death

My Latest Painting: I Am Nothing, I Am Everything, All At Once

Today I want to share with you the latest painting I just painted. You can probably tell from some of my recent blog posts that I’ve been thinking a lot about the preciousness of our fleeting time on this earth.  About how our bodies reflect God’s divine design, and about the beauty that is inherent in the death transition.     So I wanted to paint it.   To somehow capture that moment when your physical body releases your energetic body and the dissolution of the tangible flows into the intangible.  How must that feel? I think how it must feel …

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Let Me Help You Move Through (& Release) Difficult Emotions

    A few years ago I became a Death Doula. You would think as a physician we would be taught in detail about the death and dying process in medical school, but we weren’t.  Not at all. We were taught how to pronounce someone dead, how to perform advanced life support to try to stave off death, how to sign a death certificate… but never about the intricacies of it: what the body feels and experiences as the soul prepares to leave it what the dying process looks like what order the organ systems shut down in and how …

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Reflections On The Death Transition: What I’ve Seen, What I Feel

        As a physician, I’ve had quite a few experiences with patients who were dying, as well as patients who had near death experiences and told me about them. In medical school, I had an attending physician who had a heart transplant. He said as they removed his heart on the operating table, he went somewhere totally different than earth. After putting his new heart in, the surgeon shocked it to get it to start beating again. He says he felt that shock and felt himself feeling pulled back into his physical body and when he woke …

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Trying To Shed Your Quarantine Weight Gain? 8 Unusual Tips That Will Ensure Success

      Most people have gained a bit of weight as a result of social distancing for the past month or two. With gyms, YMCAs, and most indoor exercise facilities shut down, and even outdoor public spaces like hiking trails, bike paths, beaches, pools, and more shut down, it’s likely that your activity level decreased and your weight increased. It’s okay. Me too. But not only is it actually a good idea to gain a few pounds during a pandemic (see #3 on the list below if you need proof) I’ve got a fantastic list of actionable tips taken …

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Aspirin Prevents Cancer… But There Is A Much Safer Way

Yet another study reports that long term aspirin use is associated with a reduced risk of death from all causes… …and specifically a reduced risk of death from cancer.   Remember when I blogged about this back in August 2014? The study at that time reported a 30% — 35% reduction in the risk of developing colorectal cancer, a 25% reduction in the risk of developing esophageal and stomach cancers, and smaller risk reduction in the other cancer categories (prostate, lung, breast.) The latest study back this finding up, finding a 7% reduction in mortality from all causes put together …

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ADHD Raises Suicide Risk More Than Depression Does

  A new study (published Sept 19, 2016 in Pediatrics) found that children who die by suicide are more likely to have been diagnosed with ADHD than with depression.   The Study: A national database tracked violent deaths from 2003 to 2012 in 17 different states During the study period, there were 693 early childhood suicides   The results: Children aged 5 to 11 years old who died by suicide were more likely to have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD than with depression. Almost 60% of suicide victims were diagnosed with ADHD, compared to only 33% having been diagnosed with depression. …

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Avoiding The Sun Is Actually More Deadly Than Smoking

A recent article, published in the Journal of Internal Medicine on March 16, 2016, found that folks who avoided sun exposure had a decreased life expectancy, similar to smokers who bathed in the sun.   This study looked at almost 30,000 participants (females ages 25 – 64 year old with no history of malignancy) over a span of 20 years. Researchers followed participants for over 20 years and tracked health outcomes and life span. What did they find?   Researchers found that even when smoking was factored in, the life span of those who avoided the sun was over 2 …

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