Health

Getting unhooked on tech or how to reclaim your humanity

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Jan 072022

“Technology: your master, or your friend? Do you feel ruled by your smartphone and enslaved by your e-mail or social-network activities? Digital technology is making us miserable, say bestselling authors and former tech executives Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever. We’ve become a tribe of tech addicts—and it’s not entirely our fault.
”Taking advantage of vulnerabilities in human brain function, tech companies entice us to overdose on technology interaction. This damages our lives, work, families, and friendships. Swipe-driven dating apps train us to evaluate people like products, diminishing our relationships. At work, we e-mail on average 77 times a day, ruining our concentration. At home, light from our screens is contributing to epidemic sleep deprivation.
”But we can reclaim our lives without dismissing technology. The authors explain how to avoid getting hooked on tech and how to define and control the roles that tech is playing and could play in our lives. And they provide a guide to technological and personal tools for regaining control. This readable book turns personal observation into a handy action guide to adapting to our new reality of omnipresent technology.” [From the publisher’s website]

Your Happiness Was Hacked : Why Tech Is Winning the Battle to Control Your Brain — and How to Fight Back. Vivek Wadhwa, Alex Salkever. Oakland, CA: Berret-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2018.

An epidemic of overdiagnosis

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Feb 052018

From the publishers: “A complex web of factors has created the phenomenon of overdiagnosis: the popular media promotes fear of disease and perpetuates the myth that early, aggressive treatment is always best; in an attempt to avoid lawsuits, doctors have begun to leave no test undone, no abnormality overlooked; and profits are being made from screenings, medical procedures, and pharmaceuticals. Revealing the social, medical, and economic ramifications of a health-care system that overdiagnoses and overtreats patients, Dr. H. Gilbert Welch makes a reasoned call for change that would save us pain, worry, and money.” The author, however, is very clear: “Diagnosis is always important when people are suffering and it’s important that it be done well. None of my comments should be construed as suggesting you are better off not being diagnosed when you are sick. Finally, this book is not a condemnation of all of American medicine, nor a call for alternative medicine. I am conventionally trained in Western medicine, and I believe doctors do a lot of good. If you are sick, you should see one.”

Overdiagnosed : making people sick in the pursuit of health. Dr. H. Gilbert Welch. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 2011.

Some schemes that can make you sick

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Sep 172017

Collaboration is the name of the game. ‘The main reason we take so many drugs is that drug companies don’t sell drugs, they sell lies about drugs. This is what makes drugs so different from anything else in life…Virtually everything we know about drugs is what the companies have chosen to tell us and our doctors…the reason patients trust their medicine is that they extrapolate the trust they have in their doctors into the medicines they prescribe. The patients don’t realise that, although their doctors may know a lot about diseases and human physiology and psychology, they know very, very little about drugs that hasn’t been carefully concocted and dressed up by the drug industry…If you don’t think the system is out of control, then please email me and explain why drugs are the third leading cause of death…If such a hugely lethal epidemic had been caused by a new bacterium or a virus, or even one hundredth of it, we would have done everything we could to get it under control.’ [From the Introduction]. Be prepared to be shocked reading about confessions from an insider, the hall of shame for ‘big pharma’, conflicts of interest at medical journals, the corruptive influence of easy money, forceful and insistent drug advertising, too many warnings and too many drugs, the drug industry’s paradise (psychiatry) and a big etcetera.

Deadly medicines and organised crime : how big pharma has corrupted healthcare. Peter C. Gøtzsche. London: Radcliffe Publishing Ltd, 2013.

The real meaning of success, beyond money and power

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May 242017

If you make one too many withdrawals from your health bank account and only a few or no deposits then you will collapse on top of your money and your power, hopeless. This unfortunate situation may happen to you, among other miseries, if you balance your life on a two-legged stool holding onto your money and your power, as your only trophies for "success." Arianna Huffington, a very rich journalist, the president and editor in chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, wants with this book to define and review a third measure of success, the “third leg”, that in turn, consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving, which are “common themes embraced by people who are genuinely thriving in their lives”. What I like of this book, besides its clear message, it’s the fact that it was written by someone who draws from her own experience and who, in spite of all her riches, wants to share her own enlightenment.

Thrive : the third metric to redefining success and creating a life of well-being, wisdom, and wonder. Arianna Huffington. New York: Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, 2014.

The power of self-healing is a scientific reality

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Nov 302016

It’s 2013 and little by little physicians are realizing, and proclaiming, what ancient wisdom and cultures have always known: heal thyself. The subtitle of this great and refreshing book says it all: Scientific proof that you can heal yourself. Not that the medical establishment had been denying notable cases of spontaneous healing for the last 50 years, but this book stands out as a way of writing a “personal prescription” after a “personal self-healing diagnosis” like the one the author put herself through. The result: a “radical self-care.” The book starts with this reflection: “We’ve been led to believe that when we get sick, it’s our genetics. Or it’s just bad luck—and doctors alone hold the keys to optimal health.”

Mind over medicine : scientific proof that you can heal yourself. Lissa Rankin, M.D. Carlsbad, CA : Hay House, Inc., 2013.

The “Science of Life” to the rescue

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Feb 262015

What I find most striking about this book is how it encompasses, in less than 200 pages, most of the wisdom and “great tips” regarding good health that you had always heard somewhere else, namely, from “health gurus”, and “specialists”. It is because Ayurveda, the “science of life” is the primal source of the science of self-healing. Originating in Cosmic Consciousness, this millenary wisdom was intuitively received in the hearts of rishis or “seers of truth” who perceived that this consciousness is energy manifested into the five basic principles or elements which lie at the heart of Ayurvedic science: Ether, Air, Fire, Water and Earth, all present in every human being, considered therefore as a microcosm. The book is not only an enlightening treaty about how these elements relate to the organs of the senses and their actions and how Ayurveda aims to enable each individual to bring his body into a perfect harmonious relationship with that Consciousness, but it is also a useful guide on how to accomplish self healing. This practical guide includes indeed instructive illustrations, explanations on how disease develops, its diagnosis, treatment and helpful diet tips, as well as Yoga asanas or postures indicated for each ailment. And of course, last but no least, a chapter on “medicinals” including the kitchen pharmacy, or the healing power of food, metals, gems, stones and color therapy. This should definitely be one of your bedside books.

Ayurveda : the science of self-healing. Dr. Vasant Lad. Twin Lakes, Wisconsin: Lotus Press, Reprinted 2009. Published in 2004.