Honey As An Ethnoremedy

Honey In Traditional And Modern Medicine

The use of honey as a medicine is referred to in the most ancient written records, it being prescribed by the physicians of many ancient races of people for a wide variety of ailments (Ransome 1937). It has continued to be used in folk medicine ever since. There are abundant references to honey as medicine in ancient scrolls, tablets, and books. It was prescribed for a variety of illnesses. Excavated medical tablets from Mesopotamia indicate that honey was a common ingredient in many prescriptions (Hajar 2002).
In ancient Egyptian medicine, honey was the most frequent ingredient in all the drug recipes for both internal and external use listed in the Ebers and Edwin Smith Papyri. According to the Ebers papyrus (1550 BC), it is included in 147 prescriptions in external applications. Also, according to the Smith papyrus (1700 BC), it was used in wound healing: “Thou shouldst bind [the wound] with fresh meat the first day [and] treat afterwards with grease, honey [and] lint every day until he recovers.” Honey was used for treatment of stomach pain and urinary retention and as ointment for dry skin. It was used as ointment for wounds and burns, skin irritation, and eye diseases. The Ebers Papyrus contains a description on how to make ointment from honey and how to apply it, with a note: “Notice that this is a very good therapy.” The author of the Smith Papyrus directed that honey be applied topically, with few if any other possibly active ingredients, to wounds.
In old Egypt, honey was the only active ingredient in an ointment described in the Ebers Papyrus for application to the surgical wound of circumcision. Ebers also specifies that an ointment for the ear be made of one-third honey and two-thirds oil. The concentration of honey in seven oral remedies in the Chester Beatty VI Papyrus ranges from 10% to 50%, whereas its proportion in other remedies ranges from 20% to 84%. Honey could very well have provided some kind of protection from the kinds of bacteria most likely to infect wounds, at least enough protection to permit wounds to begin healing on their own.
The ancient Egyptians were not the only people who used honey as medicine. The Chinese, Indians, ancient Greeks, Romans, and Arabs used honey in combination with other herbs and on its own to treat wounds and various other diseases.
In old Greece, the honeybee, a sacred symbol of Artemis, was an important design on Ephesian coins for almost six centuries. Aristotle (384–322 BC) described for the first time the production of honey. Aristotle believed that eating honey prolonged life. Hippocrates (460–377 BC) speaks about the healing virtues of honey: “cleans sores and ulcers, softens hard ulcers of the lips, heals cabuncles and running sores.” Hippocrates is quoted as saying, “I eat honey and use it in the treatment of many diseases because honey offers good food and good health.” Dioscorides (AD 40–90), a Greek physician who traveled as a surgeon with the armies of the Roman emperor Nero, compiled De Materia Medica around AD 77, which was the foremost classic source of modern botanical terminology and the leading pharmacologic text until the 15th century. In addition to excellent descriptions of nearly 600 plants and 1000 simple drugs, Dioscorides described the medicinal and dietetic value of animal derivatives such as milk and honey. Dioscorides stated that honey could be used as a treatment for stomach disease, for a wound that has pus, for hemorrhoids, and to stop coughing. “Honey opens the blood vessels and attracts moisture. If cooked and
applied to fresh wounds, it seals them. It is good for deep dirty wounds. Honey mixed with salt could be dropped inside a painful ear. It will reduce the pain and swelling of the ear. It will kill lice if infested children skin is painted with it. It may also improve vision. Gargle with honey to reduce tonsil swelling. For coughing, drink warm honey and mix with rose oil.” Galen recommended warming up the honey or cooking it, then using it to treat hemorrhoids and deep wounds.
In ancient Rome, honey was mentioned many times by the writers Vergil, Varro, and Plinius. Especially Virgil’s Georgics is a classic where he describes in detail how honey is made. During the time of Julius Caesar, honey was used as a substitute for gold to pay taxes. In the first century AD, Apicus, a wealthy Roman gourmet, wrote a series of books in which more than half the recipes included honey (Bogdanov 2009). A Roman Catholic saint (St. Ambrose) stated, “The fruit of the bees is desired of all and is equally sweet to kings and beggars and is not only pleasing but profitable and healthful, it sweetens their mouths, cures their wounds, and conveys remedies to inward ulcers.” The Roman, Pliny the Elder, said that mixing fish oil with honey was an excellent treatment for ulcers.
In medieval high cultures of the Arabs, the Byzantines, and medieval Europe, honey was important too, and in these cultures, most sweet meals contained honey.
The Compendium of Medicine by Gilbertus Anglicus is one of the largest sources of pharmaceutical and medical information from medieval Europe. Translated in the early 15th century from Latin to Middle English, the text consists of medicinal recipes with guides to diagnosis, medicinal preparation, and prognosis. The text names more than 400 ingredients. Treatments are presented roughly from “head to tail,” so to speak, beginning with headache and ending with hemorrhoids. Honey was a frequent ingredient to many of the remedies and it was combined with other medicinal herbs commonly used at that time. Excerpts appear below:
Headache … let him use oxymel … made of honey and vinegar; two parts of vinegar and the third part of honey, mixed together and simmered. Pimples … anoint it with clean honey, or with the powder of burnt beans and honey, or with the powder of purslane and honey mixed together. Pennyroyal … taken with honey, cleanse the lungs and clear the chest of all gross and thick humors. (Fay Marie Getz 1991)
Germans used honey and cod liver oil for ulcerations, burns, fistulas, and boils in addition to a honey salve, which was mixed with egg yolk and flour for boils and sores (Newman 1983).
AlBasri (Ali Bin Hamzah AlBasri), a 10th century Arab philosopher, mentioned uncooked honey for swollen intestine, whereas cooked honey was good for inducing vomiting when a poisonous drug was ingested. For that purpose, he recommended mixing one pound of sesame oil with one-third pound of cooked honey. Al Razi (Rhazes, AD 864–932), a renowned Muslim physician famous for writing a treatise distinguishing measles from smallpox, claimed that honey ointment made of flour and honey vinegar was good for skin disease and sports nerve injuries and recommended the use of honey water for bladder wounds. His book, Al Hawi (Encyclopedia of Medicine), a comprehensive medical textbook of medicine, which was translated from Arabic to Latin in the 13th century and became a standard textbook of medicine up to the 1700s stated: “Honey is the best treatment for the gums. To keep the teeth healthy mix honey with vinegar and use as mouth wash daily. If you rub the teeth with such a preparation it will whiten the teeth. Honey does not spoil and could also be used to preserve cadavers.” Likewise, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), another famous Muslim physician whose great medical treatise, the Canon, was the standard textbook on medicine in the Arab world and Europe until the 17th century, wrote: “Honey is good for prolonging life, preserve activity in old age. If you want to keep your youth, take honey. If you are above the age of 45, eat honey regularly, especially mixed with chestnut powder. Honey and flour could be used as dressing for wounds. For lung disease, early stage of tuberculosis, use a combination of honey and shredded rose petals. Honey can be used for insomnia on occasions.”
The Hindu Scripture, Veda, which was composed about 1500 BC and written down about 600 BC, speak of “this herb, born of honey, dripping honey, sweet honey, honied, is the remedy for injuries. Lotus honey is used for eye diseases. It is used as topical eye ointment in measles to prevent corneal scarring” (Imperato and Traore 1969), “moreover it crushes insects.” In the section on Hymn to All Magic and Medicinal Plants, honey is used as a universal remedy: “The plants … which removes disease, are full of blossoms, and rich in honey … do I call to exempt him from injury” (Bogdanov 2009).
In ancient China, honey has been mentioned in the book of songs Shi Jing, written in the 6th century BC. According to Chinese medicine, honey acts according to the principles of the Earth element, acting mainly on the stomach and on the spleen. It has Yang character, acting on the Triple Heater Meridian (Shaoyang) (Bogdanov 2009).
In Central and South America, honey from stingless bees was used for ages, long before Columbus. Honey of the native stingless bees was used and regarded as a gift of the gods; it was also a sign of fertility and was given as an offering to the gods (Bogdanov 2009).
Africa has also a long tradition of a bee use for honey, both in the high cultures of Mediterranean Africa and in the more primitive cultures in regions to the south. Honey is used to treat infected leg ulcers in Ghana (Ankra-Badu 1992) and earaches in Nigeria (Obi et al. 1994). Other uses include treatment of gastric ulcers and constipation (Molan 1999).

Source: "Honey in Traditional and Modern Medicine (Traditional Herbal Medicines for Modern Times)" 1st Edition by Laïd Boukraâ (Editor)

25 Days: A Proven Program to Rewire Your Brain

25 Days: A Proven Program to Rewire Your Brain

Why twenty-five days? you ask. Let’s just say I’m partial to numbers that finally
work in my favor.
If you’ve ever heard of the notion that death always comes in threes, I can
personally vouch for that. In my case, death came three times for me in the same
night. But instead of losing my life, the experience changed it, affecting the way I
would view health and fitness from that day forward.
It was October 4, 2004, midway through my twenty-one-year career in fitness
and nutrition, when, while I was seated at the computer, my heart—
simply—
stopped—
beating.
Thirty seconds later, I recovered on my own, only to have my heart fail again
minutes later. I had no pulse. I wasn’t breathing. I was officially dead for the second
time for about six minutes before being revived by a paramedic, who plunged a big
needle full of epinephrine into my heart and defibrillated me three times.
My heart was beating, but I had been without oxygen to my brain to the point
where my lungs had already shut down. I had a pulse but no lung activity, so they
hooked me up to a ventilator and rushed me to the hospital. That’s where my heart
quit on me a third and final time. It took a minimum of ten defibrillations to bring
me back to life before I fell into a coma for three days. But that night, I made the
history books in a way I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
I died three times in three hours and became the world’s only known medical
case to survive three consecutive sudden cardiac arrests (SCA) without any kind of
implanted defibrillator.
When I woke up, I began to pull out all of my intravenous tubes because I didn’t
understand where I was—all I knew was that I wanted to get out of there. They
sedated me and removed me from life support, but I had no short-term memory. I
didn’t know who my parents were, or my girlfriend. You could tell me something,
and ninety seconds later, I wouldn’t know what you were talking about. But it
wasn’t amnesia. It was simply the inability to retain anything. In fact, to this day, I
have a blank space in my brain and can’t recall anything from October 4 until
Thanksgiving—two months of my life are still missing from my memory.
After enduring a week’s worth of tests and having a cardio defibrillator device
implanted in my chest, I was sent home with no real answers. The medical
community was surprised that I had survived and shocked that it had found
nothing wrong with my heart or any evidence of damage. The only two things
doctors were certain about was that a “random” electrical malfunction—most likely
stress—had caused my SCAs and that my being in shape and living a healthy
lifestyle were behind the fact that I was still alive.
Even though I left the hospital with what seemed to be a normal working brain,
I knew something wasn’t quite right. Due to the lack of oxygen flow to my brain
during my SCAs, I couldn’t stay focused and even found myself suffering from
clinical depression. It wouldn’t be until much later, after being diagnosed by Jeff
Ricks, MD, one of the world’s foremost experts on mass trauma management, that
I would discover I had battled what is known medically as mild brain trauma. But
at that moment, I just knew that the way my brain was working was not working
for me.
Up until my incident, I had been working as a personal trainer for ten years and
had been working extensively with NFL and NBA athletes in their off-seasons.
During that time, I trained both myself and my clients using very strict routines:
carefully planned workouts designed to prevent plateaus by gradually changing the
intensity, specificity, and volume over the course of twelve to twenty weeks. The
diets I relied on were even more complicated, involving three separate twelve- to
twenty-week phases.
I was a measurer, a calorie counter, and focused on every single nutrient level in
every single food. I even wore a watch and set alarms to remind myself to eat at
exact times, just to try to capitalize on my body’s hormonal functions around
whatever stimulus I was getting by eating a particular food. If all that sounds
confusing, trust me, it was. In fact, it was nauseating.
But after my SCAs, I was suddenly someone who had to monitor his stress, so it
was unhealthy for me to follow complex and frustrating programs anymore. I was
also still someone who couldn’t remember what he had just done minutes before.
Sometimes my watch would go off, and I wouldn’t know what meal I was on.
Sometimes I wouldn’t even know what day it was. It was unbearable and undoable,
which was why I decided to stop everything I was trying to do and simplify it. I had
to work around my brain to keep my body from falling apart.
Instead of trying to focus on exercise and diet programs lasting twelve to twenty
weeks, I started focusing on one meal at a time. One snack at a time. One workout
at a time. And for each time I ate healthy or finished a workout, I gave myself a
grade of 100 percent. At the end of the day, I would sit down and go over
everything I had done—even if I didn’t remember doing half of what was on my
list. If I managed to do everything and I scored 100 percent on every meal, snack,
and workout, I considered myself successful.
And the next day, I would do it again. And the day after that.
At the end of the week, I added up my total score to see how successful I had
been for five days straight. After five consecutive blocks of five days, I added up my
score again, just to have a sense of the past month. Eventually, as my short-term
memory slowly returned and my depression lifted, within months, I was a changed
man—both physically and mentally. I was imminently aware that something felt
better about the program compared with methods I had used in the past.
Beyond getting back into incredible shape, the first thing I noticed was how
calm I became. I was no longer as worried about how my meals were balanced, and
I stopped weighing and measuring everything. Instead, I took an eyeball approach
with all my servings. I knew I was still eating healthy, but I took a very general
preventive health approach to my diet, instead of the very strict, hard-line approach
I had been used to following.
I also noticed that I was no longer that person who was hard to go out to eat
with, so my friends no longer had to kill themselves trying to find restaurants that
could accommodate my crazy dietary habits. Suddenly I could eat anywhere. I
accepted that every meal wouldn’t be perfect but so long as I ate certain foods,
everything would be all right.
I returned to work as a top trainer three months after my incident and started
using 25Days with clients immediately. But to be honest, I didn’t start them on it
because of the amazing results I had seen in myself; I did it because it was the only
way I could keep track of their programs! I had them carry journals and grade
themselves at every meal, snack, and day I wasn’t training them, so I always knew
exactly what to do and where they had slipped along the way.
It made my training job easier and made their outcomes more enjoyable for
them by streamlining my approach to diet and exercise into a twenty-five-day block
of time. By having them focus on what really mattered to get results, and asking
them to grade themselves each day, it left my clients feeling equally relaxed and as if
they were kicking life in the ass each and every day. And then an interesting thing
happened.
Before my SCAs, I had always had a great success rate with all my clients in
getting them to get onto the difficult-to-manage nutrition programs I was
suggesting. But even though I had a really high success rate, it wasn’t maintainable
practically in a real-world situation. Suddenly my clients weren’t just hitting their
fitness and weight loss goals faster and more often, they were making positive
changes within other facets of their lives—and feeling like a success every step of the
way.
So . . . Is Your Life Worth Twenty-five Days?
For me, 25Days didn’t start as a choice—it began as something I needed to do to
overcome an obstacle.
I can’t eliminate my obstacle. I see it every day when I step out of the shower
and notice the scar on my chest. I’m reminded whenever I look down at Lucky, my
heart therapy service dog who works with me twenty-four hours a day. I’m aware of
it each time I offer him my palm to lick to make sure I’m doing okay—and any
time he gets me out of harm’s way if he senses my cortisol levels going through the
roof unexpectedly.
No, I can’t eliminate my obstacle, but I have no fear of it anymore. I’ve become
stronger than my obstacle—and so can you. So tell me, what’s your obstacle?
I know you have one, or you wouldn’t be reading this. We all have some kind of
barrier to becoming the best version of ourselves. And for many, that obstacle is
usually doubt or fear of failure. Either way, it makes them feel that they can never
be successful.
So I challenge you with this: Is your life worth twenty-five days?
Is the effort of putting in just twenty-five days too much to risk to eliminate
that obstacle for the rest of your life?
If, after twenty-five days, you begin to uncover a way to be consistently healthy
so you can live a life of full potential, then isn’t it worth it to try doing away with
that obstacle? I want you to have the best life possible, and the way to do that is
through the same commonsense, straightforward, no-nonsense approach that saved
me and has been successful with all of my clients. That’s what the 25Days program
is really all about. That said, take a deep breath. Now blow it out. If you’ve failed
every other time in your life or you’ve never tried for fear of failing, I want you to
relax. This will be the time you succeed. This is the way to be able to stay healthy
for the rest of your life. This is the way to rewire your brain to make it effortless to
make the choices necessary to live the life you deserve.
This is so much easier than you think it is. Just give me twenty-five days to show
you.

New biomarker could lead to early detection of Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD)

Researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) have identified a peptide that could lead to the early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The discovery, published in Nature Communications, may also provide a means of homing drugs to diseased areas of the brain to treat AD, Parkinson's disease, as well as glioblastoma, brain injuries and stroke.

"Our goal was to find a new biomarker for AD," says Aman Mann, Ph.D., research assistant professor at SBP who shares the lead authorship of the study with Pablo Scodeller, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at SBP. "We have identified a peptide (DAG) that recognizes a protein that is elevated in the brain blood vessels of AD mice and human patients. The DAG target, connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) appears in the AD brain before amyloid plaques, the pathological hallmark of AD."

"CTGF is a protein that is made in the brain in response to inflammation and tissue repair," explains Mann. "Our finding that connects elevated levels of CTGF with AD is consistent with the growing body of evidence suggesting that inflammation plays an important role in the development of AD."

The research team identified the DAG peptide using in vivo phage display screening at different stages of AD development in a mouse model. In young AD mice, DAG detected the earliest stage of the disease. If the early appearance of the DAG target holds true in humans, it would mean that DAG could be used as a tool to identify patients at early, pre-symptomatic stages of the disease when treatments already available may still be effective.

"Importantly, we showed that DAG binds to cells and brain from AD human patients in a CTGF-dependent manner" says Mann. "This is consistent with an earlier report of high CTGF expression in the brains of AD patients."

"Our findings show that endothelial cells, the cells that form the inner lining of blood vessels, bind our DAG peptide in the parts of the mouse brain affected by the disease," says Erkki Ruoslahti, M.D., Ph.D., distinguished professor at SBP and senior author of the paper. "This is very significant because the endothelial cells are readily accessible for probes injected into the blood stream, whereas other types of cells in the brain are behind a protective wall called the blood-brain barrier. The change in AD blood vessels gives us an opportunity to create a diagnostic method that can detect AD at the earliest stage possible.

"But first we need to develop an imaging platform for the technology, using MRI or PET scans to differentiate live AD mice from normal mice. Once that's done successfully, we can focus on humans," adds Ruoslahti.

"As our research progresses we also foresee CTGF as a potential therapeutic target that is unrelated to amyloid beta (Aβ), the toxic protein that creates brain plaques," says Ruoslahti. "Given the number of failed clinical studies that have sought to treat AD patients by targeting Aβ, it's clear that treatments will need to be given earlier--before amyloid plaques appear--or have to target entirely different pathways.

"DAG has the potential to fill both roles -- identifying at risk individuals prior to overt signs of AD and targeted delivery of drugs to diseased areas of the brain. Perhaps CTGF itself can be a drug target in AD and other brain disorders linked to inflammation. We'll just have to learn more about its role in these diseases".

This technology has been licensed to a startup company, AivoCode Inc.

Source: www.sbpdiscovery.org/

Canola oil linked to worsening of Alzheimer’s

Canola oil linked to worsening of Alzheimer’s

Canola oil has been marketed as a healthy cooking oil choice because of the low levels of saturated fats that is seen in it. Now a new study has revealed that consumption of canola oil could be linked to worsening of memory functions and learning ability in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

The study also shows that canola oil consumption could increase the risk of formation of plaques within the brain that is the signature feature of Alzheimer’s disease and also lead to weight gain. The study titled, “Effect of canola oil consumption on memory, synapse and neuropathology in the triple transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease” was published in the latest issue of the journal Scientific Reports.

This is the first study that shows that consumption of canola oil is not a beneficial choice for the brain. Senior study investigator Professor Domenico Praticò, Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Microbiology and director of the Alzheimer's Center at Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM) in Philadelphia, explained that canola oil has been advertised as being healthy and is easily a more “appealing” choice because it is cheaper than other vegetable oils. There have been little or no studies that link its effects on the brain Praticò said.

For this study the team of researchers used a laboratory mice model that was specifically designed to mimic Alzheimer's in humans. These rodents would show no symptoms of memory loss and learning problems early in life and slowly progress to symptoms of Alzheimer’s as they aged. They were classified into two groups at six months of age before they showed any signs of memory loss. One group was given normal diet and the other group received diet supplemented with about two tablespoons of canola oil daily. They were all assessed after a year.

It was seen that canola oil consumption increased body weight significantly over normal diet. Working memory and learning abilities also were reduced in the canola oil group. To test this scientists usually use a set of mazes that the mice need to navigate through. The brains of all the mice were studied and it was noted that amyloid beta 1-40 levels were lower with canola oil consumption. This peptide is known to be protective against Alzheimer’s disease. This group of animals also developed amyloid plaques in the brain that is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. The injuries in the brain were extensive upon examination.

Dr Praticò said, “Based on the evidence from this study, canola oil should not be thought of as being equivalent to oils with proven health benefits.” He explained that they are planning longer studies to check upon the extent of harm caused by the oil and also its effects on other types of dementia and memory loss.

Elisabetta Lauretti, a graduate student in Dr. Pratico’s laboratory at LKSOM and co-author on the new study had earlier worked with him to study the effect of olive oil on Alzheimer’s disease in the same laboratory. This had shown that olive oil was beneficial in terms of brain health. That study too was published earlier this year.

Source: www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17373

Wash Away Stress With The Power Of Nature

IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS TODAY, you’re in for a big surprise.  Why? Because your time out in nature isn’t just a nice antidote to the digital world, it has real wellbeing benefits.

Yep, spending time in green spaces is a scientifically proven wellness concept that comes with an official name: ‘forest bathing’. The Japanese coined the phrase shinrin-yoku way back in 1982 (roughly translated as ‘taking in the forest atmosphere’ or ‘forest bathing’) and have turned it into a form of therapy that’s now thought to lower blood pressure, improve mood and focus and reduce stress. In fact, shinrinyoku is so popular it’s now part of Japan’s national health policy, with millions being spent on research and more than 55 official forest trails being created, with plans for many more. And it’s not only the Japanese who are heading for leafy areas. In Malaysia, the concept is known as mandi embun or ‘bathing in the forest dew’ and it’s catching on in South Korea, Taiwan, Finland, and (not surprisingly) Australia.

Nature’s medicine

Research shows that immersing yourself in natural, green spaces can improve creativity, mood, memory and focus – and that’s just for starters. Hypnotherapist Edrina Rush says it’s because we’re wired to be engrossed in nature and appreciate natural surroundings - especially when there’s an abundance of greenery. “Green is the colour we see the most in nature and it also signifies balance,  calm and harmony,” she explains.

There’s evidence that your pituitary gland is stimulated, your muscles are more relaxed and your blood histamine levels increase when you’re exposed to the colour green. Rush adds that going outdoors can also help to manage levels of serotonin, the neurotransmitter that regulates our mood, behaviour and appetite.

“Too much serotonin and we can become irritable and tense, but too little serotonin and we can become depressed. Breathing fresh air [with more oxygen in it] can help regulate our serotonin [which is affected by oxygen], promoting wellbeing.”

Happily, the feel-good factor triggered by forest bathing can also have a positive one effect on loved ones. “They’re most likely to reap the rewards of our positive psychological gain from spending time in forests,” says psychologist Dr Saima Latif.

The numerous wellbeing benefits of nature mean therapists are beginning to take their clients outdoors. Psychologist Maz Miller from Walk Different (walkdifferent.com.au) is one therapist tapping the benefits of Australia’s beautiful natural scenery for her walk-and-talk sessions in Sydney’s south, and she says it offers a unique opportunity to help patients unwind. “Practising mindfulness with ocean sounds is very different to trying to imitate that in an office with some music,” she explains. “People open  up much more [in nature], they feel more comfortable when they’re looking around.”

Take it slow

As far as wellbeing trends go, this one’s pretty easy to pull off - you simply visit a forest, park or bushland, and walk while taking in your surroundings. It’s important to note that this practice isn’t a fast-paced one – it’s all about moving mindfully, contemplating your surroundings and allowing the serene setting to ‘wash’ your soul and rejuvenate your mind and body.

“Forest bathing is one of my favourite self-love practices,” says Chloe Kerman, 36, former fashion editor-turned-shamanic healer (chloeisidora.com). “I encourage clients and friends to connect with nature by walking in silence and allowing all of their senses to pick up information.” Kerman likes to lie down at the base of a tree and meditate – a process she finds deeply relaxing. “I often leave a forest- bathing session feeling happier, relaxed, in tune and inspired with creative ideas and increased energy,” she says.

Wondering why large, leafy places evoke these feelings? One study published in the journal Public Health reveals that being in a forest setting benefits acute emotions, and is especially effective at soothing chronic stress.  As well as reducing feelings of anxiety, it helps lower the risk of stress-related diseases. “The forest environment lowers your blood pressure, reduces your levels  of stress hormones and increases levels of serum adiponectin, which helps to prevent obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease,” says Dr Latif. “The positive health effects of viewing natural landscapes on stress levels and on speed of recovery from stress or mental fatigue, faster physical recovery from illness and long-term improvement of health and wellbeing are reported in research.”

Into the woods

To dip into the forest bathing trend yourself, “Take longer walks in local parks and be present to the sounds and surroundings,” says Rush. “Go where it’s less busy and leave your phone at home.” She advises walking slowly, taking time to pause and tuning in to the sounds of birds and nature. “Touch leaves and walk barefoot to feel the sensations,” she suggests, adding that it’s a good opportunity to sit and take a few deep, conscious breaths, too.

If you’re ready to explore beyond your local park, look up your nearest national park ’s trails, or pick up a copy of Walks in Nature: Australia by Viola Design (Explore Australia, $29.95) for  112 tracks in and around the nation’s major cities (including foodie pit stop recommendations!). Make sure you’re wearing comfortable walking gear, including sturdy shoes or hiking boots,and take water and some snacks for the road if you’re planning on being in the bush for a while. Oh, and if you’re forest bathing alone, always make sure you tell someone where you’ll be and how long you expect the adventure to take.

Want some company on the trail?

There are several accredited forest bathing guides in Australia who can help you soak up all the wellbeing benefits from your  experience. Visit natureandforesttherapy. org to search for a guide in your area.

While getting outside is obviously ideal, you don’t have to physically visit a forest to enjoy its restorative powers. A recent study by the BBC and the University of California found that you can access some of the wellbeing benefits of this trend merely by watching nature documentaries. “Just viewing a forest scene has been documented to have a very positive effect on psychological healing and recovery from stress, especially for those from urbanised environments,” Dr Latif says.

Filling your home environment with natural light, plants and flowers can also increase your connection with nature, as interior designer Olivia Heath explains. “Research tells us that when we improve that sense of nature, directly or indirectly, it can create a more calming, restful, restorative and energising space,” she says. Try filling your home with easy care indoor greenery, such as maidenhair ferns, spider plants and rubber fig trees to bring the forest into your everyday world, and get back to nature more often.

Love this? Search for more like it on www.womensfitness.com.au

Exercising twice a week may improve memory in people with MCI

Exercising twice a week may improve thinking ability and memory in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), according to a guideline released by the American Academy of Neurology. The recommendation is an update to the AAN's previous guideline on mild cognitive impairment and is published in the December 27, 2017, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The guideline is endorsed by the Alzheimer's Association.

Mild cognitive impairment is a medical condition that is common with aging. While it is linked to problems with thinking ability and memory, it is not the same as dementia. People with MCI have milder symptoms. They may struggle to complete complex tasks or have difficulty understanding information they have read, whereas people with dementia have trouble with daily tasks, such as dressing, bathing and eating. However, there is strong evidence that MCI can lead to dementia.

"It's exciting that exercise may help improve memory at this stage, as it's something most people can do and of course it has overall health benefits," said lead author Ronald C. Petersen, MD, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. "Because MCI may progress to dementia, it is particularly important that MCI is diagnosed early."

According to the guideline, doctors should recommend that people with MCI exercise regularly as part of an overall approach to managing their symptoms. Although long-term studies have not been conducted, six-month studies suggest twice-weekly workouts may improve memory.

The guideline states that there are no FDA-approved medications for the treatment of MCI. Moreover, there are no high-quality, long-term studies that suggest drugs or dietary changes can improve thinking ability or delay memory problems in people with MCI.

The guideline states that doctors may recommend cognitive training for people with MCI. There is weak evidence that cognitive training may be beneficial in improving measures of cognitive function.

The American Academy of Neurology's guideline authors developed the recommendations after reviewing all available studies on MCI. Worldwide, more than 6 percent of people in their 60s have MCI, and the condition becomes more common with age. More than 37 percent of people age 85 and older have it.

"If you or others have noticed that you are forgetful and are having trouble with complex tasks, you should see your doctor to be evaluated and not assume that it is just part of normal aging," said Petersen. "Sometimes memory problems are a side effect of medications, sleep disturbances, depression, or other causes that can be treated. It is important to meet with your doctor to determine the root cause. Early action may keep memory problems from getting worse."

Source: www.aan.com

Ask the Expert: Collagen Peptides for Bones and Joints

Q: Lately, I've been hearing that collagen peptides help alleviate bone and joint issues. What exactly are collagen peptides, and are their health claims evidence based?

A: Collagen is a protein that's part of bone, cartilage, and other tissues in humans and animals. People consume collagen from animals, such as chicken, bone broth (though bone broth has little collagen in it), or supplements. Collagen peptides are the broken down and more easily absorbed protein fragments of collagen, but most sources use the terms interchangeably. You'll find many Paleo advocates promoting collagen peptides, touting their ability to decrease joint pain associated with arthritis and surgery and improve overall bone and joint health. However, clinical studies on the role of collagen peptides in bone and joint health are limited.

Research
A 2016 systematic review published in BMC Medicine looked at 197 studies starting in January 1980.1 Researchers found that based on the available literature, a significant amount of in vitro and in vivo evidence exists on many collagen peptides. They also found that several collagen peptides helped upregulate bone healing response in experimental models and potentially could be used for future clinical applications. However, based on the limited number of peptides studied in clinical trials, researchers have determined the results are limited and more research is needed.

Evidence also shows conflicting results, specifically regarding the effects of collagen on rheumatoid arthritis. A 1993 study published in Science found that taking collagen orally at 0.1 mg/day for one month followed by 0.5 mg/day for two months improved joint pain and swelling.2 However, a similar study published in 1999 in Arthritis & Rheumatology using the same dosage as the aforementioned study continued supplementation for five months, with results showing no improvements.3 A 2008 study published in Nutrition Journal found that collagen supplementation had short-term effects in relieving pain in subjects with osteoarthritis; however, the authors questioned whether the effects are long lasting.4

Safety
According to the Therapeutic Research Center Natural Medicines database, collagen type II—a major structural protein responsible for tensile strength and toughness in the cartilage—taken orally is possibly safe in doses up to 2.5 mg/day for no more than 24 weeks.5 Other collagen products, including bovine collagen, have caused allergic reactions. Possible side effects include nausea, heartburn, diarrhea, constipation, drowsiness, skin reactions, and headache. There are no known interactions with drugs, foods, herbs, and supplements at this time.

Recommendations for Practitioners
Some RDs recommend collagen supplements when counseling athletes. "Many in the Paleo community tout collagen for helping with skin, gut, and joint health in addition to improving performance," says Kim Feeney, MS, RD, CSSD, LD, CSCS, a sports performance dietitian for the US Air Force located in San Antonio. "There is research supporting some of these claims, but it is likely not the silver bullet it is described to be." Feeney believes the potential benefits of appropriately using a collagen supplementation protocol in conjunction with physical therapy outweigh any risks associated with taking the supplement. However, if a client chooses to take collagen supplements, they shouldn't be educated only about the potential side effects but also be made aware of the lack of clinical trials, especially since there isn't evidence of long-term efficacy.



Source: Today's Dietitian Magazine November 2017

Coffee's Power To Boost Performance

Athletes of all levels are catching on to coffee's power to boost performance. Increasingly popular in gyms and among endurance athletes, coffee is a better fuel than sweetened sports beverages, as it has no sugar, few calories, and these incredible capabilities:

*  Improves speed and power during exercise

*  Preferentially burns fat while you exercise

*  Combats oxidation of free radicals

Coffee is the best training aid I've encountered in my years as a competitive Nordic skier, cyclist, marathoner, Ironman participant, alpine racer, and big-ocean stand-up paddler. By increasing your anaerobic threshold, coffee allows you to work at a higher pace, harder and longer than you otherwise might. While you're working harder, longer, and faster, caffeinated coffee can even help you burn fat instead of sugar. Caffeine frees up fatty acids from your fat stores, so you can burn them immediately as fuel. Preserving sugar stores in muscle this way is the secret to going faster and farther in endurance sports.

While helping you burn fat, coffee also can increase speed and power during exercise.

Sports scientists in the United Kingdom studying this potential in coffee discovered groundbreaking results in 2013. As simple a change as drinking coffee an hour before a maximum endurance test, called a time trial, spurred cyclists to ride significantly faster, with notably greater power.6

How hard does exercise feel to you? Scientists measure this as perceived exertion. While numerous studies have demonstrated coffee's ability to increase power, speed, and endurance, the research we conducted with Dr. Nieman at NCRC showed that coffee can also make exercise feel easier. We studied high-phenol coffee's influence on performance as well as mood and found amazing results in perceived exertion. An hour after drinking a cup of either high-CGA or placebo coffee, our athletes participated in fifty-kilometer cycling time trials. Thirty minutes into the workouts, when the coffees were exerting their maximum effects, we measured perceived exertion. Athletes who'd had high-CGA coffee found that their workouts felt much easier, even at their highest levels of exertion. The implications of these preliminary findings are simple and powerful: A cup of high-phenol coffee before a workout may make your exercise seem much easier!

We know for certain that coffee can upgrade your athletic performance, but the benefits don't stop there. Coffee also aids recovery. Athletes and exercise fans have known for years that intense and prolonged exercise places a great deal of oxidative and inflammatory stress on the body. The production of energy by muscle cells during exercise generates an excess of one of the most powerful and damaging known oxidants: the superoxide radicals. The harder you exercise and the more oxygen you consume, the more superoxide spews out. This can slow recovery, increase the risk of injury, and decrease the intensity or duration of exercise. With their potent antioxidant properties, the phenols in coffee act as a fire extinguisher to quench superoxides. At the end of our time trials, the cyclists taking high-phenol coffee had higher levels of antioxidants in their blood than those taking the placebo.

Phenols™ anti-inflammatory effect supports recovery, too. They can almost take the place of ibuprofen says Dr. Nieman. Extensive research has shown that caffeine supports performance by working on the central nervous system, but new studies are focusing on phenols. The purple color in blueberries, the green in broccoli, all the colors are the polyphenols' explains Dr. Nieman. “Most go to the colon and bacteria break them down. But if you exercise, that opens the door and they come flooding back. They relax the blood vessels to improve blood flow, so the muscle gets better oxygen delivery.” You'll read more about how athletes can benefit from coffee in chapter 5, The Coffee Lover's™ Diet.

Source: The Coffee Lover's Diet Bob Arnot

Managing Your Depression

By Susan J Noonan

Foreword

About as many millions of individuals suffer from mood disorders in any given year as from cancer or diabetes. Among all medical conditions worldwide, mood disorders are recognized by the World Health Organization as among the most disabling. By affecting all domains of functioning, including sleep, appetite, energy, mood, motivation, self-esteem, judgment, and hopefulness, major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder interfere with the ability to work, study, maintain relationships, and carry on the very activities of daily living. Social isolation, poor self-care, and pessimism, core symptoms of depression, often become part of a pernicious cycle further reinforcing the impact of a mood disorder on an individual and on families and communities. The most devastating outcome of mood disorders is suicide, which occurs at a tragic rate of about one every 15 minutes in the United States. Although mood disorders, particularly depression, have been thought of in terms of individual episodes of illness, they have increasingly been recognized as often relapsing/remitting conditions that may extend over many years and benefit greatly from astute management through a collaboration between clinician and patient.

Fortunately, over the last three decades, a great deal has been learned about the effective treatment of mood disorders. Evidence-based medication and psychotherapeutic approaches along with novel pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatment strategies have improved our ability to manage illness acutely and prevent recurrence. We continue to learn more about the neurobiological and environmental contributions to mood disorders and how individualized factors may inform treatment choice. Compelling research efforts are underway to investigate the best ways to combine treatment approaches as well as how to prevent the onset of illness in those at risk but not yet affected. Given the prevalence, impact, and often long-term course of major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder, the value of effective treatment, persistence, and well-informed, engaged patients and families in the optimal management of mood disorders is all the more apparent.

In this book, Dr. Noonan courageously presents “lessons learned” during her years of combating a mood disorder. In stark contrast to a model in which patients are passive recipients of diagnosis and treatment, we hope readers will appreciate the overarching theme presented: the critical importance of proactively managing mental health. Dr. Noonan offers the reader comprehensive and accessible coverage of key concepts and principles that are translated into practical “ready to use” self-management skills. Among the book’s outstanding accomplishments are:

* Inclusion of easy-to-read, accurate descriptions of signs and symptoms of mood disorder diagnoses

* Review of medication treatment strategies with an emphasis on how to promote open dialogue between providers and patients

* Presentation of graphic tools for use in tracking symptoms and challenging maladaptive thoughts and behaviors

Perhaps most impressive is the thorough coverage given to skills steeped in the tradition of cognitive and behaviorally based psychotherapies. These skills are predicated on the well-known fact that the way in which an individual thinks and behaves predictably changes during the course of a mood disorder. When depressed, an individual sees the world as half empty and selects for elements of the environment that support this negative view. Alternatively, while hypomanic or manic, an individual can view the world and himself or herself in an overly optimistic or even grandiose manner. Behaviors corresponding to these mood states include isolation/withdrawal and impulsivity/risk taking, respectively. Dr. Noonan’s book offers pragmatic and insightful methods to address both thoughts and behaviors altered during one’s struggle with a mood disorder.

It is an honor to have worked with Dr. Noonan during her long battle with depression. As we hope Dr. Noonan has learned from us, we have learned much from her and incorporate these insights into our work with others. This book is emblematic of Dr. Noonan’s persistence, courage, expertise, willingness to disclose, and desire to share with others practical ways to successfully cope with and manage a mood disorder. We thank her for a contribution that will undoubtedly enhance the health and quality of life of many readers.

Timothy J. Petersen, Ph.D.

Jonathan E. Alpert, M.D., Ph.D.

Andrew A. Nierenberg, M.D.

The Massachusetts General Hospital

Department of Psychiatry

Boston, Massachusetts

Switch On Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health

By Dr. Caroline Leaf

Prologue

What would you do if you found a switch that could turn on your brain and enable you to be happier, healthier in your mind and body, more prosperous, and more intelligent?

In this book you will learn how to find and activate that switch. What you think with your mind changes your brain and body, and you are designed with the power to switch on your brain. Your mind is that switch.

You have an extraordinary ability to determine, achieve, and maintain optimal levels of intelligence, mental health, peace, and happiness, as well as the prevention of disease in your body and mind. You can, through conscious effort, gain control of your thoughts and feelings, and in doing so, you can change the programming and chemistry of your brain.

Science is finally catching up with the Bible, showing us the proof that "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Tim. 1:7). Breakthrough neuroscientific research is confirming daily what we instinctively knew all along: What you are thinking every moment of every day becomes a physical reality in your brain and body, which affects your optimal mental and physical health. These thoughts collectively form your attitude, which is your state of mind, and it's your attitude and not your DNA that determines much of the quality of your life.

This state of mind is a real, physical, electromagnetic, quantum, and chemical flow in the brain that switches groups of genes on or off in a positive or negative direction based on your choices and subsequent reactions. Scientifically, this is called epigenetics; spiritually, this is the enactment of Deuteronomy 30:19, "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live." The brain responds to your mind by sending these neurological signals throughout the body, which means that your thoughts and emotions are transformed into physiological and spiritual effects, and then physiological experiences transform into mental and emotional states. It's a profound and eye-opening thought to realize something seemingly immaterial like a belief can take on a physical existence as a positive or negative change in our cells.

And you are in control of all of this. The choices you make today not only impact your spirit, soul, and body, but can also impact the next four generations.

The great news is that we are wired for love, which means all our mental circuitry is wired only for the positive, and we have a natural optimism bias wired into us. Our default mode is one of being designed to make good choices. So our bad choices and reactions were wired in by our choices, and therefore can be wired out. Our brain is neuroplastic-it can change and regrow. In addition, God has built in the operating principle of neurogenesis-new nerve cells are birthed daily for our mental benefit. This sounds like Lamentations 3:22-23, "The LORD's mercies . . . are new every morning." This book shows you how to get back control over your thoughts and renew (as in Rom. 12:2) and rewire your brain in the direction you were originally designed to go.

Based solidly on the latest neuroscientific research on the brain, as well as my clinical experience and research, you will learn how thoughts impact your spirit, soul, and body. You will also learn how to detox your thoughts using my practical, detailed, and easy-to-use 21-Day Brain Detox Plan.

The application is for all walks of life. You won't forgive that person, get rid of that anxiety or depression, follow that essential preventative healthcare, strive to that intellectual level you know you are capable of, follow that dream, eat that organic food, do that diet, be that great parent or husband or wife or friend, get that promotion, or make other changes to create a quality, positive lifestyle-unless you first choose to get your mind right and switch on your brain. After all, the ability to think and choose and to use your mind correctly is often the hardest step, but it is the first and most powerful step.

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.

No One Cares About Crazy People

By Ron Powers

Preface

This is the book I promised myself I would never write. And promised my wife as well. I have kept that promise for a decade—since our younger son, Kevin, hanged himself in our basement, a week before his twenty-first birthday in July 2005, after struggling for three years with schizophrenia. The promise was easy to keep in the first five years after Kevin’s death, if only because I could not bring myself to think about such a project and the revisiting that it would make necessary. I wasn’t able to think about much of anything at all, except that I dreaded each new season of “greening up,” as it is called here in Vermont. (“It’s a tragically beautiful summer,” my wife, Honoree, managed to observe not long after that terrible July had passed.)

Over the second five years, the infernal process of “healing”—adaptation, really—had begun its unwelcome sterilizing work. And then the malady struck our family again. Symptoms of schizophrenia surfaced in our elder and surviving son, Dean. My wife and I witnessed the psychotic break on a Christmas morning that sent him knocking on doors through the neighborhood, announcing that he was the Messiah, until a police officer restrained him and took him to a nearby medical center.

Dean stubbornly surmounted the disease’s worst effects and is functioning well as of this writing. Still, this second of two unthinkable blows to our family added to a list of reasons why I felt that I should really just leave the subject alone.

At the top of the list was privacy. My sons, even as robust and outgoing children, shared a powerful ethic of discretion, which they inherited from their mother. None of these three was what you would call a hearts-on-sleeves person. It wasn’t a matter of secretiveness. Some things were just nobody else’s business, that was all. When Kevin, our younger son, was away with his guitar at a music academy in Michigan, he emailed us a photograph of himself and his date for the spring dance. Kevin was wearing a white dinner jacket, his first. I was moved to use the photo as the basis of a commentary I wrote for the Vermont public radio station:

The image of a white dinner jacket, especially one worn by a 15-year-old son nine hundred miles from home on a spring night at the prom with a very young woman on his arm—this image takes on a new and unexpected luster: a sweetness and fragility so unbearable that you lie there in your bed wishing the damned alarm would go off and restore you to the necessary cynicism of daylight.

One of Kevin’s buddies back in Middlebury, where we lived, heard the commentary and ratted me out. Kevin let me know that he was wise to what I’d done, in terms that you would have thought were being used against somebody who’d stolen his black Martin electric.

So privacy was my top consideration, and I suppose it should have sufficed. But there were other reasons, strong ones.

The moral blemish of exploitation, for example. Even when “exploitation” is not the intended motive in a book such as this, it can seem the unintended consequence. My sons were and remain sacred to me. They are not for sale.

And, really, end of the day, who the hell wants to read about schizophrenia anyway?

Not me.

And that was the way things stood for the second five years. That is the way I thought things would stand for the duration. I was just not interested.

But to paraphrase Tolstoy: “You may not be interested in schizophrenia, but schizophrenia is interested in you.” It turns out, schizophrenia was particularly interested in the Powers family, and no amount of disinterest on my part was going to change that. So I began, tentatively, to explore the malady.

Schizophrenia is a chronic and incurable disease of the brain. It is rooted (or so neuroscientists presently believe; nothing about it is yet a matter of settled truth) partly in genetic mutation and partly in external, or “environmental,” experiences. It is the most dreaded of all the human mental illnesses, afflicting slightly more than one in one hundred people. Its name—a bit misleading, as we shall see—is a vernacular near synonym for its closely allied affliction, schizo-affective disorder. The latter disease is rarer, striking about 0.3 percent of the population; but worse: it incorporates severe mood swings as well as the loss of touch with reality wrought by schizophrenia. Some specialists believe there is no hard distinction between the two maladies.

Schizophrenia is a scourge, but it’s only one of the many mental illnesses that sprawl across many categories, lengths of duration, and degrees of severity. The World Health Organization estimates that one-fourth of the globe’s people will experience some kind of mental illness in their lifetimes. Two-thirds of these either do not recognize that they are ill or simply refuse treatment. Studies by the National Institute of Mental Health show that among Americans age eighteen or older, more than sixty-two million (26 percent of the population) require (but are not always given) counseling and medical treatment.

But even among the many devastating diagnoses of mental illness, schizophrenia stands unique in its capacity to wreck the rational processes of the mind. It is to mental health as cancer is to physical health: a predator without peer and impervious to cure.

My final resolve to refrain from writing this book came unraveled on the night of January 30, 2014.

In the late afternoon of that day, Honoree and I drove northward from our home in Castleton to the Vermont state capitol in Montpelier. We’d been invited to testify at a public hearing convened by the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare. The hearing was called to air out arguments on either side of a bitter, seemingly intractable clash of ideologies: whether or not mentally ill patients should be detained against their will (an “involuntary” intervention) in times of acute need and sickness, especially given the delays in treatment caused by the shortages of hospital beds and treatment facilities. It sounds benign in the abstract, but in practice an “intervention” generally means retaining such a person in the emergency room until a psychiatric bed becomes available, and medicating the patient with psychotropic drugs. Neurological research supports the view that early intervention is necessary to prevent the psychosis from deepening—but when that intervention is involuntary, a whole new array of issues (both legal and ethical) arises.

In Vermont as in some other states, “involuntary” patients can be placed in emergency rooms but cannot receive medication for their affliction without a court order authorizing a doctor to proceed. Some Vermont patients have waited in their psychoses as long as two or even three months for the case to work its way through the courts.

At first glance, speedy “involuntary treatment” might seem the least objectionable of measures, given that people in psychosis are virtually never capable of making rational decisions. And yet opponents of the process, whose ranks are reinforced by schizophrenia victims, bring passionate counterarguments to the debate. Among the most formidable is that “involuntary treatment” is by definition a violation of one’s civil liberties.

Another motivation for opponents of involuntary care lies in their distrust of the medications themselves. It is undeniable that as they have evolved since the 1950s, antipsychotic drugs, experimental by their very nature, have at times further damaged patients rather than stabilized them; that even the effective ones can produce damaging side effects; and that widely despised “Big Pharma,” the multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry, has made it lucrative for doctors and psychiatrists to prescribe medications as a preemptive cure-all for mental illness at the expense of scrupulous individual care and regardless of how well or ill the patient, or even whether the meds work.

The hearing at Montpelier that cold winter night in 2014 showcased both sides of this disagreement. Honoree and I testified in alliance with those advocating for shorter waits for “involuntary treatment.” Like many families visited by schizophrenia, we did not base our position in ideology. We thought about, understood, and respected the motivating principles on both sides.

The state legislature debated the bill through the spring, and in June the governor signed a version of it, containing several compromises, into law.

My purpose in bringing up this hearing and legislation is not to reargue its merits or demerits. My purpose is to describe the awakening the event triggered in me.

I discussed my reactions with Honoree as we walked out of the chamber and the capitol building to our car, and I discovered that hers were similar.

I had found myself moved—riveted—by the people who spoke against involuntary treatment. They sat in an uncomfortable line at the long polished desk in the committee chamber, clearing their throats and stealing glances at the suited and scarved and coiffed legislative committee members. They had come dressed in the Vermont uniform of workaday jeans and flannel shirts and denim skirts, many of the women with their hair uncombed and men with their beards untrimmed. Their voices sometimes quavered and their handwritten notes trembled in their grip. Yet they were there: the faces and souls of the mentally ill, emerging from their prevailing invisibility to declare themselves.

The sheer presence of them, their actualization in the room, had affected me in the gut, not because I hadn’t expected them, but because of the profound, elemental humanity of them. Full realization dawned on me only later: Like so many people, I had converted the mentally ill into abstractions. I had stopped seeing them. I’d looked away reflexively when I did see them. I had stopped thinking about them. I had stopped acknowledging their chimerical presence at the corners of my tight little sphere of “reality.”

How thunderously ironic.

I, who had witnessed mental illness in as intimate and convincing a form as is possible to witness it; I, who had wept, sat unmoving, endured years of dreams—including the most exquisitely, diabolically “sweet” dreams that an agitated human mind could concoct; a recurring dream of Kevin alive but refusing ever again to play his guitar*—I, of all people, was shocked to behold mentally ill people in corporeal form.

Shame on me.

Just three weeks after that hearing in Montpelier, I was stunned by the disclosure of a ghastly remark in a series of emails made public by subpoena. The emails had been written in 2010, principally by an administrative aide to Scott Walker, then the Milwaukee County executive, who was running for the governorship. The aide’s name was Kelly Rindfleisch. At the time, Milwaukee County Hospital was in the news for allegations of mismanagement of its mental health complex—allegations that included the death of a patient by starvation and sexual assaults on patients by other patients and by staff doctors, at least one of which resulted in a pregnancy. Earlier in the chain—on March 27—Walker, wary of the effect the scandal might have on his campaign, had written, “We need to continue to keep me out of the story as this is a process issue and not a policy matter.”1

Walker’s staff labored through the spring and summer to satisfy his wish. On September 2, Rindfleisch wrote, “Last week was a nightmare. A bad story every day on our looney bin. Doctors having sex with patients, patients getting knocked up. This has been coming for months and I’ve unofficially been dealing with it. So, it’s been crazy (pun intended).”

Later, in an attempt to reassure a colleague on Walker’s staff, Rindfleisch somehow found it in herself to write: “No one cares about crazy people.”2

I began to rethink my determination not to write this book. I realized that my ten years of silence on the subject, silence that I had justified as insulation against an exercise in self-indulgence, was itself an exercise in self-indulgence. The schizophrenia sufferers in that hearing room had not been asking for pity, or for anyone to “feel the pain” of their victimhood. They were asking for understanding. They were insisting that their humanity, so indelibly on display in the room, be acknowledged. They were demanding that their points of view be heard as legitimate and considered alongside the viewpoints of the general population.

They were determined, it seemed to me, to speak up, and back, to the voices of indifference and denial: the voices of “No one cares about crazy people.”

That claim, of course, is an exaggeration. Not even the person who infamously typed it into an email could have believed it to be literally true. Many people care about the insane, even though their numbers in proportion to the total population are tiny. They include family members; neurosurgeons; consulting and research psychiatrists; psychiatric nurses; the clergy; members of organizations such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness and its ideological opposite, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights; and many thousands of social workers, unpaid hospital and care-center volunteers, and sympathetic law enforcement officers such as the young policeman who gently restrained Dean on that frantic Christmas morning in Castleton.

Good, conscientious, indispensable people, all of them. And woefully outnumbered.

In tackling the layered and complicated topic of mental illness, I am treading a path that has been traveled by hundreds of writers with far better credentials than I have: neuroscientists with expertise in schizophrenia’s evolving nosology; scholars who have retraced its long history and the long history of mankind’s attempts to understand and conquer it or, alternatively, to render it invisible by throwing those afflicted with it into dungeons where atrocities were the norm. (This particular remedy survives—thrives—in our time.)

My aim with this book is not to replace or argue with the existing vast inventory of important books on mental illness. Rather, I hope to reamplify a simple and self-evident and morally insupportable truth:

Too many of the mentally ill in our country live under conditions of atrocity.

Storytelling is my choice of action. As noted, writing this book has not been an easy choice, and it is one that I have deferred for nearly a decade. Writing the book has tested the emotional resilience of my wonderful wife, Honoree, and of my brave surviving son as well. And of myself.

Yet I have concluded that in the end, it is among those books that cannot not be written. (Other writers and discerning readers will understand this.)

Nor can it be written in half measures, as I had briefly contemplated after deciding that I was duty-bound to tackle the subject.

I had planned for a while to write from a distance, confining my book to a survey of mental illness’s historic contours and of the efforts and impediments in the last century and a half to understand, master, and eradicate it. Yet a hard and humbling truth arose in my path and would not budge. The truth was that such a book would have been hollow, redundant at best with the many good expositional books on the subject already in (and out of) print. Useless, at worst. It would have meant the squandering of a chance, my last and only chance, to make common cause with the untold numbers of people maimed by psychotic attack upon either themselves or a beloved friend or relative.

By opening up my family’s intensely private loss and suffering, I hope to achieve two goals.

One goal is to persuade my fellow citizens in the Schizophrenic Nation that their ordeals, while awful, are neither unique to them nor the occasion for shame and withdrawal. The other is to demonstrate to those who fear and loathe “crazy people” that these victims are not typically dangerous, weak, or immoral, or in any other way undeserving of full personhood. On the contrary, like my adored sons, Dean Paul Powers and Kevin Powers, they tend to be people who have known love, laughter, inventiveness, hope, and the capacity to dream the same dreams of a future that other people dream. That they have been maimed by a scourge of inexplicable, malign destructiveness is not their fault.

Well, there is a third goal: to preserve that which is possible to preserve in words that describe the lives and soaring souls of Dean and Kevin. Another term for this goal is “consecration.”

Finally: No One Cares About Crazy People is a call to arms on behalf of these people for any society that dares describe itself as decent.

America must turn its immense resources and energy and conciliatory goodwill to a final assault on mental illness. My sons, and your afflicted children and brothers and sisters and parents and friends, deserve nothing less. The passionate, afflicted people who testified in that hearing room in the Vermont capitol in January 2014 deserve nothing less.

I hope you do not “enjoy” this book. I hope you are wounded by it; wounded as I have been in writing it. Wounded to act, to intervene. Only if this happens, and keeps happening until it needs happen no more, can we dare to hope that Dean and Kevin and all their brothers and sisters in psychotic suffering are redeemed; that they have not suffered entirely in vain.