Studies and Progress Notes (November 2007)

* * * STUDIES and PROGRESS NOTES* * *

* *  SPIRITUAL AWARENESS AND WHOLISTIC HEALING * * 

Precognitive effects or backwards in time (retrocausal) effects to explain expectation and placebo effects

Dean Radin, Ph.D. Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, CA; Eva Lobach, M.S. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Objective: Conventional models of placebo effects assume that all mind–body responses associated with expectation can be explained by ordinary causal processes. This experiment tested whether some placebo effects may also involve retrocausal, or time-reversed, influences.

Design: Slow cortical potentials in the brain were monitored while adult volunteers anticipated either a flash of light or no flash, selected with equal probability by a noise-based random number generator. Data were collected in individual sessions of 100 trials, contributed by 13 female and 7 male adult participants.

“We decided to examine slow cortical potentials (SCPs) in the brain because SCPs reflect states of anticipation and expectation, and as such, if SCPs were found to respond differentially according to future stimuli, then we could infer that our expectations may be influenced by future events and thus that the placebo effect might also be influenced by future events.” (p. 734)

Outcome measures: Ensemble median slow cortical potentials 1 second prior to a light flash were compared with the same measures prior to no flash. A nonparametric randomized permutation technique was used to statistically assess the observed difference. Electroencephalographic data were analyzed separately by gender.

Results: Females' slow cortical potentials significantly differentiated before stimulus onset (z = 2.72, p = 0.007, two-tailed); males showed a suggestive effect in the opposite direction (z = -1.64, p = 0.10, two-tailed). Examination of alternative explanations indicated that the significant effect in females was not caused by anticipatory strategies, equipment or environmental artifacts, or violation of statistical assumptions.

Conclusions: This experiment, in accordance with previous studies showing similar, unconscious “presentiment” effects in humans, suggests that comprehensive models seeking to explain placebo effects, and in general how expectation affects the mind and body, may require consideration of retrocausal influences.

Source: Radin, Dean/ Eva Lobach. Toward Understanding the Placebo Effect: Investigating a Possible Retrocausal Factor, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 2007, 13(7): 733-740. doi:10.1089/acm.2006.6243.

IJHC – WHR Observations

Radin and Lobach make the interesting suggestion that this experiment demonstrated a backwards-in-time effect. In other words, the flash caused an effect prior to its occurrence. This is an interesting reversal of more than a hundred years of parapsychology research that presumes such effects are the result of the subject anticipating the future event prior to its occurrence. This has been called precognition. In this model, the consciousness of the subject extends into future time to acquire information that is brought into an earlier point of time in counsciousness.

  Placebo effects appear to be reasonably explained as responses of the subject to expectations held in the conscious or unconscious mind, activated by the external situation.

  Readers are invited to weigh in on these alternative explanations!

  I add my own personal experience regarding this article to the discussion. Yesterday, I started preparing this issue of the eZine. I did not have an article for this section of the Studies and Progress Notes, and wished to myself that one would come along and make my life easier, saving me the trouble of searching for one. Today, an email arrived from Liebert on Line with a link to this article. My sense of the world is that I participate in a collective consciousness that includes everything, everywhere, everywhen in an acausal world in which everything simply is. Within this model, both precognition and retrocausation are misperceptions from a theory of a causal world.

**  FUTURE RESEARCH IN WHOLISTIC HEALING * * 

The IJHC/WHR E-Zine features monthly suggestions for future research in healing.
READERS ARE INVITED TO SUBMIT SUGGESTIONS FOR TOPICS TO STUDY
If your topic is chosen, you ill receive free access to the IJHC for a month, including the current issue and all back issues.
 
 Observational studies of intuitives’ qualitative ways of perceiving the world

There have been numbers of reports about intuitives’ perceptions of the world.
· Individual intuitives who describe their paths of intuitive development and their work in helping others with intuitive ‘readings.’
· Researchers validating the abilities of intuitives in randomized controlled studies
· Researchers sorting and sifting reports in qualitative studies of healers and intuitives
I think there is a piece missing in this series. That piece is the gathering of a series of intuitives’ reports, in their own words about what they perceive and how they understand their perceptions, without distilling them. I would be interested if anyone knows of such a study.

* *  WHOLISTIC APPROACHES * * 

Crazy Sexy Cancer? A Different Coping Twist! 9-27 Epitheloid Hemangioendothelioma

In speaking to my buddy Eric tonight (I'm Godfather to his daughter Athena-Maire down in Long Beach, California) he told me about a now 31 year old photographer/actress who was interviewed on Fox describing her irreverant and rebellious coping response to being diagnosed on Valentine's Day 2003 with stage iv rare vascular cancer that permeated her liver and labeled "incurable."  To quote Ms. Carr directly:
 
"My cancer is incurable, and it's called epithelioid hemangioendothelioma, (EHE for short) an extremely rare vascular cancer affecting the lining of the blood vessels in my liver and lungs. There are only about 200 cases diagnosed nationwide. There are no ribbons or walks. There's no sisterhood for this. " And in fact, the only hope for survival that doctors gave her was to build up her immune system through diet and lifestyle.
 
Today, Carr's cancer is stable. Although she has had no treatments, ("I wish there would have been something they could have cut out or radiated, but there wasn't," she says), she goes each year for scans to see how her multiple tumors are doing. So far, they have not worsened, and she has no symptoms. In fact, she says, she feels great.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And why does she consider cancer "crazy" and "sexy"?
She laughs. "This is the title I would use in the subject headings when I'd send mass e-mails to my friends. I wanted to signal that something serious had come into my life, but I was still the same.

"I had to poke fun at it, come at it with humor and levity and life force. Sexy to me means passionate and empowered. And that's what I believe that women have, even when they have cancer. Cancer can't take that away from you. Only you can take that away from yourself. I wanted to create a little revolution, a positive thing."
 
You must see her very impressive "Trailer" to her documentary which you can click on, at her web site; very moving!
 
So, she wrote a book and has done a documentary entitled, Crazy Sexy Cancer, and has a pretty high tech web site to boot.  (You can skip the flash musical introduction by clicking on the white lettered "skip" at the bottom right of the intro page that comes up). She refuses to get into the "staging" and the compartmentalizing medical thinking. Anyway, here's the background info on her and her web site URL ( http://www.crazysexycancer.com/  )
(With thanks to Larry Lachman, PsyD, a regular columnist in IJHC, for this web find.)
 

Crazy Sexy Cancer documentary teaches life lessons

I didn't feel well the night cancer survivor Kris Carr's documentary Crazy Sexy Cancer aired on TLC. At the time this production began, I should have been calling it a night, bundling myself in my sheets, and drifting off to sleep. But I couldn't do it. Once I caught laid eyes on Carr's film, I couldn't let it go.

Kris Carr, a young woman diagnosed on Valentine's Day 2003 with stage 4 incurable cancer of the vascular system, began documenting her journey from the very first moment fear tore through her body.

What she captured on camera -- audio of voice mail messages, clips of car trips to and from appointments, glimpses of tests and scans and poking and prodding, peeks into her innermost thoughts and most private moments, interviews with others battling cancer, and her determined journey through both conventional and alternative healing -- brought her story to life.

Life. That's what Carr has learned to embrace throughout her struggle with a disease that does not respond to chemotherapy, radiation, or any other traditional treatment approach. Hers is a wait-and-watch condition. She could live a long time with this cancer. Or it could become aggressive and kill her. It's stage 4, she says. There is no stage 5.

Carr said in her quest to find a cure she figured out how to live. She took risks, learned to fly on a trapeze, visited her childhood home, fell in love -- with her cameraman -- and met dozens of people living triumphantly with cancer.

About her documentary, four years in the making, Carr writes on her blog http://crazysexycancer.blogspot.com/: "I don't look at my journey as if it is a battle (partly because I hope I don't lose) so instead I call it my cancer adventure story. It is a documentary film about how I coped with cancer. Since there is no cure and no treatment for my disease I live with it everyday. By calling it crazy sexy cancer I demystify it and redefine it for myself. It makes me feel a little lighter and a lot stronger -- NOT shackled and shelved like damaged goods.

Carr is strong. And inspiring. And if you can catch a replay of her powerful documentary, you will see -- this woman is downright determined to stomp all over cancer.

"I refuse to let cancer break my spirit, victimize me, or make me feel like a sick person," she says. "So I CHOOSE to believe that I am more alive, beautiful and yes, sexier (AKA empowered, passionate and intriguing) than ever before! Why not?"
Posted Sep 2nd 2007 7:00AM by Jacki Donaldson http://www.thecancerblog.com/bloggers/jacki-donaldson

To view a clip of Carr on the TODAY Show go to:
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx/?mkt=en-us
&brand=msnbc&fg=rss&from=05
&vid=86026fe4-d738-4e6b-ae30-1957dce9a738
&wa=wsignin1.0%20%20

IJHC – WHR Observations

This is an outstanding example of how our response to illness can determine how we fare with our lives. It may also be an example of how a positive attitude can alter the immune system and change the course of an illness.

* *  COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES * * 

Vitamin D3 can help prevent breast and colorectal cancer

“Cedric F. Garland, Dr.P.H., cancer prevention specialist at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and colleagues estimate that 250,000 cases of colorectal cancer and 350,000 cases of breast cancer could be prevented worldwide by increasing intake of vitamin D3, particularly in countries north of the equator. Vitamin D3 is available through diet, supplements and exposure of the skin to sunlight…”

“The study combined data from surveys of serum vitamin D levels during winter from 15 countries. It is the first such study to look at satellite measurements of sunshine and cloud cover in countries where actual blood serum levels of vitamin D3 had also been determined. The data were then applied to 177 countries to estimate the average serum level of a vitamin D metabolite of people living there…”

Results showed the lower the Vitamin D3 levels, the higher the rates of these caners. Exposure to sunlight for 10-15 minutes daily produces natural vitamin D.

Source:  www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-08/uoc--ssm082107.php
University of California - San Diego

IJHC – WHR Observations

More CAM reviews at
www.naturalhealthvillage.com
www.mdlinx.com/FamilyMDLinx 
 www.ucalgary.ca/~camig/litsearch.html
AMSA website
www.amsa.org/humed/camresources/camnews.cfm

* * TECHNOLOGY * *

Germany bans low frequency exposure to its population

“Before the digital revolution, a long line of epidemiological studies compared people who were exposed to strong low-frequency fields - people living in the shadow of power lines, for example, or long-time military radar operators - to similar but unexposed groups.

One solid outcome of that research was to show that rates of childhood leukemia are associated with low-frequency EM exposure; as a result, the International Agency for Research on Cancer has labeled that type of energy as a possible carcinogen, just as they might label a chemical compound.

Other studies have found increased incidence of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (commonly called ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), higher rates of breast cancer among both men and women, and immune-system dysfunction in occupations with high exposure.

Five years ago, the California Public Utilities Commission asked three epidemiologists in the state Department of Health Services to review and evaluate the scientific literature on health effects of low-frequency EM fields.

The epidemiologists, who had expertise in physics, medicine, and genetics, agreed in their report that they were "inclined to believe that EMFs can cause some degree of increased risk of childhood leukemia, adult brain cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease, and miscarriage" and were open to the possibility that they raise the risks of adult leukemia and suicide. They did not see associations with other cancer types, heart disease, or Alzheimer's disease.

Epidemiological and animal studies have not been unanimous in finding negative health effects from low-frequency EM fields, so the electric-utility industry continues to emphasize that no cause-and-effect link has been proven.

High Resistance

Now the most intense debate is focused on radio-frequency fields. As soon as cell phones came into common usage, there was widespread concern that holding an electronic device against the side of your head many hours a month for the rest of your life might be harmful, and researchers went to work looking for links to health problems, often zeroing in on the possibility of brain tumors.

Until recently, cell phones had not been widely used over enough years to evaluate effects on cancers that take a long time to develop. A number of researchers failed to find an effect during those years, but now that the phones have been widely available for more than a decade, some studies are relating brain-tumor rates to long-term phone use.

Some lab studies have found short-term harm as well. Treatment with cell-phone frequencies has disrupted thyroid-gland functioning in lab rats, for example. And at Lund University in Sweden, rats were exposed to cell-phone EM fields of varying strengths for two hours; 50 days later, exposed rats showed significant brain damage relative to non-exposed controls.

The authors were blunt in their assessment: "We chose 12-26-week-old rats because they are comparable with human teenagers - notably frequent users of mobile phones - with respect to age. The situation of the growing brain might deserve special concern from society because biologic and maturational processes are particularly vulnerable during the growth process."

Even more recently, health concerns have been raised about the antenna masts that serve cell phones and other wireless devices. EM fields at, say, a couple of blocks from a tower are not as strong as those from a wireless device held close to the body; nevertheless many city-dwellers are now continuously bathed in emissions that will only grow in their coverage and intensity.

Last year, the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia closed off the top two floors of its 17-story business school for a time because five employees working on its upper floors had been diagnosed with brain tumors in a single month, and seven since 1999. Cell phone towers had been placed on the building's roof a decade earlier and, although there was no proven link between them and the tumors, university officials were taking no chances.”

Source: AlterNet Health http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/58354/%20

IJHC – WHR Observations

The wireless industries are naturally concerned about these reports. Not about the possible health threats to people exposed to this electromagnetic radiation, but about the threats to their business profits. It is no surprise that studies done by industry tend to show less negative effects than those done by researchers funded from other sources.

The German government, considering the evidence, is following the precautionary principle and banning a potential health hazard.

Are you aware that wireless companies are paying churches and schools for space on their roofs to erect radio towers?

* *  ENVIRONMENT (HEALING OUR PLANET) * *
 
Atlanta’s main source of water is close to drying up

Global heating is upon us. Atlanta is only a few months away from disastrous water shortages, worsened by poor governmental planning. There are also several endangered species that have required release of more water from the lake supplying Atlanta than would have been wise in consideration of the needs of the city.

Source: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101207EA.shtml

IJHC – WHR Observations

Global heating is going to cause similar problems around the world. In other places, excess rains and rising ocean levels will cause flooding. Global heating is the number one priority in healing our planet today.

* *  HUMAN ECOLOGY* *

Critique of AHRQ REPORT "Meditation Practices for Health: State of the Research"

A controversial new government-funded study said that the research on meditation and health is inconclusive.  The report was heavily criticized by leading researchers ask to peer-review the study.  The reviewers’ major concerns were ignored, in violation of the peer-review process, and consequently the report is full of misinformation that may be used to guide public policy.
 
Summary

"Meditation Practices for Health: State of the Research" is a health technology assessment report by lead authors Maria B. Ospina and Kenneth Bond and their colleagues at the University  of Alberta. It was sponsored by the U. S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the U. S. NIH-National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). The authors are to be commended for undertaking this ambitious review of the effects of a variety of meditation techniques on health, as are AHRQ, and the NCCAM for supporting it. The report stated: "Firm conclusions on the effects of meditation practices in healthcare cannot be drawn based on the available evidence." Some press coverage has distorted this conclusion to say that meditation does not improve health, which the authors of the study corrected (see below). More seriously, however, problems with the report were found by experts in the field who were invited to participate in the study process as peer reviewers. These problems were largely ignored by both the study authors and the study's sponsors at AHRQ and NCCAM. Reviewers independently found the study had so many methodological flaws and mistakes that they recommended the report be withdrawn until it was corrected. Standard peer review, fact checking, and editors are usually effective at correcting misinformation. Unfortunately, these safeguards were not honored in this report, and misinformation is now positioned to guide public policy on the use of meditation techniques for healthcare.

On this website post you will find a summary of reviewers’ critiques, and links to the full texts of their reviews. Below are links and a summary.

 <http://www.truthabouttm.org/truth/Research/
AHRQReview2007/index.cfm>
 
Press article appearing in Physorg.com. <file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/
David%20Orme-Johnson/Desktop/
NCCAM%20review%20of%20meditation/
Top%20researchers%20criticize%20new
%20meditation%20and%20health%20study.htm> 

For further critiques see
 http://www.truthabouttm.org/truth/SocietalEffects/
FairfieldCrime/index.cfm
Click here for press release <http://www.mum.edu/pdf/inmp_pressrelease.pdf>  (PDF)

David W. Orme-Johnson, Ph.D.
davidoj@earthlink.net
http://www.truthabouttm.com/
http://www.seagroveartist.com/%20

IJHC – WHR Observations

It is becoming clearer with time that healthcare is a commodity that vested interests are seeking to influence by various means, including deliberate distortions of evidence. While some may say that this is just a matter of opinions, when procedures for peer review are ignored and evidence is misrepresented, it becomes clear that other motives must be at play.