Status Updates From Redefining the Boundaries o...

Living a spiritual life is not easy; it's certainly not the path of least resistance.... self-absorption is normal in early childhood and adolescence, but one has to grow out of it in order to become an emotional and spiritually mature individual. 'As you move out of narcissism you become aware of community and its needs... This set of values is fairly simple yet mind-altering.'

The problem is so prevalent in society, there is even a medical speciality devoted to it: psychoneuroimmunology, which rests upon one simple truth: Thoughts have physical consequences.

The evidence demonstrating the detrimental effects of overwork on the brain and immune system are overwhelming: it would be irresponsible for us to ignore them. The American Institute of Stress calculates that 77% of Americans 'regularly experience physical symptoms caused by stress.'

Medical experts initially rejected the role of viruses in cancer, Helicobacter pylori in gastric ulcers, prions in mad cow disease, the germ theory of disease, Gregor Mendel's laws of inheritance and the occurrence of traumatic brain injuries among professional football players.

In 1975, 80% of Americans had confidence in the medical system, but by 2015, it had dropped precipitously to 37%, according to a Gallup poll....This loss of confidence in medical experts, no doubt, is partially responsible for the explosion in unproven and/or dangerous remedies for a long list of health problems.

One of the great challenges in life is knowing enough to think you're right, but not enough to know you're wrong. — Neil deGrasse Tyson

Determining the best for an individual (the task of the doctor) is fundamentally different from determining the average effect of treatment in a population (the purpose of a trial.)'...the findings of a large research study only tell us how a large group of patients responded to a treatment. That average may not apply to subgroups of patients within that large group, nor to the individual sitting in the office.

Among the 850,000 patients who die in US hospitals annually, about 71,400 of these deaths include a major diagnosis that has not been detected.

The massive influx of new research, in combination with the limitations of the human brain, has contributed to the epidemic of misdiagnoses that continue to plague the profession.... about 5% of adult outpatients in the US experience a diagnostic error...diagnostic mishaps contribute to about 1 in 10 patient deaths...as much as 17% of adverse events...and affect approximately 12 million adult outpatients a year.

'The complexity of medicine now exceeds the capacity of the human mind.... The first step toward a solution is acknowledging the profound mismatch between the human mind's abilities and medicine's complexity. Long ago, we realized that our inborn sensorium was inadequate for scrutinizing the body's inner workings - hence microscopes, stethoscopes, electrocardiograms, radiographs.'