Like any chronic condition, chronic pain is something that has been around for some time. This means that it is not a passing problem, such as a one-off headache. Nor is it something that comes and goes - like migraines, for example – although its level of intensity may alter as time passes. Generally speaking, doctors consider constant pain that has not gone away for something like three to six months to be chronic. That said, some specialists believe that pain must have been endured for around a year to be truly chronic. There are many causes of chronic pain. In some cases, it may come about directly from another condition which is, itself, causing pain. In other cases, it may be that the brain is malfunctioning in some way to make people feel pain when there appears to be no cause. A typical form of chronic pain comes from spinal problems, usually because the nervous system in the spinal cord is sending pain signals to the brain. People with heart disease and certain respiratory conditions are more likely to suffer from this type of pain than the general population.
Ram Dass – sometimes known as Baba Ram Dass – was an American-born exponent of Eastern spirituality and yoga in the West. He was also a qualified psychoanalyst and author. He was perhaps best-known as a spiritual teacher who did a great deal to bring many aspects of Hinduism to a wider audience in the post-war generation of Americans. Ram Dass travelled to India in the late 1960s where he became a disciple of Neem Karoli Baba, a Hindu guru. It was him who gave Ram Dass his new name which translates into English as 'Servant of God'. Following a stroke in the 1990s, the spiritual teacher was left with some paralysis, but he learned to speak again and took up travelling once more until he became ill again after a trip to India in 2004. He died in Hawaii in December 2019.
At its simplest, raw food is any sort of edible material that has been uncooked in any way. Of course, cooking may mean a variety of things when it comes to raw food, not simply heating food so that it breaks down somewhat. As such, for food to be considered raw, it should not have been processed in any meaningful way. Cured foods or those that have been tenderised are usually not considered to be fully raw, for example. At its simplest, the concept of raw foodism – the dietary practice of only consuming unprocessed and uncooked foods – means eating things in their most natural state. The idea is that this is closest to man's relationship with the natural world before human beings were able to harness fire to begin cooking their food.
