Citizen Science Double Blind Testing
Good health solutions never get double blind testing so I designed a Citizen Science Double Blind Study method to inexpensively get the testing done. It was published in a medical journal of bioethics May 8 2019
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We Face Alternative Health Futures
The possible future encompasses all the things we can imagine happening, which can take it into the realm of science fiction. This is not to disparage science fiction; at its best, it can illuminate our present world and its values, and imagine and test ideas most of us have never considered.
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Senate Needs To Protect Our Health and Environment
In recent weeks, we have seen large Canadian industries pressuring the Senate to favour their special interests over the wider health and environmental interests of Canadians. In the process, this unelected chamber is being asked to subvert the will of the elected House of Commons by delaying and effectively killing two bills.
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Time To Shift The Bell Curve Toward Health
Life is lived on a bell curve. Many attributes of a population — height, for example — are distributed on a bell-shaped curve, with the average at the centre and then decreasing numbers of people as we get further from the centre.
Read MoreTake Action on Food and Farmland Trust
Hello CRD residents, As you know we need food and farmland that is protected and accessible to farmers over the long term. One strategy is to create a local government supported Food and Farmland Trust. It’s time! On February 20, 2019, the CRD Planning and Protective... Read More
Many global health threats linked to climate change
The World Health Organization recently released a report on the top 10 threats to health in 2019. Strikingly, several are related to global ecological change, marking perhaps a turning point in the recognition of the health implications of the rapid and massive ecological changes we are causing.
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Physicians Raise Concerns
I recently came across this letter in the Times-Colonist from Dr. Janet Ray from 2009. I believe it fits well with the new Biodiversity conversation. Dr. Rays determination that “what is becoming clear is that determinants of health also includes the health of... Read More
Planning To Feed A One-Planet Region
The concept of a one-planet region is simple: We need to reduce our collective impact on the Earth so we — and others around the world — can live within the ecological and physical constraints of this one small planet we all share. But at the same time, we want to... Read More
Health Benefits of Trees
Can you imagine a world where a walk in the forest is prescribed by medical doctors to reduce stress? Japan began studying the benefits of ‘forest bathing’ in the early 1980s. Their scientific research has shown that 20 minutes in the forest reduces blood pressure, lowers heart rate and increases the number of cancer-fighting cells in the body by as much as 40%.
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Evolution of a Healing Prayer to the Universe
Here is a healing prayer that considers the universe itself to be the creator. It’s a prayer that both theists and non-theists can be comfortable with. The evolution from a Sufi prayer in 1920 to this version is discussed
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A Victory To Celebrate
Victories are being won that bring power back to the people and help protect our planet and democracy from abuse. This story is one to celebrate. It’s a victory for all of us. — Dear Avaazers, Our hearing just ended, and the judge absolutely DESTROYED... Read MoreWatch Now: Creating a One Planet Community Event
Everyone wondered how we could possibly feature more than 20 presentations in less than two hours, but we did it! Inspiring stories of innovation, collaboration, community and creativity were shared with both a live and livestream audience worldwide around the theme... Read More
We Can Create Healthy Built Environments
The B.C. Healthy Built Environment Alliance was established by the Provincial Health Services Authority in 2007 to provide leadership and action for healthier, more livable communities.
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Films on Food Issues & Food Security
Enjoy a compiled list of films and documentaries related to food issues throughout the world.
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Issue: Food Security
Food security can be described as the state of having reliable access to an adequate quantity of nutritious and affordable food, while food sovereignty is the right of communities to have authority over their own food systems, to produce food that is healthy, culturally appropriate, and ecologically sustainable.
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Microplastics found in Bottled Water and Beyond
We, in Victoria, BC, Canada, have been blessed, more blessed than many other parts of North America. We’ve had some amazing warmish weather, bringing out the best in many things: flowers, blossoms and the urge to live a healthy life style. That includes eating... Read More
Does Mental Heath Matter Most?
There is an interesting common thread underlying many of my recent columns. It is the question in the headline: Does mental health matter most?
Read MoreLocal Heroes Bringing Hope to Millions in Epic Plea
Victoria’s own Compassionate Resource Warehouse (CRW) is partnering with ICROSS Canada in sending 2 x 40′ HC containers to YEMEN. I have personally visited the Compassionate Resource Warehouse and can say they are a vital, proactive volunteer organization... Read More
Pandora’s Box and the Canada Pension Plan
The World Economic Forum released its 2018 Global Risks report last week. One business reporter dubbed it “the Pandora report,” and that is a fair assessment. If you have an interest in the welfare of future generations — or, for that matter, young people alive today — it makes for sober reading.
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Finding Hope at the Turning of the Year
I often find reason for hope — if not optimism — at the local level. Experience has shown that good things often start locally and move up, which explains why we should think globally, but act locally.
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Many ministries could be Ministry of Health
Courtesy of the Times Colonist Despite its name, the Ministry of Health is anything but focused on health. Like the “health-care system” it directs, it is largely focused on managing people with all manner of diseases, injuries or disabilities. Only a small part of... Read MoreSolutions Episode Three: Food & Farming
Local food experts share a wealth of knowledge on everything from growing citrus fruit to food security, featuring Vancouver Island non-profits and leading edge small businesses dedicated to healthy, nutritious and delicious food. “What a fantastic segment. I’m... Read More
Protecting health in our chemical society
Courtesy of the Times Colonst Last week, The Lancet — one of the world’s leading medical journals — published another in its series of commission reports on various aspects of planetary health, this time on pollution and health. Next week, I will delve into the report... Read More
Tapping into the Power of Ancient Indian Ceremony (Puja) for Personal and Global Transformation
In ancient Indian Vedic teachings, there is a science for tapping into that numinous energy for powerful transformation. This precise science has been handed down through the centuries in the form of a sacred ceremony to our Divine natures called a puja.
Read MoreGood mental health needs good start in life
Not only is poor mental health costly to manage, it also represents a large burden of human suffering and loss of human potential and — to the extent it is preventable — a tragic societal failure. So it is good to see that, finally, we are beginning to pay attention to improving the mental well-being of the population.
Read MoreWe are being marketed to death
But let’s face it, the purpose of marketing is to persuade us to buy more of their products — why else would a business spend all that money? And therein lies perhaps the greatest danger. Because marketing feeds into and supports the dominant narrative of growth, it stimulates us to want and need more products, more “stuff.”
Read MoreIf we want to save lives, control alcohol
This is not going to make me popular with my beer-drinking, Morris-dancing friends, or with a lot of other people, I imagine, but we need to put higher taxes on alcohol and implement other proven policies that make it less accessible and less glamorous. This is the conclusion one must come to on reading the report on alcohol harm in Canada just released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information and a 2015 report by Canada’s chief public health officer.
Read MoreChild Poverty Is Outrageous and Unhealthy
Canada is a wealthy country, and within Canada, B.C. is a wealthy province. And yet we have levels of child poverty that are shameful, that exert a terrible toll on the health of children, and that blunt our human and social development. If it is true that the worth... Read MorePro-poverty policy is sickening and costly
Courtesy of the Times Colonist Last week, my students were discussing public-health ethics. One group pointed out, correctly, that doing nothing is a policy decision. What, then, are we to make of the B.C. government’s persistent policy, over the past 15 years, to do... Read MoreToward a B.C. Framework For Well-Being
Too many governments seem to think that the business of government is business. This comes from the erroneous belief that the central purpose of government and society is economic development.
Read MoreThe new public-health entrepreneurs
There is a lot of money to be made from making us ill. The No. 1 example is the tobacco industry, whose products, if used as intended, are bound to make us ill. But close behind it is the food industry, which for years has been selling us both too much food and the wrong sorts of food.
Read MoreI Found a God of My Understanding
Are you hobbled psychologically by your church doctrine?
I’m only asking.
Some things do not evolve me. Some things do.
When a man moves away from nature his heart becomes hard.
Native American Proverb, Lakota Sioux
Seeds for Thought
When I held a seed there was a weight of inspiring knowledge that sprung forth – I was holding generations and generations of a plant. An endless cycle of seed, leaf, flower, seed… Food for generations.
Read MoreHow a bowl of soup helped me get to know 100 neighbours
How bowls of soup helped me get to know 100 of my neighbours!
Read MoreGE Free Victoria passed. Unanimous
Eloquence is the poetry of prose.
– William C Bryant
First of all, I was inspired by a quote from Robyn O’Brien. The gestalt was “Keep speaking, even when you’re trembling.” I was trembling.