The traditional health care landscape, hospitals and private physicians' offices, is undergoing a major shift of focus. "Womb to tomb" care facilities, typified by boutique developments, medical malls, and health parks, are just now in their infancy. This article provides an overview of the likely direction of health care design as shaped by consumer demand.

A British disease Myalgic encephalomyelitis is a new name for an old disease with an impressive history of synonyms. It's a British disease, unknown in the New World; but North America is in the grip of chronic EpsteinBarr virus infection, and Australasia has repetitive stress injury, which unkind people say is myalgic compensationitis. Myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic EpsteinBarr virus wi...

During embryo implantation and initiation of pregnancy, uterine NK (uNK) cells engage invasive fetal trophoblasts to remodel vessels that conduct blood to the placenta. This partnership, involving uNK cell receptors that recognize HLA-C ligands on trophoblasts, varies the course of human pregnancy because the genes for both receptors and ligands are extraordinarily diverse. Several pregnancy di...

In Birth without Violence (1975), French obstetrician Frederick Leboyer [4] describes in poetic form the possible perceptions and feelings of embryos and fetuses before, during, and after birth. His work has helped to promote a gentler and more sensitive birthing method with the goal of easing the newborn?s transition from the womb [5] to the outside world. Leboyer?s birthing method influenced ...

People are especially vulnerable to environmental pollutants while in the womb, or prenatal period, and throughout childhood. During these times, environmental chemicals are more likely to have impacts on health and normal growth, and can cause serious health effects later in life. For example, research has shown that when pregnant women are exposed to pesticides, their children may have an inc...

While still in the womb, the gut of an infant is completely sterile. But as the birthing process begins, bacteria and other microbes soon start to colonize the surfaces of the infant’s body—the skin, nose, mouth, and by far the most densely colonized, the gut. Babies born by caesarean section are initially populated with different microbes (from the hospital and skin microbiota) than babies del...

Abstract Marsilio Ficino’s view on ensoulment, which can be extrapolated from his critique of natal astrology, relies the relations metaphysical proportion between different levels life and being are central to Platonic philosophy. Drawing primarily Plotinus, Ficino describes emergence in embryo as a process World Soul is true agent. For him, ‘human nature’ that present developing attracts into...