Wellness in the News for September 2019
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Chinese Medicine for the Modern World
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Hormone Replacement Therapy and breast cancer
A recent study confirms what we already know, that prescribing hormones to women to control the heat of menopause will contribute to the incidence of breast cancer. The hormones prescribed are very yin. They control the rising heat that is very yang. The trouble is, they not only cool yang but they supply unnatural amounts of yin/material, which can get stuck in the breast and cause tumors.
A healthier route is to stop the hurrying and worrying that set up the heat condition in the first place. Also useful are slow breathing exercises, lots of sleep and rest, acupuncture, herbal formulas, and many other forms of healthy yin.
You can also overeat and put on fat. Fat cells, by the way, supply extra yin/estrogen, which is why overeating is popular with many menopausal women. But I don't recommend it.
Obesity tied to weakened sense of taste
Here's a report on an experiment with rats and their brains. Seems the fatter they got, the weaker their ability to taste food. Which points up the ridiculousness of telling overweight people to eat subtle tasting vegetables in order to get lean. Not gonna happen. Guilt helps no one.
On the other side, this study confirms the fact that we all can use our diminished sense of taste to put the fork or chopsticks down as soon as the deliciousness begins to drop. That's our body's way of warning us of impending weight gain.
Why animals eat what they eat
What an animal eats is a fundamental aspect of its biology. It eats what it can digest and avoids what it cannot digest. Humans fall into that elite category of "omnivore," neither meat-eater nor plant-eater, but EVERYTHING EATER. That's basically the Chinese view, and it's my view too.
So many patients have come to me confused and distressed. "Doc, just tell me what to eat." I can have only one answer for them. "Eat if, when, and what you body tells you to." They usually find that advice to be disturbing at first, since everyone else in their lives is constantly telling them what to eat and not eat.
Insomnia, cigarettes, alcohol, and coffee
Researchers at Florida Atlantic University conclude that smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol before bedtime often disrupt sleep, but, to their surprise, coffee-drinking does not.
Inhaling hot gasses (smoking) and imbibing damp heat (alcohol) naturally induce internal excess heat, which disturbs the shen and rousts it out of its cozy home to wander the streets at night like a werewolf.
The causes of internal excess heat
Pathogenic heat is a modern scourge, responsible for so many health problems in type and number that humanity has never seen before. Inflammatory, autoimmune, and mental disorders just keep getting worse. Let's discuss their causes.
1. HURRYING: Deprivation of sleep and rest; continual rushing; multitasking; not taking breaks; overscheduling; doing everything fast
2. WORRYING: Stagnation in the future or past, neither of which exist, causes turbulence, friction, and heat
3. OVEREATING: Eating more food than the body calls for creates a hot swamp full of nasty swamp creatures (damp heat)
4. SMOKING: Adds hot gasses to the inside of the body
5. STIMULANTS: Adds substances into the body that speed up natural functions while delaying sleep and rest
Nanotechnology used to combat prostate cancer
A nanometer is the length of 5 carbon atoms strung together. That's how small scientists are building machines these days. And it's going to get a lot smaller and a lot more sophisticated.
Whatever medical advances you could possibly imagine using technology at that scale will probably come about.
Here's the link to the report.