Studies and Progress Notes (September 2007)

* *  SPIRITUAL AWARENESS AND WHOLISTIC HEALING * * 

Spiritual healing and music significantly enhance seed germination

Abstract
Objective: To measure biologic effects of music, noise, and healing energy without human preferences or placebo effects using seed germination as an objective biomarker.
Methods: A series of five experiments were performed utilizing okra and zucchini seeds germinated in acoustically shielded, thermally insulated, dark, humid growth chambers. Conditions compared were an untreated control, musical sound, pink noise, and healing energy. Healing energy was administered for 15-20 minutes every 12 hours with the intention that the treated seeds would germinate faster than the untreated seeds. The objective marker was the number of seeds sprouted out of groups of 25 seeds counted at 12-hour intervals over a 72-hour growing period. Temperature and relative humidity were monitored every 15 minutes inside the seed germination containers. A total of 14 trials were run testing a total of 4600 seeds.
Results: Musical sound had a highly statistically significant effect on the number of seeds sprouted compared to the untreated control over all five experiments for the main condition (p < 0.002) and over time (p < 0.000002). This effect was independent of temperature, seed type, position in room, specific petri dish, and person doing the scoring. Musical sound had a significant effect compared to noise and an untreated control as a function of time (p < 0.03) while there was no significant difference between seeds exposed to noise and an untreated control. Healing energy also had a significant effect compared to an untreated control (main condition, p < 0.0006) and over time (p < 0.0001) with a magnitude of effect comparable to that of musical sound.
Conclusion: This study suggests that sound vibrations (music and noise) as well as biofields (bioelectro-magnetic and healing intention) both directly affect living biologic systems, and that a seed germination bioassay has the sensitivity to enable detection of effects caused by various applied energetic conditions.

Source: Katherine Creath, Ph.D. (Optical Science), Ph.D. (Music) and Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D Measuring effects of music, noise, and healing energy using a seed germination bioassay, J of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 2004, 10(1), 113-122.1'3'4

IJHC – WHR Observations

It is good to have a confirmation of spiritual healing effects. A number of other controlled studies have also shown effects of healing on plants, as have several pilot studies of music. (See Healing Research, Volume I.)

Seed germination is an excellent model for testing healing. Anyone can do this at home, as long as the treated and control seeds are handled identically.

**  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.
 
Energy Psychology (EP) – formal research

Numerous anecdotal reports from grateful careseekers and caregivers confirm that EP is effective in treating anxieties, fears, phobias, post traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), pain and more. See an enormous variety of testimonials for EFT at http://www.emofree.com/eft-at-work.htm and for WHEE at http://wholistichealingresearch.com/appreciations.html#whee

Formal EP research: I am pleased to be working on the research committee of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP). We are exploring a variety of settings where EP could be helpful to those receiving it, at the same time that research could be conducted to confirm formally that EP is effective.

If you know of places where rapid, easily learned, yet potent methods such as WHEE could be helpful, please contact me. Such settings might include:
· a school where stress is a problem for teachers and/ or students
· an emergency service setting – police, firefighters, medical emergency teams
· a work setting where stress is a problem
· a Veteran’s hospital or clinic where war trauma is crying for treatment
· other stressful settings that you know of

* *  WHOLISTIC APPROACHES * * 

Excellent cancer story

A New Year's Surprise
We hope we don't disappoint all of you avid homeopathic practitioners and enthusiasts, but we chose to write this month about another personally compelling health matter: my (Judyth's) successful healing from breast cancer. It has been a tremendous learning experience for us and, we hope, may be for some of our readers. The diagnosis, as probably happens with most women, took me by surprise to say the least. About to turn 50, I felt healthier than ever before. I had gotten down to 120 pounds thanks to the Zone Diet. I have a wonderful husband and friends, love my work, feel quite inspired spiritually, and live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. For the past five years I had a nagging, pulling sensation around my left armpit, but my mammograms and ultrasounds were consistently normal except for an increasing tendency to benign cysts in the left breast. The sensation began shortly after my fifth miscarriage, so I attributed the changes to the hormonal fluctuations of the pregnancies. I did, however, develop a fear of breast cancer at that time…

Read on: Healing with Homeopathy - Physician Heal Thyself: Cancer as a Path to Gratitude, Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman, ND, DHANP and Robert Ullman, ND, DHANP, Townsend Letter, May 1998, Issue #179

IJHC – WHR Observations

Many people who have serious health challenges come to realize that there is much that they can bring to the treatment of their own conditions: Courage, openness to examining oneself and one’s relationships, persistence, listening to one’s intuition, calling on family and friends for help; re-examining and addressing relationships that are not nurturing or are stressful, and more.

It is wonderful to have a story such as the above to encourage us that self-healing can be successful, sometimes beyond ordinary expectations.

 * *  COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES * * 

Don't have a stroke!
Competent stress management reduces stroke risk

Background and Purpose - Laboratory-based studies have suggested that individual differences in cardiovascular reactivity and stress adaptive capacity are associated with stroke incidence. We test the hypothesis that sense of coherence (SOC), a marker of social stress adaptive capacity, is associated with incident stroke in a population-based prospective cohort study.

Methods - A total of 20,629 participants, aged 41 to 80 years, in the UK European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC)-Norfolk study, who had not previously experienced a stroke, completed assessments that included SOC and details of their experience of life events during adulthood. An index of adaptation was constructed from responses to questions concerning over 80 000 adverse life events.

Results - During 145,000 person-years of follow-up (mean 7.1 years), 452 participants experienced either a fatal or nonfatal stroke event. A strong (as opposed to a weak) SOC was associated with a reduced rate of stroke incidence (rate ratio 0.76; 95% CI, 0.60 to 0.96) after adjustment for age, sex, pre-existing myocardial infarction, diabetes, hypertension treatment, family history of stroke, cigarette smoking, systolic blood pressure, obesity, social class, education, hostility and depression. No sex difference in this association was observed. Measures of social adversity occurrence and impact were not associated with stroke incidence, whereas faster reported adaptation to adverse event exposure was associated with a reduced rate of stroke incidence (rate ratio 0.89; 95% CI, 0.81 to 0.98; per standard deviation change in adaptation score, adjusted for age and sex).

Conclusions - Stress adaptive capacity is a potentially important candidate risk factor for stroke.

Source: Surtees, Paul G.  et al. Adaptation to social adversity is associated with stroke incidence: Evidence from the EPIC-Norfolk Prospective Cohort Study, Stroke 2007, 38, 1447.
http://stroke.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/
STROKEAHA.106.473116v1

Correspondence: paul.surtees@srl.cam.ac.uk


IJHC – WHR Observations

This helpful study confirms the common sense observation - supported by experience of many in the CAM community who regularly take time to meditate, exercise and de-stress in other ways - that we are less likely to raise our blood pressure and have a stroke when we handle our stresses well.

Many have complained to me that this is easier said than done. This is no longer so. WHEE is an incredibly easy method to learn and use for de-stressing and de-distressing. (Pardon the neologism - but I feel this term deserves to be in the English language!)

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 * *

New, more efficient lighting technology

“Lighting accounts for approximately 22 per cent of the electricity consumed in buildings in the United States, with 40 per cent of that amount consumed by inefficient incandescent lamps. This has generated increased interest in the use of white electroluminescent organic light-emitting devices, owing to their potential for significantly improved efficiency over incandescent sources combined with low-cost, high-throughput manufacturability. The most impressive characteristics of such devices reported to date have been achieved in all-phosphor-doped devices, which have the potential for 100 per cent internal quantum efficiency…”

Yiru Sun et al. Management of singlet and triplet excitons for efficient white organic light-emitting devices, Nature 2006, 440, 908-912 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/
n7086/abs/nature04645.html

IJHC – WHR Observations

While currently available low energy fluorescent bulbs can significantly cut energy use and costs, they will lead to further mercury pollution. The new devices described above are more efficient and appear (so far) to be more environmental friendly.

* *  ENVIRONMENT (HEALING OUR PLANET) * *

Getting serious about controlling carbon emissions

“…the enthusiam… shown for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group 3 summary report on mitigation of climate change is, on the surface, well justified.

Here, for the first time, we have the overwhelming mass of the world's governments sitting down with humanity's leading experts and agreeing a price list for tackling climate change.

This is not the Stern Review, commissioned by a single government and visited upon the rest; it is not a dry assessment by scientists which policymakers will keep dry by leaving it on their top shelves forever.

However worthy and weighty such reports are, they are not automatically "bought into" by those holding the reins of political power.

In principle, IPCC reports are. The initial offerings of scientists (and in this case economists) are scanned line by line, clause by clause by representatives of almost all the world's governments.

They have endorsed its findings, and this is what makes the IPCC different; this is what leads to the expectation of action.

IPCC Working Groups 1 and 2, which released their summary reports earlier this year, looked at the science of climate change and the potential impacts on the world.

Nuclear may be cost effective, says the IPCC, but concerns remain. This third report now tells us what are likely to be the most cost-effective ways of reducing emissions, and how much it will cost.

The answers to the second question are "it depends", and "not much".

It depends on what you set as a target for greenhouse gas concentrations. Keeping the global rise in average temperature to about 2C, the most radical and expensive scenario addressed here, would shave about 0.12% off the average annual GDP growth rate.

For comparison, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects annual global growth of 4.9% this year and next. So taking a small bite out for reducing emissions would leave the expanding cake virtually untouched.

And in its sober language, the report hints that the financial benefits from reducing emissions (in the form of avoiding climate impacts such as floods, droughts and migration) could be on a same scale as the investment…

Furthermore, the IPCC has laid out the areas where reductions could be achieved most cost-effectively, and the technologies for achieving them.

Curbing climate economically
These amount to recipes for keeping the cake cheap and tasty at the same time…

There is, however, an elephant in the room, which the IPCC cannot address, because it belongs to national governments.

Investing in emissions control might bring a small reduction in GDP; but it would still be a reduction. The only exceptions are measures such as improving energy efficiency where there could be a net economic gain.

So in order to induce governments, businesses and individuals to make those emissions-curbing adjustments, some incentive is needed.

Although the IPCC acknowledges that social and cultural factors might make us more frugal with energy, it assumes - probably correctly - that money will do most of the talking.
But currently the carbon market is not global; it is limited to European countries immersed in the Kyoto Protocol, and to other states, regions and companies of the world which have chosen to get involved.

As Professor Grubb told this website last year, a global carbon market needs to be driven by a global deal limiting emissions.

"In the longer term, spreading [carbon trading] further afield will depend on having further emissions targets spread beyond the countries which already have them."

…Last time the international community talked about them, at the UN climate summit in Nairobi in November, it could not even agree when to start talks about talks…

Even so, they would have to agree on what scale of climate impacts they want to avoid, what level of greenhouse gas concentrations that equates to, and how soon they want to begin reversing the inexorable rise in emissions…

Perhaps a more accurate view can be deduced from changes to this report's wording made during the week's discussions in Bangkok, where a reference to a "global" carbon market became merely an "international" market, and a reference to the importance of "regulatory and financial incentives and international co-operation" in climate policy was removed altogether, with approval for the effectiveness of "voluntary agreements" inserted instead.

Governments have emerged with a roadmap to a cooler world. Whether they follow it, or get distracted on the way, or argue so much over which route to take that the journey never starts, is a question for another time.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6623601.stm

IJHC – WHR Observations

The lengthy quote above on controlling global heating (‘warming’ is an unacceptable euphemism) reflects a small note of hope in what has been until now the dismally callous and dangerously dismissive approach of most governments and multinational corporations to dealing with carbon emissions.

We must make serious investments in controlling the global heating if we want to survive on this planet. Carbon is not the principal problem. Carbon is only the fuse that may set off methane releases from the arctic tundra and ocean bottoms – which could heat up the earth many times more rapidly and irreversibly than carbon will.
Click here for evidence and discussions of runaway methane heating of our planet. 

 * *  HUMAN ECOLOGY* * 

Online certificate in clinical ethics

The Alden March Bioethics Institute has announced its Online Certificate Program in Bioethics.  The program, offered in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, provides clinicians with training in hospital-based ethics analysis and policy, with teaching provided through online courses and video lectures combined with hands-on, practical training in
clinical ethics.  Students use an iPod video linked to the iTunes University site, developed in collaboration with Apple, Inc.   For more details, visit:
http://bioethics.org/education/graduate/index.php?page_id=6

Source: THE SOUL OF BIOETHICS, (May 20, 2007) From the International Longevity Center-USA, Edited by H.R. Moody

IJHC – WHR Observations

Ethics is too often a neglected topic in conventional and CAM therapies. It is good to see this course available on line.