Author: Stephanie Jackson
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Dopamine and Desperation
This past weekend, I attended a seminar on how to write a bestseller. Unsurprisingly, the focus of the event was mostly upon publicity and marketing. (If nuanced insights and a scintillating prose style were all that were required to sell books…well, I can dream.) One of the speakers had a lot of energy. At first,…
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The Myth of the Chemical Imbalance
by Sujatha Ramakrishna, M.D. It’s been over a decade now since the pharmaceutical industry started exposing the American public to advertisements such as this one: In that time I’ve encountered many patients who simply state, “I have a chemical imbalance,” when I ask them what brings them into the office. They don’t want to discuss their…
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Big Healthcare and Cheesecake
I always get a little giddy when a new article by Atul Gawande appears. The latest, in which he compares the quality control and cost efficiency at the Cheesecake Factory with that of Big Healthcare, does not disappoint: The neurologist, after giving her a two-minute exam, suggested tests that had already been done and wrote a prescription that…
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What to Do When You Can’t DO Anything
As many of you know, my brother-in-law, Leif, is currently battling a rare form of cancer called mantle cell lymphoma. He’s young, formidably strong and has one of the healthiest lifestyles of anyone I know. We went up to Maine to visit him last week. It’s impossible to describe what it’s like to watch someone you…
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The You-ness of Rolfing
Theresa Zordan is an expert Rolfer and visionary blogger from Denver, CO who graciously offered to swap guest posts with Practical Bodywork. We are pleased as punch to have her. It may be hard to believe, but sometimes I forget about Rolfing and how helpful it can be. It’s especially hard to believe considering I am a…
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So How The Hell Do We Do That???
As some of my wise friends point out, changing the face of healthcare is a quixotic proposition. It’s all very well to saythat your doctor should be prescribing more massage than painkillers, that insurance should cover it, and that everyone should be insured. But as we all know, our broken healthcare system makes far more money by selling…
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Vision for the Future of Healthcare
‘Winter and Spring,’ stained glass by Judith Schaecter, 30″ x 38″, judithschaecter.com Wouldn’t it be amazing if: • You could go to your doctor with severe pain, and she would write you a prescription for a course of massage therapy and other bodywork, which not only blissed you out, but solved your problem without the nasty side…
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You Cannot Control Your Posture
Do you hear that? You’re not responsible for sitting up straight: You do not have conscious control over your postural muscles. Your postural muscles are controlled by a part of your sub-conscious system. If you had conscious control over your posture you would be unable to do anything else. For example, while you are reading this,…
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The Smoking Gun
A widely-reported study finally traces the mechanism by which massage therapy reduces pain and promotes healing: They found that massage reduced the production of compounds called cytokines, which play a critical role in inflammation. Massage also stimulated mitochondria, the tiny powerhouses inside cells that convert glucose into the energy essential for cell function and repair. “The bottom…
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Why I Am A Bodyworker
Talk about stumbling upon a gift. At the age of four, during a performance of The Nutcracker, it was revealed to me that I was destined to be a Famous Ballerina. I pursued this vocation with focused determination until the age of seventeen, when I acknowledged that no girl with flat feet and limited hip…