The effects on our health

We live in a polluted environment where the air is alarming, the water is contaminated by chemicals and foods are processed and highly artificial. Our bodies must overcompensate in order to deal with these adverse conditions. How much insult can the body take?

As stated above, the body’s way of expressing the imbalance within comes in the form of disease: chronic bronchitis, asthma, allergies, migraine headaches, eczema, learning disabilities, multiple sclerosis. These are just a few diseases that manifest themselves in the body when the cup has overflowed.

Homeopaths view each case as unique and treat each patient on an individual basis. They look for the striking characteristics that show how the person is sick and what might be maintaining their disease; in other words, what environmental component is keeping someone in this diseased state. What are the obstacles to the cure?

Let’s look at two people with asthma – two individuals, two kinds of asthma and, most probably, two different homeopathic remedies.

One patient has asthma periodically. The asthma gets worse at change of weather and, particularly, in any cold, damp, stormy weather. This individual experiences severe reactions to cats and smoke. Bronchitis is in the medical history, with wheezing and scant perspiration. Lastly, this person feels much better with any warmth and warm drinks. Another patient with asthma has a marked, tickling cough that is worse in cold wind and better in damp, rainy weather. Symptoms worsen with talking or laughing, and it’s often hard to get a deep enough breath. On top of the asthma, this person suffers from chronic sinusitis and bronchitis. The previous examples are used to merely point out that although two people have asthma, homeopathic medicine looks at how they have asthma and treats accordingly.

Our environment is so impure that it will most certainly weaken our body’s ability to correct itself. When you add emotional symptoms, everyday stresses and work overload into the mix, the imbalance heightens and the vitality of life decreases. Homeopathy will treat you as an individual and remedy your unique vital energy.

TEXT 5

Assignment: Read the text and give a short summary of it.

Blueberries may improve your memory

A study by researchers at the University of Houston indicates that eating blueberries may help fight age-related memory loss in rodents and, by extension, perhaps in humans. Cooked blueberries, as in a blueberry pie, might be even better for you. Eating strawberries and spinach may have similar benefits, according to the research.

“Eating the sort of diet mother told us to eat isn’t such a bad idea,” says one professor of psychology and neuroscience at the university. His student research group did the blueberry testing. “Departing from a meat-and-potato, limited diet to one where we eat a variety of fruit and vegetables is beginning to look as if it might help and it’s hard to see how it would hurt.”

A related study has also been conducted on the effect of spinach on learning ability in aging rats by a group of researchers from the University of South Florida. Both studies indicate that the specific foods could markedly improve performance, either in memory or learning, in rats at an age at which they normally would have age-related problems.

With the population aging, and baby boomers approaching senior-citizen status in massive numbers, there is an increasing interest in finding ways to improve the lives of older people, not incidentally decreasing the cost of supporting the health of those new seniors. “This is one topic that has general interest because this is one thing people can do for themselves,” Malin says. “Waiting for a miracle cure for aging and Alzheimer’s could be a pretty long wait. We could perhaps be doing something for ourselves in the meantime, possibly through dietary changes.”

Malin was intrigued by results of experiments done elsewhere with fruits and vegetables, especially with blueberries. That research indicated the effects of aging in rats might be slowed if they ate a diet of rat chow containing blueberry extract. “I wondered, if the brain is aging less slowly in terms of neurochemistry, does that mean that some of the deterioration in memory ability that comes with aging could be slowed down?” he says.

The result of the test was that elderly rats that ate blueberry extract had equal or better memory than young rats in the same tests. A control group of aged rats not eating blueberry extract had no improvement.

Malin warns that there is no guarantee the results translate to people. However, a great many treatments for neurological and psychiatric disorders were originally discovered through testing rats and mice. Most of the neurochemical processes in the rat and human are similar. Also, there are corresponding brain structures in the rat brain and the human brain.