you need to know: The exact quantity of the herb depends on the concentration of the formula, so please take as directed on the bottle.

Researchers are now finding evidence for what we’ve been saying for decades in functional medicine: Mild food reactivities like gluten sensitivity with only occasional, mostly tolerable symptoms are on one end of the larger inflammation spectrum, with autoimmune diseases like celiac disease (CD) on the opposite side.2 I believe that just as there is an autoimmune-inflammation spectrum, there is a spectrum from mild gluten sensitivity to true celiac disease.3 I call this the celiac spectrum. Conventional doctors can diagnose

As communal and composite creatures, we human beings often symbolize our important relationships in physical ways. Nations create flags to represent their country, and pledging allegiance to those flags displays and reinforces the patriotism of its citizens. Couples exchange rings during a wedding ceremony, embodying their commitments to each other into wearable symbols that become a part of everything they do from then on. These symbols not only help us stay mindful of the fundamental relationships that shape our activity, they actually make those relationships stronger. That same dynamic, then, can be seen in the way sacraments function in the church's worship of God. First through the waters of baptism and thereafter through the bread and the wine of communion, we express and extend our devotion to God in physical ways. To be entirely devoted to God, we must make God a part of everything that we do. What better way to symbolize that than by eating and drinking the representations (i.e., “presenting to us again”) of Christ's broken body and shed blood. Sanctification is about living as a representation of Christ, and we become more mindful that Christ fills us and empowers us spiritually when we celebrate that filling and empowering physically. By recognizing our dependance on God in this way, we demonstrate to ourselves and others how important God is to us; we “worth-ship” God. Because this is an act of “communion,” the very same sacrament that celebrates our dependance on Christ also celebrates our interdependence on one another. It is hard to imagine a better medicine for sin-sick, self-addicted people to take than one that celebrates how much God loves them and calls them to love one another.