Healthscape

Part II of a two part discussion on Death with the author Ivan Obolensky, The Anatomy of Death- A Montage Is there already at least some overlap with Death in our materially focussed lives? When we die, does consciousness finally get shod of the 'training wheels?

Part I of a two part discussion on Death with the author Ivan Obolensky. A much needed discussion on an even more greatly avoided subject, our inevitable departure from Life. As the title suggests, a synthetic (rather than analytic) approach was adopted, using an array of approaches and disciplines, employing paradox and sometimes even anachronism to assemble snippets that shed light on the complexity and scope of this slippery chimera. But are we even looking in the right direction? Do we already have more than a foothold?

Dr. Karl Zarse, a double Board certified anesthestist and regenerative medicine specialist, returns to speak about one of the most prevalent problems in medicine, namely back pain. He addresses episodic, recurrent and chronic pain, highlighting the problems, myths, treatment solutions as well as insights into health daily practices and behaviors to maximize outcomes, functionality and quality of life. In back pain, self-care remains a staple of treatment, and includes back specific as well as general lifestyle changes such as weight loss, that can be a game-changer. Learn what you can do to ensure a superior outcome. Evidence- based, accessible and effective direction, clearly presented with a good deal of common sense. Simply, a winner!

Dr. Pawa provides a lucid overview of mind-body treatment approaches, offering compelling insights and examples. All along the way her incisive intelligence, compassion and obvious love for her calling shine through. Most of all, she makes the discipline accessible and easy to implement by providing exactly what is needed whenever there is dis-ease that is usually accompanied by fatigue, low energy and anxiety. Her over-arching message is simple and clear; it is one of hope and possibility, but it is also a crystal clear call to action. Dr. Bal is a rare and outstanding teacher with the hallmark approach of a true healer.

Hear Dr. Raouf Gharbo, Director of Cardiac and Wellness Integration at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), discuss breathing techniques, biofeedback and heart rate variability (HRV), and the value that these activities can add to your mental and physical flexibility, general health and recovery potential from chronic diseases, including chronic pain, anxiety and trauma. Simple to perform and highly accessible, this will help you control your brain-body connections, reduce your fatigue and hypervigilance, allowing for greater mental and emotional flexibility. A fascinating and lucid guide through the importance of the heart brain dynamic, the central role of the diaphragm and the understated but formidable power of authenticity and letting go. Vitally important, timely and value packed information seamlessly presented.

Dr. Karl Zarse, a double Board certified anaesthetist and regenerative medicine specialist, shares his experience and insights on how to maximize your situation post-injury or when in chronic pain. The owner of Idaho Spine and Pain Management, he outlines tips to enhance flexibility, strength, sleep and nutrition, helping you to outmaneuver ageing and to flip the chronic injury script. Learn how to benefit from the potentially massive accumulation of seemingly modest, daily advantages. In chronic pain, most of the daily changes that need to occur, and the lion share of what has to be done, must be made by the individual personally. Simply mandatory listening, in my opinion.

Alzheimer's disease is a neuro-degenerative and relentlessly progressive disease causing cognitive, memory and behavioral impairment. It disproportionately affects women and can be of early onset. More typically, it afflicts the elderly, most often having a long pre-clinical period. It is also incurable, and the sixth largest cause of death in the United States. This challenge only inflates as life expectancy in developed countries increases, heralding yet another burgeoning health crisis. Hear the enlightening and deeply moving story of Carlen Maddux and his family's courageous and epic odyssey after his wife Martha was diagnosed at age 50. Sobering, memorable and inspirational.

Have we reached a point of 'crisis overload,' both at the societal and global level? We seem to trip through the caveats while the larger challenges seem intractable. We are already well aware that unbridled stress increases the risk of or worsens most physical and mental disease. But this time it's different. In previous decades, our guiding light was a credible media that mostly portrayed a journalistic 'best efforts' approach, in which many could have confidence. Not long ago, news became commodified, veracity taking a back seat to ratings, agendas and groupthink. A casual approach to the truth made truth itself the first casualty. In the age of the Everything Crisis,' more than ever, trust and lucidity alone can save the day.

A fascinating revelation of how our hearts and brains communicate by Dr. Rollin McCraty, Director of Research at the Heartmath Institute. Learn how this is reflected in our heart rate variability (HRV) and why this metric is so vitally important. It turns out that the heart has a nervous system of its own, a 'heart brain,' that sends nine times more the information to our intracranial brains than it receives from it, in this bi-directional flow. HRV reflects the functioning of our nervous system and can be used as feedback, enabling us to reach a state of coherence, that is, a more optimal state of mental, emotional, and creative functionality, even improving our equilibrium and intuition. In this mode of enhanced self-regulation there are also numerous health, behavioral and cognitive benefits. Backed by hundreds of studies, the phenomenon operates not only at a personal level but also at a societal one, even having a global reach. Given the punishing, unrelenting global stress levels of the last two years, this much needed, vitally important information could hardly be more timely.

Listen to Dr. Taryl Felhaber describe the suboptimal way that menopausal issues are currently dealt with in family practice. Poor physician undergraduate education and a paucity of continuing medical education offerings in the field for practicing physicians are but part of the problem. Too many family physicians under treat the often debilitating and life intrusive symptoms on the basis that hormones are 'unsafe,' some citing a twenty year old study purely on preliminary data. It needs to be remembered that with increasing life expectancies, especially among women, some may live a third to almost a half their lives in this situation. Discover other interesting facts and insights in this informative, timely and much needed interview.

While today’s subject is not a conventional choice for Healthscape, there are a good deal of lessons that can be learned from this discussion by those who have chronic diseases and chronic pain as they know better than most, all about feeling stuck. What would it be like if one brought one’s full consciousness and awareness to the table when making decisions.? Do we perhaps sometimes have to break a fixed pattern of behavior or thinking in order to solve a challenging problem and what does it mean to be stuck and arrested in a particular conundrum? Well, the jury is already out on these subjects with regard to chronic pain and disease as we constantly are required to do things that are counter-intuitive to us such as exercise a body part that is painful and socialize when we least feel like doing it. We also know that we can totally change unhelpful thinking patters by reframing situations and questions that in itself can lighten the stress load if not actually help resolve the issue. We call this kind of psychotherapy, CBT. The lesson is that a seemingly intractable problem may more easily be resolved by the ways we present it to others but even more importantly by the way we approach it ourselves. The disclaimer here is, that none of the discussion today should be viewed as therapy, much less as replacement therapy by any particular listener. You have your family physician who best knows your medical history. However, the insights presented remain important as it shows us that we can change certain things when we feel stuck, and this in itself can increase motivation by kindling hope.

In this episode, we discuss emerging topics in Family Medicine like polypharmacy, over-medicalization as well over-diagnosis. We also reflect on the value that family physicians add, particularly at this time when their discipline is under significant threat, both in terms of staff shortages, expanded responsibilities, technological demands and burgeoning paperwork, some of it questionable and much of it unpaid. Generalists, like family physicians, too infrequently receive due credit in an age of innovation and specialization, yet they remain the faithful gatekeepers and the backbone of the western medical delivery networks. Most importantly, they provide ongoing longitudinal care, often at a trans-generational level, a service that is invaluable, particularly when we as patients age. Given the breadth and scope that is both expected and required of them, they manage to survive and navigate the enormous burden of uncertainty that they inevitably have to bear.

Hear Dr. Robert Barrett, sociologist and author of Hardwired: How our Instincts to be Healthy are Making us Sick, discuss the problem of authenticity in our current social climate. Poets, philosophers, bards and society itself exhort us to be authentic, Shakespeare, in his play Hamlet, urges us to thine own self be true, but society itself often lacks authenticity, and while it trumpets the virtue, regularly penalizes them that would be authentic. While our well-being and mental health benefit from personal authenticity, we consequently also also have to navigate significant social challenges where perceptions and 'optics' often eclipse realities. Social stressors are a major source of distress and chronic disease exacerbation. How will the young contend with the anomalies and mixed messaging of our rapidly changing social landscape? What discipline or institution will grapple and ameliorate this problem? When enmeshed by a tangle of complication, the answer is sometimes surprisingly simple, under one's own feet. Perhaps our best chance to save the day is increased awareness, will and collaboration at a grass roots level.

I interview Dr. Sue Stuart-Smith, author of “The Well- Gardened Mind”- The Restorative Power of Nature. She is both a psychiatrist and a gardener. The utility and value of this book can hardly be overemphasized, given the pressurized and frankly pathogenic or illness inducing-lifestyles that many of us lead today, often while being quite detached from Nature or Source. The Well Gardened Mind, is a work that both educates and delights. It is a cornucopia of facts, stories, anecdotes, and possibility. Like gardening itself, it opens up the mind and the heart. Moved by a familial connection to gardening involving her grandfather’s recovery and rehabilitation after captivity as a prisoner-of war, and her own personal experience of the physical and mental benefits of gardening, Dr. Stuart-Smith illustrates the significantly positive effect gardening may have on mental recovery and equilibrium with regard to stress management, mood, and anxiety disorders. Frequent close contact with Nature allows one to reconnect with others as well as with life itself, gardening having been useful in the rehabilitation and treatment of addictions and chronic pain, as well as in mental hospital and prison programs. Gardening teaches us that we are never entirely in control. It slows us down in order to adapt to Nature’s pace, tending to steer us towards contemplating time in a cyclical manner rather than in our usual linear way. Gardening is ultimately a transcendental experience and arguably also a spiritual one, as it connects us to something greater than ourselves and offers us a higher meaning that goes way beyond anyone's individual life. By learning to prefer ‘generativity over stagnation,’ we may become more collaborative than competitive. Nature, after all, need not explain herself. She simply exists and prevails. This is an absolute ‘must read’ in my opinion.

Spirituality is innate in all of us, yet it often causes discomfort and even aversion when the topic comes up in conversation. The mystery, suspicion and misinformation with which (for some) it appears to be enshrouded, does little to reduce any of the unease. Hear Dr. Richard Miller, clinical psychologist and spiritual teacher, dismantle some of the myths, and misunderstandings. He further walks listeners through a brief guided meditation that once again highlights and reminds us exactly how intrinsic spirituality is, even though it may lie dormant in some individuals, having shrunken and possibly been buried by disuse. Insightful, inspirational and memorable. A much-needed approach in a stressful and often 'pre-veritable' age.

Shauna Sky Romano, kinesiologist, athlete, and coach to elite athletes believes that “while the principles of high performance and science don’t change, the art is the application of those principles through movement, and the magic lies in developing a love for movement.” Her clients include people recovering from injuries as well as those with chronic pain and chronic disease. Exercise, of course has a central role in this, and the problem has always been durability, or how to get clients to maintain their exercise routines. A similar situation is also of course also seen with dietary advice, where, although the rationale for the prescribed diet is sound, adherence to the plan doesn’t always necessarily follow. So, what do we do? The traditional response is usually along the lines of getting therapists and coaches to come up with new and innovative motivational strategies. On the other hand, perhaps it’s simply time that our communal attitude towards exercise and movement needs to radically change. Also learn about the potential of dance therapy in health maintenance, chronic disease, and neuro-degenerative disorders. A lively and inspirational discussion that uncovers and contemplates possibility.

A Spiritual quest invariably starts with a journey inwards. We are sometimes drawn into it and sometimes nudged, but the inevitable reward is the ability to live an enriched life more fully and more freely. Our passage further compels us to accept and fulfil our role in this elevated reality, showing us that we need to transcend, rather than deny our own cherished ideas of who we are. Learn how Dr. Richard Miller, clinical psychologist and Spiritual teacher, integrated western psychology, neuroscience, and the ancient wisdom of eastern thought; Yoga, Taoism, Buhhism and other disciplines to develop the research-based iRest Yoga Nidra Meditation. iRest is a highly accessible form of meditation designed for modern day living that allows for a new level of healing, wellness and wellbeing. Effective in the treatment of several mental disorders, chronic pain and PTSD, it is also recommended for everyday healthy living and life balance.

Part 1- Personal reflections on the practice of meditation and mindfulness, and the value that this adds not only in health wellness, but in all chronic disease, especially mental disease and chronic pain. Part 2- An overview of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), the relationships and the inevitable interactions between our thoughts, behaviors and mood. How gaining better control over out thinking patterns can reduce our daily stress levels and the potential for self-sabotage of our recovery efforts.

Child abuse is pervasive and shocking and it's toxic reach may endure for decades when not frankly lifelong. It may include physical, psychological and sexual abuse in any combination, but it also encompasses neglect and willful deprivation. Once again, the causation is usually multi-factorial, including conditions like mental illness, substance abuse, personality disorders and a whole constellation of possible stressors. You will be fascinated and moved by Dr. Arcuri's account of his troubled upbringing at the hands of his mother, how he coped and navigated an early exit, later strengthening his position to overcome and triumph, while realizing all his adult goals. His book Toxic Mothers: A Son's Guide to Healing and Moving On encapsulates all the sentiments and strategies he himself used together with 'loving boldly.' His recovery is highlighted by the fact that he was his mother's caregiver during her last six months when she was ill with cancer. It is encouraging and uplifting to learn that reconciliation was secured on several fronts.

Dr. Tanguay clearly explains how untreated mental trauma is a common confounder in the treatment of mental health conditions. What is often labeled as treatment-resistant depression or anxiety disorder, for example, may well turn out to be driven and complicated by untreated mental trauma. Aversive childhood events and mental trauma often lie at the root of mental disorders, yet these are either overlooked or more surprisingly, left untreated. Any mental illness that co-exists with untreated trauma, rarely has a favorable outcome, the trauma continuing to drive, exacerbate, and aggravate the mental condition. In this episode, you will learn more about early mental trauma and its effects, not only in chronic pain, addictions, and an array of mental disorders, but also how it increases one’s susceptibility to a range of physical diseases and increases the risk of suicide and reduced life expectancy. There are two key, age-old adages in medicine; number one, “first do no harm,” and the other is most applicable in this very situation, which is to “firstly try to remove the cause,” when possible. Learn too, about the new advances in the treatment of trauma and the role and importance of meaning, acceptance, increased functionality, and a return to purposeful work and a healthy lifestyle for recovery. He also addresses the vitally important societal issue of inter-generational trauma. Dr. Tanguay’s innovative approach at the Newly Institute is ground- breaking, as it includes the assessment and treatment of mental trauma, addictions, chronic pain, and other psychiatric conditions all at one location, providing timeous, comprehensive, and highly customized treatment plans delivered by an inter-disciplinary team, setting a whole new standard in mental health care delivery.