Cancer: The plant kingdom heroes continue to surface. According to research done in St. Louis University, the extract from bitter melon – a vegetable commonly used in Indian and Chinese cuisine and medicine – attacks breast cancer cells. The study, published in the March 1 edition of the journal Cancer Research, found that bitter melon extract significantly induced death in breast cancer cells and decreased their growth and spread in vitro by triggering a chain of events that kills the cells and prevents them from multiplying. Bitter melon (shown above) is also often used in India and China as medicine for diabetics due to its ability to lower blood sugar and cholesterol levels. more …
Dear HLife: If all illnesses start in the mind, what does a fibroid mean?
Dear HLifer:
You’re on the right track asking this question, because the minute something happens to your body, you need to focus on one thing: What is my body trying to tell me?
The physical body is a map to the mental “body”. Your physical body has many jobs and one of them is telling you exactly what is going on in your mind, which is something that you may not be able to see. The point of connection between the mind and the body are the emotions. There are healers who say that all problems are emotional, and that’s not untrue. A holistic approach to health looks at all bodies – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual – to get a whole picture of what is causing the imbalance. more …
The latest from the journals when it comes to men and women, in honor of Valentine’s Week.
Communication: There is power in the word “we”. A new study from UC Berkley suggests that spouses who use “we-ness” language are better able to resolve conflicts than those who don’t. The researchers analyzed conversations between 154 couples and found that those who used pronouns such as “we”, “our”, and “us”, behaved more positively toward one another and showed less physiological stress. In contrast, couples who emphasized their separateness by using pronouns such as “I”, “me”, and “you” were found to be less satisfied in their marriages. more …
“Laughing Zebra” by August Jennewein
Emotions: Laughter is a universal language, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, conducted with people from Britain and Namibia, suggests that basic emotions like fear, anger, sadness and amusement are shared by all human beings. Conventional wisdom dictates that, while we all communicate, people from different cultures may not understand the same words, phrases or body language. In spite of this, the researchers discovered that emotions like laughter and anger are easily recognizable despite cultural differences, suggesting that these emotions and their vocalizations are similar across all cultures. Laughter was probably the best recognized among the positive emotions, which should not come as a surprise, as researchers have seen this with other primates such as chimpanzees, and other mammals, too. While previous studies have indicated that smiling is also universal, laughter is special because it symbolizes playfulness, probably one of the first steps in communication between children and their mothers. more …
