Health & Wellbeing

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Marijuana Ingredient Can Help Heal Broken Bones, Study Says

Scientists in Israel are exploring another medical use for marijuana: Their research indicates that a compound in the plant helps heal bone fractures.

The new study, published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, found that broken bones healed faster and stronger when the patient received the non-psychoactive compound cannabidiol, or CBD.

"We found that CBD alone makes bones stronger during healing, enhancing the maturation of the collagenous matrix, which provides the basis for new mineralization of bone tissue," said Dr. Yankel Gabet, one of the lead researchers, in a statement. "After being treated with CBD, the healed bone will be harder to break in the future."

Researchers administered CBD to a group of rats with mid-femoral fractures. After just eight weeks, they saw marked improvement in the broken bones. They injected another group of rats with a mixture of CBD and THC, marijuana's psychoactive ingredient. Comparing the results, they concluded that CBD alone was an effective treatment.

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Amazon tribe creates 500-page traditional medicine encyclopedia


A Matsés shaman named Cesar. Photo courtesy of Acaté.

In one of the great tragedies of our age, indigenous traditions, stories, cultures and knowledge are winking out across the world. Whole languages and mythologies are vanishing, and in some cases even entire indigenous groups are falling into extinction. This is what makes the news that a tribe in the Amazon—the Matsés peoples of Brazil and Peru—have created a 500-page encyclopedia of their traditional medicine all the more remarkable. The encyclopedia, compiled by five shamans with assistance from conservation group Acaté, details every plant used by Matsés medicine to cure a massive variety of ailments.

“The [Matsés Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia] marks the first time shamans of an Amazonian tribe have created a full and complete transcription of their medicinal knowledge written in their own language and words,” Christopher Herndon, president and co-founder of Acaté, told Mongabay in an interview (in full below).

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Science Focuses on Body’s Own ‘Inner Light’ as the Ultimate Healer

by Christina Sarich

Do you think you are psychic enough to predict your future health? Most people would answer, ‘of course not’ but with a new science called biontology, we can literally measure the light stored in our DNA and determine our probable state of well-being and vitality.

If having a ‘light-body’ sounds like new age mumbo jumbo to you, you might reconsider after reading further. According to scientists like Alfred Fritz-Popp and Pjotr Garjajev, along with physicists who have studied medicine like Johan Boswinkle, biophotons are the ‘light’ we exude from our own bodies at very weak levels which are just beyond the visible spectrum. They are in fact, the sub-quark level organizing force of all life – animal, plant and human alike. They precede any biochemical reaction in the body.

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Holding Hands Reduces Pain

Researchers revealed that, at least for women, the touch or sight of a partner seems to anaesthetise them. Even a photograph of their loved one is enough to have an effect.

The discovery was made by psychologists at the University of California and "underscores the importance of social relationships and staying socially connected", they reported.

The 25 volunteers were mostly students who had been in a good relationship with their boyfriends for at least six months.

Tests revealed that if the young women were given a mild burn, they felt less discomfort by looking at photos of their boyfriends.

A similar anaesthetising effect was found if they held hands with their partners when "moderately painful heat stimuli" was applied to their forearms.

Researcher Naomi Eisenberger, an assistant professor of psychology involved in the study, said: "When the women were just looking at pictures of their partner, they actually reported less pain to the heat stimuli than when they were looking at pictures of an object or pictures of a stranger.

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Lovers' hearts beat in sync, UC Davis study says

When modern-day crooner Trey Songz sings, “Cause girl, my heart beats for you,” in his romantic ballad, “Flatline,” his lyrics could be telling a tale that’s as much physiological as it is emotional, according to a University of California, Davis, study that found lovers’ hearts indeed beat for each other, or at least at the same rate.

Emilio Ferrer, a UC Davis psychology professor who has conducted a series of studies on couples in romantic relationships, found that couples connected to monitors measuring heart rates and respiration get their heart rate in sync, and they breathe in and out at the same intervals.

To collect the data, the researchers conducted a series of exercises, sitting 32 heterosexual couples a few feet away from each other in a quiet, calm room. The couples did not speak or touch.

“We’ve seen a lot of research that one person in a relationship can experience what the other person is experiencing emotionally, but this study shows they also share experiences at a physiological level,” Ferrer said.

The couples, in one of the exercises, were asked to sit across from each other and mimic each other, but still not speak, and researchers collected very similar results.

The researchers also mixed up the data from the couples. When the two individuals were not from the same couple, their hearts did not show synchrony, nor did their breathing closely match.

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Organic Takeover: Toxic Food Makers Lose $4 Billion in Sales in One Year

Consumers are leaving toxic food makers’ products behind on grocery store shelves faster than you can say ‘organic.’ Big Food lost $4 billion in sales last year alone due to their inability to answer market demand for non-GM, organic food that doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup, gluten, antibiotics, growth hormones, MSG, and other toxic additives. Meanwhile, organic food is absolutely exploding.

Big Food has a multi-billion dollar problem on their hands, and this is why they have spent so much money trying to defeat GMO labeling bills in multiple states – but they can’t get around the awakening public’s demand for better food. It is staring them right in the face.

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Mute 9-Year-Old Speaks First Ever Words After Consuming Cannabis Oil

I used to think marijuana was just a plant that got me really high and was fun to smoke with my friends. I didn’t realize its medicinal benefits until I began studying the plant four years ago.

Now, thanks to cannabis–and specifically CBD oil–I firmly believe in miracles. The latest proof of CBD as a miraculous sorcerer’s stone that aids those previously without a “cure” comes out of Puerto Rico–and it’s a tear-jerker.

Thanks to a rare form of cancer resulting in “severe, non-verbal autism”, Kalel Santiago lived the first nine years of his life without uttering a single syllable. Then, recently, his parents discovered the newfound miracle plant: CBD oil, the non-psychoactive ingredient in cannabis that cures epilepsy and saves lives.

His parents administered the oil on Kalel, and the result was the boy’s first spoken words in his lifetime–and it only took two days of using the medicine to begin seeing the results.

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The Overprotected Kid

A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer. A new kind of playground points to a better solution.

A trio of boys tramps along the length of a wooden fence, back and forth, shouting like carnival barkers. “The Land! It opens in half an hour.” Down a path and across a grassy square, 5-year-old Dylan can hear them through the window of his nana’s front room. He tries to figure out what half an hour is and whether he can wait that long. When the heavy gate finally swings open, Dylan, the boys, and about a dozen other children race directly to their favorite spots, although it’s hard to see how they navigate so expertly amid the chaos. “Is this a junkyard?” asks my 5-year-old son, Gideon, who has come with me to visit. “Not exactly,” I tell him, although it’s inspired by one. The Land is a playground that takes up nearly an acre at the far end of a quiet housing development in North Wales...

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Want to enjoy the deep, mystical sleep of our ancestors? Turn your lights off at dusk.


A bird rests in a tree at dusk near the Beaverdam Creek Reservoir in Loudoun County, Va. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

By Clark Strand

What if you could meditate like a Tibetan lama with no instruction whatsoever — and without having to subscribe to any religious beliefs?

People hear a question like that and, unless they are particularly gullible, they assume they’re about to be scammed. But in this case there is nothing to buy — no tapes, no app, no religious agenda that gets sprung on you at the last moment when you’re feeling vulnerable and spiritually open. No hidden fees.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a catch. You have to be willing to revert to a Paleolithic pattern of sleep — and that means turning off your electric lights at dusk and leaving them off until dawn. Do that, and in about three week’s time, beginning around six hours after sunset each evening, you will find yourself experiencing a period of serene wakefulness that was once a nightly meditation retreat for all Homo sapiens on Earth. It’s a guarantee. It’s encoded in your genes.

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10 Ways Sex Heals Your Body

What's the fountain youth, secret to happiness, and key to health, longevity and a stress-free lifestyle? It's something that gives pleasure and one of life's most beautiful experiences to be shared with another human being.

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1) Lowers stress
Sex helps to create a balance between our emotional and mental health as it is a great stress buster. After sex, the brain releases endorphins that decrease stress, inducing a state of euphoria, in an individual.

During sex your body produces dopamine, a substance that fights stress hormones, endorphins, aka "happiness hormones" and oxytocin, a desire-enhancing hormone secreted by the pituitary gland.

In a study, published in the Public Library of Science journal, three neuroscience researchers conducted a test on male rats and found that the sexually active rats were less anxious than rats with no sexual activity.

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