Mind Health

The Immortal Bard is not only a wit and a genius with words; he was pretty good at getting into his characters’ psychology too… That’s obvious. Now a colleague has done a review of Shakespeare’s skills in the realm of psychosomatics (body-mind medicine) and suggested doctors could do well to study his plays and the […] The post Doctor Shakespeare Will See You Now! appeared first on Dr. Keith Scott-Mumby.

The labeling of this age has run the gamut from the ‘Space Age’ to the ‘Age of Aquarius’ to the age of ‘Sexual Revolution’. However, the one epithet that probably fits more accurately than all the rest is the ‘Age of Anxiety’. Anxiety is the one negative force that cuts through all levels of society affecting the rich and poor, young and old alike. Anxieties and tensions are insidious forces which exist below the surface of your awareness, smoldering and building up, until you reach a ‘breaking point’ and explode in a fit of anger or a violent argument, or some other unreasoned behavior. It also manifests in over-indulgence in food, alcohol, cigarettes, sex or work, in headaches, fatigue, impotence, clumsiness, sleepless nights, or any number of physical ailments. Conscious worry and fear also enter the picture to compound the feeling of frustration already being experienced because you are not able to identify the source of the unconscious anxiety and thus eliminate it. Consequently, if you are like most people, you will gulp down a handful of pills to alleviate that dull aching feeling, or your ‘escape’ will be in the form of the after-work booze-up. Or you’ll change your job, or get a divorce, or move to another town, or some psychologist will tell you to ‘adjust’ to your problems. Or you will grin and bear it because your religious leader piously proclaims that sorrow is this life’s just reward, and so on. 

The labeling of this age has run the gamut from the ‘Space Age’ to the ‘Age of Aquarius’ to the age of ‘Sexual Revolution’. However, the one epithet that probably fits more accurately than all the rest is the ‘Age of Anxiety’. Anxiety is the one negative force that cuts through all levels of society affecting the rich and poor, young and old alike. Anxieties and tensions are insidious forces which exist below the surface of your awareness, smoldering and building up, until you reach a ‘breaking point’ and explode in a fit of anger or a violent argument, or some other unreasoned behavior. It also manifests in over-indulgence in food, alcohol, cigarettes, sex or work, in headaches, fatigue, impotence, clumsiness, sleepless nights, or any number of physical ailments. Conscious worry and fear also enter the picture to compound the feeling of frustration already being experienced because you are not able to identify the source of the unconscious anxiety and thus eliminate it. Consequently, if you are like most people, you will gulp down a handful of pills to alleviate that dull aching feeling, or your ‘escape’ will be in the form of the after-work booze-up. Or you’ll change your job, or get a divorce, or move to another town, or some psychologist will tell you to ‘adjust’ to your problems. Or you will grin and bear it because your religious leader piously proclaims that sorrow is this life’s just reward, and so on. 

Here’s a great sleep “draught”; in other words an insomnia formula. If you don’t need one, share it with others. It’s always good to sleep and it is absolutely works! INSOMNIA NUTRITIONAL FORMULA: 3 mgm melatonin 4,000 units of vitamin D 400 mg of magnesium You can be a bit flexible. Some people can’t take […]

Here’s a great sleep “draught”; in other words an insomnia formula. If you don’t need one, share it with others. It’s always good to sleep and it is absolutely works! INSOMNIA NUTRITIONAL FORMULA: 3 mgm melatonin 4,000 units of vitamin D 400 mg of magnesium You can be a bit flexible. Some people can’t take […] The post Insomnia Nutritional Formula appeared first on Dr. Keith Scott-Mumby.

If you’ve read my book “Virtual Medicine” (you should have!), you’ll know that I gave some space to the dangers of periodontal disease. Today it’s probably the #1 marker for heart disease. But do you remember, I also talked on pages 62- 63 about dental dangers, with particular reference to the work of Dr. Patrick […]

If you’ve read my book “Virtual Medicine” (you should have!), you’ll know that I gave some space to the dangers of periodontal disease. Today it’s probably the #1 marker for heart disease. But do you remember, I also talked on pages 62- 63 about dental dangers, with particular reference to the work of Dr. Patrick […] The post Advanced Gum Disease May Raise Cancer Risk appeared first on Dr. Keith Scott-Mumby.

On some days, I think that nothing good ever comes out of computers! But here’s something… Schizophrenia is still one of the most stigmatized medical conditions. Most people are distinctly uncomfortable being present with patients who carry on conversations with imaginary voices in their head. Modern drugs suppress many of the disturbing symptoms, such as […]

On some days, I think that nothing good ever comes out of computers! But here’s something… Schizophrenia is still one of the most stigmatized medical conditions. Most people are distinctly uncomfortable being present with patients who carry on conversations with imaginary voices in their head. Modern drugs suppress many of the disturbing symptoms, such as […] The post eSchizophrenia appeared first on Dr. Keith Scott-Mumby.

If you haven’t heard already, you will soon come across a new anti-cancer therapy called Kanglaite. It’s manufactured in China and is pushed by incredible hype and fanfares as a “proven” and “miracle” cure. But we’ve been there before, haven’t we? When commercial interests get on the bandwagon, the inconvenient matter of truth and integrity suddenly gets lost in all the brouhaha. So what are the facts? Kanglaite was developed by a pharmacist, Li Dapeng. It is made from a plant called Job’s tears, a relative of maize. We might think of it as “Chinese pearl barley”. The botanical name, for those interested, is Coix lachryma-jobi. Its Chinese name, yi-yi-jen, or yi-mi (in southeast China) is the same as that used for barley, or yang-yi-mi, ‘yang’ meaning ‘foreign’, or ‘across the ocean’. Yi-mi is used in soups and gruel and is a common ingredient in many Chinese traditional herbal medicines for treating a variety of ailments including cancer. It has also been widely used as a diuretic, analgesic and antispasmodic agent. No one knows exactly how Kanglaite works, but the drug has been taken by more than 270,000 patients in some 2,000 hospitals in China, and has proven effective against malignant tumors such as carcinomas in the lung, liver, stomach and breast. So far so good.

If you haven’t heard already, you will soon come across a new anti-cancer therapy called Kanglaite. It’s manufactured in China and is pushed by incredible hype and fanfares as a “proven” and “miracle” cure. But we’ve been there before, haven’t we? When commercial interests get on the bandwagon, the inconvenient matter of truth and integrity suddenly gets lost in all the brouhaha. So what are the facts? Kanglaite was developed by a pharmacist, Li Dapeng. It is made from a plant called Job’s tears, a relative of maize. We might think of it as “Chinese pearl barley”. The botanical name, for those interested, is Coix lachryma-jobi. Its Chinese name, yi-yi-jen, or yi-mi (in southeast China) is the same as that used for barley, or yang-yi-mi, ‘yang’ meaning ‘foreign’, or ‘across the ocean’. Yi-mi is used in soups and gruel and is a common ingredient in many Chinese traditional herbal medicines for treating a variety of ailments including cancer. It has also been widely used as a diuretic, analgesic and antispasmodic agent. No one knows exactly how Kanglaite works, but the drug has been taken by more than 270,000 patients in some 2,000 hospitals in China, and has proven effective against malignant tumors such as carcinomas in the lung, liver, stomach and breast. So far so good.

Would you torture or hurt another, even kill, just because you were ordered to by an authority figure? Beware your answer. A modern reproduction of a classic behavioral experiment of the 1960s suggests many people would. In 1961 Stanley Milgram carried out one of the most famous and controversial psychology experiments of modern times. People were asked to give what they believed were increasingly painful electric shocks to others, even potentially fatal ones, in the name of science. The people being tortured by electricity were in fact just actors and pretend to writhe and scream in pain. But the “subjects” of the experiment didn’t know that. They believed the pain was real and yet, when told to do so by the researcher, were willing to inflict more and more pain and actually risk killing someone else. Some people even pressed the button when they were told the jolt would be a potentially fatal 450 volts. It was a sad scientific proof of something horrible about our species that we would all rather not believe.