A golden braid: Memory, vizualization and manifestation

From Dr. Mercola: "How many of you have been challenged because you forgot to do something?

Well the first and most important step is to make sure that you are getting enough beneficial omega-3 fats like cod liver oil. As you age, your ability to engage in what we call controlled or executive functions declines.

Executive functions involve deliberate, planned actions that are processed in the brain's frontal cortex.

Unfortunately, your frontal cortex shrinks with age, and these frontal processes become less efficient. While your frontal cortex deteriorates with age, brain areas specific to automatic responses stay relatively intact.

The fact led researchers to develop a new technique to improve memory that seems quite effective.

The simple act of mentally picturing a future task is turning out to be an inexpensive, simple and highly effective way of making sure important things get done. If you imagine completing the desired act in great detail, you're much more likely to do it.

The key is visualizing yourself in as much specific detail as you can successfully completing the task.

This is a great application of the law of manifestation. Whatever you focus your intention on you have a high likelihood of manifesting into your reality."  ⊕

This laughs for you: Only in America

From Dr. Mercola: A great series of very funny photos from around the world called "Only in ...". You won't be sorry you clicked your way over.  ⊕

Iatrogenesis: Perhaps already in your neighbourhood

Tim Bolen via Health Supreme: "A new study, a compilation of most recent studies, called "Death by Medicine," says:

"It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. The total number of iatrogenic deaths shown ... is 783,936. The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate, 553,251."

The number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million. Dr. Richard Besser, of the CDC, in 1995, said the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections was 20 million. Dr. Besser, in 2003, now refers to tens of millions of unnecessary antibiotics.

The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million."

And that's only the "deaths." The Lazarou study on Hospital ADR also showed that, besides the 106,000 "deaths," twenty times that number of people had health problems caused by that same hospital Adverse Drug Reaction. There were an additional 2,200,000 health problems caused by Adverse Drug Reaction to drugs in hospitals. It would be reasonable to assume, then, that that factor of twenty times the number of deaths could be applied to all of the death statistics - meaning that in addition to the total 783,936 deaths there were 15,678,720 serious health problems caused by the American Medical System."

No word about the Canadian situation or that of other nations. While the story is clearly a partisan statement for a cause - arguably a noble one - it's portents are disturbing to say the least.
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Turning the Tide: Humanitarian Interventions?

Noam Chomsky?: " I won't run through the details regarding Somalia since you can find a lot in print, right at the time and later.
Steve Shalom had a fine article about it at the time in Z; I wrote about it right away in Z too. More later, after other facts dribbled out. In brief, there had been a terrible famine after the chaos following the overthrow of the murderous US-backed dictator. By the end of 1992 it was declining, Red Cross supplies were mostly getting through, it looked as though the situation was coming under control. At that point Bush 1 decided to make a spectacular show of 'humanitarian aid.' Marines were sent in a manner so comical even the TV teams couldn't take it seriously. There was a night landing in front of TV cameras (of course all networks were notified: what else would be the point?). But the marines with their night vision equipment were blinded by the cameras and the crews had to be ordered to shut them off. There was no resistance of course.
After that came a tragicomedy in which some lives were saved by humanitarian aid and probably as many or more were lost by heavy-handed military tactics -- which were later blamed on the UN when it became a fiasco, though it was all under US military control. Black Hawk Down and all the rest are one fictionalized version of it. The US estimated that 7-10,000 Somalis were killed, for what that's worth. Specialists who have worked on the area, like Alex de Waal, estimate that deaths and saving of lives were about in balance, and that the whole matter could have proceeded better without the military intervention, which appears to have been done mostly for PR purposes, and was virtually announced that way. That's only the beginning. But a good enough reason to suggest plenty of skepticism."

For healing, compassion is mightier than the gun.  ⊕

Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) Supplements Helpful For Obesity

mercola.com:: "This study used about one teaspoon of CLA to 180 overweight adults for one year and found a significant reduction in body fat, by as much as 5%. "  ⊕

Many Americans Turning to Complementary and Alternative Therapies

E-Commerce Times:: "Some 32,000 adults were questioned about their use of complementary or alternative medicine. They were asked about their use of medical systems such as acupuncture, ayurveda, homeopathic treatments, and naturopathy."  ⊕

Scents Will Not Rouse Us From Slumber, Says New Brown University Study

Science Daily: "Study participants easily detected odors when awake and in the early transition into sleep (Stage One sleep) but, once asleep, did not. The findings indicate a significant alteration of perceptual processing as a function of sleep. "  ⊕

A Psychic Tells You That You Are Cursed - What Should Do You Do About This?

About.com - Holistic Healing: "There are always people in the world that wish you bad things, either out of jealousy or envy, and hope for bad things to occur in your life. Any curse will work the minute YOU start to believe in it and allow it to take over your life."  ⊕

Quackpotwatch - the antidote to Quackwatch adn Quackbusters

Tim Bolen: "I've been following the activities of the "Quackbusters" for about five years, ever since the name Stephen Barrett (www.quackwatch.com) came up, as a player, against a client of mine in California. I asked the question "why would this group be using a doctor from Pennsylvania, as their witness, when there are 300,000 health professionals in this State?"

Bolen is an entertaining read. Despite the hyperbole, it's refreshing to see someone take a strong and determined stance against the unreasonable bigots at Quackwatch and Quackbusters.   ⊕

Four rules for the reinvention of health care

British Medical Journal: "Futurists might like to speculate on what the health services of 2020 look like. The world may be such that as a clinician you work in flexible virtual teams and some of your colleagues are computers. You would of course instinctively mistrust clinicians who always know the answer without consulting the information grid, and patients often choose to be the team leader. Keyboards are banned as harmful and can be found in museums, next to punch cards and spittoons. The health record is a direct multimedia history of conversations, and a software agent is its curator. For the still cognitively limited clinician, your earring whispers your patient's name when you meet. "

The four rules referred to are:

Rule 1: Technical systems have social consequences.
Rule 2: Social systems have technical consequences.
Rule 3: We don't design technology, we design sociotechnical systems.
Rule 4: To design sociotechnical systems, we must understand how people and technologies interact.

From a systems development perspective, this is not news. It may be news in medical circles and thus may be well worth mention.

There is an extensive literature and best practice documentation to help out with the design and development of stuff like this.

In order to build useful solutions, system developers variously draw on things like patterning (which came from ethnography and anthropolgy in the first place), use cases and the whole UML methodology as well as usability studies (in the vein of Jacob Nielsen's ground breaking work).

These practices are not nearly universal. As usual, art leads public practice. Commercial software is all too often driven by the mantra 'Ship now, fix later'.  ⊕

Huge penalty in drug fraud - Pfizer settles felony case in Neurontin off-label promotion

La Leva di Archimede (ENG): : "A division of Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drugmaker, has agreed to plead guilty to two felonies and pay $430 million in penalties to settle charges that it fraudulently promoted the drug Neurontin for a string of unapproved uses.

In an agreement announced by government prosecutors Thursday, Pfizer unit Warner-Lambert admitted that it aggressively marketed the epilepsy drug by illicit means for unrelated conditions including bipolar disorder, pain, migraine headaches, and drug and alcohol withdrawal.

A company whistle-blower, whose 1996 civil suit spurred government investigations of Neurontin's marketing campaign, will receive about $26.6 million through the settlement under legal provisions that reward citizens for helping to recover government money obtained by fraud.

The settlement includes $152 million to pay back amounts spent on Neurontin by the federal Medicare program and 50 state Medicaid programs for the poor. In addition, Pfizer will pay a $240 million criminal fine, the second-largest such fine ever imposed in a health care fraud prosecution, the Department of Justice said."

The story goes on with more details. Suffice this to illustrate the economics at stake in the pharma business.  ⊕

St. Joseph's Hospital, Miami, gives Healing Touch therapy a try

ABC Action News: "When you are in the hospital, you want to know you are in good hands. Now, a new program at St. Joseph's Hospital is making that wish a reality, literally, with the new 'Healing Touch' therapy."

"..."It actually works on balancing the energy of the body to provide an optimum environment for the body to heal," explained Kimberly Garcia, a nurse at St. Joe's for 21 years."

"...Kimberly was working as a nurse and doing healing touch on the side, but demand is so high now they are going to try a pilot program at St. Joe's. They'll allow her to do only the healing touch for three months and then evaluate the impact on those patients."  ⊕

Dutch Patients Start Using Online Nursing

Associated Press: "Ooms hopes CamCare will enable him to remain at home with his wife of nearly 55 years, Tilly, instead of going to an old-age home. A stroke has left him half paralyzed, with serious blood circulation and lung problems.

The technology isn't new, but its application is.

The connection is established easily using a television set-top box and an ISDN phone line, which has about twice the speed of a regular analog dial-up connection.

A picture is transmitted from a Web cam mounted on top of the patient's TV to a computer at the nursing center. A video image of the nurse appears on the patient's TV, with the nurse's name on the screen.

During a reporter's visit, the picture was good enough to make out facial expressions and read the label on a box of medicine, although it was not as clear as video sent over high-speed broadband Internet."

This is interesting. 10 years ago I ran a project to put a new patient administration system into 5 hospitals in Norway. As part of that project we set up video conference links using off-the-shelf PC applications with ISDN connections. This was not used for therapeutic purposes, but there were a lot of focus on 'Telemedicin' in Scandinavia at that time. (Still is, I imagine.)

The issue was how to provide specialist care to outlying and remote communities. I can remember two projects in particular. One dealt with X-ray pictures and remote diagnosis by radiologists. The other was for dermatologists. As I recall, the picture resolution was acceptable in both cases.

I can't remember what type of connection they used. It could have been ISDN, but most probably a dedicated network or backbone between the hospitals in the health region. (ISDN is much more prevalent in Europe than in North America.) No matter what the technology, the issue will always be how to make it available to remote areas as there is no commercial incentive to provide it.

The vehicle for ensuring basic communication services are available in remote areas anywhere, not just in Norway, is known as the Universal Service Obligation (USO). A private provider willahve to honor the USO, but will get a refund from the government to cover the loss. I worked with Norwegian Telecom when they were in the privatization process and bid on a project to sort out how the USO should be handled by a private telecom provider and how to calculate the refunds. We didn't get the project which was a big, hot political potato of the first degree. Still, it was fun putting together the proposal and talking to various people around the world in our firm who had worked on this in other jurisdictions. That's one of the benefits of working for a global consulting firm.  ⊕

New Strain of Bird Flu Found in Canada

Associated Press: "A new strain of bird flu has been found in the Fraser Valley, different from anything seen in the area before, officials said"  ⊕

Mexican A.F. Pilots Film 'UFOs' |

CBS News: " Mexican Air Force pilots filmed 11 unidentified flying objects in the skies over southern Campeche state, a Defense Department spokesman confirmed Tuesday. "  ⊕

Self-Defeating Beliefs

Inspiranote: "Any worry about possibilities that may happen is usually quite irrational. There are also many people who are not assertive enough and are constantly in turmoil because they do not dare to be themselves."  ⊕

Purifying - A Quality of Pure Consciousness

"I, schooled in misery, know many purifying rites, and I know where speech is proper and where silence."
Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.)

"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well."
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

When snow is falling on my city, everything becomes quiet, calm and white outside. There's a special feeling when it is like that. The dog likes it, too, even though she was born in Mexico and grew up on our sailboat. She must have "gypsy" genes like the rest of the family.

The weather image, it has snowed twice in Calgary this weekend, is harmonizing with my progression along the Qualities of Pure Consciousness. Today's quality is purifying. I think of snow that way. It drapes the world in a clean, white blanket. Everything looks pure, fresh and untouched. Then life continues writing its story starting with me as I leave my footprints behind me in the snow.

The snow is not a perfect metaphor, of course, because it covers things up to make everything look great. And with snow, we can get too much of a good thing, too.

A pure consciousness is purifying because it dispels untruths and confusions and brings awareness and clarity about how things are as they are and in no other fashion. There is no more room left for any confusion after that. It also brings a purity of purpose; we are as we are and need have no more doubts about what we should do in our lives. I think it would be wonderful to fully embrace that. I have so many doubts about so many things.  ⊕