Life Changes
Healing Through Storytelling: Lessons from The Odyssey
The journey of Odysseus in Homer's 'The Odyssey' offers profound insights into healing...
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- Written by: Sarah Yang, University of California Berkeley
Oxytocin is released with a warm hug, a grasped hand, or a loving gaze, and it increases libido. The hormone kicks into high gear during and after childbirth, helping new mothers bond with and breastfeed their new babies. While oxytocin is found in both young boys and girls, it is not yet known when levels of the hormone start to decline in humans, and what levels are necessary for maintaining healthy tissues.
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- Written by: Colin Espie, The Conversation
It’s often said that no-one really knows what sleep is for. Sometimes it’s as if this lack of surety means its functions are relatively unimportant or even vestigial, like an appendix to the story of our life. How we evaluate life has long since focused on the daytime – what we think and feel when we’re awake.
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- Written by: Asgar Ali
Nearly a third of all the food produced in the world is lost or wasted, according to the UN’s World Resources Institute. It is a sad irony that we waste so much food – especially fruit and vegetables – but still fail to feed the world’s ever increasing population. We need to start minimizing the amount of food that is produced and then lost.
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- Written by: Kate Flinders, The Conversation
Eating good food promotes overall health and well-being, but what you eat may also impact how you feel. Research suggests that not only can the food you eat affect your mood, but that your mood may influence the foods you choose to consume.
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- Written by: Liz Pleasant
The CDC's latest report highlights a decline in smoking among high school students contrasted with rising healthcare costs that force many adults to delay treatment. Initiatives like the Healing Clinic Collective and Third Root Community Health Center aim to provide affordable holistic care, emphasizing the importance of preventative medicine for low-income communities.
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- Written by: Dr. Jay M. Lipoff
You might work the upper body one day and the lower body the following day, split up by cardio and repeated. Another strategy is to do a split routine so you can focus on each muscle group separately. Remember they need a break to recuperate because you are focusing on them.
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- Written by: David Orenstein, Brown University
The average child in the US snacks three times a day. Concerned about the role of snacking in obesity, a team of researchers set out to explore how eating frequency relates to energy intake and diet quality in a sample of low-income urban school children in the Boston area.
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- Written by: Len Saputo, MD and Nancy Faass, MSW, MPH.
A strong immune system is influenced by various lifestyle factors such as sleep, exercise, nutrition, and stress management. Understanding how daily habits affect immunity can lead to simple yet effective changes that enhance overall health. Incorporating these practices can significantly improve immune function and resilience against illnesses.
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- Written by: Dinny Navaratnam, The Conservation
Eating an organic diet for a week can cause pesticide levels to drop by almost 90% in adults, research from RMIT University has found.The study, led by Dr Liza Oates found participants' urinary dialkylphosphates (DAPs) measurements were 89% lower.
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- Written by: Kat Duff
Our bodies change physiologically, continually altering the amount of sleep we need, the kind we get, and the time of day we are best able to get it as we progress through the life cycle. We assume and relinquish many responsibilities, encounter differing environmental conditions, and make lifestyle choices that impact...
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- Written by: Sharron Murray, MS, RN
For those of us who suffer from migraine disease, chronic stress can drain our energy and lead to adrenal crisis. Meditation, coupled with deep abdominal breathing, can be helpful in regulating our response to stressful situations, as well as in aborting and preventing migraine attacks and strengthening our kidneys.
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- Written by: Warren Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov
Different measures of physical abilities can be assessed to determine how old someone is including walking speed, standing balance, the speed they can rise from sitting. We found that hand grip strength, a measure of upper-body strength, is consistently a good indicator of future mortality and susceptibility to disease.
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- Written by: Sarah Elton, Ensia
When I investigated the threats posed to our global food system by climate change and the environmental damage caused by industrial agriculture — as well what people are doing to fix these problems, I became familiar with...
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- Written by: Lynne Kennedy
Contrary to popular belief, people who are experiencing food poverty are not ignorant of what they should eat as part of a healthy diet or even where to buy affordable food. There is a wealth of research showing that the most important factor for having a healthy diet is access to affordable healthy food.
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- Written by: Stephanie Marohn
There is a metal metabolism defect, often present in autism, which makes mercury especially toxic for autistic children. Even with a normal system, an infant can't handle mercury. Bile is needed for the process of eliminating mercury from the body, but an infant's liver does not produce bile.
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- Written by: Donald R. Yance, CN, MH, RH(AHG)
Just as there is no single cause of cancer, there is no single remedy. Therefore when approaching a complex disease like cancer it is important to formulate a balanced protocol that addresses: the characteristics of the disease; diet, environment, and lifestyle; organ weaknesses and the overall deficiency or excess of the person.
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- Written by: National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Tai chi, a traditional Chinese form of exercise, may help older adults avoid getting shingles by increasing immunity to varicella-zoster virus and boosting the immune response to varicella vaccine, according to research supported by the National Institute on Aging and NCCAM.
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- Written by: Brian Bienkowski, The Daily Climate
It's that time of year: Bicyclists young and old are lubing chains and dusting off cheap supermarket bikes, top-of-the line Treks and everything in between. A bike, of course, offers a way to get exercise, reduce your carbon footprint or just have fun. But biking activity, in large part, is driven by the pedaling opportunities available in your community.
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- Written by: Christopher Vasey, N.D.
At first glance, one would think that the causes of diseases are as numerous and diverse as the diseases themselves. However, careful observation will show that, fundamentally, all illnesses share one cause: the deterioration of the terrain, the body’s internal cellular environment...
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- Written by: Ray Filar
You are in bed, sweating and trembling, dosed up on a selection of painkillers and herbal tranquillizers. Noises outside make you jump. Your heart beats frantically, furiously, unremittingly. You sleep for brief periods, twenty minutes, ten minutes. A police siren goes past and you wake up with a start...
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- Written by: Jake Bernstein, ProPublica
Big Pharma’s focus on blockbuster cancer drugs squeezes out research into potential treatments that are more affordable. Says one researcher: “What is scientific and sexy is driven by what can be monetized.”
