Health & Wellness

Welcome to my Health & Wellness Blog! 

I do hope you will enjoy this new facility and that you’ll find our posts  interesting & useful . I have set up a “Resource” area where I have placed some of my published articles and other interesting information for you to download. You may also wish to visit www.HypnosNLP.com for more information about  Hypnotherapy and NLP consultations. You can also visit me on Twitter.
Best wishes,
Hypnos (Admin)
Gregory Antão
London Hypnotherapist

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Finally Achieved Z List Celeb Hypnotist Status: – I’ve now been posted on YouTube, with Jane Goldman and “CageFighter” Alex Reid ( “acting name” Thorne). We’d made a programme a few years ago on “Past Life Regression” (PLR) for the Jane Goldman Investigates… series on Living TV. Hope you find it interesting:

See the Blogroll panel on the right screen and click on PLR Video Part 1 and PLR Video Part 2

Dr. Mirzakarim Sanakulovich Norbekov is almost a legend in the countries of the former Soviet Eastern Bloc. He is reputed to have restored himself to perfect health from an “incurable” kidney disease, using his own system of “Health Recovery”.

Dr. Norbekov’s method has received huge acclaim and recognition, initially in Russia and now throughout Europe. It is especially acknowledged for its benefits in overcoming chronic conditions and illnesses. It comprises a toolbox of educational and practical healing tools which allow people to take personal control in regaining their good health and finding fulfillment of their life goals.

Mirzakarim Norbekov, Doctor of Psychology, is a scientist, researcher and a great teacher. He is a Karate “blackbelt” and a member of Russian and foreign academies, as well as the founder and President of the “Norbekov Institute”.

His system based in part on Ancient Sufi esoteric knowledge is synergistically comingled with state-of-the-art modern methods and healing techniques. It is said to be a powerful system which can be applied very successfully to many areas of physical and psychological wellbeing. An unique healing methodology, which has, it is said, allowed millions of people to regain the joy and vigour, of returning again, to living a healthy and fulfilling life.

Dr. Norbekov’s system has been progressively developing and evolving for well over 20 years. He has been practising and teaching the system, in his country of origin Uzbekistan, as well as several other Russian cities. Currently, his courses are conducted in over 200 towns and cities across Russia and the countries of the CIS, the Baltic countries, Germany and England. Dr. Norbekov’s courses have now spread as far as the USA, Canada and Israel.

Now Dr.Norbekov’s Course Book based on his system for Health Recovery is available at Amazon UK. It is also available as a downloadable eBook. The book “The Experience of a Fool Who Had An Epiphany About … How To Get Rid Of His Glasses” uses the metaphor of vision improvement as the basis for his system of Health Recovery. The Free Report -see below – gives full details about its content.

Perhaps You Too Can Benefit From Dr. Norbekov’s Method:

See the Free Health Report on the Norbekov Method – Click on the link below for your copy:

Norbekov Method – Free Report

US researchers say that shower heads can be particular “breeding grounds for bacteria and when water is passed through them, they blast out the bugs”. This can in some cases lead on to severe respiratory infections particularly to susceptible persons, who may have compromised immune systems or may be suffering from chronic respiratory conditions.

Research was carried out by Dr Leah M Feazel and a team from the University of Colorado, led by Professor Norman Pace. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US and was peer-reviewed. Funding for the research was provided by the “National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health” & the “Alfred P Sloan Foundation”.

A particular culprit was identified as Mycobacterium avium which is commonly found in the environment. The small scale study which examined “microbial composition of biofilms inside showerheads” in samples from 45 shower heads from nine cities in the US, basically verified the presence of the potentially infection causing bacteria.

The microbes reproduce rapidly in the dank, dark, environments found in the recesses of shower heads’. They clump together in “biofilms” which are slime like residues. Levels of bacteria in samples, were more than 100 times higher than in ordinary tapwater.

This gives particular concern because water from the shower is “aerosolised” – vaporised into tiny drops. There is thus a potential to inhale a “a faceful of aerosolised bacteria” from the shower-head, especially at initial start-up when any microbial residue is forced out. Therefore microbes can be inhaled deep into the respiratory tract and lungs.

Exposure to these pathogen can potentially lead to fairly low-level infections which can persist in healthy people. They can also lead to more severe conditions with symptoms similar to tuberculosis, in the aged and those with impaired immunity.

The leader of the research study, Prof. Norman Pace, who is a molecular biologist at the university, is quoted as saying: “How many people do you know with a shallow cough? Probably a lot. I would bet that in a lot of cases Mycobacterium avium is responsible. I think it’s a serious public health concern.”

In the cases of those at “greatest risk” such as HIV victims, those on steroidal medication, cystic fibrosis sufferers and those with chronic pulmonary/repiratory conditions, he continued: “For these people I think there’s a serious risk and I would recommend avoiding showers,”

It must be emphasised however, that the study did not directly examine the increase in risk of getting infected, by having a shower. This may well be grounds for further research in the future. Therefore ordinarily healthy people, with effective immune systems, should not have undue concerns about having showers – at least for now, until there is more concrete evidence of a causal relationship. It is in the interim, strongly advisable to flush out the shower-head before subsequent showering, to ameliorate this risk.

Professor Pace also suggests that plastic shower heads seem to “load up” with higher levels of microbe-laden biofilms. It may therefore be advisable to replace these by metal shower heads where possible.

Showers have also been implicated as a transmission medium for some other infectious diseases, including Legionnaires’ disease – a type of pneumonia, and chest infections by the “Pseudomonas aeruginosa” bacterium.

For more details please also visit the following links:

NHS.uk Article

or

BBC News

and

Times OnLine

or

CNN Article

A UK study suggests that the mortality rate (MR) of Emergency Room patients is elevated in NHS hospitals when admitted during the influx of newly qualified doctors.
This research study from Imperial College, London has noticed that there is a small but significant rise in ER patient mortality during the week starting from the 1st Wednesday in August, a day that traditionally marks the arrival of the new intake of doctors in NHS hospitals in England. This effectively validates the fairly widely held assumption that there is indeed a causal relationship between the intakes of about 50,000 recently qualified doctors on this day and the increased death rate.

The MR increase is about 6% higher than for those patients who were admitted a week earlier. This was for a mix of patients which included, medical, surgical and neoplasm admissions. Indeed this figure increased to an 8% rise in the MR for purely medical patients. The study was based upon an examination of 300,000 emergency admissions between 2000 and 2008,

Factors such as age, sex, economic & social background, as well as any further diagnoses were taken into consideration before acknowledging this “statistically significant” trend. However the study was not able to firm-up on any conclusions about any underlying factors upon which this increase in ER patient mortality is predicated.

A spokesman for the Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College London, Dr Paul Aylin is quoted as follows:
“We wanted to find out whether mortality rates changed on the first Wednesday in August, when junior doctors take up their new posts. What we have found looks like an interesting pattern and we would now like to look at this in more detail to find out what might be causing the increase.

He continued: “Our study does not mean that people should avoid going into hospital that week. This is a relatively small difference in mortality rates, and the numbers of excess deaths are very low. It’s too early to say what might be causing it. It might simply be the result of differences between the patients who were admitted.”

The conclusions of the report, which was published in the journal PLos One were:
“We found evidence that patients admitted on the first Wednesday in August have a higher early death rate in English hospitals compared with patients admitted on the previous Wednesday. This was higher for patients admitted with a medical primary diagnosis.”

The chairman of the British Medical Association’s Junior Doctor Committee, Dr Shree Datta, has stated:
“This study has to be judged alongside many previous studies looking at mortality rates before and after junior doctors start their new jobs, which have not shown any differences. Clearly even a small increase in death rates is of great concern and we need further research to see whether this is a real effect or an anomaly.”

Patient groups however, are still convinced that most junior doctors are just left to their own devices and are simply “thrown in at the deep end”, perhaps with insufficient training, supervision or pre-briefing even via memos or handover notes etc. The NHS of course demurs that conditions have improved considerably in the past few years.

Perhaps it’s best to play safe and acknowledge that early August is an “unsafe period” to be admitted to your friendly neighbourhood hospital’s Casualty Department when the Greenhorn Medicos are about!

Having said that, in early August last year, I was taken into Casualty with severe chest pains and a suspected Heart Attack. The new doctors were magnificent and did everything possible to keep me comfortable. Indeed one of them actually called me the next day to advise me that she had been thinking about my case in her free time and had prescribed me some additional medication. Awesome!

For more details please visit the following link:

Trainee Doctors and Early In-Hospital Mortality

A new combo vaccine slashes the odds of becoming infected with HIV by over 31%, according to results from the largest Aids trial performed on a cohort of more than 16,000 Thai volunteers. This hybrid vaccine comprised two separate types of “failed” vaccine, which adminstered individually did not produce any significant benefits.

The somewhat controversial study, funded by US taxpayers and costing $105 million, was conducted by US military and Thai Government personnel. Persons in the cohort who were innoculated with the hybrid vaccine were shown to be 31.2 per cent less likely to be infected by HIV over a three year period, after the doses were adminstered, than the others in the sample who only got the placebo.

The UN agency UNAids and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that the findings “instilled new hope” in the area of HIV immunisation research.

British scientific experts today commended the scientists who made this giant leap in the quest for an effective Aids vaccine.
One said, that this news is a “real boost” to researchers, especially at a time when some were enquiring whether such a vaccine against the dangerous virus would ever be feasible.

The hybrid vaccine appeared to be effective against Thai HIV strains but there are some questions about efficacy against other globally existing strains. Daily, globally, about 7,500 persons get infected with HIV. Statistics show that in 2007 about two million people succumbed to Aids.
The “new” vaccine is hopefully an initial indicator that in the future a fully effective and safe vaccine could be developed.

Professor Robin Shattock, who hold the chair of Cellular and Molecular Infection at St George’s, University of London, is cited as saying:

“This trial is very promising as it is the first to show a positive effect. It is early days and we need to see if the results are statistically significant. But it does gives researchers a real boost at a time when some were questioning whether a vaccine would ever be possible.”

He continued: “Although it is very early to say exactly what this means for the future, it does offer hope. Now we need to understand how some of the participants in this trial were in some way protected.
It is essential to discover how this experimental vaccine affected the immune response of the participants. Once we understand what worked we can build on that to develop more effective vaccines.”

Another viewpoint put across by Elizabeth Pisani who is an epidemiologist specialising in HIV prevention and the author of “The Wisdom of Whores” has written the following in an article on the subject in a
Times OnLine article:

“With most infectious diseases, reducing everyone’s risk by a third would make quite a difference across a whole population.
But the problem with HIV is that it is both an infectious disease and a behavioural one. I can get it by sharing needles with other drug injectors, I can avoid it by using condoms every time I have sex. If I know I have been vaccinated, will that make me more likely to share needles, or less likely to use condoms? And if it does, will that change outweigh the 30 per cent reduction in risk that comes with the vaccine?”

Certainly some food for thought!

Reuters: Q & A Why the Vaccine Works
or
BBC.co.uk: Thailand’s Battle With HIV
and
Times ONLine: The Worst Kind of Good News

A new research study by pathologists at Liverpool University has found that the presence of a protein can be used to predict the potential for survival from prostate cancer at the time of diagnosis.
They’ve found that men who tested positive for heat shock protein-27 were almost twice as likely to die from the cancer than those who tested negative.
The British Journal of Cancer published the findings of the research team who suggest that the protein could be the determinant of the levels of aggressiveness of the disease.
The Cancer Research UK-funded scientist Professor Chris Foster from the university’s School of Cancer Studies is cited as saying that: “Our study shows that this protein marker – currently found in tissue samples – can give us a reliable and accurate indication of whether individual cancers will become aggressive.”

He continued: “Currently, we are working on developing this finding into a blood test to monitor men with prostate cancer in order to determine when their individual disease needs treatment.”

Heat shock protein-27 forms a part of the communication channels that govern the transportation of cells around the body. This has the implication that perhaps new drugs could be developed to impede the signals that facilitate movement of the rogue cells and thus halt the explosive growth in number of prostate cancer cells.

Chris Foster went on to say: “If further research shows that blocking these cell message systems is successful, it could provide a new treatment for aggressive forms of prostate cancer.”
The research study examined tissue samples from a cohort of 553 men from initial diagnosis through to a 15-year follow-up period.

John Neate the CEO of the Prostate Cancer Charity mentions that: “It is critically important to develop a test for prostate cancer which is able to distinguish reliably between aggressive and slow growing forms of the disease. This would enable radical treatment to be focused only on men with aggressive disease, allowing men with low risk disease to feel confident that they can safely live with their cancer, without the need for radical treatment and its significant side effects.”

Men are being told to have checks for Prostate Cancer from at least the age of 40 onwards so as to arrest the spread of the disease in its early stages. Doctors nowadays use various techniques for diagnosis. These can include blood tests, cell sampling via biopsies, scanning and microscopic examination, to ascertain which male patients are at elevated risk and to determine the most effective course of action.

For more details please visit the following links:

BBC.co.uk : Killer Prostate Cancer Test Hope
or
AJHO – Radical Prostatectomy, Low Mortality

According to a scientific study conducted by scientists from University College London Heart Attacks may be linked to Flu. This was based on a review of studies going back over 75 years and was published in “The Lancet” – the prestigious medical journal.

Dr Andrew Hayward, the leader of the research team told listeners of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 that “We looked at all the published evidence going back to 1932 to look at the question of whether flu can trigger heart attacks, and essentially what we found was a very consistent association between influenza and heart attacks.”

There seemed to be a correlation between heart attack rates tending to peak at the same times that influenza levels in the population were also elevated. Detailed studies also demonstrated that individual patients suffering from flu also had a temporarily increased risk of a myocardial infarction. This was especially the case if there was a personal history of heart disease.

Dr Hayward also mentioned that they had investigated whether there was any potential for reducing the risk of heart attacks by prophylactic interventions such as flu vaccinations and such like. He said: “We found a number of studies on vaccination against flu which showed that having the vaccine could potentially prevent heart attacks by preventing flu, which triggers those heart attacks”.

He continued,“There are many things people could do to reduce their risk of a heart attack, like stopping smoking and losing weight, but having a flu vaccine is another way in which that can be done.”

Dr. Hayward, elaborated, saying: “We know the influenza vaccine is effective in preventing influenza and therefore, in theory, ought to be effective in preventing the complications of influenza.”

He confirmed that his research had indicated that cardiac patients who had taken flu shots had suffered fewer heart attacks than those who had not.

Indeed UK scientists have urged the British Government to make the swine flu vaccine available to patients with heart conditions after research effectively established links between heart attacks and the the Swine Flu H1N1 virus.

For more details please visit the following links:

The Heart.org
or
Health US News.com

Two separate studies indicate that elevated levels of Vitamin D can help in boosting survival rates of cancer patients.

The British Journal of Cancer published the findings of some cutting-edge research: The team led by Professor Kimmie Ng of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston has shown, a remarkable correlation. It seems that for a cohort of 1,017 patients, who have suffered from bowel cancer, for the duration of the study period of around nine years, those patients found with higher blood levels of vitamin D at initial diagnosis, were around 50% less likely to perish during the course of the study time-frame than those with lower levels of the “Sunshine” vitamin.

Prof. Ng is quoted as saying that “Our study shows that levels of Vitamin D after colorectal cancer diagnosis may be important for survival. We are now planning further research in patients with bowel cancer to see if vitamin D has the same effect, and to investigate how Vitamin D works with molecular and genetic pathways in the cell, to fight cancer….”.

Indeed in another UK based study of 872 patients, led by Professor Julia Newton Bishop, from the Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, demonstrated a link between low blood levels of vitamin D and recurring malignant melanoma – the most dangerous form of skin cancer. It seems that patients who had the lowest levels of Vitamin D at initial diagnosis were 30% more likely to have a relapse of the condition than patients with more elevated levels of the vitamin. Furthermore, the patients with the higher ambient levels of Vitamin D also had “thinner tumours” at initial diagnosis.

Prof. Bishop claimed that “It’s common for the general public to have low levels of vitamin D in many countries. Melanoma patients tend to avoid the sun as sunburn is known to increase the risk of melanoma. We use sunshine to make vitamin D in the skin, so melanoma patients’ levels of vitamin D may be especially low. Our results suggest that melanoma patients may need to get vitamin D by eating fatty fish or by taking supplements to ensure they have normal levels. But we are continuing to carry out research to find out the optimum level of vitamin D.”
Prof. Bishop continued: “There’s some evidence from other health studies that high levels of vitamin D are also harmful – so we should aim for a normal level rather than a very high one.”

Cancer Research UK’s Director of Information Cancer Research UK’s Director of Information Sara Hiom is cited as saying: “Both these studies support the theory that higher levels of vitamin D can improve the chance of surviving cancer. The key is to get the right balance between the amount of time spent in the sun and the levels of vitamin D needed for good health. But protection from burning in the sun is still vital. Cancer Research UK’s SunSmart campaign advises that people with lots of moles, red hair fair skin and a family history of the disease should take extra care in the sun as they are more at risk of the most dangerous form of skin cancer Anyone who is worried about changes in their moles should go to their GP.”

For more details please visit:

NHS.UK News
or
Medical News Today

The Mind-Body connection is endorsed by a Mind/Body/Healing “pioneer” Research Cellular Biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton. In an interview with Dr. Wayne Dwyer he is quoted as emphasising that: “Your own brain is your best pharmacy. Everything in your head will fix everything in your body. And that’s all we really need to know – but we really need to re-educate ourselves to access that.”

Dr. Lipton will be discussing the state-of-the-art science of “Epigenetics” and “how belief can affect biology” in an upcoming webinar. Please see the following link for details: http://tinyurl.com/CancerHyp

I have myself written an article “Modern Mind Technologies and their Rôle in Cancer Care” for the Institute for Complementary Medicine Online Journal, back in 2005. This article is a brief study of the efficacy of various “Mind Medicine” based therapies in the treatment and recovery of Cancer patients.
It covers the relatively new field of PsychoNeuroImmunology (PNI) which I suppose may be a parallel to “Epigenetics”.

You can download the unabridged version of my article in the “Resources” section on the sidebar. Please also consider registering for my upcoming Health & Wellness NewsLetter in the “Register” link in “BlogRoll” on the sidebar.