Category Archives: All Posts—newest first

Have empathy for your doctor.

Posted on by

Regular readers will know that I’m a fan of active engagement in our health-related decisions. To do this effectively, it helps to know several things about the healthcare system. This understanding will relieve your frustration with the way things are, and it may also make you more empathetic toward the doctor who doesn’t listen when you try to participate.

1. The healthcare system is a product of the consumer culture, and is designed around money.

Doctors are paid for a very short appointment time with each patient, usually about 10 minutes. That means appointments are booked close together and the doctor is invariably running late by the time the first patient leaves.

From the patient point of view, this means a long wait after arriving at your scheduled time. It also means your doctor may seem rushed, harried, and unwilling to listen to your explanation of what’s going on with your health. And, if you have the impression that doctors only want to hear about one issue at the appointment, that’s true. Ten minutes doesn’t allow enough time to sort out even one problem, never mind a complex health issue.

Sanity strategies…

  • Take a book, listen to your iPod, or decide to enjoy leafing through magazines you don’t normally read.
  • Meditate. Put on your sunglasses and no one will be the wiser. You’ll be refreshed instead of frazzled by the wait.
  • Book your appointment far enough in advance so that you can get the first slot in the morning or after lunch.
  • Don’t plan your next activity for the day based on the time you would be free if you got in to see the doctor as scheduled. You know it isn’t going to happen, so be realistic and save yourself the stress.

Continue reading →

Only time will tell the whole story.

Posted on by

I welcome reader comments on my blog. They get me thinking. Here’s one, in response to my post, written after I tripped and gave myself a black eye.

Great blog today. I love how an unfortunate event becomes blog fodder. 😊

It made me aware that I hadn’t actually thought of my black eye as unfortunate. And with that awareness, I remembered the story that first shifted my thinking about good and bad fortune.

Here’s a charming version, narrated by philosopher, writer, and speaker, Alan Watts. Born in England, he moved to the US in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Watts, who died in 1973, is best known as an early interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience.

So what can we make of this ancient teaching?

Continue reading →

The Woman Who Changed Her Brain

Posted on by

I found Barbara’s story particularly poignant because so many people experience variations of what she described. And it happens all the way along the age continuum…from children with learning disabilities of varying degrees to adults with dementia of various types and severity.

Barbara Arrowsmith Young’s vision is a lofty one—that cognitive exercises become a normal part of curriculum, and that school becomes a place that we go to strengthen our brains. The good news is, she has done something about it. The Arrowsmith Program is offered at schools throughout North America, Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

And what can we do?

Continue reading →

Engaging Your Whole Brain

Posted on by
3

Last week I wrote about using your whole brain when making decisions. That post included a TED talk by a practitioner of Psych-K (psychological kinesiology). As the name suggests, Psych-K uses body movement (kinesiology) to assist the brain in working as it’s meant to.

Psych-K was my introduction to energy psychology many years ago. Psychologist Rob Williams had blended principles of psychology with body movement from Edu-K (educational kinesiology), also known as Brain Gym.

Braqin Gym book

Brain Gym is a set of 26 movements (not all to de done at one time) aimed at integrating the two halves of your brain. It was developed by Paul Dennison to help himself with learning challenges when he was a post-secondary student. Seeing the potential to help others, he and his wife, Gail Dennison, developed the Brain Gym program. They found that people doing these movements experienced improvement in a number of areas, including concentration and focus, memory, physical coordination, and organization skills. The photo is my copy of the original book.  Continue reading →

Simplify. Use your whole brain.

Posted on by
Brain, left & right

Image via Anna Achterhoff (Miss A)

Making decisions about health can be complex and frustrating. How can you possibly know what is the right thing to do?

The complicating factor is that most of us make decisions with only one-half of our brain. For example, suppose you want to know what is the best diet. Your left brain will have a field day. You can listen to interviews, read blogs and books, ask family and friends. You’ll find masses of eating rules, opinions, and theories—many of them conflicting.

With all of that to consider, your left brain may be driven to distraction trying to determine the pros and cons of these various approaches. It may seize on something and make a plan with great enthusiasm, only to have it fail shortly after you implement the plan. That makes no sense to you because the idea or theory was such a logical conclusion from the information you found. Frustrating? No doubt!

Here’s the missing piece…

Continue reading →

Tyranny of the Test

Posted on by
Reply

As I mentioned recently, testing is one of the hallmarks of personalized medicine. These days there are so many tests to help zero in on what’s really happening in your body. When used judiciously, test results can provide comprehensive information which helps your doctor or health coach develop an individualized plan for you.

Lab testing

Image via NPR

Thanks to technology, doctors are able to see images of your heart and carotid arteries in action, graphs showing a heart under the stress of walking up an incline, and more graphs of your heart beats and blood pressure during daily activities. They can see your brain in glorious colour and your body in three dimensions. They’re able to monitor the level of all manner of things in your blood. They can measure good and bad bugs in your gut, and find out if you have genes that predispose you to certain conditions you’d rather not know about.

Sounds like a good thing? Continue reading →

Do your assumptions trip you up?

Posted on by
2

Mine did. Literally. Tripped me up.

Here’s the evidence. In full colour, an unretouched photo.

Me with blackened eye

So…how did I get a black eye, and how does it relate to assumptions?

I tripped on a curb. Well, not a curb exactly. I was stepping onto the accessibility ramp that transitions the pavement to the sidewalk.

There was no snow or ice. I was not in a hurry. I was not distracted by my phone or iPod. I did not faint and then fall. I was wearing flat shoes that are old friends. There was no obvious reason for this to happen.  Continue reading →

Personalized Medicine

Posted on by
Reply

Whether it’s called personalized medicine, precision medicine, or individualized medicine, it means you are being treated on the basis of your uniqueness. A study-of-one approach allows for comparison of different treatments in the same person. You get feedback by observing your condition before and after a particular treatment. It allows you to determine whether that particular treatment is effective in your case.

This is different from conventional research, which uses many subjects who are divided into two or three groups. each group is given a different treatment and then the average responses of the groups are compared. This is known as a randomized controlled trial, and study results are reported as a statistical average.

Truth is, this does not provide helpful information for us as individuals. Just because a research study found that a particular treatment works on average, it may not work for you in particular. Or it may even make your condition worse even though it worked for most people. Continue reading →

Something to try…for a general tune-up

Posted on by
2

In the spirit of being the director of your own study-of-one, here’s an experiment for you. This activity takes about 3 minutes and engages parts of your body that improve energy flow and oxygen to the brain. According to Dr. David Jockers, it has dramatically improved the health of many people with ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, depression, brain fog and dementia.

It’s a fast, simple, and drug-free method of improving brain function, according to the doctor interviewed in the following news report.

The next video is Dr. David Jockers demonstrating how to do SuperBrain Yoga. He mentions that a person with limited mobility can make adaptations. They aren’t demonstrated, so here’s his description from near the end of his article. This uses visualization in the same way that high-performance athletes do.

Science shows that visualizing a technique can actually result in positive benefits as if your body physically performed an exercise or experience. …adults with limited abilities to squat should sit in a chair with feet grounded and hands [holding earlobes the same as if standing]. While performing the same breathing patterns, visualize the exercise…

I did this every day for about 3 weeks and didn’t notice cognitive difference, but my knees sure improved, even though they emphasize this is not about exercising muscles. However, in my world, that’s a substantial benefit because I haven’t been able to squat down very far for years. At the 3-week mark, I got a cold, didn’t feel up to doing it,and hadn’t picked it up again. Prompted by writing this post, I did it again and was shocked how much of my knee mobility I’d lost. That’s good enough incentive to keep me going.

So…I’m curious. If you try it, what happened for you?

You’re a “study of one”…and the director of it.

Posted on by
Reply

Last week I wrote that we are complex organic systems, each with a unique combination of inherent constitution and life experiences. Under such conditions, the best way to address health issues is with an individualized plan.

In this model of achieving wellness, you are the subject in the study of you. Of course, a study also needs someone to direct it, and that is you too, since the medical system hasn’t yet embraced this approach beyond trying one prescription and then something else if that didn’t work.

How you think makes a difference to the process.

Continue reading →