What Doctors Don't Tell You Australia/NZ October 2022 - November 2022

In the late 1990s, Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist and psychologist at the University of Wisconsin's Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, flew eight of the Dalai Lama's most seasoned meditators to his lab in Wisconsin, There, Davidson attached hundreds of EEG sensors to each monk's scalp to record electrical activity in many different areas of the brain as they meditated. After 15 seconds, according to the EEG readings, the monks’ brains did not slow down, as is usually expected in meditation; they began speeding up. In fact, they were activated on a scale neither Davidson nor any other scientist had ever seen. The monitors showed sustained bursts of high gamma-band activity—rapid cycles of 25-70 Hz. The gamma band, the highest rate of brain-wave frequencies, is employed by the brain when it is working its…

Dr Damien Downing, a specialist in allergy, environment and nutrition, is current president of the British Society for Ecological Medicine, on the editorial board of Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, Chief Medical Advisor of cancer charity Yes to Life (www.yestolife.org.uk), and author of numerous books including The Vitamin Cure for Allergies. Dr Michel Odent, a French-trained surgeon and obstetrician, is a pioneer of the natural birth movement, emphasizing home and water birth. Founder of the Primal Health Research Centre in the UK, he has written some 50 scientific papers and 11 books. Dr Sarah Myhill has worked in the UK National Health Service and private practice since 1981. Honorary Secretary of the British Sodety for Ecological Medicine for 17 years, she is a frequent lecturer and author of Sustainable Medicine and Diagnosis and…

No gain with pain Well done for highlighting the vexing problem of chronic pain and its relationship to the mind (WDDTY AU/NZ, Jun/Jul 2022, pg56). As your article correctly attests, chronic pain is multi-factorial while medicine's response is one-dimensional, usually either a painkiller or surgery. The fact that “talking therapies” such as CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) have had success in alleviating chronic pain is an indicator that pain has an emotional element, and a mental one, too, if we could define what that means. It's not a controversial view. The UK's NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) has issued guidance notes for doctors not to hand out painkillers for chronic pain and instead advises acupuncture, group therapy or even ice. Your author, Dr David Hanscom, correctly describes chronic pain as a vicious…

Vitamin E is vital for helping boost your immune system-and it's an essential nutrient if you're fighting cancer. The nutrient blocks tumors from spreading and primes our killer T cells to fight the cancer. It's important to take vitamin E supplements if you're using immunotherapy to fight your cancer, say researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, although similar benefits haven't been seen in cancer patients who are having chemotherapy. Patients with melanoma, a form of skin cancer, taking an immunotherapy drug along with vitamin E had “significantly improved” survival rates compared to others who weren't taking vitamin E or multivitamins, and the results were similar in patients with breast, colon and kidney cancers. The researchers believe the vitamin helps mobilize the immune system's dendritic cells, which manage abnormal proteins and…

Spending just one hour less sitting in a chair every day can help reduce your risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Most people don't even get close to achieving the recommended two and a half hours of moderate-intensity exercise—such as brisk walking, water aerobics, dancing or gardening—every week, and so swapping sitting for even an hour of light exercise every day could do wonders for your health. Light exercise includes casual walking or a gentle bike ride—essentially any activity that doesn't cause you to break a sweat—and even this level of activity can help reduce heart disease risk, say researchers from the University of Turku in Finland. But people who already have heart disease or diabetes probably won't be helped by just sticking to light exercise, although it might stop the…

Children who are vegetarian aren't at any health disadvantage compared to meat-eaters—they'll grow to be just as tall and be properly nourished. The one area of concern is that vegetarian children are more likely to be underweight, so carefully planning meals is essential, say researchers from St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. The researchers evaluated the diets and health of 8,907 children between six months and eight years old and found that the vegetarians had similar body mass index (BMI), height and levels of iron, vitamin D and cholesterol to those eating meat. But they were also nearlytwice as likely to be underweight—although no vegetarian child was overweight or obese. This suggests the diet is not nutritionally rich enough to support normal growth, and parents need to take greater care in providing meals that…