How Does Fiber Help You?
Unless you’ve been living on Mars (!), you will doubtless have heard of the advantages of increasing the amount of fiber in your diet. A high-fiber diet reduces your risk of colon cancer, constipation, hemorrhoids hypercholesterolemia and insulin resistance syndrome.
We have always wanted to know how fiber does so many magical things at once, and now we may an answer. In a paper published in the open-access Public Library of Science Biology today, by a group from one our local institutions – the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta – collaborating with a researcher from Josai University, Sakado, Saitama in Japan.
The epithelial cells lining the intestine have a life span measured in 1-5 days. They spend their short life times working to process enormous amounts of food residue on its way past. It is this layer of cells that acts as the barrier between the body and items floating past on the inside of the intestine.
Long before it became the topic of some popular books are over-enthusiastic magazine articles, we became very interested in the idea of the “Leaky gut:” the concept that some illnesses are a result of breakdown of the normal integrity of this protective barrier. Over 20 years ago, a friend and colleague at Northwick Park Hospital – Ingvar Bjarnason – did some pioneering work on this important issue. Several recent studies have indicated that a breakdown of this barrier may be involved in several childhood illnesses including allergies and asthma. There is also some early information suggesting that “leaky gut” may be involved in some autoimmune processes involving the intestine. Both zinc supplementation and oats may prevent gut leakiness under certain very specific circumstances.
When the epithelial cells in the gut wall encounter indigestible fibrous foods, the outer covering of the cell ruptures, releasing a coating of cell-protecting mucus. In a matter of seconds, the cell begins to repair itself, in the process releasing yet more of the beneficial mucus. Not only does it lubricate, but also it may keep some carcinogens and allergens out of your system.
The constant buffeting of the cells causes mild damage that increases the level of lubricating mucus. Injury at the cellular level promotes the health of the gastrointestinal tract as a whole.
Here we see a basic principle of nature: many of the same things that apply in the cells of the body apply equally in the life of someone trying to achieve success. Without the buffeting, the cells of the intestine could not produce the mucus on which your life depends.
Without some occasional adversity, you will find it more difficult to grow as a human being.
“Storms make oaks take deeper root.”
— George Herbert (English Religious Poet, 1593-1633)
“He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.”
–Harry Emerson Fosdick (American Clergyman, Writer and Broadcaster, 1878-1969)
Friendship and Psychological Distress
“To lose a friend is the greatest of all losses.”
Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer, 1st Century B.C.E.)
Severe and persistent mental illnesses are one thing, but there are many, many more people who are miserable and unhappy, without that unhappiness necessarily getting to the level of an “illness.” The offices of primary care physicians and therapists are full of people in genuine distress for all kinds of reasons.
I first began to think about this many years ago when a woman came to see me and promptly announced, “I’ve come for psychotherapy. I’ve been in therapy for seventeen years, and I want some more.” I wasn’t being in the slightest bit flippant when I responded by asking her if, after seventeen years, she really felt that it had offered her anything? She looked at me blankly, and it soon became very clear that what she needed was not more therapy, but a friend to talk to.
There has been another puzzle: why is it that women are more likely to develop depression than men? The most profound gender difference in mood disorders begins to emerge after puberty, so it would be easy to attribute it all to hormones. But that would be a mistake.
I recently pointed out that there are some fundamental differences in the ways in which men and women interact: women tending to be more relational and men tending to be more transactional. The female sense of self tends to be more entangled with her relationships, while a man’s self-worth and sense of self is more often associated with his achievements. Most of these differences begin to emerge in early puberty: when girls talk to their friends, their conversation tends to be more emotional and to be concerned primarily with relationships, while boys tend to be more reserved and to discuss facts, statistics and achievements. There is some evidence from research in different cultures that these different styles seem to be the norm throughout the world. Yes, there are of course plenty of people of both genders who behave differently, and so it is more accurate to relate these differences to the male and female factor or essence, rather than getting it confused with anatomical differences.
Emotional language tends to put more strain on a relationship, and it is well-recognized that girls’ relationships turn over much more rapidly than boys’ ones. An interesting hypothesis proposed some years ago by Professor Sir David Goldberg, is that this high turnover in relationships may lead girls to experience more disappointing experiences in their social networks, and it is this string of disappointments that predisposes young women to depression.
A happy, healthy, dynamic network of friends is a cornerstone of developing and maintaining psychological resilience. Without them you become progressively more vulnerable to the reversals that affect all of us from time to time.
“A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet and Essayist, 1803-1882)
“To know how to live in a brotherly way with those around us is to be rich, for each of us, with our face, eyes, voice and thoughts, contributes something alive, something warm, which nourishes everyone.”
Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (Bulgarian Spiritual Master, 1900-1986)
T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Health
I have written about some of the research into the health benefits of T’ai Chi and Qigong.
I was very pleased to see that this month’s issue of T’ai Chi: the International Magazine of T’ai Chi Ch’uan dedicated several pages to some of the research that is being done on the field and advised practitioners to participate in local research projects.
It was that last piece of advice that I particularly liked.
The article by Charlotte Jones, a Chen Style practitioner from Houston, is not a critical review of the literature, and neither is it supposed to be. It lists some of the key findings from studies on balance, osteoporosis, pain and arthritis, blood pressure and cardiovascular health without going through their pros and cons.
But a short list like this is a good jumping off point if you are starting to look into learning T’ai Chi and would like to know some of the possible benefits.
I shall also continue to provide you with more critical reviews of studies as they come out.
Resilience, Misfortune, and Mortality
Much of the development of the ideas of Integrated Medicine has been driven by the idea that a truly effective holistic medicine does not simply integrate different modalities to achieve health and wellness, but is also aimed at integrating all the different aspects of a person into a coherent whole. That was the real reason for choosing the term “Integrated” medicine in the United Kingdom, though “Integrative” and “Integral” medicine are ultimately all aiming for the same thing.
This is quite different from simply adding some acupuncture, an herb or some relaxation therapy to a conventional medical program. Its aim is not so much getting someone better, as to give the whole person – physical, psychological, social, subtle and spiritual – what he or she needs to be able to get themselves back on an even keel, so as to be able to deal with future challenges as they arise. And not just deal with them, but to use challenges as springboards to growth and development.
The whole idea of this system of medicine included an extra dimension that had often been left out: the interaction between the person in trouble and the practitioner. We are social animals, but even more than that it looks as if we are highly interconnected from cell to soul. We have to take into account the impact of a therapeutic interaction on the clinician, as well as the influence of the clinician’s psychological, subtle and spiritual makeup on the individual.
The development of this system of medicine had many parents. One was the American-born Israeli sociologist Professor Aaron Antonovsky who first generated the idea of salutogenesis: the study of the factors that support human health and wellness. He was one of the first to show that people who were relatively unstressed were far more likely to be able to resist illness, compared with stressed people. His interest was not just in what causes disease, but what are the roots of health.
He returned to and discussed, developed and applied an idea that had been around since the work of Sigmund Freud and Roberto Assagioli: that was that our experience of well-being constitutes a Sense of Coherence (SOC). He defined the sense of coherence like this:
“A global orientation that expresses the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic feeling of confidence that one’s internal and external environments are predictable and that there is a high probability that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected.“
Two recent studies seem to indicate that this concept of coherence is fundamentally correct.
Researchers in Cambridge in the United Kingdom have reported a population-based cohort of 20,921 men and women completed a postal assessment of their lifetime experience of specific adverse events and a measure of their sense of coherence. Those with a weak SOC reported significantly slower adaptation to the adverse effects of life experiences, compared with those with a string SOC, and were more likely to die prematurely. Although the size of the effect was not large, the results suggest that SOC is a potential marker of an individual’s adaptive capacity to deal with social stress, which is predictive of mortality
The second study was a systematic review from Finland. I like the way in which the study was done, and it came to this conclusion:
“SOC seems to be a health promoting resource, which strengthens resilience and develops a positive subjective state of health. Salutogenesis is a valuable approach for health promotion.”
So what does this mean for you?
Developing a sense of coherence is a most critical factor in creating and maintaining robust health and ability to adapt to change, be it in health, stress, your relationship or at work.
How do you do that? Healing, Meaning and Purpose spends over a hundred pages or several CDs explaining the most up to date ways of doing exactly that using a process known as Creative Self-Integration.
I do hope that you take the opportunity to sample some of the techniques for yourself.
A Special Offer
Today I’m attaching a first enhanced podcast to my blog.
We’ve been experimenting for months to get the music, sound and graphics just right. I’m planning to do a great many podcasts in the months to come so that you can listen at your leisure, and I can also share some specific tips and techniques that are tricky to explain using the written word alone.
Today’s podcast is a short introduction, some advice on motivation, and an offer.
To commemorate the launch of this new project, I’m also going to extend the offer here.
The Internet is full of people telling you what they think and sometimes even what you should think and do!
That’s not my way of doing things. I am here to serve you, and telling you what to do is scarcely an act of service!
Now that you have got a flavor for my areas of expertise, I am going to ask you what you would like to hear about or learn about or maybe even be amused about!
As you will see if you look at my list of "Categories," there are a few areas in which a great many people think of me as THE expert: the Go-To Guy.
So I get a huge number of questions every day, and I think that most of them merit a detailed response.
So the offer is this: I’m going to invite you to email me a question in any of these categories. Just send me a quick note to healingmeaningpurpose[at]yahoo.com. The shorter the better!
Naturally I cannot diagnose or treat a person online. No responsible clinician would ever do such a thing without performing a full, detailed and personal evaluation.
I’m looking for questions that will be of interest and concern to many people.
I am going to select the hundred and one questions that I can answer with something new: a new perspective, new information or new insight. Or perhaps a question that will be best answered by intuition or by an appeal to the classics or the spiritual Masters and Mistresses who have taught us over the centuries. I am then going to put these hundred and one questions and answers together into an electronic book. I can guarantee you that the book will contain an absolute treasure trove of life-changing information.
How do I know that?
Because of the quality of the questions that I’ve already received and the kindness of the responses to my answers.
When it’s finished in late October, I’m going to offer the eBook for sale at $49.00.
However.
Anyone who sends a question that I select and can use will receive a FREE copy of the eBook.
I’m totally serious about that, and there’s no catch: I really am going to give away almost five thousand dollar’s worth of books!
While also, I hope, offering guidance, help, support and inspiration to a great many people around the world.
Enjoy the podcast, and I look forward to hearing from you if you have a question with which you think I may be able to help!
Health Maintenance: Screening and Prevention
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
–English Proverb
There is so much that we can do to help ourselves head off serious illnesses.
- Adopting the kind of health lifestyle that I’ve discussed on previous occasions . Most of us already know the key items: including what to avoid.
- Next, be alert to signs an symptoms coming from your body: the Personal Evaluation of Wellness (PEW), is an ideal guide that took years to develop. I plan to make a computerized version soon.
- Be alert to messages coming from your environment. If something dreadful happens in your life, it makes no sense at all to try carrying on as if nothing happened. The universe may be sending you a message, so use your intuition.
- Finally, ensure that you get regular health screening. Here is a resource that will point you to the current recommendations about what you should be doing and when.
“Keep your own house and its surroundings pure and clean. This hygiene will keep you healthy and benefit your worldly life.”
–Sathya Sai Baba (Indian Spiritual Teacher, c.1926-
Health Marketing at the Centers For Disease Control
I was very interested to see that The Centers For Disease Control have launched a website for the National Center for Health Marketing. I learned about it from Carol Kirshner.
This could be an important step for creating and disseminating accurate information about health, and health care options.
I just have one small worry about all this: if insightful and knowledgeable people do not become involved in providing direct input into the enterprise, it is inevitable that the main focus will be on physical interventions: diet, exercise, nutrition, workplace stress and so on. In other words, the medical model. Only because that’s the dominant way of thinking about illness and health.
But as I have been showing in these pages, there are tens of thousands of leading thinkers around the world who have long since recognized the limitations of that medical model, to say nothing of the demonstrable fact that some new Laws of Health and Healing have been emerging over the last century.
I laud this new initiative, but I’m also hoping that it will also include communication about not just the physical, but also the psychological, social, subtle and spiritual aspects of health, wellness and healing.
If these fine people would like some documented research to do so, I know that we can oblige!
What is Your Risk of Developing Breast Cancer?
When I was first practicing in the United States I was stunned when a research coordinator – who was with me as I examined a young woman – complained that it embarrassed her that I asked the patient about breast cancer screening. I had been trained and then practiced for many years in the United Kingdom, where it would have been deemed negligent if I had not asked the question. As I was taught a long time ago, “When you see a patient, man, woman or child, that may be their only contact with a doctor, so take the opportunity to do as much screening and education as you can.” I still take that to be good advice. We have good data that if women did regular breast self-examination and men checked their testicles, that we would each year catch many cancers at the stage when they are still easily treatable.
I was reminded about all this as I read the shocking results of a study that will be coming out in the European Cancer Journal this month.
In a survey of over 10,000 female students from 23 countries, hardly any knew about any of the major risk factors for developing breast cancer. We have obviously done a lousy job a teaching young people about a disease that may in large part be preventable.
This is desperately important. About 30% of illnesses you cannot help: they are the result of genetic mutations, accidents and so on. But 70% of all illnesses are thought to be the result of lifestyle choices.
Breast cancer is a good example. Yes, there are undoubtedly some cases that are largely genetic: genes have been identified in some families that strongly predispose women – and some men – to the disease. But they are uncommon: probably no more than 5-10% of cases. It is likely that the majority of people with the illness do have a genetic predisposition. But the impact of family history is usually small. And remember that biology is not destiny. Lifestyle modification may indeed significantly reduce your risk.
These are the Major Breast Cancer Risk Factors:
1. Age
2. Family history (slight risk)
3. Starting periods at a younger age
4. Late menopause
5. Using hormone replacement therapy
6. Using the contraceptive pill (small)
7. Alcohol
8. Obesity
Please do note that this is not the whole list of risk factors. Perhaps the most comprehensive list is here.
Cutting the Risk:
1. Breastfeed
2. Having several children, and having them young
3. Stay in shape
4. Eat and drink healthily
5. Don’t smoke
The take home message for everyone is this: lifestyle can strongly influence the risk of developing breast cancer. You cannot change everything, but stopping smoking, cutting down on alcohol, reducing weight and taking regular exercise are in the reach of almost everyone.
Technorati tags: Breast cancer Education Risk factors Health screening
Sex, Time and Energy
I was taking a long flight yesterday, which gave me the chance to read through the results of a large survey done by Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan Magazines. You will see, gentle reader, how widely I spread my net in my ceaseless efforts to bring you important new materials to enrich your life….
The results of this survey of 6,000 men and women seemed at first to make interesting reading. More than half of men and women surveyed saying that they wanted to have sex at least once a day; around half of the women saying that they wanted to have more adventurous sex, and so the list went on. But then I started thinking: “Who are these people?” They certainly don’t sound much like the people that I know, or people with whom I’ve worked professionally.
So I showed the survey to She Who Must Be Obeyed, and she immediately agreed: “How old are they? And how many of them have children?”
Most healthy adults are interested in having intimate relationships, but how many people are too tired and too distracted to do everything that they want to? And how many people are busily multitasking their lives away to the exclusion of everything else? I was recently talking to a married couple who had packed the children off for the evening and had a date night all organized. The restaurant was booked, the theater tickets in hand, and they both fell fast asleep on the couch and missed both.
I’m sorry to disappoint some of my readers, but the world is not quite the way that it is portrayed in some magazines. At least not once you take on responsibilities. The problem with surveys like this is that it can make some people very dissatisfied, for it leads them into the trap of comparison: “If that’s what the survey says, then what’s wrong with me?” The answer is, of course, that there is no such thing as “normal behavior.” What you and your partner like and feel comfortable with is all that really matters, so long as it isn’t infringing on anyone else. Every time another survey like this comes out, every one of my therapist friends sees an increased number of people worried that they aren’t performing up to par.
Sexual mismatches can create a lot of difficulties in relationships, but let me make a suggestion: the most valuable thing to ensure the viability of intimate relationships is not so much to try to learn lots of different techniques, and it is sometimes just not realistic to put aside as much time for each other as you would like. So instead make the time together really count. There is nothing quite as attractive as an intimate occasion marked by complete focus on and awareness of the other person. Feeling the dance of the duality, focusing on all your senses, and, if you can, feeling the subtle systems of the other person. You already know that our experience of the passage of time is highly elastic. Focused awareness of another person can make even five minutes seem like a lot longer, and remember what I have said before, and is an important theme of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: time management is far less important than energy management.
And remember this: you will never be free so long as you are concerned about the opinions of others.
Technorati tags: sex, relationships, time management
Personal Evaluation of Wellness
As a physician, I am trained to know what questions to ask in order to diagnose health problems and understand what course of action needs to be prescribed to alleviate or cure the problem. I can be a nightmare for my secretary if she makes my schedule tight because I can spend over an hour with a patient on a first visit. She would argue that it is more like two hours, but I will admit that I take whatever time I need to gather the pertinent information.
I recently wrote an article that allows one to conduct a personal evaluation of his or her own wellness. Click here to be taken to it. It is based on my many years of experience and research. You will notice that the questions cover the 5 main areas (Physical, Psychological, Social, Subtle and Spiritual) that are key to achieving an overall feeling of wellness and good health.
Keep in mind that this is a bit of a shortened version, there are many more questions that can be helpful. However, this should get you started about thinking of ways to improve your own sense of health, meaning and purpose.
Technorati tags: wellness, health survey,
