Indholdsfortegnelse for Vol 4 Issue 85 i The Art of Healing

Cancer patient navigators are typically trained nurses, social workers or healthcare advocates who help guide and support cancer patients with personalised care by working with them to understand their diagnosis, treatment options, and relevant medical information. A new global study published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians has compared the experiences and outcomes of thousands of cancer patients who were supported by navigators in regions including Australia, the US, the UK, the EU, Asia and Canada. Gathering international evidence, the results show that patient navigation is strongly linked to increased and successful rates of screening, earlier medical diagnosis and cancer outcomes worldwide. The results also highlight the benefits of effective navigation to reduce healthcare costs. “Navigating the healthcare system as a cancer patient can be an overwhelming experience, especially…

If you believe the headlines, seaweeds can do almost anything, from storing tons of carbon and stopping cows from belching methane, to making biofuels and renewable plastics - all while sustaining vibrant coastal ecosystems and feeding communities. Add to that list their potential wound-healing properties and possible antiageing effects, and it's no wonder the seaweed farming industry is booming. And with the latest study, further benefits have been discovered. “We found that extracts from South Australian brown seaweed have huge potential to help slow the effects of skin ageing,” study author Wei Zhang, a biochemical engineer at Flinders University in Adelaide says. The brown seaweeds Ecklonia radiata, Cystophora moniliformis, and Cystophora siliquosa, were all subjected to a battery of tests and analysis. The two Cystophora species stimulated the lab-grown cell…

Health ministers from G20 and other countries, scientists, practitioners of traditional medicine, health workers and members of civil societyfrom88countries participated in the summit that provided a platform for the sharing of unique experiences, best practices and ideas for collaboration. It included a diverse group of Indigenous Peoples from different regions of the world including Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Guatemala and New Zealand for whom many TCIM approaches play a fundamental role in not just health care, but also culture and livelihoods. Preliminary findings from the WHO Global Survey on Traditional Medicine 2023 presented at the summit indicated that around 100 countries have TCIM-related national policies and strategies. In many WHO Member States, TCIM treatments are part of the essential medicine lists, essential health service packages, and are covered by national…

Operating under its Anglican Community Services branch, the church has advised its New South Wales facilities to discourage residents from accessing VAD through a “strategy of minimum compliance.” With no legal grounding to explicitly deny residents access to information regarding VAD, the Anglican Church will only refer residents to relevant healthcare professionals, according to The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH). All staff have otherwise been told to refuse participation in facilitating VAD. ““The report challenges Anglicare Sydney to respectfully, in compliance with the law, seek to dissuade residents from accessing VAD by ‘deed and word.’ The Board of Anglicare Sydney decided … VAD will not be available at its residential aged care homes, and the organisation and staff will not actively participate in the provision of any VAD services,” the statement…

Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia, the risk of which increases with age, and which is associated with an increased risk of stroke, heart failure and mortality. Taking Vitamin D has been shown to have an effect on atrial structure and the electrical function of the heart, and thereby might also prevent atrial fibrillation. In a study conducted at the University of Eastern Finland from 2012–2018, researchers explored the association of vitamin D supplementation with the incidence of cardiovascular diseases and cancers. The five-year study involved 2,495 participants of 60+men and 65+ women, who were randomised into three groups: a placebo group, one group taking 40 micrograms(1600IU) of vitamin D per day, and the other group taking 80 micrograms (3200IU) per day. At baseline, study participants had not been…

Abdominal aortic calcification, or AAC, is a calcification which can build up within the walls of the abdominal aorta and predicts your risk of developing cardiovascular disease events such as heart attacks and stroke. It also predicts your risk of falls, fractures and late-life dementia. Common bone density machine scans used to detect osteoporosis can also detect AAC, however highly trained expert readers are needed to analyse the images, a process which can take 5-15 minutes per image. But researchers from Edith Cowan University's (ECU) School of Science and School of Medical and Health Sciences have collaborated to develop software which can analyse scans much, much faster: roughly 60,000 images in a single day. “Since these images and automated scores can be rapidly and easily acquired at the time of…

WELLNESS Testing Screening mammograms may lead many American women older than 70 to be overdiagnosed with breast cancer, and receive unnecessary tests and treatments as a result, a new study suggests. Patients are considered over-diagnosed when screening mammograms identify breast cancers that never would have caused symptoms, said the lead study author, Ilana Richman, MD, an assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine and a member of Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Connecticut, in a statement. This typically happens when cancer grows very slowly, Dr. Richman added “Finding these breast cancers can lead to worry and can result in intensive treatments, without improving length or quality of life,” Richman said. “The findings from this study emphasise the need for a careful evaluation of the benefits and harms of screening…

HEALING Workplace RULE 1: Accept That People Are Annoying Annoying people are everywhere. Colleagues, bosses, subordinates, CEOs, CFOs. People who work in legal and procurement, in classrooms, on worksites, in hospitals and in shops. And then there are those The Economist branded ‘the consiglieri of the corporate world’, management consultants, regarded by some as well-paid advisers and by others as exorbitantly-charging salesman. Annoying people cut across all work categories and all industries. When you click with your workmates, there is no greater joy. The banter is good, the work quality high, and the after-work drinks entertaining. But when you do not, working life can become unbearable. What makes them so annoying? Is it a desire for attention? Relentless ambition? Or just a terrible personality? The latter may manifest as mild…

A natural process, sarcopenia is where muscles become smaller and weaker due to ageing. This can lead to reduced mobility, increased frailty and overall decreased quality of life among older adults. Sarcopenia can also result from short term hospitalisation and bed rest in older individuals where inactivity leads to rapid and severe musculoskeletal wasting. The research aims to shed light on why short-term hospitalisation in older adults leads to the profound loss of muscle mass and strength, accelerating conditions of sarcopenia and frailty. The researchers will harness brand new technologies and techniques to explore the impacts of ageing on muscle function and develop potential interventions to enhance the quality of life for older individuals. At the heart of the research investigation lies a novel model for studying human muscle ageing…

However the efficiencies of tiny, budding ‘bioreactors’ have been too low for practical use. What's more, it turns out microbes can be surprisingly picky in what substrates they digest to create electricity. Now a team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) has engineered one of the most common species of bacteria, Escherichia coli, to generate electricity from brewery wastewater – and it has surpassed the most recent bioengineered strains. “Though there are exotic microbes that naturally produce electricity, they can only do so in the presence of specific chemicals,” explains senior author and chemical engineer Ardemis Boghossian, from EPFL. “E. coli can grow on a wide range of sources, which allowed us to produce electricity in a wide range of environments, including wastewater.” To enhance…

The ‘AutoMedic’ project led by Flinders University aims to create a more streamlined and accurate electronic record of prescription medicine used by patients discharged from six South Australian public hospitals to better manage their recovery and longer-term health outcomes. The trial will provide a useful model for a “smart, scalable solution to detect and resolve medicine harm,” says the Chief investigator of the $2.9 million Australian Government Medical Research Future Fund National Critical Research Infrastructure Grant project, Associate Professor of Digital Health Niranjan Bidargaddi, from the College of Medicine and Public Health. Nearly 17 million Australians are on at least one prescription medicine a year, with some high-needs patients managing multiple drugs for various cooccurring conditions. As many as 90% of hospitalised patients could have medicine-related problems after leaving hospital,…

The popularity of yoga continues to surge. From 2012 to 2021, yoga participants in the United States alone increased by almost 50 percent, from 23.3 million to 34.4 million, according to a recent survey. The benefits of a regular practice can be wide-ranging, including relief from pain, increased strength and flexibility, stress relief, better breathing, weight management, cardiovascular conditioning, better circulation, and a calmer mood, according to the Yoga Alliance. And while nearly every version of this ancient practice incorporates some degree of strength, flexibility, and breath work to improve mental and physical wellbeing, not all practices are alike. Within yoga, you can find variations that run the full gamut from gentle restorative practices to sweaty, challenging workouts. So if you want to get into yoga, there are indeed a…

WELLNESS Medical Cannabis A 2021 meta-analysis of 21 international articles shows doctors are receiving more demand for medical cannabis, but are unsure how to advise patients. Fast-forward to 2023 and not much has changed, according to the results of an AusDoc survey involving more than 240 GPs and specialists across Australia. PATIENT MISMATCH In 2016, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported that about 60% of Australian GPs agreed medicinal cannabis should be available on prescription, compared with 85% of the general Australian population. Unsurprisingly, almost eight out of ten respondents to the AusDoc survey agreed or strongly agreed with the following statement: “Over the past 12 months, more patients are asking me about medicinal cannabis as a treatment option.” Doctors are struggling to keep up with patient interest,…