Monthly Archives: March 2020

Before you reach inside your medicine cabinet, consider the most powerful healing tool is your own body. That is the philosophy certified reiki practitioner Korinne McManus follows.

Her practice, Amethyst Reiki and Healing, located on Roxbury Street in the Miller Forge building, is the result of her answering her calling to educate people about this form of alternative medicine with roots in 19th century Japan.

A reiki practitioner channels universal life force energy (known as qi) and transfers it through the palms to the patient to promote physical or emotional healing. During a session with a client, McManus uses light hands-on touch to assist with activating the bodys natural healing process, often incorporating essential oils.

Her interest in the modality began 20 years ago when she received her own first reiki session.

In that moment, I realized how loudly our bodies speak, she said, adding that a reiki session is an opportunity to talk to the body. I started to learn who I was as a person, and I committed to my own reiki practice.

In 2012, McManus reiki practice became a medical intervention after she was diagnosed with cancer.

It allowed me to continuously connect with my body, she said. I believe reiki and other healing modalities I utilized have kept me cancer-free.

Reiki became even more deeply important to McManus when she was seriously injured two years later in a motor vehicle accident and in recovery for several months after.

Through my healing journey over 15 to 20 years, seeing how (reiki) healed my deep roots whether spiritual, emotional or medical I knew I had to share it and empower others to look at themselves as an ultimate healing tool rather than relying on pharmaceuticals, she said. Reiki is just one tool to ultimately figure out the root cause of what youre experiencing.

Once McManus was healed from her injuries, she enrolled in her first reiki certification training. She opened her Keene practice in 2018.

While her clientele greatly varies, she said, her specialty is working with people who have issues with addiction and mental health, as well as those with developmental disabilities. Her full-time job is working in the mental health field, which she has done for the past 20 years. In addition to her private practice, she also offers reiki services at a recovery center in Vermont.

I have a personal addiction connection with family members. Its my mission to reach out to those in recovery to say, Lets give you another tool to have in your toolbox, she said. Its important for people to have opportunities and experience different [types of] alternative care.

For that reason, McManus offers a discounted rate for her services to those in recovery.

My goal is to knock down any barriers to accessing alternative care, she said. I dont do what I do to make money. I have a full-time job. If someone couldnt afford to pay full-price, I want them to reach out and have a conversation with me.

A reiki session with McManus starts with just that, in fact: a conversation.

When someone reaches out to me [for an appointment], I always ask if they have ever had reiki before and I ask them if there is anything theyd like to work on, she said. Sometimes the answer is no and they just want to come in and relax. But I do revisit the original conversation once they come in.

At the beginning of her session, she does what she calls a body scan.

I pay attention to how [the clients] energy feels if theres a shift in temperature and I work my way down the body and back up, McManus said. When your qi is low, [thats] when we start to see illness and disease.

Some areas of the body require light hands-on touch to heal. For others, McManus will hover over with her hands, depending upon what energy she is picking up in the body and the level of support she feels is needed. With the goal of ultimate relaxation, clients wear a lavender-scented eye pillow during the session and listen to soft background music.

After the first session to assess the client, McManus creates an individualized plan.

It varies, she said. If the client is experiencing high anxiety, I may request to see them once a week. If someone just needs time to de-stress, it might be once a month.

Another way she breaks down barriers is by offering home visit healing sessions for those physically unable to see her at her office or for those whose social anxiety prevents them from doing so.

In addition to reiki services, McManus offers reiki with guided meditation, crystal and chakra healing and breath work, as well as intuitive reiki, during which she will connect with spirit.

If someone is open to those messages [from spirit], I offer them, she said.

McManus also facilitates a monthly womens sacred circle, during which other alternative healing practitioners will offer their wisdom.

Its a nice mix of women who attend, she said. Its been really eye-opening. Your story is no different than my story its important for us to understand that. Every circle, I leave feeling just so connected and proud to be doing what I do, offering that space for women to come and release whats heavy on their heart.

McManus hope is to offer another womens sacred circle in Brattleboro, where she is also planning to expand her services. She always talks to her clients about additional alternative healing therapies and how they can complement each other in the path to overall wellness whether its acupuncture, massage aromatherapy or the many others on this list.

Its about moving energy within the body, she said. The most important thing you can do when finding out what healing modality works for you is by simply listening to your body. When someone gets on my table, they get the chance to slow down, connect with and honor themselves.

Amethyst Reiki and Healing is located at 103 Roxbury St., Suite 103 in Keene. For more information, call (603) 762-1135 or visit Facebook: m.me/amethystreikiandhealing.

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Keene Reiki Practitioner Offers Alternative Healing Tools - The Keene Sentinel

Straddling the line between advocacy documentary and D.I.Y. infomercial, Dosed promotes psychoactive vegetation as a potential cure for drug addiction. The filmmaker, Tyler Chandler, trails a friend, known in the film only by a first name, Adrianne, as she experiments with psilocybin mushrooms and the hallucinogenic plant iboga to treat her seemingly intractable dependence on heroin, methadone or morphine. The effectiveness of these alternative-medicine therapies, and the question of whether they should be legal, is still the subject of debate.

Adrianne, who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, has a third, potentially powerful ingredient contributing to her recovery: the presence of the camera, which, at times, is clearly on her mind. As the documentary opens, Adrianne is asked how she would like it to end. Id love to be sober, she replies, but adds that shed like to be sober, generally. And although her treatment does not follow a straightforward path her initial efforts at a supervised iboga retreat are disrupted by a hospital trip for a panic attack she eventually achieves the sobriety she foreshadows.

Which is great. But the shot-calling undermines the movies pro-psychedelics argument, because there is no way to control for the psychosomatic effects of starring in a documentary. Nor does Dosed do much to counter or even address objections to mushrooms or iboga as treatments, although it does include firm warnings about the need for supervision.

The movie, which was scheduled to be released in New York on Friday, will instead be available to rent or buy on Vimeo. The distributor has pledged a portion of the proceeds to fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Dosed

Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes.

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Dosed Review: The Case for Plant-Based Recovery - The New York Times

While it may seem silly today, when Hippocrates defined the four humorsblood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegmthe Greek physician of the fourth century B.C. built on the best science (or natural philosophy) available, systematized in the idiom of the day's most cutting edge technology: hydraulics.

In The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee describes the Greeks preoccupation with fluid mechanics, spurred by a "revolution" in irrigation and "culminating with Archaemedes discovering his eponymous laws in his bathtub."

"This preoccupation with hydraulics also flowed into Greek medicine and pathology. To explain illnessall illnessHippocrates fashioned an elaborate doctrine based on fluids and volumes, which he freely applied to pneumonia, boils, dysentery, and hemorrhoids," Mukherjee writes. "In the normal body, these four fluids were held in perfect, if somewhat precarious, balance. In illness, this balance was upset by the excess of one fluid."

His point is simple: how we name and describe disease, and the idiom in which we understand them, affect how the disease is understood and how its sufferers are treated. While the advent of the germ theory of disease has advanced our understanding and our ability to treat diseases, we are not always more rational in how we choose, as individuals, to respond. We have better information, which can lead researchers to vaccines instead of new methods of bloodletting, but our perspectives are still colored by culture and how we interpret our place in the world.

One beneficial expression of this can be seen in how we react to the novel coronavirus, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic spreading through 157 countries. Rather than the Greek's pursuit of internal balance, inspired by hydraulics, we think of the coronavirus in ways appropriate for the social media age. Using terms like "social distancing" and "self-quarantine," our reaction to COVID-19 is defined in relation to a connected humanity, where the best way to address a disease is to retract from the social network that spreads COVID-19.

This is, without a doubt, an improvement on the past. But just because we have made advances in science, doesn't mean we aren't prone to some of the same superstitions and modes of thinking that accompanied earlier plagues and pandemics.

With their dark, heavy robes and beaked masks, the plague doctor will forever be associated with the bubonic plague, even though they first appeared in France and Italy in the 1600s, nearly 300 years after the Black Death ripped through Europe and killed up to 60 percent of the continent's people. But while the plague doctor has become an eerie symbol of pandemic death, there's much about the outlandish costume that's more practical than you might think.

Invented by Charles de l'Orme, chief physician to three French kings and friend to the infamous Cardinal Richelieu, the plague doctor outfit included heavy gloves and clothing designed to keep people at a distance and prevent skin-to-skin contact. Plague doctors would use a staff to point out buboes and other indications of plague on patients, without touching.

While the state of medicine in the 1600sa century that saw a resurgence in bubonic plague epidemics throughout Europedoesn't map well on to modern debates about public vs. privately funded health care, the plague doctor was hired directly by towns and offered a vital public service to all rungs of society (though many became infamous for extracting additional fees). Not only did they treat the sick, but plague doctors also maintained public records, witness wills, conducted autopsies and dispensed medical advice. Some of the most respected medical minds of the era were plague doctors, including the Swiss physician Paracelsus and, strangely enough, Nostradamus, who advised against the bloodletting commonly used to treat the plague (he instead prescribed a lozenge of rosehips).

But even if they may have engaged in the best medical practices of their day, we now associate the plague doctor more with death than healing. The mask, with its skull-like visage, certainly doesn't help. But stuffed with strong-smelling substancesambergris, mint, rose petalsthe plague doctor's mask actually embodies both practical and erroneous responses to the spreading pandemic. While it undoubtedly helped ward off the smell from dead and diseased bodies, the masks were based on an outdated miasma theory of disease, which held that the plague was spread by foul odors and bad air.

We have better masks today. N95 respirators and surgical masks are worn by medical professionals treating people infected with the coronavirus. The respirators protect the wearer from inhaling the aerosolized/airborne virus. Surgical facemasks are less effective, providing only what the CDC describes as "barrier protection" from droplets and "respiratory particles." As such, their primary recommended use isn't for people hoping to avoid catching COVID-19, but for those who already have it to prevent infecting others when they cough or sneeze. But since surgical masks have been shown to decrease transmission rates during flu seasons, other authorities, including Hong Kong health officials, recommend everyone mask up.

While respirators are vastly more effective than 17th century plague masks, surgical masks aren't all that different, providing a barrier that might be effective, but are ultimately imperfect against viruses. In comparing surgical masks to plague masks, what's surprising is not how it highlights modern medicine against the backwards thinking of earlier centuries, but instead how plague doctors, even while working from imperfect premises, got a few things right, or half-right.

There's still a lot more people got disastrously wrong in historical responses to pandemics. What may be surprising is how often the failures of the past continue into the present.

On the Smithsonian Channel series Mystic Britain: Witches and Demons (above), Dr. Elma Brenner of London's Wellcome Library describes a circular diagram, or "plague charm," meant to guard against pestilence.

"These charms quite often had some kind of instruction to write them on the body, sometimes in blood," Brenner says. "But you could do other things with this. You could copy it onto a scrap of paper and carry it on your body, for instance."

While plague charms would seem out-of-place during the coronavirus pandemic, we still aren't immune to the allure of amulets, charms, talismans and snake oil. In March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission issued warning letters to companies selling "fraudulent COVID-19 products," including herbal teas, essential oils, tinctures and colloidal silver.

In 1621, Oxford University scholar Robert Burton published his masterpiece, The Anatomy of Melancholy, which purported to be a medical textbook addressing melancholia, or what we'd describe today as clinical and other forms of depression. Instead, the book is more a wild miscellany of advice, using a library's worth of sources, stretching back centuries, to address the breadth of human emotional and physical wellbeing. Along the way, Burton lists dozens of folk cures, herbal remedies, magical spells and amulets useful for fighting disease.

Some are recognizable, like St. John's Wort, which Burton describes as most effective at driving away "all phantastical spirits" when gathered "on a Friday in the hour of Jupiter" and hung in a bag around your neck. But other amulets include wolf's dung for colic and "a ring made of the hoof of an ass's right fore-foot." Precious stones, in particular, can be effective in treating just about anything.

But maybe the strangest is an amulet Burton describes his mother using to treat fevers: a spider, trapped in a nutshell and wrapped in silk. But while it's unlikely to catch on today, Burton's reaction to his mother's spider amulet carries with it a cautionary tale for our modern reaction to the coronavirus pandemic.

"Quid aranea cum febre? What has a spider to do with fever? For what antipathy?" Burton writes, doubting his mother's folk remedy. But then he does a little more reading. "Til at length, rambling amongst authors (as often I do), I found this very medicine in Dioscorides, approved by Mattiolus, repeated by Aldrovandus; I began to have a better opinion of it, and to give more credit to amulets, when I saw it in some parties answer to experience."

While initially skeptical of amulets, Burton finds himself a believer after discovering that first century Greek physicians endorsed spider nutshells. This appeal to antiquity remains a potent source of misinformation today: treatments that are described as ancient are assumed to have some efficacy, otherwise why would we have used it for so long?

As a sales tactic, it can be especially potent when wielded by scammers and practitioners of alternative medicine. Silver has a long history of medical use, since the metal is toxic to bacteria, but its uses as an antibiotic are dubious. Nevertheless, alternative medicine peddlers have heralded colloidal silver as a cure-all for all sorts of maladies, including as a treatment for the coronavirus. Far right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been advertising the effectiveness of colloidal silver toothpaste in treating COVID-19, while televangelist Jim Bakker has been sued for selling a similar silver-based tincture. So while amulets have largely been set aside in the 21st century, we are still prone to quackery and snake oil.

Modern talismans aren't just peddled by grifters and scammers either. Guns have become uniquely American amulets during the coronavirus outbreak. Buyers cite the need for protection against civil disorder and their looting neighbors. But while medical systems throughout the world are overtaxed by COVID-19, no country is experiencing the kind of social breakdown gun buyers imagine. When it comes to objects meant to ward against evil or danger, but with zero effectiveness against the coronavirus, the massive increase in firearms and ammunition exemplifies talismanic thinking.

We also remain prone to a strange form of fatalism, which valorizes the coronavirus pandemic as an unavoidable, even necessary, reaction to the state of humanity. In his Anatomy, Burton summarizes some of the positive views held by religious authorities and philosophers:

"Sickness, diseases, trouble many, but without cause; 'It may be 'tis for the good of their souls'; pars fati fuit ['twas part of their destiny], the flesh rebels against the spirit; that which hurts the one must needs help the other. Sickness is the mother of modesty, putteth us in mind of our mortality; and when we are in the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, she pulleth us by the ear, and maketh us know ourselves. Pliny calls it the sum of philosophy, 'if we could but perform that in our health, which we promise in our sickness.'"

In this formulation, disease becomes an expression of virtue, either because suffering results in some form of purification, or because it makes us humble. Similar sentiments are still expressed today. On Sunday, Florida megachurch pastor Guillermo Maldonadowho hosted a January rally for President Donald Trump, according to Right Wing Watchdescribed the coronavirus as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and a harbinger of the End Times. He described the virus as a test of his parishioners faith and virtue, urging them to ignore public health warnings to demonstrate they truly sought God's protection (he has since suspended services).

But while religious justifications for disease as somehow "good for the soul" still exist today, the mindset also takes on different, more modern forms. You may have seen viral tweets celebrating the return of wildlife to spaces previously dominated by humans and their pollution:

But notice also a darker undercurrent, which describes the coronavirus as a form of retributive justice; a purification for the planet, instead of the soul:

Actor Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical, Spring Breakers) offered a dramatic example of fatalism masquerading as a form of brave realism, even virtue, in an Instagram Live video posted Tuesday.

"I'm sorry. But it's a virus. I get it. Like, I respect it, but at the same time, even if everybody gets it... yeah, people are going to die, which is terrible, but inevitable," Hudgens said in the video, since deleted. Hudgens issued an apology for the video, but the mentality can be found everywhere, from St. Patrick's Day revelers to Florida retirees.

In 1722, Londoner Daniel Defoe, already famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, published A Journal of the Plague Year, a novelistic account of the last major bubonic plague epidemic to strike England, the Great Plague of 1665. The meticulously researched historical fiction includes many of the same public reactions as those seen today, including defiant partying in a pandemic's looming shadow, talismanic thinking and the spread of snake oil cures and inaccurate medical information.

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"They ran to conjurers and witches, and all sorts of deceivers, to know what should become of them (who fed their fears, and kept them always alarmed and awake on purpose to delude them and pick their pockets), so they were as mad upon their running after quacks and mountebanks, and every practising old woman, for medicines and remedies; storing themselves with such multitudes of pills, potions, and preservatives, as they were called, that they not only spent their money but even poisoned themselves beforehand for fear of the poison of the infection; and prepared their bodies for the plague, instead of preserving them against it," Defoe writes in his fictional Journal.

While the far lower mortality rate and modern medical science mean the coronavirus pandemic will never approach the horrors of historical plagues, we can find in the past some of the same responses as today, including the rush to hoard supplies and the same proliferation of bad information. Instead of confronting death in the "heaps of dead bodies lying unburied" described by Defoe, we check and recheck the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker. We may not be seeking cures using the Philosopher's Stone, as surgeon Sigismund Bacstrom attempted in the 1700s, but we are, in our character, much the same as people were then.

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Are Surgical Masks the New Plague Masks? A History of the Not-Always-Helpful Ways We've Reacted to Pandemics - Newsweek

A worker in a protective suit at the closed seafood market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, January 10, 2020. The seafood market is linked to the outbreak of the pneumonia caused by the new strain of coronavirus, but some patients diagnosed with the new coronavirus deny exposure to this market.(Stringer/Reuters)Despite the huge health risks they create, these practices are deeply embedded in rural Chinese life.

The Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress, in effect the executive committee of the Chinese Communist Party, in late February issued an edict banning the countrys wet markets, including those in Wuhan, the source of the current COVID-19 outbreak. The statement notes that it is necessary to strengthen market supervision, resolutely ban and severely crack down on illegal wildlife markets and trade, and control major public health risks from the source. The Straits Times of Singapore has reported that eight laws have been passed in the last week. We have no details on the contents of the legislation. Its too soon to know, though, whether we have been down this road before.

After the SARS outbreak in 2003, which was traced to a wet market in the southern Guangdong Province, a temporary ban on wet markets and the wild-animal industry were put in place. In July of that year, the World Health Organization declared the SARS virus contained, and in August the Chinese government lifted the ban.

Wet markets are found the world over, typically open-air sites selling fresh meat, seafood, and produce. The meats often are butchered and trimmed on-site. Markets in China have come in for justifiable condemnation because of the way theyve evolved, commingling traditional livestock with a wide variety of wild animals, including exotic and endangered species. Many are quite unsanitary, with blood, entrails, excrement, and other waste creating the conditions for disease that migrates from animals to people through virus, bacteria, and other forms of transmission. Such zoonotic diseases that have emerged from China and other regions of the world include Ebola, HIV, bird flu, swine flu, and SARS.

The wild animals that mix with more common livestock poultry, swine, and seafood form a deadly combination. And, as has been well reported by Vox and others, wild-animal farming has a long history in China, emerging after disastrous decades of state control of rural production under Mao Zedong. By the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, tens of millions of Chinese citizens had died of starvation under a system that could not produce enough food for Chinas population.

Maos successor, Deng Xiaoping, in the late 1970s lifted state controls on rural farming to allow peasant farmers to provide for their own sustenance. Rats, bats, civet cats, pangolins, and other wild animals became staples of rural farming. To acknowledge and even encourage this, the government enacted laws that protected the lawful rights of those engaged in the development or utilization of wildlife resources.

Over time, this led to the breeding and distribution of these animals, and small rural outposts developed into larger-scale operations. Add to this the use of wild animals not only for consumption but as the supposedly magic ingredients in tonics and alternative medicines, and it is obvious that what began as subsistence farming for the rural poor has developed into a substantial industry. Wuhan, a city most Americans had never heard of before this year, is larger than New York City.

Wet markets and commingling with wild animals have created much misery for the Chinese and for the world. Sixty million Americans caught the H1N1 swine flu virus in 2009, while the SARS outbreak killed nearly 800 people worldwide. The COVID-19 death toll is already multiples of that.

We should be skeptical about reports of a crackdown on the wild-animal industry in the wake of the Wuhan catastrophe. We dont know any details about the new laws that have been reported. What will be the enforcement and discipline? Law enforcement in rural China is notoriously lax, in contrast to the cities, where the use of surveillance technology and other means to control the population is widespread. What is the posture toward Chinese medicine, which is a significant driver of the wild-animal industry? While thousands of such wet markets have been closed, how did we get to 2020 with such practices in a city larger than the largest U.S. city?

So far, we may just be seeing a repeat of the crackdown after the SARS epidemic, which was quickly and quietly lifted. We do not know the nature of the current ban. And can we even trust Beijing to keep such bans in place, particularly with a slowing economy and persistent rural poverty? Also, what exactly is banned? It should be all aspects of the wild-animal trade breeding, transporting, and marketing.

There should be permanent closure of the wet markets, given the governments obvious inability or unwillingness to regulate them. Such a comprehensive approach would be a reversal of decades of government policy and market practice, but when we get through this crisis and the toll it will take on the world, we will owe it to the memory of those we lose that there be a global, sustained push to see these practices ended, everywhere.

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The Chinese Wild-Animal Industry and Wet Markets Must Go - National Review

The wellness industry has capitalised on the coronavirus public health crisis with many alternative medicine practitioners pushing false claims about cures

As the coronavirus threat gets worse, sotoo does the misinformation surrounding the novel disease.

From miracle minerals to herbal remedies and supplements, it seems the wellness industry will stop at nothing to capitalise on the worst public health crisis in a generation.

Homeopaths have claimed they have a cure. Aromatherapists are selling anti-viral essential oils. Chiropractors claim spinal treatment can boost the immune system and natropaths have recommended eating garlic to prevent an infection.

None of these claims are true. There is no cure for Covid-19, and scientists across the world are racing against the clock to develop a vaccine for it. Yet with people desperately rushing to supermarkets to get their hands on anything that can reduce their risk of infection, many are falling for this false health advice.

Here are some of the top coronavirus wellness scams to look out for and why they wont work

Eating garlic can get rid of coronavirus

During the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak a post on social media, shared by hundreds of thousands of people, claimed drinking boiled garlic water would improve and cure people afflicted with the virus overnight. Several naturopaths have claimed eating garlic, along with other immune boosting food such as ginger and veg, can also prevent catching Covid-19.

Throughout history many cultures have hailed garlic for its alleged ability to treat and prevent various illnesses, including colds and flu. However, scientific evidence supporting such claims are weak. The World Health Organisation (WHO) even addressed this rumour in their myth busting guide to Covid-19.

WHO said: Garlic is a healthy food that may have some antimicrobial properties. However, there is no evidence from the current outbreak that eating garlic has protected people from the new coronavirus.

The NHS says eating fruit and veg and drinking plenty of water will, in general, keep you healthy. But there is no evidence specific foods will help fight this particular virus.

Herbal remedies and supplements will boost your immune system

On that note, its worth pointing out that the whole concept of boosting your immune system, whether by eating superfoods, doing a juice cleanse or taking herbal remedies and supplements, is scientifically suspect.

Charles Bangham, professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Imperial College London, has previously warned against the idea that the immune system is some kind of internal force field that can be boosted or patched up. In an interview for The Guardian way before anyone had ever heard of Covid-19 he said: This couldnt be further from the truth. As the name suggests its not a single thing but a system incorporating many organs and biological functions.

Of course, this has never stopped Instagram influencers and alternative medical practitioners claiming conveniently expensive products can do exactly that. Even at the best of times, immune- boosting is a popular marketing trend, never mind during a global pandemic.

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has said it is taking swift action after a number of homeopaths in the UK claimed they had remedies to cure Covid-19 (again, there is no cure for the virus). A Telegraph investigation found these remedies include colloidal silver to boost the immune system, the side effects of which include turning the skin a bluish grey colour, whichcan be permanent, and kidney damage.

In the US, the Food and drug administration (FDA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are pursuing legal action against seven companies for selling unapproved herbal remedies and other supplements to treat or cure the novel coronavirus.

One of those companies has ran out of anti-viral herbals due to overwhelming demand, but advises people to google immune herbs as they are being sold across the nation.

Homeopathy is hugely popular in the states and proponents may genuinely think they notice health benefits when they take special remedies. But, according toDr Ben Neuman, the head of the biology department at Texas A&M University-Texarkana, this is down to the placebo effect when your brain tricks you into thinking that this works.

Addressing claims about supplements, Medicine researcher Dr Melanie R Graber from the University of Connecticut has explained: Unless you have a vitamin deficiency, it is believed that supplements arent really necessary. Focus on eating a diet full of various fruits and vegetables to meet your vitamin and mineral needs.

This is inline with NHS advice, which says there is no good-quality evidence that homeopathy works as a treatment for any health condition and that most people dont need to take vitamin supplements if they already have a balanced diet.

Drinkable Silver

Another myth gaining popularity amid the coronvirus pandemic is that colloidal silver tiny particles of the metal suspended into liquid can cure the disease. This false claim was brought to the attention of US authorities after it was promoted on televangelist Jim Bakkers show.

A guest said it hadnt been tested on Covid-19, but claimed the liquid solution had been tested on other strains of coronavirus, and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours. Not only does silver totally eliminate the virus, the so-called natural health expert claimed, but does it, also kill it, deactivate it and then boost your immune system.

Bakker is now being sued by the State of Missouri for refusing to take the produce off his website, insisting the treatment does work. His belief has been widely shared on Facebook, particularly by medical freedom groups which are extremely suspicious of mainstream medical advice.

DIY hand sanitiser

Due to a global hand sanitiser shortage sparked by panic buying, many are taking it upon themselves to promote their own recipes online. While this may be well-meaning, it can harm your skin if made wrong.

The World Health Organisation has published a guide on how to make a safe and legitimate hand sanitiser. But some experts say soap and hot water is a better option than doing it yourself as it is not an easy process.

Hand gels usually contain emollients, which make them gentler on skin, on top of their 60-70% alcohol content. Thats stronger than anything you would find in a store even vodka only has 40% alcohol (and we dont recommend using that!)

Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. said there is no real need to make your own hand sanitiser as soap and water works just fine.

Here is a guide on how to wash your hands properly, as advised by the NHS.

Drinking water to flush out the virus

The NHS advise drinking six to eight glasses of water a day as part of a healthy diet. But some on social media have taken it upon themselves to proclaim it has the power to heal when consumed in excess amounts (spoiler: it doesnt).

One post that appeared on multiple Facebook accounts quotes a Japanese doctor who recommends drinking water every 15 minutes to flush out any virus that might have entered the mouth. Meanwhile, there is a version in Arabic that has been shared more than 250,000 times.

University of Oxford Professor Trudie Lang says there is no biological mechanism that would support the idea that you can just wash a respiratory virus down into your stomach and kill it.

Meanwhile, Dr Neuman, called it bonkers, explaining that once the virus enters your body it will quickly infect your cells and, over time, spread to your lungs. Although in some cases it does reach the intestines, gulping down water wont have any effect as the intestines actually have more of the virus receptor than the lungs, and would offer a potential route of access to the bloodstream.

Essential oils

I think weve established by now that there is no cure for Covid-19. Needless to say, anti-viral oils will not help you fight off symptoms of the pneumonia-like flu.

US beauty influencer Michelle Phan has come under fire for making such a claim on her Instagram account to over two million followers. Posting a picture of her essential-oil diffuser she wrote: If you are burning antiviral essential oils around you this will kill off the virus before it enters your system.

She was forced to apologise when Dr Sandra Lee known more commonly as Dr Pimple Popper shut down her claim, writing Sorry, antiviral essential oils DONT EXIST.

Aromatherapists would disagree and several have written articles on the best antiviral oils to ward off the novel coronavirus, promoting ingredients such as cinnamon bark, lemon and clove bud.

We asked a couple of experts who both agreed with Dr Pimple Popper that oils cant fight viruses. That being said, theyre not completely useless for alleviating some symptoms of a common cold.

Antiviral essential oils are an alternative form of treatment for some of the symptoms of colds and flu and can alleviate conditions like a blocked nose, or aid sleep to improve recovery times, explains Dr Simran Deo at UK-based online doctor, Zava UK. However, there is no evidence to suggest that inhaling or applying essential oils to the skin can prevent infection in the first place, she adds. Viruses are spread by coming into close contact with someone who has one, or touching infected surfaces or objects and then putting your hands in your mouth.

Dr Diana Gall agrees on the lack of evidence. She doesnt think essential oils can have a preventative effect against viruses. While they may help to soothe the symptoms of viruses such as flu, they have very little effect in stopping viruses making their way into the body, she said.

Miracle Minerals

YouTuber Jordan Sather, who has thousands of followers across different platforms, has been falsely claiming that a miracle mineral supplement, called MMS, can wipe out coronavirus.

It contains chlorine dioxide a bleaching agent.

He and others promoted the substance even before the coronavirus outbreak, despite numerous warnings from health authorities accross the globe about the dangers of drinking it ( it can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and symptoms of severe dehydration).

The FDA has warned: Miracle Mineral Solution does not cure COVID-19 and has not been approved by the FDA for any use. The solution, when mixed, develops into a dangerous bleach which has caused serious and potentially life-threatening side effects.

So, how do you protect yourself from coronavirus?

Symptoms

The early symptoms of coronavirus include a dry cough, a high temperature or fever, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing and a sore throat.

While many of those affected have shown only mild symptoms, scans on some patients have shown fluid in the lungs which is consistent with viral pneumonia. The World Health Organisation (WHO) have advised that older people and those with pre-existing medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease seem to be more vulnerable to becoming severely ill with the virus.

For more information about symptoms, click here. To read more about what counts as an underlying health condition, click here

How to protect yourself To protect yourself from coronavirus, advice from WHO includes: Standard recommendations to prevent infection spread include regular hand washing, covering mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing, thoroughly cooking meat and eggs.

Avoid close contact with anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing.

You should also avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth if your hands are not clean.

For more advise on how often you should wash your hands, click here

When to see a doctor If you develop symptoms including a high temperature, cough, runny nose, sore throat or difficulty breathing, the NHS advises that you stay at home for avoid public transport, work places, your GP, hospitals and schools for seven days.

At present, you do not need to contact the 111 helpline to tell them youre staying at home.

The NHS says you should contact 111 if:

Social distancing & self-isolating

Boris Johnson has urged people to work from home and avoid social contact and non-essential travel as the coronavirus outbreak continues to grip the UK.

The Prime Minister has also said that those over the age of 70 should be prepared to self-isolate for at least 12 weeks, and that anyone who is living with someone who has symptoms should also self-isolate for 14 days.

For information on how to self-isolate, click here

See the article here:

Coronavirus wellness scams being pushed by homeopaths, aromatherapists and naturopaths - Metro

Forty-one-year-old Gaurav Bhalotia realised there is a lot to health beyond medicine, and that our bodies need to participate very strongly to recover from any illness.

Gaurav thus started FindMyHealth in 2018 with a vision to give individuals control of their health, and to help them stay healthy and recover quickly. However, the seeds of the current product was sowed in April 2019 after the successful Proof of Concept (POC) of its computer vision technology.

Gaurav Bhalotia

The platform allows users to get a peek into their inner health based on an Ayurvedic framework. It starts by analysing the face to identify the body constitution and visual aging or obesity, which is followed by a conversation with its AI doctor to identify the state of the inner health.

The B2C startup has about 10,000 users at present.

A former employee of Oracle, Kosmix (later WalmartLabs), and Flipkart, Gaurav got the idea of FindMyHealth from his own health experiences, where he moved from being a sceptic towards alternative medicine to start believing in the bodys power and participation in recovery.

The biggest gap which Gaurav saw to start with was helping people identify what herbs to take. There were many people consuming Ayurvedic herbs, but most of it was through ad-hoc recommendations from friends and family.

Gaurav says, he is passionate about holistic health and traditional Indian health sciences and medicine. FindMyHealth grew out of his belief that everybody deserves a healthy living and that it is viable to take control of our own health through personalisation and AI. He likes to address his startup as a scorecard for one's inner health.

Team FindMyHealth

The biggest challenge for him, however, was to get Ayurvedic doctors, nutrition experts, engineers, and data scientists to think and work together on a common platform as well as in creating a strong positive awareness of Ayurveda among the users.

Based in Bengaluru, today the startup is a team of eight employees including engineers, data scientists, doctors, and nutrition experts.

FindMyHealth mainly targets people in the age group 25-45. Gaurav says, this segment can be broadly divided into two categories. One is the users who are health conscious (HCIs), and are willing to invest in supplements that will help them be at the top of their health. The second set of users are those with chronic or lifestyle conditions, especially those newly diagnosed. These users want a way to manage or reverse the condition without significant trade-offs in their lifestyle.

The startup uses AI and mobile web to do remote ayurvedic assessment of the person on the phone.

The startup also offers personalised supplements, which is custom built for users health condition. Currently it offers the whole set (assessment, personalisation, and shipping of the personalised pill) for Rs 999 for one-months supplements. However, the startup is yet to monetise its services.

FindMyHealth has also partnered with Hyderabad-based startup Healtheeliving to deliver Ayurveda compliant diet plans to its customers.

According to reports, the Ayurveda market in India is estimated to be around $5 billion, and is growing at a CAGR of 14 percent yearly. There are other players in the space like 1balance delivering personalised supplements, and Jiva Ayurveda, Dr Vaidyas, Cureveda, Organic India, etc., trying to create a new-age brand for Ayurvedic supplements.

However, FindMyHealth considers personalisation through AI as its USP.

The angel-funded startup is currently working on personalised diet plans by using AI, which will be Ayurveda compliant. According to Gaurav, the team is focussing on fine tuning the technology and monetisation model before raising additional funds.

The team is also building a symptom checker based on Ayurvedic theory, which will also give an idea of disease progression.

(Edited by Megha Reddy)

Read the rest here:

This ex-Flipster's startup combines AI and Ayurveda for health monitoring - YourStory

3/18/2020

First and foremost, we want you to know that were thinking about those of you who are feeling alone or afraid as we go through these trying times. We want to help you in any way possible, so feel free to reach out if theres anything we can do, ethan@valleybreeze.com .

During these days when local businesses are struggling and residents are fearful about a loss of income, my hope is that all of us do what we can to help our neighbors and friends. Give an extra big tip, start a fundraiser, reach out to lonely people (remember social distancing), calm fears. Simple daily actions make the difference.

Part of whats contributing to so many people feeling uneasy is the great amount of misinformation floating around. Many of us have seen at least some of the viral nonsense related to the virus, from cutting up onions to gargling salt.

But theres also more subtle misinformation that gets out there from claimed experts or politicians who have ulterior motives. It can be difficult to know what to believe, but truth isnt a hopeless cause.

This Sunshine Week is a time to highlight the importance of holding officials accountable for the claims they make. As journalists, we rely on openness in government and freedom of information to keep you properly informed and protected from harm, so if that link is not functioning properly, everyone is worse off.

Peter Adams, senior vice president for education for the News Literacy Project, says we should learn from encounters with misinformation. Most people know much of what they see online is bogus, even if shared by someone in authority, but misinformation still thrives. Why? Because it bypasses rational minds by exploiting deep instincts and ideals.

But, according to Adams, we can learn to recognize the patterns, including stories that are too perfect, images and now video that lend themselves to manipulation, headlines that evoke anger or fear, and claims about conspiracies or cover-ups that defy logic. Try adding a variety of fact-checking organizations to social media feeds.

Speaking with NPR recently, Adams told Michel Martin of All Things Considered that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought out a clear picture of the kinds of things that tend to circulate in the misinformation ecosystem, but on a more intensified level and with higher stakes. Everything from miracle cures and alternative medicine recommendations, anti-vaccination propaganda to conspiracy theories, has thrived.

There have also been plenty of opportunists active, he said, people posing as doctors for their own purposes.

Much of the fake news over the past couple of weeks is what one calls a cheap fake or low-tech fake, says Adams, or copied and pasted claims going viral across platforms. For example, think, my sister-in-law works with a man whos married to someone at the CDC

Also, says Adams, beware of emotions. Most misinformation has a strong emotional effect on us, and anger or fear can override rational thoughts and short-circuit our critical thinking.

The top item anyone should look for is the source, he says, and if you cant tell the source, disregard it and go to verified authoritative sources such as health agencies or Johns Hopkins Universitys coronavirus tracker.

One of the best ways we can help our neighbors at this time is to build a better information system by taking an extra minute to verify before sharing.

- Shorey is editor of The Valley Breeze Newspapers

Continued here:

ETHAN SHOREY During these times, trusted information so important - Valley Breeze

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to upend daily life across the globe, confusion has persisted over whether its safe to take Ibuprofen for symptoms related to COVID-19.

The World Health Organization, which earlier this week recommended against taking Ibuprofen, indicated Thursday that it was walking back that advice.

"WHO is aware of concerns on the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (i.e., ibuprofen) for the treatment of fever for people with COVID-19, said a statement from the organization. At present, after a rapid review of the literature, WHO is not aware of published clinical or population-based data on this topic. We are consulting with physicians treating COVID-19 patients and are not aware of reports of any negative effects of ibuprofen, beyond the usual known side effects that limit its use in certain populations. Based on currently available information, WHO does not recommend against the use of ibuprofen.

Thursdays statement from the WHO followed an earlier comment from a spokesman for the organization, who told reporters in Geneva Tuesday that the group was looking into a recent article published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine suggesting Ibuprofen may not be safe, Science Alert reported.

In the meantime, we recommend using rather paracetamol, and do not use ibuprofen as a self-medication. Thats important, the spokesman told reporters, according to Science Alert.

The Lancet article was published Mar. 11. and authored by researchers from University Hospital Basel in Switzerland and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. It said human pathogenic coronaviruses bind to target cells through angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2).

The authors wrote that ACE2 can be increased by thiazolidinediones and ibuprofen, and that they hypothesize that diabetes and hypertension treatment with ACE2-stimulating drugs increases the risk of developing severe and fatal COVID-19.

But in a separate statement Monday, the University of Basel, which two of the study authors are affiliated with, said there currently are no conclusive findings.

Currently, the question is being discussed whether taking the painkiller Ibuprofen exacerbates the progression of COVID-19, the statement said. A correspondence by Basel researchers states that there are some indications of a negative effect, but no clear evidence of an adverse impact. More research is needed to investigate this hypothesis.

One of the studys authors, Dr. Michael Roth, who leads a research group at the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel, was also quoted in the schools statement.

Roth said the researchers hypothesis "does not constitute a recommendation to use certain drugs or not. Patients should always follow the instructions given by their physicians.

He and his co-authors wrote in the Lancet piece that patients with certain underlying health conditions are particularly vulnerable.

We suggest that patients with cardiac diseases, hypertension, or diabetes, who are treated with ACE2-increasing drugs, are at higher risk for severe COVID-19 infection and, therefore, should be monitored for ACE2-modulating medications, such as ACE inhibitors or ARBs, the article said. Based on a PubMed search on Feb 28, 2020, we did not find any evidence to suggest that antihypertensive calcium channel blockers increased ACE2 expression or activity, therefore these could be a suitable alternative treatment in these patients.

Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.

Continue reading here:

WHO walks back warning about ibuprofen and coronavirus, not aware of any negative effects - The Boston Globe

Alternative medicines and therapies refer to natural method of treatment which is different from conventional or pharmaceutical medicines. Alternative medical treatment includes non-mineral, non-vitamin and natural substances. On the basis of modality, alternative medicine market can be segmented into homeopathic medicine, herbal medicine, naturopathy, acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, ayurvedic medicine and others. Alternative therapies include magnetic therapy, herbal therapies, yoga, mud therapy and oil massage therapy, deep breathing exercise, osteopathic manipulation and meditation. Alternative medicines and therapies are used in chronic diseases, neurological diseases, reducing pain and depression and others.

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Europe, followed by Asia and North America has the largest market for alternative medicines and therapies due rise in adoption of alternative medicines and natural therapies and technological advancement for drug development in this region. In addition, Japan is expected to show high growth rate in the alternative medicines and therapies market in next five years due to rise in aging population and high spending in alternative medicines and therapies in the region.

Increasing adoption of alternative medicines and natural therapies, technological advancement, rise in ageing population, ease to reach, increasing healthcare expenditure, government initiatives and rise in adoption of alternative medicines and therapies such as biosimilars are expected to drive the market for alternative medicines and therapies, In addition, increasing consumer spending in healthcare, rise in number of incidence of various diseases and cost effectiveness of alternative medicines and therapies are expected to drive the market for alternative medicines and therapies. However, economic downturn and side effects from the alternative medicines and strict rules and regulations led by some governments are restraining for the growth of global alternative medicines and therapies market.

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Growing demographics and economies in the developing countries such as India and China is expected to lead the growth in alternative medicines and therapies market in Asia. In addition, rapid increase in aging population, increasing demand for herbal medicines and rise in demand of alternative drugs and natural therapies are expected to offer new opportunity to global alternative medicines and therapies market. However, safety in clinical trials and standardization is a challenge for the alternative medicines and therapies market.

Increasing number of collaborations and partnerships and new products launched in the market are some of the trends have been observed in global alternative medicines and therapies market.

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Some of the major companies operating in the global alternative medicines and therapies market are:

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Alternative Medicines Therapies Market to Make Great Impact in Near Future by 2020 - Feed Road