“This is a reminder of the importance of parasite surveys and basic natural history,” says Schall.
“It underlines the fact that many human health concerns are connected to wider ecological systems—and that understanding the biology of other species is a foundation to both conservation and public health management.”
“A critical example is a developing model of infectious disease that shows that most epidemics — AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more that have occurred over the last several decades — don’t just happen. They are a result of things people do to nature.
Disease, it turns out, is largely an environmental issue.”
These studies support my clinical experience, and are in line with others that have concluded many common herbs are safe to use with warfarin. There is a prevailing trend to over focus on in vitro studies and theoretical concerns about drug-herb interactions that do not account for the complex interactions found in Chinese herbal formulations.
“American health care now focuses on patient satisfaction as a marker of quality care. Numerous studies have shown this practice to be unfounded, yet it continues. It continues because it is easier and cheaper to provide pedicures, gourmet food, and valet parking than increase the number of FTEs. Numerous studies (like this one spearheaded by Dr. Linda Aiken) and articles (like this one by Alexandra Robbins) have shown the increased morbidity and mortality in hospitals and wards where nurses are required to care for an excessive number of patients.
Vaccination offers protection against infectious diseases, yet pre-existing criteria that predict vaccine efficacy or adverse events remain unknown. Hayday and colleagues identify cellular and molecular signatures in humans immunized with adjuvanted swine flu vaccine.
Wide-ranging adverse clinical events can seriously confound vaccine adoption, but whether there are immunological correlates of these is unknown. Here we identify a molecular signature of adverse events that was commonly associated with an existing B cell phenotype. Thus immunophenotypic variation among healthy humans may be manifest in complex pathophysiological responses.
Chinese medicine is based largely on scholarship and a literary tradition, with the requirement to study essential classical texts, quote and debate them. The foundations of Chinese medicine are based on principles (yin yang, five phase, six channels) that require a philosophical and philological approach to the body of knowledge. Traditionally, a physician-in-training needed to study such texts as the Su Wen/Simple Questions, Ling Shu/Divine Pivot, and Nan Jing/Classic of Difficulties to understand channel/connecting vessel theory, the Shang Han Za Bing Lun/Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases to diagnose progressions of disease parts and practice internal medicine.
The body is not just a gas tank. A calorie is not just a calorie. As Ludwig’s colleague Mark Hyman, an author and physician at the Cleveland Clinic, says, “Food is not just food—it is information used by the body.”
It also meant that the past 40 years of food advice had been a terrible, costly mistake.
