Verma Zapanta's ACCHS Blog

Loafing Around Without Feeling Guilty I need some sort of rubric to measure my effectiveness in loafing.  I thought it would be an easy feat considering I fell quite ill during our time off. I caught a cold over the weekend which progressively worsened and triggered my asthma. I haven't had an asthma attack since elementary school and didn't realize how terribly my body was feeling. It felt like I was breathing through a straw for two days and I experienced terrible hot flashes and migraines. With the help of a nebulizer, lots of soup and two weeks of rest, I was able to slowly regain my normal breathing rate. You would think through this experience that loafing would be easier, but I found myself still feeling guilty for resting while sick. I stubbornly ran errands, studied and found the rest time quite maddening at one point. (I couldn't leave the house for several days). Since going into the line of healing work, I'm actively trying to transform my relationship

Ordered Chaos Ordered chaos...sounds a lot like my life. Lol! 😓 Our human existence is based on making choices and systematizing the outcomes of decisions we make.  Cause and effect. I wonder if life is really as random as we believe it to be. I feel the more work I do in making sense of who I am and what my purpose is in this life, the more in tune I am with understanding (and accepting) why I experience the things I do.  I  first learned about the term fractal through Adrienne Maree Brown's book "Emergent Strategy."  It was a popular text a few years ago amongst colleagues who are educators and organizers committed to making radical social change against oppressive systems.  Brown's quote really encompasses my developing understanding of fractals and ordered chaos: “In a fractal conception, I am a cell-sized unit of the human organism, and I have to use my life to leverage a shift in the system by how I am, as much as with the things I do. This means actually

Understanding Cancer: TCM vs Western Medicine Like our approach to diseases in the U.S., our understanding of cancer is superficial, driven by fear and 'over-diagnosing' of patients. An article by Ezra Klein "Is America better at treating cancer than Europe" published by Vox in 2014 writes that a study of 90,000 women aged 40-59 who received an annual mammogram did not reduce mortality beyond the physical examination and 22% of invasive breast cancers caught by these screenings were over diagnosed, leading to expensive and dangerous treatment for women who did not need them. Health care in the United States is designed to keep people sick in order for providers and pharmaceutical companies to maintain profit. We continue to see an even bigger disparity in quality of care when we include factors of race, gender, and socio-economic class.  As we continue to delve into our understanding of 'medicine' in this class and ACCHS, I've become more reflective of

"Good" Vibrations, Energy & Qi All vibrations aren't good because it depends on the intention.  I think of vibrational energy beyond objects that produce sounds like singing bowls and see the human body as a tool which also exerts powerful vibrations. Outside of school, I practice energy healing and body work, so am constantly interacting with bodily vibrations. Sometimes it is nourishing and healthy, most times its icky and negative vibrations that I pick up from patients because of their intention to move/release those energies in their healing session. As budding acupuncture practitioners and folks that receive the medicine, we play with qi and energy all the time.  Perhaps that is why our work as graduate students is amplified because of the spiritual and energetic ties of the medicine to the scholarly work. While receiving an acupuncture healing session, I literally feel the qi being unlocked in different parts of my body.  My recovery process post session tak

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Use in the Bay Area For some reason, I had some trouble accessing the link in our packet on the mole, so I decided to post on hydrogen fuel cells.  The idea of using hydrogen fuel as an alternative to fossil fuels sounds promising. I just saw an article published earlier this week that a start-up is launching a hydrogen fuel cell airplane by 2020!  The Bay Area seems to be leading the way in how to integrate the use of hydrogen fuel cells in commuter cars, buses and ferries.  From my understanding, not all hydrogen fuel extractions are created equal and eco-friendly. The cheapest, most common form of hydrogen extraction still uses fossil fuels at some capacity. With the challenges in creating a solid infrastructure for hydrogen fuel cells for "everyday" folks, I hope more companies (in and outside of the fuel/automotive industry) will invest in research and roll out.

Living and Non Living Systems If I were to distinguish living and non-living systems based on the 7 Life Processes, a living thing would have the following characteristics: movement, reproduction, sensitivity, nutrition, excretion, respiration and growth.  Though I would have to delve deeper into questioning what life is. The characteristics listed above are a great starting point, though I believe all things are alive and hold energy, like inanimate objects such as rocks and even our homes.  How do we categorize things such as viruses that move, grow and have a detrimental affect on the human body. They don't seem to fit all seven characteristics, but they sure are living!  De-Stressing & Re-Connecting with Nature  I am a city girl! I grew up in an urban environment surrounded by concrete, sirens and lots of people. I used to tell myself that being outdoors was scary. It wasn't until a visit to Joshua Tree National Park three years ago when I realized how powerfu

CP violation CP or "charge parity" is the theoretical symmetry of matter and anti-matter; charge conjugation and parity .  "C is the symmetry between positive and negative charge, while P is the symmetry of spatial coordinates." CP is violated if there is a difference between the ways nature treats matter and antimatter. An article in Symmetry Magazine discusses an example of CP violation in relation to the Big Bang: "The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, with subsequent annihilation leaving neither behind. And yet, the observable universe has about 10 billion galaxies that consist entirely of matter (protons, neutrons and electrons) with no antimatter (antiprotons, antineutrons and positrons).  Very soon after the Big Bang, some forces must have caused the CP violation that skewed the equality in the number of matter and antimatter particles and left behind excess matter" My take away from this example i

Colors of Food in My Diet I was traveling this past week, so did not have the opportunity to explore the colors of food in my kitchen.  However, I was able to document the color of food in my diet while traveling and was surprised (and somewhat ashamed) at the outcome.  I ate out everyday of the week and noticed that a majority of my meals consisted of carbs, proteins, oils and very little vegetables and fruits.  Most of my meals fell into the red, orange, yellow and sometimes green categories and consisted of what I call "dead" foods (i.e.: meat and processed foods with preservatives.  In relation to the chakra system, many of the foods in my diet this week are associated with the last four chakras (i.e.: root, sacral, solar, and heart); an abundance of fire, vitality, and intensity. My mood this past week definitely reflected those emotions. I felt anxious, creative, and a little on edge. I'd like to experiment in the future and see how a change in color in my diet w