Medical developments from around the world

Skin Diseases and Liver
Researchers discovered that the skin is capable of communicating with the liver. The discovery has surprised scientists and may help in our understanding of how skin diseases can affect the rest of the body. The discovery was made by Professor Susanne Mandrudp and her research group in collaboration with Nils Færgeman’s research group at the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Southern Denmark.

Truth about Low-fat Diets
A cardiology specialist registrar at Croydon University Hospital in London, Dr Aseem Malhotra, says that low-fat diet is actually a primary driver of both obesity and heart disease. Elimination of saturated and other healthy fats from the diets of millions of people worldwide has left them with more cardiovascular abnormalities—actually the opposite of what governments have long claimed.

Benefits of Family Doctors
Each one of us should have a family doctor who is a friend, philosopher and guide. When one is feeling off-colour, however trivial the symptom might be, one MUST consult the family doctor, to discuss health problems. Most of the time, the family doctor will assure you and boost your immune system with kind words which will be therapeutic. After all, the human body is immaterial—mental and spiritual. Matter is energy and energy is matter and so the mind and the body are but the same. A good doctor’s kind words will be an effective antidote to problems.

Science, Spirituality and the ‘Multiverse’
Science understands spirituality with the advances in quantum physics.
Robert Lanza, an American astrophysicist, has come up with the theory of ‘c’ or multiple universes. This has been supported by some other physicists also. Some readers might have read HG Wells’s Holes in the Wall, in which the author writes about similar stuff. There are poets who have sung in praise of this wonderful wonder called the World. Lanza also proposes that the possibility of the soul (aatman) transmigrating to the other world as soon as our bodies cease to breathe—called death. Soon after that, the soul, or aatman or, if you like, individual consciousness, migrates. So death becomes a part of life and not the end of it. Thornton Wilder, who wrote The Bridge of San Luis Rey, mentions two worlds: the world of the dead and that of the living similar to the concept of ‘Multiverse’.

Fear of Death
Fear of death is the greatest cause of anxiety that brings forth many psychosomatic illnesses for which the gullible public receives unnecessary treatment from the medical establishment. If the new scientific finding of the ‘Multiverse’ gets known, the fear factor could be reduced.

Eat More Spinach & Avocados
It is not only calcium that is essential for bone-building, although it does play a crucial role. Silicon and magnesium are equally, and primarily, responsible for increasing bone density. Foods that contain silicon include bell peppers, soybean, leafy green vegetables, beetroot, brown rice, oats, etc. Magnesium is found in nuts, such as cashew, almond and even peanut. Foods, like avocados, oatmeal, baked potatoes and spinach, also contain magnesium. Remember to add green, leafy vegetables to your diet, as they are rich in magnesium as well as calcium. Heavy intake of salt reduces the body’s calcium level as there is calcium-induced calcium loss in the kidneys, especially if calcium is taken as a drug in isolation. Excess salt intake makes our calcium requirement higher. Oral calcium is another dangerous thing. The calcium gets deposited on vessel walls and the heart, increasing the risk of heart attack.