The Americanization of Obesity

In recent months, world health officials have reported a dramatic growth in the percentage of the US population that can be classified as morbidly obese. The World Health Organization has characterized this increase in obesity as an “epidemic”, citing an estimated 60% of the people in the US as overweight. What is the source of…

Wilderness Therapy: Nature’s Helping Hand

Nature can have a restorative effect on even the most citified or hardhearted person. When we escape into nature, something in our evolutionary history comes to the fore and we feel free. It is one of the only times that many people lose that “searching for something” feeling that we all have now and again.…

Asian Taste: Love of Soy

Asian countries have been fortunate enough to make such as enormous and constant craze in the culinary world with its many varieties and degrees of spices and sauces. The most common sauce known for its origin is soy sauce; also know as Soya sauce by the Brits. This salty, but flavorful sauce is made from…

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Drugs or Therapy, which is best?

When you think of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), you may think of a rare, bizarre disease that causes people to wash their hands until they are raw or check and recheck the turning off of things, so much so that they are late for appointments and eventually become unable to function. Yet this is not the…

USDA Organics Standards and Regulations

In the United States, the labeling of food products as “organic” is a relatively new and rather complex process. With the advent of such labeling, came an unprecedented increase in the volume of sales and consumption of organic foods – especially since 1998, when sales began to increase an annual twenty percent.[1] The development and…

The Nursing Shortage of Hawaii

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “nurses make up the largest group of healthcare professionals in the nation.” And although the majority of the nursing shortage is being felt nationwide, Hawaii has been taking a beating and it is only expected to worsen. Consider this, with 23,000 registered nurses, just over 14,000 of which…

The Effects of Nonverbal Cues on Behavior in ADHD-Diagnosed Adolescent Males

I. INTRODUCTION Purpose This study investigates whether a relationship exists between nonverbal cues and positive social interaction among two ADHD-diagnosed adolescent boys, one medicated and one non-medicated, in a small-group setting. Two boys, both 12 years in age, and in 7th grade at a rural Illinois middle school, serve as the subjects of this study.…

A Dangerous Way of Life: Eating Disorders

Descriptions of Eating Disorders: People who are constantly thinking about food, worrying about the meal they just ate and what it is doing to their body, experience guilt or shame around eating, count calories constantly, weigh themselves several times daily, label foods as “good” and “bad”, limit food intake, punish themselves with exercise, and let the number on the scale determine their mood for the day, have a eating disorder.