13. Is medical science ready for emotions?
Emotions and health: in the agelong history of medicine, there has seldom been any doubt about the influence of the one on the other. Still, although it may well be of the utmost importance to us all, we don’t see medical science reach many definite conclusions on this domain. So: is the problem in the Read the full article…
12. ‘The cure sanctifies the means’… no way, mister!
‘I don’t care how it works, as long as it works.’ Western society is obsessed with ‘things that work’. We like to see distinctive results. It gives us a sense of achievement, control and if possible also progression towards ‘a better world’. ◊◊◊ I couldn’t agree more: it should work! ◊◊◊ At the same time, Read the full article…
11. Depression: in need of the lost soul
According to medical textbooks, depression is defined on the one hand as a number of symptoms: seeing the future bleak, having profound feelings of guilt and hopelessness, appetite and sleep disturbances etc. On the other hand, it’s looked upon as a hormonal or brain transmitter disorder. ◊◊◊ So we have the symptoms and we have Read the full article…
10. Not the smoking makes the smoker
Do you agree with the following? A ‘smoker’ who hasn’t smoke for a while, is still a ‘smoker’ as long as he keeps having the addiction inside. It doesn’t matter whether he hasn’t smoked for an hour, a day, a week or several years. ◊◊◊ This is of course a somewhat unusual definition of ‘smoker’. Read the full article…
9. Anorexia: being hungry for another kind of food
Hypothesis: an anorectic is someone who is in dire need of ‘soul food’ and because this is not available, enacts this deep need into not taking any other food either. ◊◊◊ This doesn’t make every anorectic a kind of saint, unless you assume that in the end we are all ‘saints’. What’s in a word. Read the full article…
8.ADHD: children in need of attention, twice
‘Attention’ is a very strange phenomenon. At first sight, and as far as we are normally used to think about it, it’s very easy. One focuses one’s attention on something to some degree or not at all. That’s all there is to it, no? ◊◊◊ No. Pay attention now. ◊◊◊ To make this clear, compare Read the full article…
7. An eye-opener on double-blind studies
The core of present-day scientific medicine is more and more boiling down to ‘evidence based medicine’ (EBM). The essence of EBM is double-blind studies: comparing a new supposedly-active substance to placebo whereby both prescriber(s) and patients are ignorant (‘blind’) in regard to whether they get placebo or the ‘active’ substance. ◊◊◊ Nice. ◊◊◊ Everything (really: Read the full article…
6. Phobia: let the spiders talk to you
If you have a phobia for spiders and you go to a therapist, there’s a big chance that he will subject you to a ‘systematic desensitization’. This is: you are gradually brought into contact with ‘spider’ until you can stand its presence or even touch the real thing. Simple procedure, no? And doesn’t it work? Read the full article…
3 Why Do the Obese Continue Eating?
Most obese people fight against the own ‘wanting’ as against an invisible enemy. No hocus pocus! We know that the calories which are present in a human body have been entered there one way or the other. No hocus pocus. Therefore losing weight is the most simple thing to do, namely: not doing something. Then Read the full article…
2 The Link Between Yawning and a Painkiller
The placebo effect is substantial AND we do not have to deceive the patient for it. Someone yawns. Seeing this, someone else gets an urge to yawn. Or someone (you perhaps?) reads about yawning and already feels an urge towards it. A well-known phenomenon. But what is the cause of it? There can only be Read the full article…
5. Yummy yummy, Mr. Pavlov, yummy yummy
Pavlov took a dog and gave him food (unconditioned stimulus = UCS) paired with the sound of a bell. After a while, the sound of the bell (conditioned stimulus = CS) gave the same response as the UCS, namely: drooling. Pavlov considered his dog conditioned very well. He and others showed again and again this Read the full article…
4. So plastic flowers are real after all… are they?
Good to know (yet not a recent finding) for all asthmatic patients: you can seemingly get an asthmatic attack through contact with a plastic flower or even distilled nebulized water (*). It may surprise you at first, but this is extremely good news, since it means that the relation between allergen (the thing you react Read the full article…
3. Give me your brainscan and I’ll tell you what you’re thinking
On a modern brainscan (PET, SPECT), researchers can see which parts of the brain are specifically active when a person is looking, feeling, imagining, visualizing, etc. One can of course look at this as ‘proof’ that everything psychological is based on a physical substratum. Mind-materialists do like this very much. Human mind in a mind-materialist’s Read the full article…
2. Why diets put more weight on the scale
We all know it, or should know it by now. People who go on a diet, in many or even most cases eventually end up gaining more weight than they have lost in the process. Why? And how to prevent it? ◊◊◊ Think of a small boat. You are in the boat. So are ‘you’. Read the full article…
Are we living in a ‘burnout society’?
You. Burnout. Society. A lot of questioning goes on about whether the cause of burnout lies rather within the individual or rather within his immediate environment, his workplace, his direct leader perhaps, or the broader environment: capitalism… With ‘burnout society’, I mean something even broader and deeper. This is a domain of rather intangible worldviews Read the full article…
Transcending the Tyranny of Techniques to Speak from the Heart!
With one single goal: speaking to the hearts of the people in the audience. Because people come to see you as a person. And there is only one you, right…? Wrong: there is only one ‘you at this moment.’ Each time people come to see you, you are different. So there are in fact many Read the full article…