Embracing the Placebo Effect in Health Care: One Patient’s View
What’s up with placebo effect and do we embrace it? What is placebo effect? What is nocebo effect? Placebo Effect The placebo effect describes a beneficial effect, produced by a placebo drug or treatment, that cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient’s belief in that treatment. Nocebo Effect In medicine, a nocebo reaction or response refers to harmful, unpleasant, or undesirable effects a subject manifests after receiving an inert dummy drug or placebo. Nocebo responses...
read moreYou Already Have Your Own Permission
I just got off the phone with a colleague in Guernsey. I was connected to him through a colleague Dr. Lissa Rankin after hearing that he has initiated a project “to make Guernsey the best place to live on earth by 2020”. I have written several blogs, Facebook posts, and tweets on twitter sharing my “big audacious dream” to make our community the “World’s Healthiest Community”. I originally wrote about this on January 25, 2013 and it has been in my head ever since. I also recently wrote a call to action to try to get people...
read moreStepping Into Your Power
It's not about whether we become famous or wealthy, it's not about whether we're given the recognition of changing the world, it's not about any of that. Those are all side effects that may or may not happen. I believe it's simply about living life to the fullest, giving it all we've got, and being happy with our efforts.
read moreEmpowering Patients | Healing Health Care
The current approach to dis-ease management is at best "incomplete" and at worst "flawed". .... My belief is that the act of empowering the patient to understand and deal with root causes of conditions is not only good for the patient, it will have a "side effect" of healing the healthcare system.
read moreDo Your Struggles Define You?
This thought, or should I say question, crossed my mind as I was standing in the shower this morning and I spent the whole time while I was in the shower mulling over the answer. Before you proceed, what would your answer be to this question “right now”. As a plot spoiler, you may find that your thoughts change by the end of the post. We all have struggles at times in our lives. Sometimes they’re pretty insignificant and other times it may seem like everything is a struggle. I have several struggles in my IT consulting...
read moreWhat’s Happening at kenjaques.com?
Where’s Ken? Well the winter Olympics are starting today, and I’ve just realized that it has been over 3 months since I’ve written a blog post. A few people have asked me if I’ve stopped writing. I haven’t, it’s just that it has been a very different type of writing that I have been doing. Here’s a bit of an update as to what’s happening in my world of late. I Wrote a Book For many months I have been telling people that I could write a book in a week. Well I did. Actually, it took about three or four days. The book has been...
read moreLet Your Freak Flag Fly | Or “Do You Stick With Social Norms”
Are you comfortable enough with yourself to simply be yourself regardless of what others might think of you? I’ve done some pretty silly things in my life, yet the funny thing is that they have created lasting memories for me. The things I’m talking about probably fall a little outside of “social norms” and maybe even in the vein of “ok to think it, are you really sure you want to do it”. But I come back to the memories that they have created for me, and I’m sure glad I was comfortable enough in my own skin to “let my freak...
read moreHealing Health Care | Are YOU Part of the Solution?
I’ve been walking around for months talking about the need for changes in the health care system and that I was taking action to do everything I could to “put the care back in health care” and to “heal the health care system”. Somebody looked me in the eye and asked me how I’d do it. Even after all these months of telling my stories and urging people to shift their beliefs away from the current paradigm of how health care is delivered, I stumbled for a moment. My answer wasn’t clear, my vision...
read morePositivity and Health | Do Your Thoughts Affect Your Health?
I was speaking with a colleague this week and he asked me to share my thoughts about how positivity affects health positively, so I started by asking myself a question: Is it possible that a positive attitude has a direct (positive) impact on your health? Most of us have heard about the power of positive thinking from a young age. Our parents would tell us “you can be anything that you want to be”, “don’t let anything stand in the way of your dreams”. Even our coaches and teachers joined in. And I would hazard a guess...
read moreCan Empowered Patients Heal Healthcare?
In last week’s blog, I shared my thoughts on what constitutes an empowered patient, then asked the following questions. So are you an empowered patient? Do you see how empowered patients (and health care practitioners that encourage their patients to become empowered) will heal the healthcare system? At the risk of screaming too loudly, here is my overriding thought. The empowered patient is the ONLY thing that will heal the healthcare system. And, more yelling, we need each and every one of us, now more than ever, to become an empowered...
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