Health & mental health across cultures

It made me think of Oldgoat's comment in the Adam Giambrone affair that he may have been subconsciously sabotoging himself.  Any reading material would be helpful.

i read all 6 pages jas, very helpful, thanks.

Thanks Jas......

Find all info on schizophrenia interesting, as IMV, it is misunderstood, misactioned, and misapplied in this western world

"an attitude that certainly seems pestilent on Babble."

....stock portfolios to protect and pension plan investments, perhaps.....

Was at a North American or perhaps it was a world mental health conference  back in the early 2000's, can't remember now which it was as both were held here in BC that year.

There were 2 presenters of a work shop at the conference that held the position that schizophrenia. was actually PTSD undiagnosed in youth, that progressed without it being addressed, as people do/did not pay enough attention to how life traumas affects children.

What I found interesting in my reading of the links that Jas posted was the specialized "care" given to those who exhibited symptoms, as opposed to medications that are supposed to treat the symptoms but create a whole host of other side effects that require symptomatic treatment too. That this specialized care lessened or got rid of the schizophrenia was very interesting.

As the care outlined is a type of cognative therapy actually, which indicates to me again, or further, there was/is much validity in the 2 therapists claims within the workshop.

Briefly touches on the marketing of "problems" such as male baldness, erectile dysfuction, osteoporosis, and "social anxiety disorder".

For me, the marketing of depression that began in the 1990s comes to mind, as well. I remember at that time seeing depression "screening" clinics set up in, of all places, the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, the university, and other locations.

Oh, that's better.

Bumping to provide a vehicle to share or discuss alternative and non-western traditional approaches to health and mental health.

This is a somewhat parallel topic to this topic: Call Out: PsychOUT: A Conference for Organizing Resistance Against Psychiatry but with a slightly different and more positive focus on non-pharma, non- or pre-western approaches to health. 

I had a cousin that died in Thailand last year, very young.  He was very sensitive growing up, and I believe, but cannot prove that there were deeper mental issues going on.  In university, he got involved with Buddhism. It totally changed his life.  Just before he died, his mother went to Asia to visit him, and she said that she had never seen him happier in his life.

It is not just Buddhism. Yoga, has wonderful benefits as well. I'm just not the knotty type.

There are some western doctors who have found a direct link between stress and mental health on a biological level.  Too much stress like from a major trauma, childhood trauma, or ongoing abuse, or high stress jobs,  throws the stress hormones into over-production, and over time, the body loses the ability to synthesize that imbalance, and illness settles in.  What I personally like about this medical model from western sources, is that it explains and validates peoples' real life experiences, especially when no one listens to them or belives them, such as children who are being abused.

These western medical researchers believe that this change in chemical synthesis is the body's natural way of slowing itself down, when critically high levels of stress has been reached.  They consider it to be a life preservation mechanism built into us all.

If anything, meditation if practiced faithfully, teaches the mind to slow down and uses mental means of correcting hormonal imbalances in the body by learning how to deeply relax and to give the brain a rest from the stresses of everyday life.

That's my opinion anyway.

Reposting from this thread.

In a search for stats regarding cancer chemotherapy vs. no treatment I found these quotes: 

Conventional cancer treatments: if they don't kill you directly, they will make it easier for something else that will.

ETA: Of course, if Chavez had undergone naturopathic treatment, our defendants of "evidence-based" medicine here would be blaming that - and suggesting that his family sue the practitioner!

I was thinking exactly the same thing. I always wished that I had the opportunity and ability to convince him to examine the role of anti-oxidents and a nutritional approach to fighting his cancer battles.

see below.  Orthomolecular Treatments for Cancer. by Dr. Abram Hoffer.  Here is an anecdote, his first pertaining to cancer recovery, and the first of many...

There are other similar anecdotes in this article for those who wish to read it.  By simply using a change in diet and the implementation of certain nutrients, this man not only recovered from cancer, but he recovered from cancer induced psychosis as well.

(edit)...

For those wishing to debunk this as a bogus claim, please note that this anecdote has been circulating for over 50 years and has never been challenged as a bogus claim. Also note that there were NON-orthomolecular physicians and specialists involved in the case.

1. The resident doctor, who listened to Dr. Hoffer's directives.

2. The oncologist.

3. The Director of the Cancer Clinic.

4. The man was a retired university professor.

5. Dr. Hoffer treated him for his psychosis only, from which he recovered.

This post discusses the issue of fraudulent claims made by mainstream medical professionals about vitamins in order to discourage their usage.

From the same website on Orthomolecular Medicine for Cancer. 

I mentioned on other threads that the methodologies used to perform repeat independent studies that debunk the effectiveness of vitamins on health are fraudulent. This is what Dr. Abram Hoffer writes about Dr. Linus Pauling's experiences with his research being criticized by the mainstream medical community... (Note that the studies he is referring to pertain to the use of high levels of vitamin C for the treatment of cancer)...

Quote:

" At that meeting Dr. Linus Pauling delivered a vigorous and careful critique of the Mayo Clinic's attempt to repeat the studies he had done with Dr. Ewan Cameron in Scotland. The Mayo group claimed they had exactly repeated these studies but it was clear on reading their paper that they had not. Dr. Pauling did not object to their negatives findings. He objected to their statement that their conclusions resulting from a different method of administering the vitamin C were used to condemn his and Camerons findings. In other words no scientist can claim to confirm or deny any study unless they really have repeated the original work as described by the original authors."

Here is a quote from the very same website written by Dr. Linus Pauling about the intentional misrepresentation of facts about vitamins made by the mainstream medical community...

Quote:

"So the other day I got a book published by the National Academy of Sciences on control of diseases. It mentions practically nothing about vitamins and their usefulness but it does have something about common colds. A statement that 16 control trials have been turned out, every one of which showed that Vitamin C has no value in controlling the common cold, preventing or controlling the common cold. They didn't listen, but I'm sure they're the 16 control trials that I discuss in my books, where I give the amount of decrease in illness. Every one of these shows that Vitamin C has value, not that it doesn't have value. That's perhaps a minor misrepresentation.

A couple of years ago, I got two or three letters from people who sent me clippings from a magazine. One of them said he had stopped taking his Vitamin C because of the statement in this magazine. It was a quotation from the Professor of Medicine at Yale University Medical School. I had mentioned, three or four weeks ago, while speaking in Yale University Medical School, his statement that you shouldn't take as much as even one gram of Vitamin C per day because it will damage the liver.  So I wrote to him and said that I read the literature on Vitamin C to the extent that I can, and there are a couple of thousand new papers published every year about Vitamin C, but I missed the meal. Would you please send me the references to the work done on the damage done to the liver. Well, he was a gentleman, which you'd expect at Yale Medical School and often when I write letters like that I don't get an answer from them. He wrote back saying oh, that was just a mistake. That was the end of that. So far as I know he didn't write to the magazine and say that was a mistake, but he did say it to me. And there are lots of mistakes of this sort about vitamins that perhaps sometimes intentionally misrepresent the facts. For some perhaps there is a reason an economic, financial reason, that there is so much opposition in the medical establishment against improving your health by taking vitamins."

 

rats that aren't under stress don't erupt with tumours