Health

Review: Weight Loss for Binge Eaters Course

My blogging friend Ang of Lose Weight with Ang (who’s previously guest posted for MH@H on orthorexia), has developed a new course called Weight Loss for Binge Eaters, and I wanted to share it with you. This description comes from the course page: “Weight Loss for Binge Eaters is designed to help you overcome your …

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Mental Health @ Home book reviews: Decolonizing Wellness by Dalia Kinsey

Book Review: Decolonizing Wellness

Decolonizing Wellness by dietitian Dalia Kinsey aims to help QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) folks reject diet culture and restrictive ideas about bodies and food in order to achieve greater self-love and self-acceptance. The author, who identifies as a genderqueer, pansexual person of colour, wrote this book to fill a gap in …

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What is... Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) - cartoon of exhausted snail

What Is… ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue)

In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms… but not this week. Instead, we’ll take a look at ME/CFS, and why it’s absolutely not all in someone’s head. The National Institutes of Health describes ME/CFS as “a debilitating disease that lacks a universally accepted case definition, cause, diagnosis, or …

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Does the Gut Microbiome Affect Mental Health?

We all have trillions of microbes living in our intestines. This microbiome, which develops in infancy, plays a major role in our digestion, but there’s growing evidence that it affects more than just our digestive system. This collection of critters weighs about 2 kg and includes bacteria, fungi, and viruses. There is no “normal” microbiome …

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What We Can Learn from the Medicine Wheel

While we’re used to looking through a Western lens at health and wellness, I think there can be a great deal of value in looking at other ways of understanding to gain new ideas. The medicine wheel is used by certain North American Indigenous peoples to tie together culture, traditional knowledge, health, and healing. Traditionally, …

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the placebo effect: what causes it?

The Placebo Effect: What Is It and Why Does It Happen?

We’ve probably all heard of the placebo effect, but what is it, and how does it work? For something that happens regularly, it’s not all that well understood. A placebo is any substance that’s not intended or expected to have any therapeutic effect. Ethically, it generally wouldn’t be considered acceptable to give a patient a …

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Is Psychic Surgery a Real Thing?

There are plenty of odd pseudoscientific health practices out there, but psychic surgery kicks it up to a whole new level of weird. Psychic surgery isn’t like what happens in an operating room; it’s more like what happens on a magician’s stage. Sleight of hand, fake blood, and animal parts are used to make the …

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Do You Actually Need to Detox or Cleanse?

Detox diets and cleanses are quite popular these days, especially if you’re of the Goop-y persuasion. And while they might seem to make sense on an intuitive level, from a scientific perspective, is there anything to actually back that up? Or is it just pseudoscientific nonsense? “Toxins” Commercial detox products tend to refer vaguely to …

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