Children & Divorce

Divorce is a difficult time for eevryone, particualrly if children are involved. Jill Curtis has done lots of research on this subject and writes with sensitivity and compassion, so I'm delighted to be able to post one of her articles on Health & Goodness:

Children & Divorce

Scammers |Targeting Therapists

I thought this was worth passing on:

Massage therapists are now on the receiving end of a variation of anonline con. Here's how it works: An out-of-town "client" contacts apractitioner via e-mail wanting to schedule appointments for a time inthe future when he/she will be visiting the area. The appointments andtimes are scheduled. Shortly thereafter, the practitioner receives a cashier's check forthese services, but it's generally for much more than the originallyagreed upon price. The alleged client or a secretary of the clientcontacts the therapist, explains the mistake, and asks the therapist todeposit the check and simply refund the balance. The check appears toclear and the practitioner sends the overage back to the client only tolearn two weeks later that the check was a fraud. Now the practitioneris out whatever the overage was.If this has happened to you, visit the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) website, www.ftc.gov/ftc/consumer.htm, and click "File a Complaint" tofill out the form. You can also forward the offending e-mails tospam@uce.gov.Using caution and common sense will help you avoid the pitfalls ofInternet scams. For more information on Internet scams, visitwww.ftc.gov/spam/ or www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/cashier.asp.from: http://www.abmp.com/home/scams.html

Ethical consumerism

earlier this year we decided to sponsor the health and body section of Ethical Junction - you can see our clickable logo for Health and Goodness on all the health pages.

Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) has today announced it will sponsor Ethical Junction. CFS includes the Co-Operative Bank, the internet bank Smile and Co-Operative Insurance.

Great news for Ethical Junction, and yet another sign that people are interested in behaving ethically and not just in making money.

Salvestrols, Skin Problems & Cancer

If you look at my web sites you'll know I'm keen on salvestrols, so I was interested to get this email:

Hello, I have just read your article on the impact that salvestrols have on skin tumours. My Mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer two years ago, and is still receiving treatment for it. A friend of mine told me about someone she knew who had managed to rid herself of stage 4 cervical cancer by having conventional treatment and by taking 12 fruitforce tablets a day, so I immediately got my Mum to start taking them on a daily basis.
As well as having ovarian cancer my Mum had a basal cell carcinoma on her back which had been there for approx 5 years but she had never got round to doing anything about it. It would weep and bleed and would often be quite painful, however since taking fruitforce it has dried up and completely healed over. We were astounded!
We are still waiting to hear how my mum's ovarian cancer is doing but we are all very hopeful that the fruitforce tablets are working miracles!
Many Thanks
Michelle Thomas

Children with high blood pressure

A new study in the US found 21% of school children had HBP, especially the prevalence was higher among the overweight and Hispanic group. The study group were involving 1,066 children aged 10-12 from seventeen schools in Fort Worth, Texas.

21%! what does the future hold for these kids?

Read the full study.

Marriage tips

having a successful marriage or relationship needs work, but the benefits of having a supportive, happy partner are immense.

Since 1973, Dr. John Gottman has studied what he calls the "masters and disasters" of marriage. Ordinary people from the general public took part in long-term studies, and Dr. Gottman learned what makes marriages fail, what makes them succeed.

Here's his tips.

Advice for parents of sporty children

Being a parent always involves treading a fine line - we don't wnat to be too pushy, but we want to encourage our child too. May be there's no clearer place for this dilemma than in relation to sport. So here's some wise words from Dr. Patrick J. Cohn.

Stopping Junk Mail (UK only)

To stop those irritating marketing phone calls and cut down on the flood of tree wasting junk mail you can register with the official Mailing Preference Service and Telephone preference Service.

See websites www.mpsonline.org.uk and www.tpsonline.org.uk for all the details. By law, companies are supposed to check with them before sending you a mailshot, or telephoning you. It is a very simple process to register.

Vegetarian Thanksgiving

the holday season will soon be here, and one of the first big celebrations is Thanksgiving in the US. If you are keen to eat less meat and be more compassionate, check out this article on how to have a vegetarian thanksgiving.

Don't Give Stuff. GiveFun! GiveFun.com a gift certificate for a Gift Experience!

Homeopathy Study

Here's an interesting homeopathy study:

Homeopathy - what are the active ingredients? An exploratory study using the UK Medical Research Councils framework for the evaluation of complex interventionsTrevor DB Thompson and Marjorie Weiss BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2006, 6:37 doi:10.1186/1472-6882-6-37
Published

13 November 2006Abstract (provisional)
The complete article is available as a provisional PDF. The fully formatted PDF and HTML versions are in production.

Background
Research in homeopathy has traditionally addressed itself to defining the effectiveness of homeopathic potencies in comparison to placebo medication. There is now increasing awareness that the homeopathic consultation is in itself a therapeutic intervention working independently or synergistically with the prescribed remedy. Our objective was to identify and evalute potential active ingredients of the homeopathic approach in a prospective formal case series, which draws on actual consultation data, and is based on the MRC framework for the evaluation of complex interventions.

Methods
Following on from a theoretical review of how homeopathic care might mediate its effects, 18 patients were prospectively recruited to a case series based at Bristol Homeopathic Hospital. Patients, who lived with one of three index conditions, were interviewed before and after a five visit package of care. All consultations were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Additional data, including generic and condition-specific questionnaires, artwork and significant other reports were collected. Textual data was subject to thematic analysis and triangulated with other sources.

Results
We judged that around one third of patients had experienced a major improvement in their health over the study period, a third had some improvement and a third had no improvement. Putative active ingredients included the patients openness to the mind-body connection, consultational empathy, in-depth enquiry into bodily complaints, disclosure, the remedy matching process and, apparently, the homeopathic remedies themselves.

Conclusions
This study has has identified, using primary consultation and other data, a range of factors that might account for the effectiveness of homeopathic care. Some of these, such as empathy, are non-specific. Others, such as the remedy matching process, are specific to homepathy. These findings counsel against the use of placebo-controlled RCT designs in which both arms would potentially be receiving specific active ingredients. Future research in homeopathy should focus on pragmatic trials and seek to confirm or refute the therapeutic role of constructs such as patient openness, disclosure and homeopathicity.

Only Natural Pet Store

Save 30% Off All Letterhead, Brochures, Flyers, Folders

Waste Food Nation

A World Cancer Research Fund survey has found that people in the UK throw out somewhere between ten and fifty per cent of the fresh produce they bought in any one week. Statistics show that on average people throw out 194kg of organic waste per year – this is the equivalent to 2800 banana skins.

The most commonly cited reason for this was because it goes mouldy (63 per cent) or that people forget that it’s there (31 per cent).

The research was conducted as part of Cancer Prevention Week which aims to raise awareness about the importance of eating plenty of fruit and vegetables. Scientific evidence from the expert report Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Cancer: a global perspective concluded that people who ate a diet rich in plant based foods can reduce their risk of cancer by up to 20 per cent. Coupled with exercise and maintaining their weight this protective factor was increased up to 40 per cent.

Eating at least five portions of fruit and vegetables can also help to maintain a healthy weight. Other foods such as animal and saturated fat and alcohol are separately noted as increasing cancer risk and are also more likely to increase the likelihood of obesity. Being overweight or obese is, in itself, also a risk factor for cancer.

Karen Sadler, Head of WCRF says: “These are rather dismal findings. Not only in respect of the impact on people’s health but also on the environment. We really should make our health a priority and that means eating plenty of fruit and vegetables. What we eat really is integral to our health and the quality of our lives. Few people realise that what they eat today could have a huge impact on their risk of cancer in later life. Preventing disease is always going to be the best route to take and we need to encourage more people to follow it.”

The charity encourages people to start to make small changes to their diet. To ensure that food is not thrown away people can incorporate frozen, dried and canned fruit and vegetables as these all count towards the day’s portions. It is also helpful to plan menus ahead of going shopping.
The best way to add more fruit and vegetables is to existing meals – some chopped vegetables in your casseroles, curries or chillies, a salad with lunch or extra tomato and cucumber in your sandwich. Breakfast could include having a glass of juice and a banana or berries with your cereal.

Save 30% Off All Letterhead, Brochures, Flyers, Folders

I'm thinking of the changing seasons and the up-coming holiday season, so I've published an article on alcohol and seniors on Health & Goodness, and an article on what to take in a skiing survival kit on Sport & Me.

Don't forget that Vistaprint are running a sepcial offer for holiday and Christmas cards - click on the image below (on the Vistaprint site you'll need to use the dropdown menu at the top to change to your own country if you aren't in the US:

Drink more water

Drinking enough water is really important, so I love the part of the WaterAid site which reminds us how important water is. You can use the interactive form to estimate how much water you should be drinking, download a little pop up programme to remind you to drink water, and find tips and games too. It's definitely worth a visit.

All that is free, but while you're there you might like to think about making a donation to WaterAid's work in many different countries in Africa and Asia.

Snowboarding tricks

all the snowboarding tricks and terms are a mystery to me so it's good that there are people who enjoy writing about it in a way that beginners can understand and the more experienced can learn from. I've just added another article from Jakob Jelling on skidded turns and beyond to Sport & Me.

Tesco and vegetarianism

Tesco have lots of free leaflets and I've just been looking at one entitled: Understanding Vitamins.

In it I came across this:

Why might taking a supplement be beneficial? .....

Box 4. Following the latest fad diet?
* Cutting out meat, using meal replacements, or having a liquid only diet can cause problems
* Most fad diets involve cutting out foods that contain vital nutrients your body needs to work properly.

I cannot believe that Tesco consider cutting out meat as being "a fad diet"! But may be I can, apparently earler this year they billed a salad as vegetarian when it contained anchovies

yet another reason not to shop at Tesco!

This made me laugh

I hope it will make you smile too ...

A woman goes to the doctor for her yearly physical.
The nurse starts with certain basic items.
"How much do you weigh?" she asks.
"115," she says.
The nurse puts her on the scale.
It turns out her weight is 140.

The nurse asks, "Your height?"
"5 foot 8," she says.
The nurse checks and sees that she only measures 5' 5".

She then takes her blood pressure
And tells the woman it is very high.
"Of course it's high!" she screams,
"When I came in here I was tall and slender!
Now I'm short and fat!"

Going veggie

the veggie and vegan info on Health & Goodness is expanding all the time. I've just added a piece from the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation on how favourite meals can be adapted when you become veggie.

If you want something more adventurous, check out our free vegetarian and vegan recipes.

Fish Oils & Children

As many of you know I'm a long stading vegetarian, so I found this info from particularly interesting:

Clever capsules may spell disaster for kids…

The Vegetarian & Vegan Foundation (VVF) is shocked and appalled on hearing plans to provide more than 5,000 year 11 school pupils in County Durham with fish oil supplements which may harm health rather than improve it. Dr Justine Butler, health campaigner for the VVF says “Our main concern is that as a result of widespread industrialisation, all the world’s oceans are polluted with toxic substances such as mercury, dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) – which have entered the food chain. This is why the government recommends that girls and women who might have a baby one day and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding limit their intake of oily fish to two portions per week”.

A major review by Dr Lee Hooper from the University of East Anglia published earlier this year in the British Medical Journal looked at the effects of fish oil on heart health. One study Hooper’s team reviewed showed an increased risk of heart attack in men who took fish oil capsules. Hooper’s team suggested that the harmful effects of pollutants could build up over time to increase the risk of heart problems. In other words the damaging effects of mercury, dioxins and PCBs in fish may outweigh the beneficial effects of the ‘good’ omega-3 fats.

“The fish oil supplement companies insist that these pollutants are removed during processing,” says Dr Butler “but do you want your children to take the risk? In March 2006, the fish oil supplement manufacturer Seven Seas Ltd withdrew a number of batches of its own fish oil supplements because the levels of dioxins present exceeded statutory levels, less than a month later Boots too withdrew fish oil capsules for the same reason. In both cases the government’s Food Standards Agency assured us that ‘…there is no health risk associated with consumption of this product, [although] the level of dioxins found exceeds statutory limits’. These toxic pollutants are implicated in heart disease, cancer, infertility and can harm developing foetuses. To claim there is a ‘safe’ dose is irresponsible, particularly where children are concerned”.

“The good news is you don’t have to eat neurotoxins and carcinogens to get your omega-3 fats, there are safer plant sources including flax seed (linseed), rapeseed and soya oil, walnuts and leafy green vegetables. This benefits the environment as well; flax is a sustainable crop, fish are not. About one million tons of fish oil is produced around the world each year, this is unsustainable. This experiment could lead to an environmental and health catastrophe! Instead of looking for a magic bullet to improve our kids brain power, we should be encouraging them to eat better foods – less junk and more whole grains and fresh fruit and vegetables”.

"Geopathic Stress & Subtle Energy"

my new book "Geopathic Stress & Subtle Energy" is now available!

The first book I ever wrote was called "Geopathic Stress: How Earth Energies Affect Our Lives" - this has been out of print for some time.

The new book is NOT a reprint - the old one was 39000 words, this one is 47000 words. Lots of the original book has been reorganised and rewritten, so it really is different.

When I wrote the first book in 1994 it was pre the internet (at least for me), so I had very little contact with other people working in this field. For this book I've been able to make contact and get case studies and ideas from experienced dowsers and kinesiologists.

It's been a very difficult book to write as the concepts aren't that easy to convey, but I'm really pleased with it. I hope you will like it too.

You can get the book from bookshops, online stores or direct from us at our online store at Life-Work Potential. We have a special offer running in the online store if you buy my "Allergy A to Z" at the same time.

Here's the chapter headings and some excerpts:

Introduction Chapter 1 An Overview
Chapter 2 Effects Of Geopathic Stress
Chapter 3 Electromagnetic Energies Or Subtle Energies?
Chapter 4 Sources Of Geopathic Stress
Chapter 5 Types Of Geopathic Energy
Chapter 6 How Geopathic Stress Affects The Body
Chapter 7 Individual Sensitivity
Chapter 8 Detection Of Geopathic Stress
Chapter 9 Correcting Geopathic Stress
Chapter 10 Self Help & Protection For The Individual
Chapter 11 Conclusions
Appendix 1 Man-Made Electromagnetic Pollution
Appendix 2 Sick Building Syndrome
Appendix 3 Feng Shui
Appendix 4 Earth Energy Essences
References
Useful Addresses

Excerpts:
[Page 3] Geopathic comes from two Greek words: geo means 'of the earth', and pathos means 'suffering' or 'disease'. The word 'geopathic' literally means suffering or disease of the earth. Geopathic stress (GS) is the general term for energies emanating from the earth that cause discomfort and ill health in human beings. Because of their detrimental effect, they are often known as negative earth energies.

[Page 134 ..] It is clear to me that if you asked ten different GS practitioners to assess the same property, you would be likely to get ten different analyses and ten different solutions. Surely this suggests that this is just a mental construct with no validity? Maybe to the cynic it also suggests that these people are charlatans, robbing the gullible of their money and spreading unfounded alarm. Yet if the evidence presented in this book is reviewed dispassionately, this conclusion is not so easily reached.
The predictive studies by myself (page 18) and Giulia Boden (page 19) in business settings, which identified accurately where sick people would be working are difficult to explain away. What about the challenge that I successfully met to predict where people with headaches would be sitting in a lecture theatre (page 4)? How could I have known that the man on the TV programme suffered with leg or back problems, and that someone in the house probably had migraines (page 79)? Can the sceptics explain why the local cats all stopped congregating in a garden (just as I predicted, see page 22) once the GS was fixed in the house? What do the cynics have to say about the engineer who dowsed a negative energy line in a park and then looked up and saw all the trees as far as the horizon bending away from it? (See page 24.) What about the Neutralec Neutraliser that started out life as a solution to a carpet problem, and was found unexpectedly to be beneficial for people's health? (See page 113.) The dog that suddenly stopped barking (page 15) and the cows that were healthier and produced more milk (page 22) did not know that the geopathic stress had been fixed. How can the sceptics explain the dramatic drop in motor accidents at a traffic black-spot (page 16) after some quartz pillars were placed near the road? The study by Ann and Roy Procter (page 7) allowed for the placebo effect and still produced impressive results. Alf Riggs' uncanny ability to identify exactly where a cancer would be located is difficult to explain (page 78). All this suggests that there is something going on that has some validity.

Geopathic energies challenge our current understanding of how bodies work and what affects them. Michael Shallis in The Electric Shock Book remarks:"Electricity and magnetism can be seen as the intermediary between the material world and the ethereal world, touching us physically but also linking us to other realms of the totality of creation. It is through electromagnetism that we can perceive the subtle forces that operate in those intangible regions."Including knowledge of geopathic energies in our understanding of illness requires a much more holistic view of man: one which takes into account the role of ch'i, the subtle bodies, the meridians, the chakras, yin and yang. This view of man sees the importance of harmony and balance within the body, and also between people and their environment. Some of the frameworks from quantum physics may also be useful in deepening our understanding.

These unseen energies help to remind us that we are more than just physical bodies with a mind, that we have dimensions beyond that which our normal senses can understand. We have an energy presence that can be disturbed by other energy presences, and we ignore this fact at our peril.

I like to keep fit but I've never particularly enjoyed treadmills,but I know lots of people find it a great way to get some cardiovascular workout into their day. I've put a new article on Sport & Me that explains some of the different things you can do on a treadmill (hmmm... should I rephrase that!) and what the benefits can be.

I'm still enjoying my fitness training with advice on how to start getting fit.