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Holistic News and Views

Our Biography Is Our Biology

Written by Christiane Northrup, MD

Back in the 1980s, as a fairly new doctor, I was deeply engaged in the practice of obstetrics and gynecology whilst also serving on the board of the American Holistic Medical Association. We holistic docs were a bunch of mavericks back then, firmly believing in the body/mind connection long before it was popular or accepted. We couldn't help ourselves.


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How We Change for Good

January is an exciting time for us; a new year, new beginning and a time of hope. Many of us direct our hope toward change; either starting a habit we’ve not been successful starting before or stopping a habit that’s been hard to break. We can be helped in our journey if we turn to the research on change and let it clarify for us how to vastly boost our chances of success.

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Chronic illness and the holidays: fielding the inevitable questions

At the holiday party Aunt Rose asks you in her best “poor dear” voice, “And how are you?” The tone is meant to sound sympathetic and confidential, but the question is audible to everyone in the room. You feel like a loser.

Cousin Betty is serving the salad. “Oh, dear. Is this something you can eat? What about the nuts? You can’t eat nuts, right?” she says. Ears perk up around the table, as you and your bowel become the table centerpiece.

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AHMA President, Molly Roberts, MD, featured in the ABIHM November Newsletter


A special note from AHMA President Molly Roberts, MD, to ABIHM / San Diego Conference attendees appears in ABIHM's November 2012 Newsletter.


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6 in 10 Physicians Would Quit Today

Written By John Commins, HealthLeaders Media

Doctors are working less, seeing fewer patients, and many would quit if they could, a sweeping survey of 13,575 physicians from across the nation shows.

The survey, A Survey of America's Physicians: Practice Patterns and Perspectives, was commissioned by The Physicians Foundation. It is the latest, and perhaps the largest and most comprehensive of a number of surveys that have identified wide, deep and increasing discontent among the nation's physicians regardless of their age, gender, specialty, location, or employment status.


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Rediscovering the Spark that Led Us into the Healing Profession

Lately it seems that every patient who walks through my door is dealing with burnout and stress. I hear myself having the same conversations over and over again; talking about the importance of work-life balance, healthy diet, daily meditation and regular exercise and filling up your own well first before giving to others. As I hear these words coming out of my mouth – and I really do believe them - I recognize that it is all too easy to slip back into old patterns and recently, I have not been fully walking my talk. This saddens me, but I love how the universe always provides a mirror to remind us of what we need to look at most in ourselves!


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"Osteopathy and Swedenborg" - An AHMA Member Review

“Osteopathy and Swedenborg”
Written by David B. Fuller, D.O., FAAO
Published by Swedenborg Scientific Association Press, 2012

Review by William F. Morris, D.O.

Spirituality in medicine is a provocative subject. It is difficult to measure the effect of spirituality in the healing process; the outcomes are perhaps inconsistent, and the varieties of spiritual experience are wide-ranging and hard to categorize. As we are learning via physics, genetics, nutrition and many other areas of research, there are multiple factors involved in the healing process, not the least of which is the patient’s belief system, his or her spiritual orientation. Of note, and relevant to our discussion, is the observation that physicians also have a belief system, which affects, to a greater or lesser degree, the care of their patients. Both Emanuel Swedenborg, an engineer by training, and Andrew Taylor Still, a physician and discoverer of osteopathic medicine, have had enormous effects on how we think about the healing process.



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The Clatter of the Hospital Room

Clasping her chest and struggling to breathe, the small, birdlike woman had landed once again in the hospital for complications of kidney failure. It was her third visit in the last year and now, with fluid building up around her heart, she had come back in, but only after her family had pleaded with her for a day to do so.

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The Best of Both Worlds

I met my husband my second day on campus at Northwestern University, 1991. He was one year ahead of me; I was asking him which book to buy for Introduction to Sociology. He was an established molecular biology major, having years of laboratory research experience behind him already. I, too, decided to major in biology, but with a physiology concentration. The micro and the macro--that may be us in a nutshell: Both amazed and awed by the mysterious and yet completely logical ways a body works—the ultimate integrated system—but from opposite ends of the spectrum.

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Holistic Aging versus Degenerative aging

Aging is the process of becoming older, a process that is genetically determined and environmentally modulated. Science cannot predict the duration of a human life. Genetics, too, fails,because a centenarian may not have a centenarian parent. According to Dr Chopra: “Aging is much more of a choice than people ever dream” and for that, it is essential to reinterpret the concept of body and realize the “changeless I” inside of us, which the ancient sages in India simply called the Self (Soham). He considers three distinct ways to measure someone’s age: “Chronological Age – how old you are by the calendar; Biological Age – how old your body is in terms of critical life signs and cellular processes, i.e., how time has affected your organs and tissues compared to other people of your chronological age; and Psychological Age – how old you feel you are.”
 

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