Guest Blogger: Sue Cooke, Co-CEO Circle + Bloom

The true story of a little boy named Garrett has to be one of the most inspiring examples on the power of a vivid imagination and the mind body intelligence to self-heal. Garrett had an inoperable brain tumor and after intense radiation treatments the tumor sat basically untouched. His doctors said to his parents “we have done everything we can do, so take him home and make him as comfortable as you can. It is terminal.”

His parents decided to not give up on their boy and they took him to the Biofeedback Center at the Menninger Clinic, where he was taught self-regulation techniques, which is how to control his body with his mind through imagery exercises. He went home with the imagery audio tape the clinic gave him to continue his self-regulation techniques at home. Garrett quickly decided the tape was very boring and created his own new imagery to use.

He made it exciting and fun, setting it up like a video game with rocket ships soaring through his head and shooting his tumor. He imaged the cancer as “a big round dumb-looking thing” and blasted at it regularly. He kept up his game, many times with out adults knowing, and one day, months later, he woke up and realized he could no longer find the “big round dumb-looking thing.” When he told his father the news, his farther was concerned that Garrett had given up. His father tried to help him concentrate and find the tumor, but Garrett just kept telling his Dad that there was only a “normal brain in his head.”

It took a fall down a set of stairs until Garrett received another CAT scan to check for a skull fracture. The scan showed results that were truly unbelievable to the doctors who had treated Garrett: The tumor was entirely gone.

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Guest Blog Appearance: Dr. Tye Moe of Whole Family Chiropractic

Struggling to conceive is such an overwhelming time, so many choices, and many unknowns. Utilizing a holistic approach certainly can aid you in your efforts.

There are a couple of things that can be overlooked when it comes to a couple struggling with fertility. One question is, how well are each of your bodies functioning neurologically? A second question, are your bodies as strong and healthy as they could be to help promote conception? Sometimes we all just need a little oomph to help us along.

While many things affect function, one area of special interest is the brain-body connection (neurological function). Everything in your body works because your brain tells it what to do. For example, each month an egg is released from one of your ovaries. This does not occur by random chance, it occurs because a series of messages from your brain to your body parts allow it to happen.

If there is disturbance to the brain-body connection, this process is negatively affected. What is especially important for fertility is the brain-body connection to the reproductive organs and the hormone producing glands.

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Please check out my guest blog appearance on Circle + Bloom, Topic: Infertility and Fretting Over the Numbers

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Smartphone App Touts It Can Calculate Women’s Fertility

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — These days, it seems there’s an app for everything, and there is a recent technology that is aimed at couples struggling with infertility.

On the website IVFpredict.com, British researchers devised an online calculator that detects your odds of conceiving a baby through in-vitro fertilization, or IVF.

Scientists from the Universities of Glasgow and Bristol analyzed more than 144,000 IVF cycles and came up with nine questions for couples, including a woman’s age, IVF history, pregnancy history and years trying to get pregnant. The researchers say your answers predict your IVF success rate, a percentage that can soon be downloaded to your smart phone.

“I have a 14.4 percent chance of conceiving using IVF at the age of 41,” said Kristin Beltaos, a Maple Grove mother of two, who took the online test.

View the full article and the video clip