Verma Zapanta's ACCHS Blog

"...buildings of the future might become, living, breathing things"  I'm encouraged that this may be true! A friend of mine who is traveling in Singapore shared online that it is the greenest country on earth! When I did a little research, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew envisioned Singapore to be known as "The City in the Garden." This is a cool article I found published by National Geographic explains how Singapore is fulfilling its goals of becoming an eco-friendly country. The image below are "super trees" and considered to be a symbol of Singapore, reflecting their use of green space. Legislatures began the initiative of green building in 2008 and aims to have a 80% environmental performance rating by 2030. My research topic: TCM + Medicinal Marijuana I chose to wrote about medicinal marijuana in both Chinese and Western medicine and its use in TCM.  Since its legalization in California, the cannabis industry and research has sky rockete...

Public Health Policy + Vaccinations I think compulsory vaccination is effective, especially if there is a major breakout of a disease that historically has been under control, such as small pox.  I think because I don't have any children there is a bias, disconnect, and misunderstanding I have of parents who are willing to place the children (and the risk of other peoples children) by not vaccinating them.  Throughout history, our society has been able to sustain and survive crazy epidemics.  There was a point in time when vaccines weren't available or accessible in the U.S. There are developing countries today who continue to have little to no access to vaccines that people in this nation are PRIVILEGED to obtain.  Perhaps anti-vaxxers would have a change of heart if they lived in an environment where they see scores of children being decimated from preventable diseases like the measles.  I honestly don't know how to accommodate parental choice if I were dr...

Aspirin and Overuse of Supplements I believe Americans in particular rely heavily on supplements to provide anti-oxidants. Taking pills to "instantly" solve health issues, rather than making systemic changes to our health has been the culture around wellness in our country for decades. I am guilty of this! 😫 Instead of eating more fruits and vegetables, lessening my intake of processed foods and incorporating an exercise routine, I overcompensate with taking Chinese herbs and supplements daily.  I am trying my best to shift this pattern before serving others as a health practitioner, so I can practice what I preach! "Aspirin a day could dramatically cut cancer risk" My step father and grandmother who suffer from heart disease and high blood pressure take aspirin daily as prescribed by their doctor. As two aging relatives that suffer from various serious health conditions, I pray that aspirin will truly keep cancer from developing. I'm generally he...

Restoring the American Bison to its Rightful Range I would work prioritize working from a legislative level to establish policies that protect the American Bison and the work around re-populating them.  I think working from an institutional level will provide protections for organizations like the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative, Native American tribes and their allies to sustain this work unscathed from greedy politicians and corporations. I think that political and ecological leaders in the United States should allow Native American leaders to guide the work in restoring the natural ecological balance for bison because they inherited that ancestral knowledge. 

8-Point Deep Ecology Platform and Social Ecology I have never heard of the deep ecology movement and think the 8-point deep ecology platform is a great starting point to understanding its framework and purpose.  What I appreciate most about the principles is the ideological, internal, interpersonal and institutional approach to understanding how human's affect the world around them.  I really like #7: "The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living.  There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great." As I continued to read the platform, I was getting anti-capitalist vibes which was really intriguing. Then as I researched where the 8-points of deep ecology came from and learned that deep ecology has its roots in anarchism.  Check out this cool article  from the Anarchist Library. This excerpt from he...

Cell Biology: HIV + AIDS How do you feel about western approaches to HIV/AIDS? What are your thoughts on PreP treatment? Can TCM strengthen our immune systems? Much like my reflection in my blog entry from the previous week about the western understanding to cancer, I think the approach to HIV/AIDS is also reactive, rather than responsive. In the West, we continue to heavily focus on medication that treats AIDS related illnesses, rather than looking at how to holistically care for a person living with AIDS. I'm not surprised because there is no capital to be gained if people continue to rely on pharmaceutical drugs.   I think investing in PreP treatment is a useful method of preventing the spread of HIV, however investment in culturally responsive health education on the disease should be matched. In reference to the articles on stigma as a barrier to using PrEP among women written by Carline Vrana, how can health care institutions integrate educational programs/lit...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Caster Semenya: "I Am a Woman" Conversations around sex and gender continues to be a taboo subject in our society.  Much of those conversations are based on sexist and patriarchal ideas of what it means to be a "man" or "woman."  It's only fitting that these same issues will arise in institutions such as the Olympics. Requiring female athletes with naturally elevated testosterone levels to inhibit their hormones through drug therapy and surgery completely negates the IAAF's goal of equality amongst female competitors. For Caster Semenya and other female intersex track Olympians to endure the regulations imposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is an injustice. This quote by Pidgeon Pagonis in a May 2019 article from Vox that summed up my thoughts on Semenya's fight with the IAAF. Pagonis is an intersex activist and founder of the Intersex Justice Project:  "Certain bodies are never allowed to be female,...

Human + Chimp Genes and Genetic Evolution "99.4% of the most critical DNA sites are identical in human and chimps genes" In response to the quote above, I believe humans are either descendants of chimps or share a common ancestor. P erhaps over time, a genetic mutation occurred in a generation of chimpanzees and the human species are products of that change.  Our genetic similarities to chimps can offer a useful key into understanding the biological and evolutionary traits of humans; it seems we are just scratching the surface in understanding what makes us human. I was unable to access the link provided on human genetic evolution, but found an interesting article published by Big Think on four beneficial evolutionary mutations that humans are currently undergoing.  What intrigued me is their stance on mutations as a more positive outlook on genetic evolution. For instance, there is a small community in Italy who carry a mutant version of a protein gene ca...

"Evo-Devo" + Epigenetics If our environment has a direct correlation to gene development, then I'm curious to learn more about epigentics (a branch of evo-devo) and transgenerational inherited trauma. Epigenetic researchers who focus on the genetic transmission of trauma look at historical trauma (i.e. slavery or the Holocaust), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and how it is passed down through family genes, affecting varying aspects of their offsprings livelihood. This can impact the future generation's life expectancy, resiliency to diseases and capacity to respond to stressors. I also think about the implications this has on the physical and mental health of descendants of colonized and displaced people.  Although most studies on epigenetics are on descendants of survivors of traumatic events that happened decades ago, t, I think about the individuals today who are constantly re-exposed to their traumatic environments such as those living in Palestine and...

Introduction Greeting ACCHS Western Sciences Community,     My name is Verma Zapanta and I am a first year student at ACCHS. Although I've been attending the course since the beginning of the trimester, I just enrolled in the class and am slowly catching up with the workload in all the Western Science courses that Larry is teaching. =) I worked in education for ten years prior to attending ACCHS as a history teacher, college professor and in youth leadership development.  I transitioned out of teaching because the work became unsustainable and had a significant impact on my wellbeing. I found myself drawn to mental health work and holistic medicine because it supported my own healing.  Acupuncture was the introduction to other modalities of healing and re-connected me to the medicines that exist in my ancestral land of the Philippines.  My goal as a practitioner is to not only practice Chinese medicine, but to continue conversations on wellness within spac...