The Landscape Approach to Global Health

The relationship between personal health, community health, and landscape health can be understood as an interconnected system, where each component influences and is influenced by the others. From a climate perspective, this connection is especially significant, as environmental changes—such as shifts in temperature, precipitation patterns, or biodiversity—create cascading effects that impact health at multiple levels.

For example, changes in the landscape, such as deforestation or urbanization, can directly degrade air and water quality, leading to increased respiratory illnesses, waterborne diseases, and heat-related conditions. Conversely, the resilience of the landscape—its ability to sustain diverse ecosystems and provide critical services—helps buffer communities from health risks associated with climate extremes, such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves.

Examining these linkages through a climate lens opens the door to innovative approaches to health and environmental stewardship. For instance, restorative practices like reforestation, wetland conservation, and regenerative agriculture offer co-benefits for both the environment and communities. These practices can improve food security, reduce exposure to pollutants, and enhance mental health by providing greater access to green spaces.

The concept of biophilia—our innate connection to nature—further highlights the importance of healthy landscapes. Biodiverse and aesthetically rich environments have been shown to reduce stress, enhance cognitive function, and foster social cohesion. This reinforces the mental and emotional benefits of living in harmony with nature.

Additionally, climate change alters disease dynamics, creating new challenges for public health. For example, shifting ecosystems may provide habitats for disease vectors like mosquitoes, enabling the spread of illnesses such as malaria or dengue fever to regions previously unaffected. This demonstrates the need to integrate climate resilience into public health strategies to mitigate such risks.

Ultimately, the interplay between personal, community, and landscape health forms a dynamic and complex system. Adopting a holistic, climate-informed approach allows us to address the interdependencies between environmental health and human well-being. By doing so, we can create solutions that are more sustainable, equitable, and impactful across scales.

Article

Health and landscape approaches: A comparative review of integrated approaches to health and landscape management

This article explores the relationship between health and the landscape approach, a form of systems thinking. It focuses on three distinct applications of the systems approach, each grounded in unique ontological foundations.

Link to article

Description:

Landscape approaches focus on managing specific areas by bringing together ideas from different fields to create sustainable solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on how people live, move, and interact with the environment, highlighting the need for health approaches that connect humans and nature. This has led to an increased focus on integrated health approaches in policy discussions.

Approaches like One Health, Ecohealth, and Planetary Health are all types of landscape approaches because they address the connections between health, the environment, and society. This study reviews these health-oriented approaches to understand their shared ideas and unique differences. It looks at their history, how they’ve developed, and their approaches to solving health and environmental challenges.

The study finds that all these approaches share key features, such as systems thinking, working across disciplines, and promoting collaboration across different fields. However, they differ in the specific problems they address, the areas they focus on, and the ontological roots (the underlying mindset) guiding their research. By examining these approaches together, the study suggests ways to strengthen landscape approaches by using health-focused methods to better understand the connections between health and landscapes.

Fish Oil Omega-3s and COVID-19 Clotting

COVID-19 is increasingly being seen as having its strongest impacts on the blood (rather than on the lungs) where it appears to promote clotting (thus affecting the lungs and heart). There is enough evidence to promote further research into the benefits of fish oil (omega-3s EPA and DHA) on COVID-19 induced deep vein thrombosis (clotting) since: "There is ... evidence that fish oil may reduce thrombotic events." (emphasis added) says this paper:

Fish oil and COVID-19 thromboses

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7362817/

New Reasons not to let Raw Milk Sit at Room Temperature

For the longest time, I've known that you should refrigerate raw milk (any milk really but especially raw milk). This is to prevent any stray pathogens that may have made their way into the milk from growing to levels that would lead to illness. Well, there is a new reason you should avoid letting raw milk sit a room temperature. That is to prevent the spread of antibacterial resistance, particularly to your gut. 

Apparently, there is a new food-health fad of making "clabber" (I have no idea what that is) which starts with letting milk sit for a long period at room temperature. Well, researchers have found that the bacteria in raw milk left at room temperature preferentially promote the sharing of antimicrobial resistance genes between bacteria leading to large "inoculations" of such bacteria into the guts of people who later drink the milk. The authors suggest that people making clabber use " a starter culture if they want to ferment raw milk."

See the news item here: https://www.labmanager.com/news/raw-milk-may-do-more-harm-than-good-study-finds-23173

From the NYTimes

Does running (or working out in general) in the morning help you lose weight more effectively than doing the same in the evening?

According to this (very early, no pun intended) research. I call it early research because the

From Wikipedia

researchers were not expecting a correlation on the time of day so did not have a theoretical framework on which to build an argument. I.e., correlation is not causation.

This is not to say this isn't perfect research - this is perfect research! Indeed finding this correlation means that they now have a new frontier to explore to find out how such a result may have come to pass.

Does this mean you should exercise only in the morning? No - the researchers found that morning or evening, those who exercised lost weight. It was that the morning exercisers lost more than the evening ones. If mornings are not an option, evenings still do good for you.

Morning Exercise May Offer the Most Weight Loss Benefits

The New York Times · by Gretchen Reynolds · July 31, 2019

Does a sugar "detox" work? The author is on one and has had some "surprising" results.

I personally cannot stand the term "detox". Largely - it is a term used but the pseudo-scientific alternative "health" industry when they make claims about various body parts and some herb (or potion of herbs). Liver detox, lung detox, colon detox. Well, unless someone can point to some actual science that shows toxins being removed from these organs by the herb concoctions well... it's just another concoction.

From en.wikipedia.org

So despite the title of the piece, I read this article since I am of the belief that too much sugar in the diet may well be a health risk. It is an interesting article which, unfortunately, like many alt-health articles, asserts some of the vague, cloudy findings of health research as hard, take 'em to the bank type facts.

The author says at one point that as a result of this reduction in sugar intake his weight as dropped. This is good but fits within my favorite diet plan/framework which I call the "change your diet" weight loss program. Whatever it is you eat now, be it nothing but breakfast cereal or steak and potatoes. Stop. Just stop. Find some other collection of food that is different, start eating that instead. My thinking is that the mental effort at consciously changing your diet and the impact that the change in food-type has on the microbiome together lead to reduced fat storage and thus weight.

Perspective | Does a sugar detox work? I’m on it and have had some surprising results.

The Washington Post · by Steven Petrow · August 6, 2019

Book Review: Carl Sagan's The Demon-Hunted World

Overall a good book that all should read. It is a quest to bring constructive critical review (science) back into more widespread use.

Sagan spends too much time on debunking alien abductions and UFOs perhaps suggesting that this now 21-year old book is showing a little bit of its age. That said there are truisms throughout the book that have and will stand the test of time.

In the intervening 21 years, a lot of positive change has happened. The challenge for science that social pressures on kids not to be "nerds" has, for the most part, transitioned as nerds became geeks, and as such have gained notoriety and respect (as their prospects for earnings have grown).

Perhaps most haunting in our time was the foresight on what the lack of a scientific education might mean to our democracy. In reading the last two chapters (24. Science and Witchcraft & 25. Real Patriots Ask Questions) you cannot help but see happening before us now the very situations and consequences that he described as potentially happening.

Where I wish the book would have gone more in depth is the subject of Ch 17, The Marriage of Skepticism and Wonder. The focus of this chapter is a reminder to the critically inclined that we can be too quick to judge, to box potentials and alternatives out, and to set people off of exploration by consciously or unconsciously using very human social tools and desires to establish, maintain, and grow social status and provide ourselves with a degree of personal legitimacy and certainty. These are essentially the battlegrounds and weapons of the Great Culture War that we now find ourselves in and an area that the tools of science need not pick a side. There are no such things as "alternative facts" and this howler should be seen for what it is - an admission of lies. But our capacity to aim for our tribe to dominate also means that we use these tools sometimes not for the advancement of science but to squelch debate, to control the dialogue, and to gain advantage. The tools of science should not be seen to take sides in the culture war but should be seen as a means to negotiate the peace. We scientists have a responsibility to know this and to engage, in some cases, with a more open mind. Put another way, as the Zen master Suzuki Roshi put it, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” We need to use our scientific creed to keep open those seemingly unlikely avenues because foundational (paradigm) shifts do happen. But only when we choose to allow our beliefs to be challenged and to explore the possibilities with empathy, comradery and "the beginner's mind".

Shoulder pain: a randomised trial shows that "subacromial decompression" surgery may be no more effective than placebo.

Arthroscopic subacromial decompression for subacromial shoulder pain (CSAW): a multicentre, pragmatic, parallel group, placebo-controlled, three-group, randomised surgical trial

Beard, David JAhrens, Philip et al.

The Lancet

Summary

Background

Arthroscopic sub-acromial decompression (decompressing the sub-acromial space by removing bone spurs and soft tissue arthroscopically) is a common surgery for subacromial shoulder pain, but its effectiveness is uncertain. We did a study to assess its effectiveness and to investigate the mechanism for surgical decompression.

Interpretation

Surgical groups had better outcomes for shoulder pain and function compared with no treatment but this difference was not clinically important. Additionally, surgical decompression appeared to offer no extra benefit over arthroscopy only. The difference between the surgical groups and no treatment might be the result of, for instance, a placebo effect or postoperative physiotherapy. The findings question the value of this operation for these indications, and this should be communicated to patients during the shared treatment decision-making process.

More at The Lancet

http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32457-1/fulltext