Monthly Archives: April 2020

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Crisis in America: Hospitals Across the Country Begin to Close due to Lack of Patients – Nurses and Doctors being Laid Off

The so-called Coronavirus pandemic “crisis” is very quickly taking a back seat to more serious crises in the U.S. right now, and perhaps none more critical than the closure of hospitals and emergency rooms, along with doctors and nurses being laid off, which is happening all across the country.

During the early stages of the Coronavirus outbreak, the corporate-sponsored “mainstream” media flooded the airways with images of over-crowded hospitals, supposed corpses being carried out in body bags, and other gruesome details that brought fear to the public.

Soon, however, citizens around the country began going to these hospitals to see first hand these horrible images, and they began to film and share on social media what they were seeing: hospitals and emergency rooms either empty or less crowded than usual.

Fast forward to today, at the end of April, and now not even the corporate media can deny that hospitals are suffering due to a lack of patients, as most states have shut down “non-essential” medical services to concentrate on treating COVID-19 patients.

Add to that the federal stimulus funds being directed to COVID-19 treatments, hospitals are obviously going to concentrate on COVID-19 treatments first, and as we have previously reported, many medical personnel are now coming forward to expose how pretty much every patient coming through the doors of hospitals are assumed to be COVID-19 patients whether they are tested or not.

As a result, whether intended or not, many hospitals are suffering financially, facing closure, and beginning to lay off their medical staffs, because other than perhaps New York City, there just are not enough COVID-19 patients to keep everyone employed.

Therefore, if you are suffering from something other than COVID-19 that needs emergency room or hospital services, such as cancer, hypertension, or any other non-respiratory illness, you risk not being able to get treatment.

So what can you do? You have to pretty much lie and tell the doctors or nurses that you suspect you might be infected with COVID-19. That gives you a free ticket, all expenses paid, access to hospital services.

Welcome to the new government-run healthcare system. What President Obama tried to do for 8 years with his “Obamacare” to have government take over healthcare, and was only partially successful, has now happened almost overnight because of the fear driven by the Coronavirus “pandemic.”

Here is a sample of what the corporate media is reporting regarding the crisis now facing American hospitals.

Beaumont Health in Michigan lays off 2,475 workers, permanently cutting 450 jobs

It seems counter intuitive that this could happen… What has transpired here is that the regular business of running a hospital has changed dramatically…

Some expectant mothers in Charlotte are losing doctors weeks before due dates

As WCNC first reported Friday night, HMG opted to dismiss several doctors who resigned in March but had planned to honor scheduled patient visits and contracts through September. In the days since, we learned 35 doctors, in all, lost their jobs, HMG closed 10 office locations and laid off support staff, blaming COVID-19 for a “dramatic reduction” in-office visits.

Maine hospitals losing $250 million per month during coronavirus, COVID-19 pandemic

How are health care workers losing their jobs during a pandemic?

The Oregon Clinic laid off 820 workers in the Portland area. Here’s an explanation why nurses, nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants are losing work.

Health care workers face benefit and pay cuts amid coronavirus outbreak

The financial fallout from the pandemic is affecting health care workers in America. ER doctors are taking a 40% pay cut and getting their benefits cut during the coronavirus outbreak. Nikki Battiste reports.

North County health care workers protest temporary layoffs

Laid Off Healthcare Worker On Going From ‘Hero’ To ‘Unconsidered’

 

Source: Crisis in America: Hospitals Across the Country Begin to Close due to

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The Benefits of Slow Breathing | Dr. Michael Greger, NutritionFacts.org

There are all manner of purported hiccup “cures,” which include everything from chewing on a lemon, inhaling pepper, or, our dog’s favorite, eating a spoonful of peanut butter. In my video How to Strengthen the Mind-Body Connection, I talk about the technique I’m excited to try the next time I get hiccups: “supra-supramaximal inspiration,” where you take a very deep breath, hold for ten seconds, then, without exhaling, breathe in even more and hold for another five seconds, and then take one final, tiny breath in and hold for five last seconds to achieve “an immediate and permanent termination to hiccups…”

When I was a kid, I taught myself to control my own hiccups using slow-paced breathing, and, as an adult, was so excited to see there was finally a case report written up on it.

There’s a nerve—the vagus nerve—that goes directly from our brain, to our chest, and to our stomach, connecting our brain back and forth to our heart and our gut, and even to our immune system. The vagus nerve is like the “‘hard-wired’ connection” that allows our brain to turn down inflammation within our body. When you hear about the mind-body connection, that’s what the vagus nerve is and does. “There has been increasing interest in treating a wide range of disorders with implanted pacemaker-like devices for stimulating the vagal afferent [vagus nerve] pathways,” but certain Eastern traditions like Yoga, QiGong, and Zen figured a way to do it without having electrodes implanted into your body.

“A healthy heart is not a metronome,” as a study titled exactly that explains. “Your heart rate goes up and down with your breathing. When you breathe in, your heart rate tends to go up. When you breathe out, your heart rate tends to go down.” Test this out on yourself right now by feeling your pulse change as you breathe in and out.

Isn’t that remarkable?

That heart-rate variability is a measure of vagal tone—the activity of your vagus nerve. Next time you’re bored, try to make your heart rate speed up and slow down as much as possible within each breath. This can be done because there’s an entirely other oscillating cycle going on at the same time, as you can see at 2:08 in my video, which is the speeding up and then slowing down of your heart rate, based on moment-to-moment changes in your blood pressure. And, as any physics student can tell you, “all oscillating feedback systems with a constant delay have the characteristic of resonance,” meaning you can boost the amplitude if you get the cycles in sync. It’s like pushing your kid on a swing: If you get the timing just right, you can boost them higher and higher. Similarly, if you breathe in and out at just the right frequency, you can force the cycles in sync and boost your heart rate variability, as you can see at 2:36 in my video.

And what’s the benefit again? According to the neurophysiologic model postulation it allows us to affect the function of our autonomic nervous system via vagal afferents to brainstem nuclei like the locus coeruleus, activating hypothalamic vigilance areas.

Huh?

In other words, it’s not just about curing hiccups. Practicing slow breathing a few minutes a day may have lasting beneficial effects on a number of medical and emotional disorders, including asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and depression. In the United States, we’ve also put it to use to improve batting performance in baseball.

To date, most studies have lacked proper controls and have used fancy biofeedback machines to determine each person’s resonant frequency, but, for most people, it comes out to be about five and a half breaths per minute, which is a full breath in and out about every 11 seconds. You can see the graph at 3:34 in my video. When musicians were randomized into slow-breathing groups with or without biofeedback, slow breathing helped regardless. It’s the same with high blood pressure. As you can see at 3:52 in my video, you can use this technique to significantly drop your blood pressure within minutes. The hope is if you practice this a few minutes every day, you can have long-lasting effects the rest of the day breathing normally.

Practice what exactly? Slow breathing—taking five or six breaths per minute, split equally between breathing in and breathing out. So, that’s five seconds in, then five seconds out, all the while breathing “shallowly and naturally.” You don’t want to hyperventilate, so just take natural, shallow breaths, but be sure to simply breathe really slowly. Try it the next time you get hiccups. Works for me every time!

For more tips, watch my video on How to Stop Hiccups.

And, because slowing down our pulse in general may also have beneficial effects, I encourage you to check out:

Every time I’m amazed by ancient wisdom, I have to remind myself of the video I did on toxic heavy metals—Get the Lead Out. So, though traditional healing methods may offer a plethora of insights, they still need to be put to the test.

In health,
Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my free videos here and watch my live presentations:

Source: The Benefits of Slow Breathing | NutritionFacts.org