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Archive for the ‘from the reading room’ Category

Fancy a dose of Vitamin N?

Posted in from the consulting room, from the reading room, health, life, science on June 7, 2012| 8 Comments »

Vitamin N?

It’s what Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods”, and “The Nature Principle” , refers to as the therapeutic agent we call Nature. It’s a clever idea, as is his diagnosis of “Nature-deficit Disorder” which he claims is widespread in our urbanised societies.

He writes about how exposure to nature is healing and mentions that in Japan “Forest Medicine” and “Forest Bathing” are becoming recognised medical treatments.

He even has his own definition of nature – ” human beings exist in nature anywhere they experience meaningful kinship with other species”

A 2008 study published in American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that the greener the neighborhood, the lower the body mass index of children. “Our new study of over 3,800 inner-city children revealed that living in areas with green space has a long-term positive impact on children’s weight and thus health,” according to senior author Gilbert C. Liu, MD

And….

A study of 260 people in twenty-four sites across Japan found that among people who gazed on forest scenery for twenty minutes, the average concentration of salivary cortisol, a stress hormone, was 13.4 percent lower than that of people in urban settings.6 “Humans . . . lived in nature for 5 million years. We were made to fit a natural environment. . . . When we are exposed to nature, our bodies go back to how they should be,” explained Yoshifumi Miyazaki, who conducted the study that reported the salivary cortisol connection. Miyazaki is director of the Center for Environment Health and Field Sciences at Chiba University and Japan’s leading scholar on “forest medicine,” an accepted health care concept in Japan, where it is sometimes called “forest bathing.” In other research, Li Qing, a senior assistant professor of forest medicine at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo, found green exercise—physical movement in a natural setting—can increase the activity of natural killer (NK) cells. This effect can be maintained for as long as thirty days.7 “When NK activity increases, immune strength is enhanced, which boosts resistance against stress,”

I like these ideas – a lot! You can read more here and here.

Our hospital, the NHS Centre for Integrative Care at Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital, is built around a beautiful garden, and patients frequently comment about the increase in well-being they feel gazing out into, or wandering around in, the garden.

My recent trip up to Crarae Gardens gave me a similar experience. Don’t you feel better after spending some time in natural environments? Which ones are especially good for you?

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Science and certainty

Posted in from the reading room, science on June 1, 2012| 2 Comments »

We live in a complex, constantly changing, ever more amazing, astonishing world. One of the things which takes me aback every time I come across it is a claim to know something for certain, and, beyond that, the claim that this certain knowledge is the ONLY possible explanation or choice.

Margaret Thatcher once famously said “There is no alternative”. The moment she said that she revealed she was living in a state of delusion. In complex, interconnected phenomena (like Life, the environment, the economy…..) there are countless alternatives. What she really meant was she didn’t wish to consider anybody else’s opinions, views, or values.

We’re facing a similar situation in economics. The latest fashion is for “austerity” (which seems to mean protect the profit making potential of the finance sector by reducing everyone else’s standard of living). The advocates of this view, who are in the seats of power throughout Europe, are certain that this is the right policy to adopt. In fact they are so certain, (“there is no Plan B”), that they maintain there are no alternatives.

It’s the same in Medicine. I read a piece recently by a Pain Specialist (that’s someone who tries to reduce pain, not inflict it!), who used the phrase “the Ayatollahs of Evidence Based Medicine”. Health policy makers, claiming the certainties of science, cite “evidence bases” to support their choices based on their world view ie their values, prejudices and preferences. They are convinced they are right, that they know best, not just what is best for them, but what is best for you. If you think differently they will tell you you are wrong.

Yesterday, reading The Edge, I came across this statement by Carlo Rovelli.

 The very expression ‘scientifically proven’ is a contradiction in terms. There is nothing that is scientifically proven. The core of science is the deep awareness that we have wrong ideas, we have prejudices. We have ingrained prejudices

CARLO ROVELLI is a theoretical physicist, working on quantum gravity and on foundations of spacetime physics. He is professor of physics at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France and member of the Intitut Universitaire de France. He is the author of The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy; and Quantum Gravity.

It’s a good point, and one worth remembering……science is NOT about certainty, it’s about unceasing wonder and having the humility to know that you will never know everything.

I don’t trust those who claim there are no alternatives to their own “certain” one. There’s nothing appealing about the arrogance of conviction.

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Who decides what’s best for you?

Posted in books, from the consulting room, from the reading room, health on May 21, 2012| 2 Comments »

Just read Leonora Carrington’s novel, The Hearing Trumpet and was stopped in my tracks by the following passage –

What is the Well of Light Brotherhood? That sounds more terrifying than death itself, a Brotherhood with the grim knowledge of what is better for other people and the iron determination to better them whether they like it or not.

The novel tells the story of an elderly woman put away in a “home” by her son and his wife when her behaviour becomes difficult for them. The home is run by the “Well of Light Brotherhood”.

You know, it seems to me that health care these days is probably run by the same people!!

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A miraculous life

Posted in books, from the living room, from the reading room, life, philosophy on April 19, 2012| 3 Comments »

When I read this passage from Marilynne Robinson’s new book, I immediately recalled Robert Solomon’s “Joy of Philosophy” (which I reviewed and reflected on here)

There is a tendency, considered highly rational, to reason from a narrow set of interests, say survival and procreation, which are supposed to govern our lives, and then to treat everything that does not fit this model as anomalous clutter, extraneous to what we are and probably best done without. But all we really know about what we are is what we do. There is a tendency to fit a tight and awkward carapace of definition over humankind, and to try to trim the living creature to fit the dead shell. The advice I give my students is the same advice I give myself—forget definition, forget assumption, watch. We inhabit, we are part of, a reality for which explanation is much too poor and small. No physicist would dispute this, though he or she might be less ready than I am to have recourse to the old language and call reality miraculous

I do think reducing a human being, in whatever way, takes us into acting at a subhuman level. It’s this reduction of the miraculous, amazing, special individual to a data set of measurable parameters which lies at the core of a lot of our problems these days. (This is why I argue for a SEA CHANGE in our values).

Robert Solomon’s book is subtitled “Thinking Thin versus the Passionate Life” and in that, he nails it.

A data led, reduced, materialism is a poor, thin, inadequate way to live. What I argue for is a rich, passionate life of wonder and amazement – a miraculous life.

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View from Sirius

Posted in from the living room, from the reading room, life, movies, personal growth, philosophy on April 15, 2012| 4 Comments »

The view from Sirius……I was exploring the origins of this idea today (it’s actually a French phrase “point de vue de sirius”), and found that someone had helpfully linked it to this clip from the great Dead Poets’ Society (haven’t seen that film in YEARS!)

I like it. In French, this idea relates to the idea of the “vue en haut” – the perspective from on high. Voltaire’s 1752 tale, Micromegas, is often cited as the origin of the Sirius reference. In this amazing, centuries ahead of itself tale, a person from Sirius, Micromegas, visits the Earth. The idea of “le point de vue de Sirius”, refers to both that ability to stand back and take an overview, something we all need to do from time to time (and which I’ve been doing on my week’s break from work these last 7 days), and, also, that ability to experience the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Years ago I chanced across a little paperback in a secondhand book shop – the poet Stephen Spender’s “Life and the Poet” where I read his idea of the poet getting into the mindset of a traveler from Earth visiting the Moon for the first time. The view from Sirius idea encompasses that idea.
However, it’s Pierre Hadot, the French philosopher, I have to thank for explaining it in his brilliant “N’oublie pas de vivre” (“Don’t forget to live”).

Whatever its origins, I think it’s a great concept – so why not try to adopt the “view from Sirius” today, and see how things look now?

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To know someone

Posted in books, from the consulting room, from the living room, from the reading room, health, life on April 13, 2012| 2 Comments »

Stumbled across a fabulous extract from Marilynne Robinson’s new book. Here’s just one of the paragraphs which hooked me –

There is a great difference, in fiction and in life, between knowing someone and knowing aboutsomeone. When a writer knows about his character, he is writing for plot. When he knows his character, he is writing to explore, to feel reality on a set of nerves somehow not quite his own. Words like “sympathy,” “empathy,” and “compassion” are overworked and overcharged—there is no word for the experience of seeing an embrace at a subway stop or hearing an argument at the next table in a restaurant. Every such instant has its own emotional coloration, which memory retains or heightens, and so the most sidelong, unintended moment becomes a part of what we have seen of the world. Then, I suppose, these moments, as they have seemed to us, constellate themselves into something a little like a spirit, a little like a human presence in its mystery and distinctiveness.

She’s writing about writing fiction of course, but the insight is applicable to life too, don’t you think? I recall Dan Siegel’s great line about the importance of “feeling felt”. I think that, as a doctor, it’s these little moments which are all around us every day, if we can only be sufficiently present and aware to notice them, which embed their constellations of human emotion into our psyches. I do believe, it’s these, and all the others I encounter in the everyday clinic, which create the conditions for understanding – for my understanding of those who come to me to be heard and to be felt.

This is the essence of “healing”.

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The magic of being human

Posted in from the living room, from the reading room, life, psychology on April 12, 2012| 5 Comments »

There’s been quite a drive to reduce human beings to purposeless, temporary clusters of molecules. I don’t buy into it. For me, to understand what it is to be human involves taking on board consciousness, an inescapable subjective experience of a self, the interconnectedness of a person with others and with the rest of the universe in which we exist, and, not least, through the development of symbol manipulation and language development, a constant bent towards storytelling and seeking meaning in every day existence. (Cripes! That was quite a sentence, and, believe me, I had to stop myself there…..I could see that sentence spilling over into an entire page…)

The NY Times recently published a piece, “In Defense of Superstition“, about Matthew Hutson’s “The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking”. This is one of those things which makes you wonder about the nature of reality. I don’t think reality can be reduced to its physical, material elements. There’s a lot about reality which emerges from the fact we live as conscious beings in an inextricably interconnected universe. From this perspective, what are we to make of magic, and magical thinking?

The article cites research showing that golfers told the golf ball they are to play with is a lucky ball are 35% more likely to sink the putt, and that people can improve their memory performance when in possession of a lucky charm. This doesn’t surprise me. What you believe, and what you experience emotionally and subconsciously significantly influences your behaviour and your performance.

Do you remember a movie entitle, “The Cooler“? I think it was William H Macy as an unlucky charm, employed by a casino boss to stand next to people on a winning streak, so they’d start to lose. When he falls in love, his ability to transmit bad luck disappears….fascinating movie.

We co-create our reality with the world we live in, and most of that creation doesn’t come from the “thinking” part of our brain!

The article sums up

But without it, the existential angst of realizing we’re just impermanent clusters of molecules with no ultimate purpose would overwhelm us. So to believe in magic — as, on some deep level, we all do — does not make you stupid, ignorant or crazy. It makes you human

I agree with the last two sentences, but I don’t agree with the assumption that we are “just impermanent clusters of molecules with no ultimate purpose”. Do you?

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The Slow Movement approach to weight loss

Posted in from the consulting room, from the reading room, health, life, tagged on April 10, 2012| 2 Comments »

The French do seem to have a different way of viewing Life from the British. That’s one of the reasons I really enjoy reading French publications, and one of my regulars is a magazine called “Cles“. In the most recent issue they have a thought provoking and different article about dieting. In “Cles” there is a regular section dedicated to articles which promote a “Slow movement” approach to Life, and in this month’s issue they take on dieting. (“Slow minceur, le corps tranquille”).

Essentially, the article advocates this approach to diet.

1. Don’t go on a diet.

2. Instead, slow down and really enjoy your food. For the French enjoying your food is about more than just the taste, the colour and smell of the food. It’s about the whole experience of enjoying a meal….the environment, the aesthetics, the company you share. The article doesn’t use the word “mindful” but such a concept would be consistent with this message – eat mindfully – slowly, really savouring and appreciating what you are eating, and the experience of the meal.

3. Stop when you’ve had enough. Sound straightforward? Maybe not so easy because we tend to have bad habits related to eating way too large portions, either because we were taught to clear our plates, or because we think more food for less money is a bargain. However, if you are eating mindfully, you’ll become aware when your body has had enough. And at that point, you can stop!

4. Learn to handle your emotions without reverting to food. In fact, the article quotes a David O’Hare whose book is entitled “Maigrir par la cohérence cardiaque” (which sounds like Heartmath to me, but see here).

5. Finally, they recommend not cutting out anything, but instead steadily eating a little less, moving a little more, and accepting that it will take a long time to lose a significant amount of weight ie take away any performance or fear of failure anxiety induced by setting short term targets.

What do you think? Maybe this way isn’t for you, but it’s sure different, and as we are all different, it’s good to have a range of possible strategies available, isn’t it?

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Stop stealing dreams

Posted in books, education, from the reading room on March 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Seth Godin is sharing his thoughts about education and they are very stimulating thoughts! His ebook (which is free) is entitled “Stop Stealing Dreams“.

The basic thesis is that our education system is designed to produce compliant producers and consumers. Compliant producers/workers tend to end up in hourly paid jobs and with the globalisation of large corporations, there’s been a race to the bottom. If you work for an hourly rate, you are disposable. In fact, increasingly it’s likely your employer will seek to replace you with someone who will work for less – either in your country, or in another one.

There’s not much of a future for any of us down that road, so what we need instead are unique, autonomous, creative individuals – artists (he says) and scientists (of the ideal type – the ones who are truly constantly skeptical, not the ones who think they are the new guardians of THE TRUTH!)

Schools need to change to meet the changing times. In particular we need to move from FEAR – which is used to induce compliance – to PASSION – to encourage self-starters, innovators and life-long committed learners.

Part of that process is to encourage our children to dream (hey, we need to encourage our ADULTS to dream too!) – to dream BIG, but to dream REALISTIC. In other words, not to accept the status quo, but not to opt out by dreaming the dreams sold by those in control – dreams of celebrity for example.  No, the kind of dreams we need to encourage are the dreams which motivate people to engage with working towards making them happen.

Here’s a quote or two –

 19. The dreams we need are self-reliant dreams. We need dreams based not on what is but on what might be. We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen. I think we’re doing a great job of destroying dreams at the very same time the dreams we do hold onto aren’t nearly bold enough

11. School’s industrial, scaled-up, measurable structure means that fear must be used to keep the masses in line. There’s no other way to get hundreds or thousands of kids to comply, to process that many bodies, en masse, without simultaneous coordination. And the flip side of this fear and conformity must be that passion will be destroyed. There’s no room for someone who wants to go faster, or someone who wants to do something else, or someone who cares about a particular issue. Move on. Write it in your notes; there will be a test later. A multiple choice test. Do we need more fear? Less passion?

29. There really are only two tools available to the educator. The easy one is fear. Fear is easy to awake, easy to maintain, but ultimately toxic. The other tool is passion. A kid in love with dinosaurs or baseball or earth science is going to learn it on her own. She’s going to push hard for ever more information, and better still, master the thinking behind it. Passion can overcome fear – the fear of losing, of failing, of being ridiculed.

Seth highlights a problem I see in health care, even though he is focused on education in this ebook. He describes Taylorism and Scientific Management –

“measure often. Figure out which inputs are likely to create testable outputs. If an output isn’t easily testable, ignore it.” It would be a mistake to say that scientific education doesn’t work. It creates what we test.

That really is the trouble with health care – see my recent post about finding the person in the patient,  and the earlier one about people not processes.

Here’s his definition of an artist by the way –

“An artist is someone who brings new thinking and generosity to his work, who does human work that changes another for the better.”

He uses the same definition in his We are All Weird.

And, just to finish with here, he highlights the issue of getting people to give a damn –

“Can we teach people to care? Can we teach kids to care enough about their dreams that they’ll care enough to develop the judgement, skill, and attitude to make them come true?”

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The benefits of aging

Posted in books, from the consulting room, from the reading room, health, life, tagged on March 21, 2012| 3 Comments »

More of us are living more years than our ancestors did. That’s often presented as a problem. How will we afford all the pensions? How will we afford to pay for the extra care these millions of additional frail people will need? How will we afford to pay for the extra years of drugs they’ll be prescribed?

And what about respect for the elderly? Do we see this increase in the numbers of older people as providing us with unique resources of knowledge, wisdom, care, love, support?

How refreshing to read the words of Herman Hesse on this subject –

Aging is far from being only a process of reducing, wilting and fading. Old age, like every other stage of life has its own merits, its own magic, its own wisdom, its own sorrow.
Whoever becomes old consciously, can observe that in spite of diminishing powers and potencies, every ear brings an increase and an enhancement in the infinite web of relations and connections.

Oh, I so understand that last point in particular. With my now five grandchildren my web of relations and connections has been enhanced amazingly. And over the last few years, with teaching in different countries, and writing this blog, I’ve made many, many new friends and connections, meeting such different people who so often shift my perspectives and make my world a bigger, yet smaller place!

Here’s more from Hesse on the benefits of aging –

…increased independence from the judgement of others, less vulnerability to compulsion and more undisturbed reverence before the eternal

You should have been with me this morning when one of my very sprightly, beautifully dressed, 86 year old patients told me as I asked her if she was ok to climb the staircase with me to my consulting room, “that’s a beautiful, straight bannister on this staircase. Maybe I’ll slide down it on my way out!” ……made my day!

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