The Global Conversation

Tag: body

  • Holistic health: faddish buzz word or real possibility?

    People seem confused by the term “holistic health.” Maybe it’s because businesses are using the catch-phrase inappropriately. Holistic practices aren’t presented thoroughly or followed by some “holistic practitioners” as they prescribe the same old pharmaceuticals without another natural approach first. So what do I mean when I say holistic health? I’ll tell you!

    Holistic health includes all aspects of the person – psychological, physical, social, and spiritual otherwise known as mind, body, and spirit. Whatever words you want to use to describe holistic health, it includes all aspects of well-being in you. To be holistically healthy, you must care for your body, your relationships, work and purpose in life, and your spirituality. You care for yourself, your friends, and your community. In order to do that, you avoid toxins in your food, environment, emotions, and life. You nurture your body with nutrient dense foods, relaxation, sleep, and exercise. You attempt to keep yourself healthy proactively through foods and natural healing, and you incorporate the same practices when dealing with an illness or disease. Don’t get me wrong, we need our medical doctors – our trauma care and advanced medical practices are necessary when other things don’t work or aren’t appropriate!

    But let’s try to allow our body to heal itself when we can!

    Holistic Health is nothing new. Ayurvedic medicine has taught us for thousands of years that we must treat the whole person to avoid illness, cure disease, and have a happy life without suffering. Through Ayurveda you learn to balance your biological tendencies, metabolic activities, and body functions using diet, sleep, activity, and sex. For instance, using Ayurveda you choose your food based on your imbalance, the taste, preparation, combination, quantity, and time to rebalance your body based on your constitution or symptoms. Here in the USA we eat at fast food restaurants, eat processed foods without paying attention. We eat fast food, junk food, and nutrition-less food and then take expensive vitamins and supplements.We eat fiber-less white bread and white flour in everything, but we take expensive fiber supplements.

    So, in Holistic Health we look at the Whole…… the whole person.

    In order to be whole and healthy we need to change old attitudes and pay attention to the following aspects:

    • Remove from and avoid toxicity in the body, food, relationships, daily life, and thoughts
    • Increase nutrition and positivity in food, emotions, priorities, exercise, positive mental energy, relationships, spirituality, and purpose in life or job
    • The result of the above will be a less stressful, more comfortable happy life full of meaning, health, and happiness
    With all of this being said, I also believe that no one has all of the answers. Therefore we are open to and experiment with all kinds of healing through
    • Tasty, fun, and healthy food
    • Healing foods
    • Spices, herbs, natural remedies
    • Physical activity
    • Natural healers and practitioners
    • Energy work
    • Emotional Health
    • Connection
    • Drugless practitioners
    • Alternative healing methods
    • Alternative Medicine
    • Spirituality

    The list goes on.

    Are you healthy as a whole? Think about the areas you need to change based on what I have shared with you. Any positive change you make in any area of your life will surely improve your overall holistic health.

    (Beth Anderson is a certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of the Holistic Health Hotspot in Evansville, Indiana. She is also the author of “The Holistic Diet: Achieve Your Ideal Weight, Be Happy and Healthy for Life.” Beth received her training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Beth is helping people improve their lives through nutrition and lifestyle education, health coaching, and by helping others to learn to make informed choices. Beth continues to spread understanding of the connection between body, mind, and spirit and encourages all to discern the truth about food, consumer products, environment, and life choices. You can find Beth on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HolisticHealthHotspot or email her at beth@holistichealthhotspot.com)

  • I have AIDS: a journey of awakening and crusading

    I was 11 years old when I contracted HIV, I was diagnosed with AIDS at 16.  The news was a relief, actually, after a couple of years of waiting around to find out and adjusting to adolescence while nursing bleeding ulcers, when my doctors had already known for a year and were just getting their legal ducks in a row before springing the big news. My high school years consisted of nasty infections, a nagging fear that my terrible, shameful secret would be revealed, and a drug regimen toxic enough to bring down an elephant, not to mention my own personal regimen of vodka, acid, and whatever else I could get my hands on to ease the monotony while I waited around to die.

    But when I look back on this specific time in my life, some thirty odd years later, I feel nothing but gratitude. I am healthy, stronger than I have ever been, in body, mind, and spirit. Facing the idea of death early on woke me up, showed me the necessity of being fully awake in every moment, to truly be thankful for every breath of life. I am wiser, and more acutely aware of the ugly vices of greed, exploitation and corruption that some in positions of power seem to be able to engage in while not losing even a single night of sleep. I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about human nature, as I hope to explain as I detail the bizarre events that fell into place and allowed for over 10,000 people to be murdered by pharmaceutical companies during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

    I was born with hemophilia, a hereditary blood disorder that inhibits the blood’s ability to clot. The current treatment is a product made from thousands of donors which replaces the specific clotting factor that my blood is missing.

    In the late 1970s through 1985, four pharmaceutical companies knowingly exposed 20,000 Americans with hemophilia to tainted blood clotting products, rather than warn, recall, or quarantine the clotting factor that they knew was contaminated. For at least fifteen years this darkest corner of the pharmaceutical-industrial-complex pumped a myriad of viruses into the veins of anyone who needed a blood transfusion while they amassed vast fortunes that would far outweigh the cost of future lawsuits.

    The CDC began to warn the National Hemophilia Foundation, a highly trusted and, in fact, beloved advocacy group for hemophiliacs, of the risks from infected blood products in the early ’80s, but since it receives most of its money from drug companies, the NHF continued to recommend that hemophiliacs remain on the highly concentrated clotting factor regimens, even though much less risky options were available. My doctor, as well as most across the country, echoed their sentiments. Similar conflicts of interest seemed to apply, most of them were paid consultants for the drug industry at the time.

    When the U.S. Government finally put a stop to these shenanigans, after years of screaming by the hemophilia community as well as the CDC, these companies shipped the contaminated product to China and various Latin American countries rather than throw billions in profit down the drain with a mass recall.

    Drug companies have basically been allowed to regulate themselves in the United States, with a staggering amount of influence in the workings of government through the system of bribery known as lobbying and campaign contributions.  The pharmaceutical industry is the thing that tells the 800-pound gorilla where to sleep.

    In the late ‘90s the lawsuits finally came, no thanks to the NHF, but to the hard work and due diligence of the patients themselves, working with their attorneys, pouring over internal corporate memos until the whole truth had been pieced together. Most hemophiliacs had aged beyond the statute of limitations requirements for a direct lawsuit, so the whole ugly incident was resolved with a $640 million settlement paid by Bayer AG, Baxter Healthacre Corp., Armour Pharmaceutical, and Alpha Therapeutics Corp. This amounted to $100,000 per person and I was one of the lucky recipients of this fabulous cash prize. I had more money than I’d ever seen in my life and these revered and trusted companies, these “angels of mercy,” were required to admit no guilt or criminal wrongdoing whatsoever. Everyone was a winner.

    Sure, most of my friends who had embarked with me on this grueling legal crusade were dead or dying, not to mention the wives and children they unknowingly infected, but surely we got something out of it. The blood supply is a little safer, although the CDC is warning of parvovirus and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease contamination, emerging pathogens, the scrappy up-and-comers to watch out for this season. An outbreak of fungal meningitis has been linked to steroid shots for back pain and has killed hundreds all over the country. Throughout every city and town, fretful Americans are standing in lines for flu shots containing God knows what because their doctors pressure them like a seasoned pusher, hoping for a sweet cash bonus for high patient compliance paid by the altruistic manufacturer of the drug.

    Rather than view these few examples as gross negligence, ominous pandemics, or even sinister conspiracies, just try to see it from the drug company’s point of view, imagine the treatment opportunities!  And we all know, in a culture of greed, exploitation and corruption, “treatment” is just another word for “profit.”

     (Mike Gibson is an artist, musician and writer, whose work has appeared in a wide variety of print and online publications. He currently resides in Palm Springs, California.)

    (If you have a Guest Column that you would like to submit, send it to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.  Not all material submitted is accepted for publication, but we appreciate each submission.)