EiR Blog

 There is no doubt that chronic illness involves a lot of suffering, a lot of soul searching, and a great deal of loss, both of one's capacity to continue doing all the things that bring enjoyment and of self-esteem and fulfillment in life. But what if chronic illness could be turned into a positive experience? This summer I completed a bachelors degree in nutritional health and was awarded first class honours by the University of Greenwich, London. At 31 I was beginning to think I would never obtain a degree after being forced to drop out of a computer science course at the University of Sheffield aged 19 due to ill health - this was therefore a great achievement for me. However, the degree was supposed to be followed by a year of clinical training to become a nutritional therapist/nutritionist. A recent downturn in my health as forced me to...

 Many people who develop chronic illnesses find that conventional medical care is inadequate for treating their symptoms and incapable of giving them the quality of life they desire. This is a major reason why many of us turn to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Many CAM therapies are proposed to work through the so called 'mind-body connection'. Despite a now well established body of sound scientific evidence this connection is usually ignored by conventional medicine which still thinks of the body and mind as being seperate. In conventional medicine there is no room for a "spiritual" aspect to healing at all. To many people it seems obvious that the mind and body are essentially one and the same. Science began to make this link experimentally around the 1950s and in 1980 Robert Ader introduced the term 'psychoneuroimmunology' during his presidential lecture to the American Psychosomatic Society. The term brings together...