Health -General
By Eva van Loon -Cognition Therapist R U hooked on phonics? Then don’t expect miracles. R U hooked on phonemics? You’re on the right road, the shorter, more natural one. Trouble is, it’s still a narrow track-not much phonemics around. Remember that program that took the concerned-parent world by storm about two decades ago, Hooked on Phonics? If it worked for you or your kids, the chances are that your visual-processing function in the brain was working well. It didn’t work? Chances are the brain you were working with suffers from today’s most common learning problem, auditory-processing deficit. Any kind of phonics is a waste of time for that brain. Stop torturing yourselves. As an article in the Wikipedia says about the most popular phonics program ever, “The program is better for some groups than for others. Among the criticisms, adult native English-speaking illiterates would recognize most of the words because they have large vocabularies. But children or non-native speakers, who know the meanings of fewer words, could be left clueless.” Duh! Clueless is a good word for the phonics approach to reading. Why? Because phonics teaches students to relate letters to the sounds of English. Seems okay, doesn’t it? But reflect a moment: how did you learn to speak English? From the way it sounds, naturally! Your brain learned to recognise the sounds of English so as reproduce them. Enter phonemics. Instead of teaching your brain to relate letters to sounds, phonemics teaches your brain to relate sounds to letters, or combinations of letters. This is a good thing, because English is maddeningly illogical. Take this example: phonics sets the letters ea in front of the brain and says, “These letters make the sound ee.” |
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By Lesley Thorsell These are questions that people seem to ask themselves, especially in the spring when it feels like a time to cleanse and renew, as nature does. The first obvious choice is to do a cleanse-buy a prepared one like Firstcleanse or drink purified water and teas made from nettle, burdock root, dandelion leaves, elderberries and hot lemon. • Drink green tea regularly-highly antioxidant. |
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Here I sit, with an extraordinary headache and definite nausea, wondering if somehow I’ve already caught IT in remote Powell River, as I wait for my daughter to step off the plane from attending one of the biggest conferences on the continent, ‘way down in sticky-hot Atlanta. A zillion people attended this event—and she’s had a chance of catching something from every one of them. Cheery thought! Who isn’t worrying about swine flu this season? The Powers That Be have spent enough advertisement dollars scaring us to death about it—what’s really going on? I’ve done hours of reading and listening online, and here’s what I’ve come up with so far. 
Swine flu isn’t appreciably more dangerous than the regular flu we’ve come to know and love. You’ll probably get over it, no problem, unless you’re already sick or compromised by a weak immune system.
When this flu variety is talking tough, it seems to kill two types of people: young adults, and unhealthy people. So, if you’re obese, diabetic, or saddled with a chronic illness, consider boosting your immune system.
The swine flu is odd: it’s a mix of our old familiar flu, the good old swine flu from past pandemics, and avian flu. How the heck can that happen?—outside a laboratory, that is. Were the birds and the pigs getting it on in some corner of the world? I feel so dumb about the “science”.
The immunity you achieve from suffering a bout of this flu is far, far stronger than the immunity provided by a vaccine, and lasts longer, according to some medics.
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by Corey Matsumoto Dr. F. Batmanghelidj is an M.D. who once found himself in a situation where a person was suffering excruciating stomach ulcer-induced abdominal pain and there was no medication immediately available for treatment. He gave the patient (a fellow cell mate in an Iranian prison during the 1979 Iranian Revolution) 2 glasses of water for lack of options, and within 8 minutes the debilitating pain was completely gone. Dr. B. instructed him to take 2 glasses of water every 3 hours, and thus ended the ulcer pains for his remaining 4 months in prison. He sucessfully treated over 3000 fellow inmates—and ordinary water proved its effectiveness every time. 
This woke Dr. Batmanghelidj up and got him thinking about why the pain-relieving properties of water has not been mentioned in medical school. Upon his release from prison in 1982, the doctor escaped from Iran and moved to the United States where he began to research the effects of dehyration on the human body. Ten years later he published his first book, Your Body’s Many Cries for Water in which he states that the body signals a water shortage by producing pain. The book has since been translated into 15 languages.
His research found that a dry mouth is not at all a reliable indicator of dehydration since by the time this symptom appears, many delicate functions of the body have already shut down. “This is exactly how the aging process is established—through a loss of enzyme function. A dehydrated body loses sophistication and versatility.”
According to Dr. Batmanghelidj, dehydration induces pain and many degenerative diseases including asthma, arthritis, hypertension, angina, adult-onset diabetes, lupus, and multiple sclerosis.
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by Kevin E. Abrams Described by many as a committed humanitarian, Italian oncologist Dr. Simoncini is strongly critical of the “global medical system operating in what is a scientific dead end, that is of no help whatsoever to the patients.” In the US, a cancer patient who opts for surgery must agree to take chimo and radiation—both of which, according to Dr. Simoncini, are carcinogenic. Plus, surgery often makes matters worse by taking only the outside of a tumor, whereupon the fungal cancer cells at the center of the tumor promptly learn from their mistakes and carry on proliferating. He writes, “Many have begun to sense medicine is becoming stalled. It has become too anchored in outdated concepts, and incapable of proposing innovative ones upon which to build new foundations for medical knowledge. Genetics, the battle horse of modern oncology, is about to give up the ghost, together with its endless explanations based on enzymatic and receptor processes.” Actually, “it has already failed – it’s just that no one can think of anything else to take its place.” Bold words. “The basic theories upon which current oncology rests are wrong, with the consequence of making any research useless and non-productive, Dr. Simoncini elaborates, “The philosophy of science suggests that, where it is impossible to find a solution with the conceptual instruments that are commonly accepted, a counter-intuitive behavior (that is, opposite to what has been followed so far) must be adopted.” Hope springs eternal! Enter the fungi—and the study of mycology, the lifecycles of fungus, yeasts and molds. Thus the title of his new book, Cancer Is a Fungus: A Revolution in Tumor Therapy. Notice Simoncini doesn’t ask, “Is cancer a fungus?” but rather states it with factual certitude states it is so. |
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by Tamara McIntee—Chartered Herbalist For me, burdock brings back fond memories of forest walks with my sister. At the end of a walk, we would have to stay outside to pick the burrs off our clothing. Little did I know at the time of this plant’s remarkable healing properties. |
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by Shirly McCune Reiki is a traditional healing form rediscovered in Japan in the 1800s by Mikado Ususi and brought to North America in 1934 by Hawayo Takato. Rei: Universal, light Ki: Life force energy, breath |
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by Kevin E. Abrams The Untold Story of Milk, by Ron Schmid, N.D., could also be A Complete History of Milk in North America, possible material for a Michael Moore documentary. A practising naturopathic physician, MIT graduate, teacher at all four of America’s naturopathic medical schools, and past Clinic Director and Chief Medical Officer at the University of Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine, the author sifts through the political, medical and corporate currents that swept us from green pastures and the healthy, certified, raw-milk dairies of yesterday, to the centralized collection, pasteurisation, homogenisation and distribution of most dairy products today. Cardiologist Doctor Kurt Oster writes, “Milk has been changed over the years by processing, into an unrecognizable physicochemical emulsion which bears very little resemblance to the original, natural, and nutritional milk.” The story really begins with the American/British war of 1812, which resulted in the severing of America’s whiskey supply from the British East Indies and the birth of the domestic liquor industry. By 1814, every major [American] city had one or more distilleries, where grains were turned into whiskey. As cities grew, demand for milk and whiskey increased. The distillation process produced an acid refuse known as “distillery slop”, which was then fed to cows. For convenience, owners housed cows in confinement stalls next to distilleries, feeding hot slop directly to the animals as it poured off the stills. The (swill or blue) milk, Schmid writes, “was defective in properties (enzymes) essential to good milk,” and could not be made into butter or cheese. |
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by Corey Matsumoto We all endure stress in our busy lives regardless of our age, sex and lifestyle, and the oxymoron known as “The Holiday Season” has a knack for wearing us down to the point of exhaustion. Family get-togethers (sometimes involving long-distance travelling), year-end work loads at the office, line-ups for gift buying, planning Christmas dinner, Santa Claus parades cancelled due to snow (what?), and even just enduring bone-chilling cold weather day after day can take a heavy toll on all of us. Often we are too busy to recognize that we are, in fact, in rough shape physically, mentally, and even spiritually. It’s important to take time out to assess ourselves, because if we run ourselves in a constant state of stress we are sure to pay the price in health expenses in the future, not to mention the complications stress inflicts on our personal relationships. Day spas are often hair salons which have expanded services to allow clients to indulge in facials, manicures, massage, and body treatments. Some day spas are dedicated centres for massage therapy and rejuvenation. Medical spas run under the supervision of a licensed healthcare professional, and can offer collagen enhancement, Botox, medical peels, microdermabrasion, as well as traditional day-spa services. Destination spas are typically akin to a vacation where you spend several days immersed in a regimented program designed to re-train personal habits and improve nutrition. They often include excursions such as horseback riding or golf. |
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by Velma Richmond Basic soap is made by combining oils and fats with lye (caustic soda) and water to produce a chemical reaction called saponification, which produces both soap and glycerin. Natural soap retains glycerin which makes for a gentler soap since glycerin is a moisturizer. Most natural soap makers use the traditional French method called cold process. In this process, the oils and lye are heated to only about 120 °F, at which point, essential oils and herbs might be added. Natural soap makers use high quality oils like coconut, palm and olive. This liquid is poured into molds and left for 12-24 hours, depending on the oils used. The bars are then removed from the molds and allowed to cure for 30 days. After curing the soap is hard and no longer caustic. It can legally be called soap. In commercial soap making the oils, lye and synthetic compounds are heated to high temperatures and boiled. Once saponification occurs, the glycerin is removed and sold to the cosmetics, food or explosives industries. The absence of glycerin is why many commercial soaps can dry the skin. The soap is then sent through milling machines which shred and compress it to make a hard bar, a process that requires the addition of various chemicals. By the time the soap is finished, it can no longer be called soap—it’s a detergent bar. The finished product is sometimes called a “beauty bar” or a “luxury bar” instead. Commercial soap is usually made with cheaper oils, such as tallow, or synthetic compounds. Essential oils are rarely used. Perfumes added during the commercial process are usually artificial, and may irritate skin. Natural soap makers can tell you exactly what is in their soap and are proud to list their ingredients on a label. Powell River has several soap makers. Check your local health-food stores and the Open Air Market for natural soap. |
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