LIVING IN TUNE: UNDOING THROUGH THE POWER OF MUSIC

Just as dreams are legendary in their power to heal, so is music, which is the next and final part of the Undoing process. In the Old Testament and the I Ching, music was considered inspirational, sacred, and healing. The Greek philosopher Democritus wrote about the curative powers that emanate from the music of a simple flute. Indigenous cultures throughout the world have always used music to express the range of human emotion as well as mark rites and passages in a person’s life. Today, music still flourishes. The forms are endless: jazz, rock, rap, rhythm and blues, show tunes, folk, classical, liturgical, orchestral, operatic, and so on.

In The Mozart Effect, Don Campbell calls music the “common tongue’’ of the modern world and tells us it can replace costly medical treatments. This is not as far-fetched as it seems. Campbell’s own experience with healing a blood clot in his brain is part of some convincing proof he brings to bear. It’s nothing new to hear that “music hath charms that soothe….” It can also energize, excite, inflame, rejuvenate, and cleanse us; it inspires love, compassion, and faith. From Brahms’s “Lullaby’’ to the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” music moves us in ways that words can never express. Talking about our disappointment, loneliness, or grief helps us vent, but it rarely gets us beyond our trouble, while the experience of listening to, playing, or creating music is genuinely therapeutic.

MUSIC TO BREATHE BY

Long before music was used as entertainment, it was used as a source of healing. Like your dreams and imagery, music embodies feelings and beliefs; moods, hopes, fears, and possibilities. When music speaks to you through a specific lyric or sound, it becomes part of you and infuses you with its power to illuminate and heal.

Create Your Own Top Twenty

Using music as a healing technique goes beyond just turning on the radio or slipping in your favorite CD and getting lost inside the sound pouring out of the speakers. When you listen to music as a reflection of where you are and what you are feeling in your life, it becomes an active, creative process. When you resonate with a particular piece, the next possibility is to tape it and to make it a part of your healing practice. To create your own top twenty, you may:

• Use pieces that you already know and love, that may already be a part of your music collection.
• Use music you find by listening to the radio or any other available source.
• Compose your own music and/or lyrics (or you may also compose lyrics for existing music).
• Listen to the tape you have made and make it a part of your life. Sing, dance, walk, run, cry, and laugh with it. Let it draw out your current feelings and open you up to new ones.

Canadian Health and Care Mall News Medicine official blog: http://canadianhealthcaremallnews.blogspot.com

THE ESSENTIALS OF UNDOING

It’s difficult enough to change your backhand in tennis, to start a new job, or just to negotiate a parallel parking space. Here you are being asked to Undo the way you think. Such a turn of mind is not for the faint of heart. When Marilyn, a thirty-three-year-old mother of twin girls, reached this point in the program, she likened it to giving birth — specifically to that moment during labor when she decided it was time to go home. “This was more than I had bargained for,” she said. “It was too much pain, too scary. I wanted to stop. Then maybe I would come back and try again when I felt rested and more in the mood. Getting to this place in the work felt the same,” she said. “It was like giving birth all over again — not to a baby, but to a new way of living life. And I had no idea of how it would turn out or if I could really do it.”

The stress Marilyn felt and that you may be feeling now is not the stress that we associate with exhaustion, helplessness, hopelessness, depressed immunity, and disease. It is, in fact, something known as “eustress” or good stress — stress that’s beneficial, that strengthens your immune system and physiology. By choosing not to retreat and to go on to Now Act, you get the chance to put into action much of what you have already learned. We shape and heal ourselves — our minds, our souls, our spirit — by taking action in the everyday world. Mere contemplation won’t do it for us. Through suggestions, exercises, and examples, chapter 8 provides the tools and opportunity to make that leap and to create a transformation in your health and in all areas of your life.

The Essentials of Undoing

1. Play with opposites. Reverse what you ordinarily think and do. Even if it feels uncomfortable, think, say, and do the opposite. If you habitually defer, take over; if you usually fault yourself, give yourself credit; if you are quiet as a mouse, roar like a lion.
2. Turn toward your difficulty. Undo your impulse to label events, feelings, symptoms, and so forth as “bad.” See what comes up for you as a challenge or opportunity instead of as a problem, and embrace it.
3. Value the shocks. Stop complaining about them. They can actually make you stronger and help you to grow.
4. Heal the past through the processes of imagery, writing, and dream work. Releasing grief, sadness, resentment, and anger makes room for joy. It’s good mind medicine for the lungs.
5. Live in tune. Use the power of music to attune yourself to life, to generate joy, and to support your body’s natural healing power.

Facebook and Twitter Canadian Health and Care Mall.

Participant Characteristics

Participants completed a menstrual cycle history, asthma history (abridged European Community Respiratory Health Survey), and asthma control questionnaire (ACQ) at baseline. AHR was measured as the provocative concentration of methacholine causing a 20% fall in FEV₁ (PC₂₀). Skin-prick tests (SPTs) were completed for 12 aeroallergens plus saline solution and histamine controls (Omega Hollister-Stier Laboratories; Mississauga, ON, Canada). The three allergens producing the largest wheal sizes in each individual participant were used for all subsequent SPTs in that participant.

Menstrual Cycle Measurements

After the baseline visit, participants were seen daily from the start of a menstrual cycle (day 1 of menstruation) to the fourth day of menstruation of the next cycle. The data collection methods were identical for the OC and non-OC groups. On each day, a modified ACQ was recorded, salivary samples (passive drool technique) were obtained for the measurement of sex hormone levels, eNO levels were measured (NIOX Mino; Aerocrine Inc; New York, NY), and spirometry (Koko Legend; Ferraris Respiratory; Louisville, CO) was performed to American Thoracic Society standards. Histamine, saline solution, and the three individually selected allergens were assessed with SPT on alternate days (Table E1 in the online supplement).

Levels of 17p-estradiol and progesterone in saliva were measured in duplicate or triplicate by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (Salimetrics LLC; State College, PA). Skin allergen responses, measured at 15-min intervals, were outlined in pen and tape-transferred to paper. A blinded investigator measured wheal and flare, recording the maximum diameter and its midpoint perpendicular, and corrected for any response to the negative control. The mean of the two diameters was used in this analysis. (See the online supplement for choice of measurement tools.)

Statistical Analysis

Linear regression (Prais-Winsten regression for the repeated measures data and ordinary least squares regression for nonrepeated data) and x² analyses were used to examine differences between participants using and not using OC.

New data elucidate the mechanisms by which estrogen and progesterone influence asthma in women. Among 792 women in the United Kingdom, ED visits for the treatment of acute asthma were more common during the preovulatory (follicular) and perimenstrual phases of the menstrual cycle. In one study, airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) to adenosine monophosphate increased in the luteal phase, during which both estrogen and progesterone levels increase, compared with the follicular phase (low estrogen and progesterone), but the individual contributions of estrogen and progesterone were not addressed, and the clinical relevance was not apparent. (See the online supplement for an expanded description of the menstrual cycle.) In another study that reported increased allergen wheal size during the late follicular phase of the menstrual cycle, hormone levels were not measured. Viagra Australia by ViagraAustraliaAu.Com.

Studies have demonstrated a role for both exogenous estrogen and progesterone in the management of perimenstrual asthma. In a prospective study of 192 postpubertal women with asthma, the 106 women using oral contraception (OC) had reduced asthma symptoms compared with those not using OC. Women given exogenous sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, and estrogen with progesterone) noted reduced symptoms, improved pulmonary function, and improved asthma control. It is unclear from these studies whether exogenous estrogen or progesterone influences atopy, airway inflammation, or both.

Experimental work supports the effects of both estrogen and progesterone in asthma patients. Estrogen, at physiologic concentrations, prevents cholinergic-induced tracheal ring constriction by activating the nitric oxide-cyclic guanosine monophosphate-protein kinase pathway. Estrogen receptor-a knockout mice exhibit increased AHR to methacholine after allergen sensitization and challenge.

OTHER ILLNESSES

I have just been in hospital with anaphylactic shock from a bee sting. I have diabetes controlled with tablets and wondered if this had anything to do with the severity of my reaction?

There is no connection between diabetes and allergy to bees.

My husband is on tablets for diabetes and normally has good control. He is prone to chest infections and these seem to upset his blood sugars. What should he do?

This can be a really difficult problem. Of course if your husband is ill enough to need hospital admission, he should be given insulin while his sugars are running high. At home, this is not as simple because there is no way of knowing what dose of insulin he may require, and an inadequate dose of insulin may even make matters worse. In a perfect world he would have insulin for the duration of his illness but in reality it is acceptable for him to run high sugars for a day or so, in the expectation that they will soon settle down spontaneously. In a longer-lasting illness, he will need insulin if the sugars are consistently high and there will be time to adjust the insulin dose in response to the blood glucose measurements.

Chest infections and asthma are often treated with steroids, which can cause a major rise in the blood glucose.

Since I was told I have Type 2 diabetes, I have been very depressed. Is there any link between depression and diabetes?

People vary greatly in their response to learning that they have diabetes; some are able to adjust to their new condition easily, while others find it hard to accept. We wonder what input you have received from your doctor or nurse to help you cope with this unpleasant news. We often hear of people who are told they have diabetes in a matter-of-fact way, and then see the practice nurse who gives them basic information about diabetes, sometimes backed up with some reading material. However, they leave the session feeling that their own fears and concerns have not been addressed. Such people often become angry and get the impression they have been responsible for their own diabetes. These negative emotions often cause depression and a belief that they can do nothing to improve the situation.

We support the DESMOND approach where a group of people recently diagnosed with diabetes meet with an educator who is trained to listen as well as to teach. In the opening session, people are invited to tell their own story and this leads to a feeling of solidarity within the group. After learning basic facts about food and diabetes, including the effect this may have on their future health, members of the group are encouraged to set their own goals for improving their health. When first diagnosed with diabetes, it is often difficult to work out whether the condition is serious or trivial. The DESMOND process helps people get diabetes into perspective and allows them to make informed lifestyle choices regarding food and exercise. It also provides the reassurance of meeting other people with diabetes, who are living through the same difficult experience. Other centres have developed education programmes along similar lines to DESMOND.

Canadian health and care mall

It has yet to be determined whether plasma and CSF levels of orexin-A correlate with each other, and whether plasma orexin-A levels are regulated by a negative feedback system of the arousal response. Reduced levels of orexin-A in the CSF and a substantial reduction in the number of orexin neurons, specifically in the hypothalamus, have been reported in narcoleptic patients. Combined with the lower levels of plasma orexin-A observed in narcoleptic patients, plasma levels of orexin-A may represent changes in the number or activity of orexin neurons in the CNS. It is possible that the regulation of plasma orexin-A levels differs between narcoleptic patients and patients with OSAHS. In the present study, we acknowledge one important limitation, namely, we did not obtain CSF samples from our patients to measure the levels of orexin-A. However, the correlation of plasma orexin-A levels and the severity of OSAHS, and the simplicity of specimen collection may support the usefulness of plasma orexin-A as a biological marker of OSAHS health care store.

No significant correlation was observed between plasma levels of orexin-A and BMI in the present study. However, Adam et al reported that plasma orexin-A levels correlated negatively with BMI and that lower levels of plasma orexin-A are present in obese individuals, suggesting that orexin is involved in the regulation of human energy metabolism. In addition to their potent effects on appetite, orexins may interact with the CNS system, controlling sympathetic outflow and cardiovascular function. Orexin-A, when injected into the lateral cerebroven-tricle, induced an increase of mean arterial pressure and heart rate in conscious rats. The effects of orexin peptides have been uniformly reported as excitatory, and orexin neurons project to monoamin-ergic cell groups. These findings may explain the relation between underlying narcolepsy symptomatology and orexin deficiency canadian healthcare. The posterior hypothalamus containing orexin neurons has been implicated in arousal state control. The projection from orexin neurons to monoaminergic cell groups, which include histaminergic, serotonergic, and noradrenergic cells, could be related to arousal-state regulation, while monoaminergic neurons inhibit the REM-activated neurons in the cholinergic nucleus. Therefore, it is probable that the orexin system may have a neuromodulatory effect on arousal states. Given the putative role of orexin in sleep-wakefulness function, increased orexin transmission, reflected as increased plasma orexin-A levels, may affect the arousal response in patients with OSAHS.

Fore more information about canadian health&care follow this link: Canadianhealthcaremalll.com