Category: TED

The Power of Our Mind is Ours.

This post will mostly be about stuff that’s caught my eye/ear/imagination recently including acknowledging that our bodies, when correctly directed want to get us functioning as well as they can. The power of the mind is a precious thing:

I was listening to Today on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday the 18th February

“0845

The renowned physicist Michio Kaku, author of “The Future of the Mind” says we’ve learned more about our brains in the last 15 years than in the whole of human history and new technologies like MRI means we’re entering a golden age of neuroscience. The human brain might be unusual territory for a theoretical physicist but Professor Kaku says many of these remarkable feats are already happening in our laboratories.”

I’m really pleased investigation is going on in labs as it doesn’t always feel like there’s much investigation going on from this patient’s experience. I apologise if that sounds a bit grumbly. After finding out a number of years ago that specialists weren’t interested in investigation outside of their small area of expertise really, I should be over the fact that healthcare doesn’t directly seem to be about caring for the patient, not if you’re the owner of a non-lifethreatening condition.

pills

It could be argued that not addressing long term (ie not deadly) conditions is a rational use of the NHS’s limited funds. On the other hand, stopping people from dying is a laudable prize to keep their eyes on.

When the pharmaceutical companies are getting up to activities like those listed below it’s time for folk to start taking their health into their own hands.

  • Falsification or submission of false information
  • Underreporting of adverse events
  • Failure to follow the investigational plan or other violations of protocol
  • Inadequate record keeping
  • Failure to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of patients
  • Use of experimental compounds in patients not enrolled in trials
  • Failure to supervise clinical investigations properly

How can we harness the power of our mind to heal ourselves? I’m thinking being less grumbly on my part toward what we are offered in the healthcare arena might be a start. This article points again to the power of placebo and how it’s often more effective than the treatments  we more usually have pushed toward us.

I list some of the alternatives to the mainstream pharmaceutical offerings from our GPs and other healthcare providers in this site and on this page. We perhaps don’t pay enough attention to what we occupy our minds with?

The visual and the aural.

Connection with people isn’t always easy to keep up when you are less mobile and can’t get out to see people but we’re social animals and benefit from contact of one sort or another on a fairly regular basis.

This lady says we come to rely on machines too much and mentions visiting an old folks’ home during her time researching social media and seeing a robot seal being given to a lady with dementia to provide her comfort.

The lady seemed to be saying it was a bad thing to be substituting digital for physical contact but I think perhaps she’s looking at the situation from an able and older perspective?

Any contact whether good or bad appears to be necessary for human beings – cultivate creating good contacts.

alternative healthcare

engulfing“Right now, they [mspatients] are not getting the kind of information we as [health care] providers would like them to get,” Wray said.”

This is quoted from a Boston Globe article of the 11th September. ACTRIMS – ECTRIMS researchers were apparently concerned about the ‘perceptions’ of ms patients.

I’d like to know where would doctors and MS researchers present at the conference rather patients get information from?

Surely not them?

Are these the same groups of people who didn’t believe in the possibility of an overgrowth of candida albicans? (thinking of more than one old GP when i make this statement)?

The same people who throw antibiotics at a problem as a first line of defence? (thinking of an old GP when I make this statement) rather than further investigation of the problem. I appreciate GPs have little time per patient but perhaps we could consult a ‘project manager’ for our bodies or even be entrusted to be our own project managers?

We are perhaps the best people to be put in charge of enhancing our own health?

The same group of people who, along with most of the rest of us didn’t know the significance of a microbiota until we found out from various TED talks over the last few years and recently a BBC2 Horizon programme on allergies (I referred to one of the over 1,000,000 pages google finds on the subject in an earlier post?

The same people who thought stomach ulcers were caused by stress not an infection?

The same people who believe that what we eat can’t have as much effect on how we feel and function than their questionably effective pharmaceutical offerings? (thinking of an old neurologist when i make this statement).

The status quo can’t continue.

The image above comes from a collection of mine with the name Earth Abides, Ecclesiastes 1:4. It was the title of a 1949 American sci fi book my dad gave me by George R Stewart. The world’s population gets wiped out and civilisation goes about starting again amongst the remains of our current civilisation.

Looking back, to get an apocalyptic tale as I was on the cusp of becoming a teenager was very good. It taught me to question everything. The message I chose to take from the book was ‘nothing that lives on earth is forever but that’s ok because we can choose to adapt’ and the planet will continue.

Things seem to be changing and we now have architecture acknowledging the presence of and creating designs specifically to take advantage of omni present bacteria.

If we believe that the 20th century was all about stamping out pathogens and healthcare was involved in a mighty struggle between us and them (evil bacteria causing disease left right and centre). Then the 21st century shape of healthcare will be all about harnessing the power of these omnipresent beings to help us, the puny human.

Some question our faltering scientific progress in medicine (as an owner of a chronic condition one of those ‘some’ is me) and ask whether antibiotics represented the only noteworthy advance in medicine since William Harvey’s discovery of blood’s circulation in the body in the early 17thC. This discovery rather neatly yet arrogantly ignores the Ancient Chinese’ awareness of body systems (please see earlier post).

Perhaps I’m biased but I choose to firmly believe that asking questions and finding out answers can only be good for our brains.

I feel the image above still stands as a representation of all that we live amongst and stands as a fine illustration of the impermanence of man. This too shall pass could be an alternative title and probably, bacteria will continue, relentlessly, to play their part long after our petrol shops have gone!

Learning for life

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Until we have a need to access professionals who can ‘fix’ us, healthcare’s all a bit fuzzy and indistinct in our minds. We’re built to not spend time on things that aren’t immediately concerning to our continued existence. We imagine if at all, everything will be working in our favour. Caregivers at all levels from consultants to care assistants are there primarily for our benefit. This article from the American Academy of Neurology explains why that may not always be the case.

It’s heartening to see this acknowledgement from a trusted player in the field. Some of the ground troops of various chronic conditions have had questions along these lines for a good few years.

One of our foundations in life is no longer the reliable anchor we once assumed it was. We have spent perhaps decades taking our health for granted. We are now calling on the skills of others to help us however they see fit.

We can choose to take a passive role in our functioning day-to-day but we are now given the opportunity to think differently by learning lots of new stuff. A lot of stuff we assumed was safe as houses we have now learnt, isn’t. Post 2008, is not the time or place to question that particular truism.

Here is one TED talk that highlights the vested interests involved in developed nations’ unquestionable truths about human nutrition.

Reading for ourselves is different now we’re not at school (honestly). For a start, we don’t have to do any of it if we don’t want to. We don’t have to hand our books in to be marked. No one is asking us to do it, we are doing it for the benefit of ourselves.

Doing this sort of activity luckily, is very good for our brains. In this 11 minute talk, Sandra Chapman PhD highlights how our brains relish and thrive on feeling challenged. When given something to get its teeth into our brain will do its best to rise to that challenge and become smarter and more effective which ultimately ends up benefitting us (Sudoku it seems isn’t the answer).

Here is another TED talk giving a refreshing, scientifically backed up way to look at how to change behaviour. It’s not suggested we rely on willpower rather, research has been undertaken to look into methods which allow us to be more aware of ourselves. In it Zoe Chance, a tutor at Yale University in the US lists the 5 qualities an activity needs to possess to have a chance at becoming habit forming. We are all works in progress so if we want to change something about ourselves, we can.

TED talks are great for taking (usually) less than half an hour of our life to tell us stuff we didn’t know and may well help make life a little better. I have a link to this particular TED talk somewhere else on this site. It’s such an important and relatively easily addressed area of our lives. Getting better sleep to reap a better experience of life is within most of our grasps. It all depends on how much we want it.