I find it fascinating how pain always seems like one of the most immediate and real sensations once can experience. When you stub your toe, it hurts, and what could be more real and immediate than that? Yet the more research takes place, the more it seems that pain is actually a very subjective and [...]

Hypnotherapy is always concerned with how people are thinking. As I often explain to people I work with, there are really four elements to your daily experience of life. Things happen to you, you think about them, that thinking causes you to feel a certain way, your feelings influence how you behave and your behaviour [...]

So apparently, there’s ‘No Place For Hypnotherapy And Acupuncture In An Evidence Based NHS Stop Smoking Service, UK‘. So says Dr. Andy McEwen, assistant director of tobacco studies at Cancer Research UK’s Health Behaviour Research Centre. He goes on to say: “There is no good research evidence to show that hypnotherapy or acupuncture increase a [...]

It’s Friday, and time for some culture. First, Titian’s ‘Venus with a Mirror’. I love Titian’s paintings. Visiting the Gallerie dell’Accademia a few years back, I remember being struck by the sheer size and force of his ‘Cain and Abel‘. When you look at the picture, try to imagine it hung up on a canvas [...]

Well, apparently people can get addicted to the Internet and this is a ‘clinical disorder‘, requiring ‘medication and even hospital treatment’ in some cases. Hmmm. That’s all very well, and as usual psychiatrists are recommending tackling the problem with drugs and hospital treatment. Which is fine, for those people who are willing and able to [...]

It’s not a big surprise to me to find that obesity and depression are linked, and apparently in a circular fashion. Not only does obesity contribute to depression, but depression contributes to obesity. It’s the sort of common sense that one intuitively knows from daily life, but it’s good to see some validation. After all, [...]