health care – Hybrid Learning https://hybridlearning.pk Online Learning Tue, 02 Jul 2024 07:05:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 How to Hack Your Hormones for a Better Mood https://hybridlearning.pk/2022/07/31/how-to-hack-your-hormones-for-a-better-mood/ https://hybridlearning.pk/2022/07/31/how-to-hack-your-hormones-for-a-better-mood/#respond Sun, 31 Jul 2022 06:18:03 +0000 https://hybridlearning.pk/2022/07/31/how-to-hack-your-hormones-for-a-better-mood/ How to Hack Your Hormones for a Better Mood Hormones are chemicals produced by different glands across your body. They travel through the bloodstream, acting […]

]]>

How to Hack Your Hormones for a Better Mood

Hormones are chemicals produced by different glands across your body. They travel through the bloodstream, acting as messengers and playing a part in many bodily processes. One of these important functions? Helping regulate your mood. Certain hormones are known to help promote positive feelings, including happiness and pleasure.

These “happy hormones” include:

  • Dopamine: Known as the “feel-good” hormone, dopamine is a neurotransmitter that’s an important part of your brain’s reward system. It’s associated with pleasurable sensations, along with learning, memory, and more.
  • Serotonin: This hormone and neurotransmitter helps regulate your mood as well as your sleep, appetite, digestion, learning ability, and memory.
  • Oxytocin: Often called the “love hormone,” oxytocin is essential for childbirth, breastfeeding, and strong parent-child bonding. It can also help promote trust, empathy, and bonding in relationships. Levels generally increase with physical affection.
  • Endorphins: These hormones are your body’s natural pain reliever, which your body produces in response to stress or discomfort. Levels may also increase when you engage in reward-producing activities such as eating, working out, or having sex.

Get outside

Looking to boost your serotonin level? Spending time outdoors, in sunlight, is a great way to do this.

According to research, exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun can increase the production of serotonin.

You can try spending about 15 minutes outside a few times a week. Try exploring a new neighborhood or park if you’re tired of the same old sights. Just be aware that UV exposure can also increase the risk of skin cancer, so don’t forget sunscreen!

Make time for exercise

Exercise has multiple physical health benefits. It can also have a positive impact on emotional well-being.

If you’ve heard of a “runner’s high,” you might already know about the link between exercise and endorphin release.

But exercise doesn’t just work on endorphins. Regular physical activity can also increase your dopamine and serotonin levels, making it a great option to boost your happy hormones.

Maximize your workout

To see even more benefits from exercise:

  • Include a few friends: A small 2017 study of medical students found evidence to suggest group exercise offers more significant benefits than solo exercise.
  • Get some sun: Move your workout outdoors to maximize your serotonin boost.
  • Time it: Aim for at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise at a time. Any amount of physical activity has health benefits, but researchTrusted Source associates higher-intensity workouts with a greater release of endorphins.

Laugh with a friend

Who hasn’t heard the old saying, “Laughter is the best medicine?”

Of course, laughter won’t treat ongoing health issues. But it can help relieve feelings of anxiety or stress, and improve a low mood by boosting dopamine and endorphin levels.

According to a small 2017 studyTrusted Source looking at 12 young men, social laughter triggered endorphin release. ResearchTrusted Source supports this finding.

So, share that funny video, dust off your joke book, or watch a comedy special with a friend or partner.

An added bonus? Bonding over something hilarious with a loved one might even trigger oxytocin release.

Cook (and enjoy) a favorite meal with a loved one

This tip could — in theory — boost all four of your happy hormones.

The enjoyment you get from eating something delicious can trigger the release of dopamine along with endorphins. Sharing the meal with someone you love, and bonding over meal preparation, can boost oxytocin levels.

Certain foods can also have an impact on hormone levels, so note the following when meal planning for a happy hormone boost:

  • spicy foods may trigger endorphin release
  • yogurt, beans, eggs, meats with low-fat content, and almonds are just a few foods linked to dopamine release
  • foods high in tryptophan have been linked to increased serotonin levels
  • foods containing probiotics, such as yogurt, kimchi, and sauerkraut, can influence the release of hormones

Try supplements

There are several supplements that may help increase your happy hormone levels. Here are just a few to consider:

  • tyrosine (dopamine production)
  • green tea and green tea extract (dopamine and serotonin)
  • probiotics (serotonin and dopamine production)
  • tryptophan (serotonin)

Experts studying the effects of supplements have found varied results. Many studies involved animals only, so more research is needed to help support the benefits of supplements for humans.

Supplements may be helpful, but some aren’t recommended for people with certain health conditions. They can also interact with certain medications, so talk to a healthcare provider before you try them.

If you do take any supplements, read all package instructions and stick to the recommended dose, since some can have negative effects at high doses.

Listen to music (or make some)

Music can give more than one of your happy hormones a boost.

Listening to instrumental music, especially music that gives you chills, can increase dopamine production in your brain.

But if you enjoy music, simply listening to any music you enjoy may help put you in a good mood. This positive change in your mood can increase serotonin production.

You may also experience an endorphin release while performing music, especially in a large group. For example, a 2016 studyTrusted Source found that choir members experienced increased endorphin release during rehearsals.

Meditate

If you’re familiar with meditation, you might already know of its many wellness benefits — from improving sleep to reducing stress.

ResearchTrusted Source links many of meditation’s benefits to increased dopamine production during the practice.

Not sure how to start? It’s not as hard as you might think. You don’t even need to sit still, though it can help when you’re first starting out.

Try it

To get started with meditation:

  • Choose a quiet, comfortable place to sit.
  • Get comfortable, whether that’s standing, sitting, or lying down.
  • Let all your thoughts — positive or negative — rise and pass you by.
  • As thoughts come up, try not to judge them, cling to them, or push them away. Simply acknowledge them.

Start out by doing this for 5 minutes and work your way up to longer sessions over time.

Plan a romantic evening

Oxytocin’s reputation as the “love hormone” is well earned.

Simply being attracted to someone can lead to the production of oxytocin. But physical affection, including kissing, cuddling, or having sex, also contributes to oxytocin production.

Just spending time with someone you care about can also help boost oxytocin production. This can help increase closeness and positive relationship feelings, making you feel happy, blissful, or even euphoric.

If you really want to feel those happy hormones, note that dancing and sex both lead to endorphin release, while orgasm triggers dopamine release.

You can also share a glass of wine with your partner for an added endorphin boost.

Pet your dog

If you have a dog, giving your furry friend some affection is a great way to boost oxytocin levels for you and your dog.

According to researchTrusted Source, dog owners as well as their dogs see an increase in oxytocin when interacting.

Even if you don’t own a dog, you might also experience an oxytocin boost when you see a dog you know and like. If you’re a dog lover, this might happen when you get a chance to pet any dog at all.

So, find your favorite canine and give it a good ear scratch or lap cuddle.

Get a good night’s sleep

Not getting enough quality sleep can affect your health in multiple ways.

For one, it can contribute to an imbalance of hormones, particularly dopamine, in your body. This can have a negative impact on your mood as well as your physical health.

Setting aside 7 to 9 hours each night for sleep can help restore the balance of hormones in your body, which will likely help you feel better.

If you find it difficult to get a good night’s sleep, try:

  • going to bed and getting up around the same time every day
  • creating a quiet, restful sleeping environment (try reducing light, noise, and screens)
  • decreasing caffeine intake, especially in the afternoon and evening

Manage stress

It’s normal to experience some stress from time to time. But living with regular stress or dealing with highly stressful life events can cause drops in dopamine and serotonin production. This can negatively affect your health and mood, making it harder to deal with stress.

If you’re under a lot of stress, the American Psychological Association recommends:

  • taking a brief break from the source of stress
  • laughter
  • taking 20 minutes for a walk, run, bike ride, or other physical activity
  • meditation
  • social interaction

Any of these approaches may help relieve your stress while also boosting your levels of serotonin, dopamine, and even endorphins.

Get a massage

If you enjoy a massage, here’s one more reason to get one: massage can boost all four of your happy hormones.

According to studies, massage boosts endorphinsTrusted Source and oxytocinTrusted Source. Older research found that massage also increases serotonin and dopamine.

You can get these benefits from a massage by a licensed massage therapist, but you can also get a massage from a partner for some extra oxytocin.

]]> https://hybridlearning.pk/2022/07/31/how-to-hack-your-hormones-for-a-better-mood/feed/ 0 Your Migraine-Free Vacation Guide https://hybridlearning.pk/2022/07/31/your-migraine-free-vacation-guide/ https://hybridlearning.pk/2022/07/31/your-migraine-free-vacation-guide/#respond Sun, 31 Jul 2022 06:04:29 +0000 https://hybridlearning.pk/2022/07/31/your-migraine-free-vacation-guide/ Your Migraine-Free Vacation Guide Migraine isn’t just limited to a severe headache. You may experience aura, nausea, vomiting, and other symptoms that take you out […]

]]> Your Migraine-Free Vacation Guide

Migraine isn’t just limited to a severe headache. You may experience aura, nausea, vomiting, and other symptoms that take you out for a day or two. The last thing you want is for your migraine symptoms to pop up when you’re trying to enjoy your vacation. From giving yourself a break from sightseeing to keeping your sleep routine on track, there are things you can do to reduce disruptions. Here are some tips to help you avoid triggering your migraine symptoms when on vacation. Migraine attacks aren’t typical headaches. You may experience pounding pain, nausea, and sensitivity to light and sound. When a migraine attack or episode occurs, you’ll do almost anything to make it go away. Natural remedies are drug-free methods of reducing migraine symptoms. These at-home treatments may help prevent the onset of migraine attacks or at least help reduce their severity and duration. Keep reading as we take a look at 15 natural remedies that may help you manage migraine symptoms. Note that migraine attacks may require treatment with prescription or over-the-counter (OTC) medication. Speak with a doctor about a treatment plan that works for you.

1. Avoid certain foods

Diet plays a vital role in preventing migraine attacks. Many foods and beverages may be migraine triggers, such as:

  • foods with nitrates, including hot dogs, deli meats, bacon, and sausage
  • chocolate
  • cheese that contains the naturally occurring compound tyramine, such as blue, feta, cheddar, Parmesan, and Swiss
  • alcohol, especially red wine
  • foods that contain monosodium glutamate (MSG), a flavor enhancer
  • foods that are very cold, such as ice cream or iced drinks
  • processed foods
  • pickled foods
  • beans
  • dried fruits
  • cultured dairy products, such as buttermilk, sour cream, and yogurt

A small amount of caffeine may ease migraine pain in some people. Caffeine is also in some migraine medications. But too much caffeine may cause a migraine attack. It may also lead to a severe caffeine withdrawal headache.

To figure out which foods and beverages trigger migraine attacks for you, keep a daily food journal. Record everything you eat and note how you feel afterward.

2. Apply lavender oil

Inhaling lavender essential oil may ease migraine pain. Lavender oil may be inhaled directly or diluted with a carrier oil and applied in small amounts to your temples.

A 2016 randomized controlled study found evidence that 3 months of lavender therapy as a prophylactic therapy, meaning taken before a migraine attack begins, reduced frequency and severity of migraine attacks. However, research is still limited.

A 2020 review of studiesTrusted Source published in the journal Phytotherapy Research examined the ability of various herbal treatments, including lavender therapy for migraine. The authors found mixed or limited evidence to support the use of butterbur and feverfew for treating migraine but didn’t note that current research supports the use of lavender.

3. Try acupuncture

Acupuncture involves injecting very thin needles into certain parts of your skin to stimulate relief from a wide variety of health conditions.

A 2020 randomized controlled studyTrusted Source found that 20 sessions of manual acupuncture along with usual care was more effective at preventing migraine in people with a history of episodic migraine without aura than sham acupuncture along with usual care. Sham acupuncture is a treatment where the needles are not inserted as deeply.

A 2016 review of 22 studiesTrusted Source also found moderate evidence that acupuncture may reduce headache symptoms. In the results summary, the authors explain that if people had 6 days of migraine per month before treatment, it would be expected that they would have:

  • 5 days with usual care
  • 4 days with fake acupuncture or prophylactic medications
  • 3 1/2 days with real acupuncture

4. Look for feverfew

Feverfew is a flowering herb that looks like a daisy. It’s a folk remedy for migraine. It still isn’t well-studied, but there is some evidence that it may be slightly more effective than a placebo for treating migraine.

In a 2015 review of studiesTrusted Source, which is an update of a previous 2004 study, the authors concluded that larger studies are needed to support the use of feverfew for treating migraine.

The authors note that one larger study published since the 2004 review found 0.6 fewer migraine days per month in people who took feverfew versus a placebo. They describe previous studies as low quality or providing mixed evidence.

The 2020 review of studiesTrusted Source published in Phytotherapy Researchalso summarizes the finding on feverfew as “mixed.”

5. Apply peppermint oil

The chemical menthol found in peppermint oil may help prevent migraine episodes, although there’s a very limited amount of research.

A 2019 randomized controlled studyTrusted Source compared the effects of nasal 4 percent lidocaine with 1.5 percent peppermint essential oil and a placebo for managing migraine symptoms.

The researchers found that 40 percent of people in the lidocaine and peppermint oil groups experienced considerable improvements in their symptoms, compared with only 4.9 percent of people in the placebo group.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative HealthTrusted Source notes that very little research has examined peppermint leaf, but a limited amount of evidence suggests topical peppermint oil may benefit tension headaches.

6. Ginger

Ginger is known to ease nausea caused by many conditions, including migraine. It may have pain-relieving benefits for migraine attacks. According to a 2020 review of studiesTrusted Source, one randomized controlled study found evidence that ginger may have beneficial activity.

More research is needed to understand the extent and usefulness of ginger for treating migraine-related pain.

7. Sign up for yoga

Yoga uses breathing, meditation, and body postures to promote health and well-being. A 2015 studyTrusted Source found yoga may relieve the frequency, duration, and intensity of migraine attacks. It’s thought to improve anxiety, release tension in migraine-trigger areas, and improve vascular health.

The researchers concluded that yoga could be beneficial as a complementary therapy for treating migraine.

8. Try biofeedback

Biofeedback is a relaxation method. It teaches you to control autonomic reactions to stress. During this therapy, electrodes are applied to your skin to monitor physiologic processes that change with stress, such as your heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension.

During a biofeedback session, you work with a therapist to manage stress using changes in your physiologic processes as feedback.

According to a 2019 studyTrusted Source, there’s good evidence to support the use of mind-body interventions such as biofeedback and cognitive behavioral therapy for treating migraine. These therapies are effectively free of side effects and may make a good alternative for medication for some people.

9. Add magnesium to your diet

Magnesium deficiency is linked to headaches and migraine. Magnesium oxide supplementation may help prevent migraine with aura. It may also prevent menstrual migraine (hormone headaches).

A 2021 studyTrusted Source found that 500 milligrams of magnesium oxide taken twice a day for 8 weeks was as effective as the medication valproate sodium for preventing migraine without significant side effects.

You can get magnesium from foods that include:

  • almonds
  • sesame seeds
  • sunflower seeds
  • Brazil nuts
  • cashews
  • peanut butter
  • oatmeal
  • eggs
  • milk

10. Book a massage

Massage may reduce migraine frequency. Migraine is associated with low serotonin in the brain, and massage has been shown to increase serotonin. There’s limited evidence to support the use of massage for migraine relief, but it’s generally safe and has a low risk of side effects.

11. Try acupressure for migraine-related nausea

Acupressure is the practice of applying pressure with the fingers and hands to specific points on the body to relieve pain and other symptoms.

A 2017 studyTrusted Source found evidence that acupuncture may help manage migraine-related nausea during treatment, but that it doesn’t improve pain or quality of life.

12. Apply stress management techniques

According to the American Headache Society, more than 80 percent of people with migraine report stress being a migraine trigger. Learning how to better manage your stress may help you decrease migraine frequency.

Some commonly used stress management techniques include:

  • deep breathing exercises
  • mental imagery
  • music therapy or listening to relaxing music
  • counseling or therapy
  • meditating
  • progressive muscle relaxation
  • improving time management
  • scheduling more time for relaxing activities

13. Staying hydrated

According to the American Migraine Foundation, about a third of people with migraine report dehydration as a migraine trigger.

To prevent dehydration, make sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day, especially when exercising. On hot days, you may need to drink more water than usual.

14. Try to get a good night’s sleep

The connection between sleep and migraine still isn’t entirely clear. Research from 2016Trusted Source has found a correlation between high migraine frequency and poor sleep quality. This association is true in people with migraine with and without aura.

Going to bed at the same time each night, avoiding caffeine late in the day, and avoiding stimulating activities before bed are some of the ways you can improve your sleep.

15. Butterbur

Butterbur is a plant that grows throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. Up until 2012Trusted Source, the American Academy of Neurology recommended using it for preventing migraine attacks. In 2015, they stopped their recommendation due to the possibility of liver toxicity.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative HealthTrusted Source recommends only using pyrrolizidine alkaloid-free butterbur products, as this chemical can damage the liver, lungs, and circulation. Speak with a doctor before taking butterbur.

sources

]]> https://hybridlearning.pk/2022/07/31/your-migraine-free-vacation-guide/feed/ 0 Trump Speaks Out on Drug Costs https://hybridlearning.pk/2017/01/28/trump-speaks-drug-costs/ https://hybridlearning.pk/2017/01/28/trump-speaks-drug-costs/#respond Sat, 28 Jan 2017 06:41:32 +0000 https://hybridlearning.pk/2017/01/28/trump-speaks-drug-costs/ Trump Speaks Out on Drug Prices President-elect Donald Trump vowed Wednesday to alter the best way that medication are reimbursed and stated the pharmaceutical trade […]

]]> Trump Speaks Out on Drug Prices

President-elect Donald Trump vowed Wednesday to alter the best way that medication are reimbursed and stated the pharmaceutical trade was “getting away with homicide.””Pharma has numerous lobbies, numerous lobbyists and numerous energy,” he stated through the opening remarks of his first press convention because the election.A number of drug firms have been beneath congressional scrutiny for elevating the costs of their merchandise, and in recent times spending on medication has grown considerably sooner than different areas of medication.As an answer to get prices beneath management and save “billions of ,” Trump stated he would “open up extra bidding for drugs.”

“There’s little or no bidding on medication,” he stated. “We’re the most important purchaser of medicine on the planet and but we don’t bid correctly.”

Whereas Trump did not elaborate on the small print of how the bidding would happen, he proposed throughout his marketing campaign to permit Medicare, the federal government’s program to cowl people who find themselves disabled or 65 or older, to barter costs. The observe is presently banned beneath federal regulation.

Such a coverage proposal is uncommon for a Republican; Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders made comparable proposals throughout their bid for the nomination. President Barack Obama pledged to permit the observe when he ran for the White Home, however didn’t embody it as a part of his signature well being care regulation, the Reasonably priced Care Act. Although he has tucked the availability into price range proposals, it has failed to realize traction in Congress.

Nonetheless, members of each events in recent times have been vocal about their need to rein in drug costs and have skewered pharmaceutical firm CEOs for his or her value gouging practices throughout public hearings.

Shortly after Trump’s feedback, the Nasdaq biotechnology index dipped three.four p.c, simply because the trade is in the course of its main investor convention in San Francisco, the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Convention.

The Pharmaceutical Analysis and Producers of America, or PhRMA, tweeted shortly after the feedback that permitting negotiation by Medicare would hurt beneficiaries, although it wasn’t clear whether or not the tweet was a direct response to Trump’s feedback

“A refresh on personal negotiation in #Medicare #PartD & why interfering w/ it might negatively impression beneficiaries,” the group tweeted, sharing a hyperlink about their public place on the matter, which states that permitting such negotiations to happen would cut back entry for sufferers.

In defending its place previously, the trade additionally has famous that spending on medication has constantly made up about 10 p.c of whole well being care spending.

]]> https://hybridlearning.pk/2017/01/28/trump-speaks-drug-costs/feed/ 0 HEALTH CARE https://hybridlearning.pk/2013/06/10/health-care/ https://hybridlearning.pk/2013/06/10/health-care/#respond Mon, 10 Jun 2013 07:36:58 +0000 https://hybridlearning.pk/2013/06/10/health-care/ HEALTH CARE. Healing traditions of the Islamic world exhibit broad historical and sociocultural variation. Although a certain complex of therapeutic conventions is generally associated with […]

]]> HEALTH CARE. Healing traditions of the Islamic world exhibit broad historical and sociocultural variation. Although a certain complex of therapeutic conventions is generally associated with Islamic societies, it represents but one expression of a dialectic of unity and diversity. Specific health practices are not distributed uniformly throughout Muslim communities. Neither are such elements of healing culture unique to these communities, reflecting the distribution of pre-Islamic therapeutic traditions over vast civilizational areas, and the protracted encounter between islamized peoples and non-Muslims.
Although the link between Arabic-Islamic and GrecoRoman medicine has been privileged in Eurocentric scholarship, cross-cultural appropriations and influences far exceed the bounds established by traditional historiography. Contemporary research has highlighted the diversity of health and medical traditions, suggesting that the conventional understanding of Islamic medicine be expanded beyond its common referents of Greco-Islamic and Prophetic healing to more accurately reflect the therapeutic heterogeneity of Islam. For instance, medieval Arabic-Islamic medicine was also informed by African and Asian literate medical traditions-including ancient Egyptian, Indian, Persian, and Syriac-as well as pre-Islamic popular health practices and local modes of organizing health maintenance in Islamized communities. Prophetic medicine, which in many respects resembles pre-Islamic bedouin healing traditions, attends to hygienic and dietary concerns, as well as psychosocial distress, including forms in which the spirit world, the evil eye, and sorcery are implicated. The barakah (blessing) of the Qur’an, its learned “carriers,” and holy descendants of the Prophet, are central to this tradition. And in Islamic humoralism, nature, with its four elements, and the human body, with its four humors, are focal in definitions of health-sickness and derivative healing regimens. Humoral conceptions of balance (health) and imbalance (sickness) involve notions of hot and cold and the interaction of natural elements with the four humors of the body (blood, phlegm, bile, and black bile). As with the integrative character of Islamic culture in general, pre-Islamic and Islamic health care practices and institutions have been adapted to different social and ecological conditions.
While religious teachings enjoin Muslims to protect and restore their health, there is no specification as to type of treatment. In fact, as noted by the fourteenthcentury social historian Ibn Khaldfin, Muslims are not obligated to follow the medical prescriptions handed down even in authentic traditions attributed to the Prophet. Among Indian Muslims, for example, reliance on the healing power of the Qur’an does not preclude resort to Ayurveda. Similarly, Arab Muslims are known to visit Christian places of worship in pursuit of restoration of health. And as recently as the middle of the twentieth century, some urban Egyptian families engaged Jewish religious specialists for the circumcision of their sons.
Elements of ancient and medieval healing traditions are but partial constituents of the Islamic world’s medical pluralism. Health care practices also reflect changes in political economies over the course of modern history. Thus, while Sufi holistic healing in the Arab world exemplifies the general association between healing and religion, its significance in addressing psychosocial problems from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century is related to modern global developments. It has been suggested that these regimens acquired particular significance in relation to the pressures of market forces linked to Western encroachment. Those segments of the population adversely affected by the new market relations found refuge in Sufi forms of socially grounded healing. On the other hand, ruling-class authorization of positivist biomedicine was consistent with the support of nineteenth-century periphery capitalism.
Today, the health policies of the Islamic world’s nation-states, like those of international health organizations, are based on the premises of pathology-focused biomedicine. The principles of this cosmopolitan healing tradition, rather than Islamic medical texts of the past or their popularized forms of the present, inform state regulation of health throughout the Islamic world. Although connected to ancestral Islamic empirical/literate traditions (such as those elaborated by al-Razi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Maymun [Maimonides], and Ibn al-Nafis), modern biomedical traditions originate in a fundamentally different global system, with its particular state institutions, regulatory mechanisms, and local modes of organization. In this regard, the “Islamic Clinics” established in recent years represent a cultural veneer overlaying the basic conceptual framework of cosmopolitan medicine.
Tradition, Continuity, and Context. Coexisting with different forms of officially sanctioned, clinic-centered health care are numerous other healing practices utilized by members of Islamic communities around the world. These include household-based herbal medicine and dietary regimens for the maintenance or restoration of the body’s vitality. Also prevalent in Islamic communities are notions of the unity of soma and psyche, the ideal of exercising moderation in food, drink, and sex, reliance on the healing power of barakah, associated with Qur’anic texts and recitations, as well as visits to the shrines of holy persons. In addition, the protection or restoration of health may involve the use of amulets against the evil eye, and a variety of hygienic practices, ranging from male circumcision to the differentiation of the use of the right and left hands for the handling of food as opposed to “polluting” substances such as feces and urine. Spiritual healers, including those who possess Qur’anic knowledge, are also frequented for diagnosis of possession illness and pacification of the spirits believed to cause it, as well as the healing of sorceryinduced afflictions.
The health regimens of contemporary Islamic communities share certain structural features and specific practices with past cultures, including Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Phoenician, and medieval Islamic. Parallels include the dual role of central authorities in keeping order and regulating health, biological inheritance of the healing power of barakah, the close relationship between religion, magic, and medicine, the use of amulets against the evil eye, music therapy, exorcism of spirits, and the practice of cupping, bloodletting, and cauterization.
Beyond recognizing general similarities between health care practices of today’s Islamic world and historical therapeutic traditions, it is important to recognize that contemporary forms are not simply straightforward reproductions of past regimens. Among other examples of local particularity is the case of the Malay Peninsula, where treatment of the majority of illnesses entails restoration of the body’s humoral balance. Although many of the precepts of medieval Islamic theory were incorporated into Malay medicine, historically informed ethnographic analysis reveals that pre-Islamic aboriginal ideas continue to be operative. Furthermore, some radical alterations have affected the received theories of Islamic humoralism. Other examples of local specificity are disclosed by comparing the ways in which the risks to health of emotional distress are managed in different Muslim communities.
Working in Islamic communities in Iran, Turkey, Malay, Yemen, Egypt, and Morocco, some researchers suggest that formulations of Greco-Islamic medicine, notably those pertaining to reproductive health, and notions of health as a manifestation of humoral balance, continue to be significant as a basis of dietary regimens and the differentiation of states of compromised health among members of these communities. Addressing this issue on the basis of their experiences in some of the same Islamic societies, namely Yemen and Egypt, in addition to Islamic communities of Nigeria, other researchers report lesser evidence of the classical humoral theories than suggested by European-language literature. For example, in rural Egypt, where therapeutic measures similar to those of medieval Islamic medicine are practiced, their utilization is distanced from the coherent logical framework of classical humoralism. Bloodletting, for instance, is not linked to the elaborate medieval humoral model of balance (health) and imbalance (sickness). In other African societies, Prophetic components of Islamic medicine, rather than humoral concepts, have taken root as significant elements of medical pluralism. Among the Muslim Hausa of northern Nigeria, as elsewhere in the Islamic world, hygienic and dietary practices, as well as the use of Qur’anic charms associated with this therapeutic tradition, coexist with pre-Islamic practices of the pacification of spirits that are believed to precipitate illness. The possession cults of Sufi orders are also found throughout Islamic communities on the continent and beyond, including Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal, Mali, Sudan, and Iran.
Biomedicine and the Colonial Legacy. Within the framework of nineteenth-century global political and economic relations, biomedicine gained prestige and legitimation through the patronage of indigenous rulers and the policies of colonial administrators. For example, Iran witnessed the decline of the indigenous decentralized bazaar system of healing in favor of the centralized biomedical form sanctioned by the shah. Competing for political influence and economic gain in the Iranian court, European powers were well served by the healing skills of their physicians. Mechanisms for regulating public health, namely quarantines and sanitary councils, were also deployed in the economic contests between European rivals.
In the colonized Muslim world, the primary concern of colonial administrators was the protection of their own subjects, military and civilian. For many nineteenth-century colonial administrators and medical personnel, the dangers of disease were taken for granted as part of a hostile, “tropical” environment. Although European healing during the early nineteenth century was no more effective than Greco-Islamic medicine, it was nevertheless asserted that only through European knowledge and intervention would it be possible to bring under control the diseases of the empire’s colonies. Supported by political and military power, European medicine was considered a form of progress toward a more “civilized” social and environmental order.
During the imperial age, “disease” constituted a central element of the conceptualization of the “tropical” colonized world, which was constructed as the antithesis of sanitary Europe. As Franz Fanon described for Muslim Algeria, this discourse of empire served as a rationale for “racialism and humiliation.” In Algiers and other North African cities of the nineteenth century, residential areas were segregated by the French. Under these conditions, the visit of the European doctor, often a military man, was by no means welcomed by the indigenous Muslim population. While some of the foreign doctors were considered skillful healers at whose hands relief from pain could be obtained, others were regarded with suspicion. Judged to be spies, some European physicians were murdered.
Propelled by “curative confidence,” biomedicine eclipsed earlier literate Islamic medical traditions. Simultaneously, it served as a mechanism of social control in colonized Islamic societies, but not without historically specific variations in local articulations, resistance, or acceptance.
In Egypt, biomedicine took root prior to the British occupation of 1882, coinciding with the nineteenth century rationalization of the economy during the reign of Muhammad `Ali (1805-1848). With the aim of creating a powerful army and a large productive labor force of men and women, the state’s public health program was designed to combat epidemics and reduce infant mortality. State-sponsored health care providers included women health officers. Countrywide vaccination campaigns involving trained local paramedics eliminated smallpox by mid-century.
But the establishment of biomedical health care in nineteenth-century Egypt was hardly a case of “modernity” landing on the virgin soil of “tradition.” Ibn Sina’s work had remained influential in Europe up to the sixteenth century. Thereafter Muslim scholars in Turkey and elsewhere followed its elaboration in Europe, in addition to other developments in positivist medicine. The philosophical legitimation of Muhammad `Ali’s reform policies derived from the Islamic tradition of kalam, wherein logic, argumentation, medicine, and the natural sciences were significant. Thus, local therapeutic traditions converged with Europe’s developing scientific trends. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, professional medical practitioners, by now committed to biomedicine’s normalizing knowledge of desocialized disease, came to regard psychosocially oriented healing regimens beyond their domain as “quackery.”
With the British occupation of 1882, and consistent with the colonial extractive strategies in the Egyptian “cotton farm,” hydraulics and agricultural modernization were given priority, to the detriment of public health and medical education. Colonial authorities privatized medical education and promoted this relationship in health care. With the Arabic language declared unfit for “scientific” study, the anglicization of curricula extended to medical education. Under pressure from nationalist forces, and with the failure of British physicians to “spread the light of Western science throughout the country” (as the British consul general, Lord Cromer, put it), the 1920s and 1930s witnessed the revival of some older public health strategies of the Muhammad `Ali era, albeit in greatly compromised form. For instance, the former era’s state-sponsored training of female medical officers in preventive health care, surgery, obstetrics, and gynecology was replaced by the Florence Nightingale model of hospital-based nursing.
In other parts of the Muslim world the ascendancy of biomedicine came about differently than in Egypt, where European doctors had been invited by Muhammad Ali for the express purpose of training Egyptians within the framework of an integrated state-centered development scheme. In Tunis the nineteenth-century colonial government severely undermined the role of indigenous doctors by restricting licensing to Europeans. Within a decade of the French occupation of 1881, indigenous doctors were reduced to the status of midecin tolire, and their practice was soon rendered less than legal.
Medical Pluralism in Nation-States. Beyond its political and economic instrumentality, cosmopolitan health care introduced in Islamic societies during the colonial era was very limited; most of the population continued to rely primarily on traditional forms of healing. Aside from variation in the extent of state commitment to provide public health care, skewed distribution of cosmopolitan medical services generally continued in the postindependence period.
Presently, the authoritative role of global biomedicine in regulating social life in Islamic nation-states underscores the conviction that societal homogeneity is a function, not of Islamic legal traditions, but of mechanisms of control perfected by modern nation-states. While officials of these states may continue to honor their Arabic-Islamic literate medical heritage, they are committed to cosmopolitan medicine as the foundation of medical education, research, and public health programs. Western professional accreditation remains a mark of distinction among physicians in Muslim countries. Similarly, among patients the resort to modern medicine is a symbol of social privilege.
In spite of the limitations surrounding access to cosmopolitan health services, legal sanction of healing remains limited to professional practitioners and, with the exception of midwives, does not extend to traditional healers. The 1983 National (Sudanese) Council for Research Act represents a rare form of official support for researchers “to evaluate TM (Traditional Medicine) in the light of modern science so as to maximize useful and effective practices and discourage the harmful.” Although not legally sanctioned, traditional healing continues to be tolerated by the authorities. In some cases it may be the only accessible form of health care. In others, it is preferred over biomedical care. For although biomedicine has gained popularity and prestige throughout the Islamic world, its utility in addressing culturally meaningful, socially defined afflictions remains limited.
Prevention is central to popular health care in Islamic societies. The “word of God,” either written or oral, is deemed effective in warding off evil, including sickness precipitated by the covetous gaze of the evil eye or spirit intrusion. Preventive health care is primarily householdcentered, with women shouldering major responsibility for the execution of preventive regimens and home remedies. Assistance during birth is also part of women’s responsibilities, whether as midwives or simply experienced elders.
Traditional healers, found throughout the Islamic world, include practitioners of natural medicine. Their practice is informed by certain variants of Islamic humoralism, knowledge of bonesetting, and herbal medicine. Spiritual healers, on the other hand, diagnose and treat sickness of supernatural etiology, including sorcery-induced afflictions and spirit possession. The literate among them rely on their knowledge of the Qur’an to gain access to the supernatural realm. Paramedical variants of health care are also significant to the socially disadvantaged sectors of Muslim societies. As in the case of pharmacists, paramedics provide advice on medication and administer injections.
Transcending the medical model of health care, some health activists in different parts of the Muslim world have emphasized sociopolitical conceptions of health. Reminiscent of al-Suyuti’s medieval treatise on the medicine of the Prophet, which recognizes deprivation as a cause of poor health, activists have stressed the relationship between health and, for instance, military occupation, or the distribution of health resources, including adequate nutrition, housing, and water supply. Feminists, in particular, have called attention to the impact of gender differentiation on health maintenance, and have defined the practice of genital surgery as both a human rights and health issue. Although statesponsored and international health programs often give priority to the regulation of Muslim women’s fertility, public policy affecting women’s lives and health does not reflect an awareness of the ways in which compromised health is socially produced. As official pledges of “Health for All” gave way to selective maternal and child health programs during the eighties, women were burdened with still additional responsibilities for their family’s health. Meanwhile, their own health continues to suffer as a result of laboring in the household, field, or factory, and associated exposure to smoke, pesticides, and industrial contaminants, respectively, in addition to malnutrition and infectious diseases, among other physical and mental afflictions.
Political Islam and Health Care. While Islamic teachings do not instruct Muslims to adopt specific forms of healing, the banner of Islam has served to lend legitimacy to one healing tradition or another. This was the case in nineteenth-century northern Nigeria, where health and healing were integral to the Fulani jihad. Under the leadership of Usuman dan Fodio, and later his successor as sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Bello, the rural Hausa Qur’anic scholars known as malamai gained great authority. As a concerted effort was made to crush the power of the practitioners of pre-Islamic healing, Prophetic medicine, legitimated by political authority, gained prominence.
During the twentieth century, the relation between political and medical authority has not been lost to state managers. The religiously sanctioned provision of charitable health care has also been part of reformist Islamist agendas. In Egypt during the 1940s, the Muslim Brothers organized teams of physicians and students who engaged in public health education among the poor, particularly in rural areas. While physicians from among the Muslim Brothers operated charitable clinics, the brothers saw in Islamic teachings a more fundamental solution to health problems. Having defined poverty as a primary cause of compromised health, they advocated Islamic regulation of wealth distribution.
Although sharing other Muslims’ belief in the holiness of the Qur’an and the wisdom of Prophetic traditions, the Muslim Brothers’ health programs were clearly informed by biomedical logic. Today a similar scientific orientation is manifest in the practice of Muslim African-American physicians. In the Nation of Islam’s Abundant Life Clinic in Washington, D.C., AIDS patients are treated with Immuviron, a derivative of the drug Kemron.
The commitment to bio medicine is also evident in the Islamic Clinics established in some parts of the Muslim world, notably Jordan, Sudan, and Egypt, over the past decade. Although very little published material is available on the operation of these clinics, they are generally considered to be an expression of the rise of political Islam. For Sudan, anthropologist Ellen Gruenbaum (1989) notes that the establishment of private clinics by the National Islamic Front coincides with the coming to power in June 1989 of a new regime that implemented the Front’s policies. Through the Front, the clinics are financed by Islamic banks established with Saudi capital.
For Egypt, Islamic Clinics include numerous one- or two-room clinics established by religious voluntary associations and attached to modest mosques, as well as some major health care centers such as the Mustafa Mahmud Islamic Clinic. These health care facilities are dependent on financial contributions from nongovernmental sources. In addition to local charitable contributions, Gulf petro-wealth has served indirectly to support their low-priced medical services. In some cases, the Islamist private commercial and financial sectors contribute financially to Islamic Clinics, as well as the Physicians’ Syndicate, a stronghold of political Islam.
The “Islamic Alternative” in health care is presented by its advocates as a private initiative to address unmet health care needs at a time when state support of public health is less than adequate. Far from representing an alternative health care strategy that challenges state authority, the charitable health services offered by Islamist groups help maintain an indispensable component of the social welfare package. This in turn helps such groups gain legitimacy in, and affirm the legitimacy of, the established social order. Cognizant of the political value of such a reciprocal relationship, the Egyptian state has financed Islamic social service centers, including clinics, thus reinforcing the appearance of state commitment to Islamic tradition. But, as in other clinics, the health care provided by service centers remains distanced from the tenets of medieval Arabic-Islamic medicine. In fact, it does not even resemble such exceptional attempts as those undertaken by Essedik Jeddi’s team to integrate Arabic-Islamic healing into the biomedical psychiatric work conducted at Al-Razi University in Tunis during the 1970s.
As is the case of professional medical practitioners throughout the Islamic world, those working in Islamic Clinics are trained in biomedicine and committed to its practice. While the patrons of the clinics may be gratified by their proximity to a place of worship, they expect high-technology medical care, not Islamic medicine, whether in its Prophetic or humoral form. For their part, physicians serving in these clinics take pride in their access to the “most advanced” medical technology imported from the West.
Supporters of Islamic Clinics sometimes present them as an embodiment of the Prophet’s hadith describing science as a method blending theology and medicine (“the science of religion [theology] and the science of the body [medicine]”). Beyond such rationalizations, it is important to note the historical context of the establishment of these clinics, namely the development of a petro-economy in the Gulf and the regional development of political Islam, catalyzed by the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
As Gulf petro-wealth and Islamic political agendas left their mark on intellectual developments in the Muslim world, this extended to medical and health care. Professional and academic associations, such as the Kuwait Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences and the College of Medical Sciences at King Faisal University, launched various publications devoted to the relationship between Islam and medicine. The “authentication” of cosmopolitan medicine has been the subject of numerous international conferences held in different Islamic countries. Participants, including Muslim physicians and clerics, have attempted to define an Islamic perspective on a wide range of health issues, from preventive care, birth spacing, prenatal care, and breastfeeding, to the treatment of emotional disorders. Conferees have also addressed the religious/ethical implications of a variety of modern medical practices and biomedically defined altered states of health, including the implantation of body parts, artificial insemination, and AIDS.
International conferences in which scientific, including medical, phenomena are addressed in relation to Qur’anic knowledge have drawn criticism from some Muslim intellectuals. For example, Munawar Ahmad Anees has attached the designation “scientific fundamentalism” to the current trend of “islamization of knowledge.” Similarly, Pervez Hoodbhoy, in a book introduced by the Muslim physicist and Nobel laureate, Mohammed Abdus Salam, suggests that today’s socalled Islamic science, which seeks to capitalize on the science practiced by the early Muslims, betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific achievements of Islam’s golden age. Highlighting the works of the Muslim physicians al-Razi (865-925), Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), and Ibn Sind (980-1037), Hoodbhoy argues that these scholars, while deeply committed Muslims, practiced science of an essentially secular kind.
[See also Family Planning; Medicine; Science.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Earley, Evelyn. “The Baladi Curative System of Cairo, Egypt.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 12 (1988): 65-83.
Fanon, Franz. Studies in a Dying Colonialism. New York, 1965. Classic work on colonialism that includes insightful discussions of the politics of health in colonized North Africa.
Feierman, Steven, and John M. Janzen, eds. The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa. Berkeley, 1992. Excellent volume on African healing as a socially and historically constituted complex of traditions. Includes essential readings by Ismail H. Abdalla on the history of Islamic medicine in northern Nigeria, Bernard Greenwood on Moroccan therapeutics, and Murray Last on healing knowledge in Hausaland.
Gallagher, Nancy E. Medicine and Power in Tunisia, 1780-1900. Cambridge, 1983.
Gallagher, Nancy E. Egypt’s Other Wars: Epidemics and the Politics of Public Health. Syracuse, N.Y., 1990.
Gran, Peter. Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760-1840. Austin, 1979. Focused on Egypt during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this study of intellectual developments, including medical concerns, provides a refreshing alternative to modernization theorists’ tradition-modernity dualism.
Gran, Peter. “Medical Pluralism in Arab and Egyptian History: An Overview of Class Structures and Philosophies of the Main Phases.” Social Science and Medicine. 13B (1979): 339-348.
Greyhton, M. L. “Communication between Peasant and Doctor in Tunisia.” Social Science and Medicine ti (1977): 319-325. Gruenbaum, Ellen. “Changes in the Health of Women in Rural Sudan.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, 1989.
Hoodbhoy, Pervez. Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality. London, 1991.
Kuhnke, LaVerne. “The `Doctress’ on a Donkey: Women Health Officers in Nineteenth-Century Egypt.” Clio Medica 19 (1974) 193
205.
Kuhnke, LaVerne. Lives at Risk: Public Health in Nineteenth-Century Egypt. Berkeley, 1990.
Leslie, Charles, and Allan Young, eds. Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge. Berkeley, 1992. Informative volume on Asian medicine that includes contributions on Islamic humoral traditions in a chapter co-authored by Byron Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, and in another by Carol Laderman. Together these two chapters bring into focus the central elements of the debate on Islamic medicine as a living tradition.
Lewis, I. M., Ahmed El Safi, and Sayyid Hurreiz, eds. Women’s Medicine: The Zar-Bori Cult in Africa and Beyond. Edinburgh, 1991. MERIP Report 161 (1989). Special issue of the journal entitled “Health and Politics,” with articles on medical education, health under military occupation, medical technology, women and medicine, and occupational health.
Morsy, Soheir A. “Islamic Clinics in Egypt: The Cultural Elaboration of Biomedical Hegemony.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 2.4 (1978) 355-369.
Morsy, Soheir A. Gender, Sickness, and Healing in Rural Egypt: Ethnography in Historical Context. Boulder, 1993
Munawar Ahmad Anees. “Islam and Scientific Fundamentalism.” New Perspectives Quarterly 158 (Summer 1993): 61-63.
Myntti, Cynthia. “The Social, Economic, and Cultural Context of Women’s Health and Fertility in Rural North Yemen.” In MicroApproaches to Demographic Research, edited by John C. Caldwell et al., pp. 165-169. London, 1988.
Paul, Jim. “Medicine and Imperialism.” In The Cultural Crisis of
Modern Medicine, edited by John Ehrenreich, pp. 271-286. New York, 1978. Critical commentary on colonial medicine in Morocco. Rahman, Fazlur. Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition. New York, 1987.
Sonbol, Amira El Azhary. The Creation of a Medical Profession in Egypt, 1800-1922. Syracuse, N.Y., 1991.
Wikan, Unni. “Bereavement and Loss in Two Muslim Communities: Egypt and Bali Compared.” Social Science and Medicine 27.5 (1988): 451-460.
SOHEIR A. MORSY

]]> https://hybridlearning.pk/2013/06/10/health-care/feed/ 0