Prostate

An informative look at recent Holistic Fitness News

DR KAPLAN'S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Return to the Fitness training News and Holistic Health Archive

Dogs forced their way into the medical news columns this week. veterinarians in cambridge are conducting trials to see if sniffer-dogs can diagnose prostate cancer simply by taking a whiff of the urine of men being tested for this condition. cancerous cells produce different chemicals from normal cells and these chemicals may have different odours. at present the recommended screening test for cancer of the prostate is called a 'psa'which stands for prostate specific antigen. although this blood screening test does indeed identify many cases of cancer of the prostate, it is not 100% reliable; it gives both false negatives and false positive results. that means it sometimes fails to pick up the disease and sometimes indicates the possibility of the disease in men who do not have the disease. the hope is that the canines can do a better job. much as i love man's best friend, i'm hoping that my profession won't go to the dogs just yet.

returning to the theme of the health benefits of laughter. those of you who read last week's newsletter know that i'm using the mnemonic s m i l e so that you can memorise all the health benefits of laughter.

S is for stress release for the proof (if you really need it) see last week's newsletter

M is for muscular relaxation

now listen to this: a deep belly laugh (not a titter, giggle, chuckle, snort or chortle, but a full-frontal belly laugh) causes deep muscular relaxation. scientific tests show that this relaxation lasts for up to 2 hours after the belly laugh! i find that quite amazing and highly recommend that you think of the ramifications of this in today's stressed world. have you had someone massage your shoulders recently? tense? or relaxed like a 5 year old's? laughter is about as pleasant as a relaxation method comes - and cheap too!

so remember: take life too seriously and you may end up with a serious disease. more scientifically proven benefits of laughter next week when i stands for increased immunity.

homeopathic tip of the week

lousy weather it is and some people are fearful of catching a chill. to these folk i have 2 pieces of advice to offer:

1. don't ever fear a cold. the more you fear one the higher your chance of getting one. florence nightingale wrote about this concept during her time in the crimean war. she noticed that the nurses who did not fear catching tb from their patients were the ones who seemed to be more likely to avoid catching dreaded lurgy.

2. if you feel some familiar symptoms of a 'chill' particularly a shiver going down your back and that very early part of a sore throat, take homeopathic aconite 30c, one pill every 2 hours for a few hours. if the cold develops, stop taking the medicine, but you may well catch a few colds in the bud, this way.

Dr Brian Kaplan MBBCh MFHom www.drkaplan.co.uk