Amell's Corner - Panic Attacks

Imagine you’re walking down a dark alleyway and a suspicious character appears behind you with a knife in hand! Sight of this puts you in an immediate state of anxiousness - your heart is pounding frantically in your chest, your breathing becomes fast and shallow, your body is trembling and your legs feel like jelly, your throat becomes dry, and you feel dizzy and nauseous. You turn around again and now they are running towards you. You panic and are now physically ready to protect yourself from the perceived attacker or run as fast as your legs will carry you. This is known as the "fight or flight response,'' a natural human survival mechanism used to protect us from danger.

Sometimes we have thoughts and fears triggered by a whole range of negative and stressful life experiences which can subconsciously activate the fight or flight response even in the absence of danger. Our mind communicates to our body that it needs to protect us from perceived danger. When this occurs in the absence of any real danger, the body physically reacts in a way that the conscious mind cannot understand as we begin to physically prepare to protect ourselves from a danger we cannot see. This is when we experience all the unpleasant symptoms of an anxiety attack such as palpitations, trembling, shallow breathing and dizziness, alongside a whole range of other physical symptoms, but can’t quite understand why this is happening. These symptoms are simply our body physically preparing to run or fight off an attack. The first time a person ever experiences an anxiety attack is usually reported to be an extremely terrifying experience mainly because they didn’t know what was happening to them.

Highlighting Homeopathy

Jeena, an advocate of homeopathy, explains how it works:

Homeopathy was started by a German scientist. The British Medical Association does not endorse it because it has not been scientifically proven, but Prince Charles is a big advocate. 

If you drink coffee during the night and can’t sleep, a homeopath will take the same substance in the coffee that causes you not to sleep to treat you. It’s like an immunization. They treat you with what causes the problem.

They take the substance and dilute it and drop it on small balls of sugar that are lentil sized. They shake this, and the number of times they shake it is the strength or concentration.

It works with the body like drugs, or magic, and is even used to treat moods and emotional trauma, and children and animals.

Tablets must be soaked with a dry mouth, and you can’t eat or drink for half an hour before or after you take them. You should keep them away from  perfume. You should only take them when you have symptoms and immediately stop taking them as soon as the symptoms finish.

Poems by Paula

Paula shares with us THREE of her beautiful poems and the philosophy behind her writing:

MRCF has made a positive difference to many people's lives and continues to do so. It makes you feel so hopeful, like it's possible to create change. The social aspects of life have always interested me. Why is the world the way it is, for good or for bad? Is a human being strictly limited by his or her circumstances, flaws or conditions? The clearest thing to me is that society is a reflection of every human being.  It's kinda true, you have to be the change you wish to see. Sometimes it is easy to underestimate our impact on our world and to each other but every act of kindness goes a long way. Nothing is ever lost by sharing. Every defeat, every tragedy and disappointment is, in my opinion, a gift so that we can strengthen and renew the human spirit of love, forgiveness, compassion and kindness.

Fresh Bread

London Elections 2012

Do you care about the next Mayor of London? Or do you perceive local politics as a distant sphere with little connection to your everyday life?

On May 3, 2012 Londoners aged 18 or over will elect the new Mayor of this town and the 25 members of the London Assembly. The Mayor’s job ranges from housing, transport, environment, policing, health, culture, (emergency) planning and development, all the way to economic development and regeneration. The Assembly Members hold the Mayor accountable by examining his/her decisions and making sure the Mayor delivers given promises to Londoners.

In order to vote you need to register where you live before April 18 but also have to know where, when and how to vote. Answers to these questions can be found at the London Elects webpage. 

However, a more important question is why vote in the first place? The answer to that question was given by Kristina Hemon in a new post: Why should migrants care about the Mayor of London?

Still, if you have any doubts, then join us on March 27 at MRCF and find out more how the Mayor can improve the quality of our lives and communities, but also how you can influence this year’s elections!

Let your voice be heard!

DO try this at home!

Sofi shares with us how to make some delicious sounding and looking Ethiopian specialties!

The lentil dish Mesir Wot is a sauce that is especially popular during the Lent period. It's a healthy dish that can be eaten hot or cold and is easy to cook. 

Ingredients:

2 cups of lentils

1 medium onion (finely chopped)

1 teaspoon salt

4-5 garlic cloves (peeled and finely chopped or mashed)

1/2 cup of cooking oil (your preferred oil - I use corn oil)

2-3 tablespoons of bebere (red chili powder - this is very spicy and hot with a strong flavour so don't put too much of this)

1 can chopped tomatoes (or fresh tomatoes boiled for about 2-3 minutes so it will be easy to peel the skin, and chopped)

Directions:

Food Stories: Submissions Wanted

Food is essential for our survival, but it is so much more - our food stories are often our most personal and most beautiful stories.

Shazea Quraishi, a visiting writer from English PEN, is putting together a booklet of recipes and food stories, for a sharing of memories and favourite food at MRCF.

She is looking for recipes for food close to your heart – perhaps something your mother or grandmother made, or something you make for yourself or friends.   
To accompany the recipe, please write a short piece - perhaps a memory of eating that food, or how it makes you feel.

Send to: shazea.q@gmail.com by April 1st, 2012     

     

*Entries received before March 14 will also be submitted to the PEN anthology unless you indicate you’d prefer not to    

Amell's Corner

MRCF's resident health expert, Amell, introduces her column, Amell's Corner:

Amell's Corner will "inform-advise-and motivate’’ the reader, providing them with helpful hints and facts on how to tackle common mental health issues so they can begin their journey to recovery and regain ownership of their life!  

The term health covers an extremely broad range of physical, emotional and psychological facets. Having good health is not defined by the absence of physical disease, but rather is a broad term that embraces the mind, body and spirit of an individual.

It is often the case that an individual will attend to the physical condition of their body and neglect their mental health issues, unaware of the fact that there is a strong connection between mental health and physical health and that it is difficult for one to exist without the other. Many physical symptoms experienced by an individual can be misdiagnosed and treated with unnecessary medications such as pain killers etc., when in fact the symptoms are a result of the individual's mental ill health.