Gaia, in the heart of Sheikh Zayed, offers expert clinical and counseling psychologists and psychiatrists available for consultations. In line with Gaia’s holistic approach, a yoga team also provides clients with an opportunity to care for their body, mind and soul.

Co-founder and Senior Clinical Psychologist, as well as marriage and family therapist, Yasmin Magdy says, “I had always been inspired to come back to Egypt and establish a place where all the psychological needs of a person were available under the same roof, addressing clinical problems such as anxiety, OCDCs, depression, personality disorders and addictions. A hub for child and teenage therapy, marriage and family therapy, and psychiatry.”

Magdy’s partner, yoga instructor Engy Elguindy, “shares the same dream,” says Magdy, “We joined forces and created this beautiful place called Gaia, where we were fortunate to be joined by a very strong team of psychologists and a yoga and mindfulness team.”

Services extend to psychotherapy and psychiatry for all clinical disorders, couples, marriage and family therapy, child therapy, addiction counseling, hypnosis, yoga and mindfulness, in addition to workshops for parenting, addiction and psycho-education and support groups.

Gaia’s team of psychologists is comprised of clinical and counseling psychologists who have a minimum of a master’s degree in their field of expertise, as well as a team of the best yoga instructors, trailblazing a shift in the way Egyptians see yoga and how it positively affects one’s mental health and state.

Contact info:

Address: Gaia Wellbeing, Beverly Hills, Sheikh Zayed

Tel: 0100 463 6683

Facebook: GAIA-Wellbeing-105481994401447

20 Online Therapy Services No One Told You About

Burrrn… out. Sound familiar? When our minds become too scrambled to think straight or to remember the last time we had a full night’s sleep. A few experts weigh in on how we can take back control of our lives with a few simple steps. Declutter Your Brain

Leon Ho, Founder & CEO of Lifehack tells us, “Ignoring anything takes energy, and the brain becomes passive when it can’t control what to think about. Ignoring clutter around you such as noise and distractions often takes the same amount of energy as focusing.”

He points out, “When you know your priority on what is important, you know what to remove from life and free up brain energy. People are often unclear on what they want out of life and partners, etc. They spend time away from priority, trying to manage or ignore toxic relationships, the curated social media lives of their friends, etc.” he says.

Ho thinks that when we see clutter around us, it takes a lot of mental energy just to ignore it. He advises that first, we should declutter our lives, both physically and digitally.

Marelisa from Daring to Live Fully weighs in, “A cluttered mind is restless and unfocused.  Physical clutter leads to mental clutter. Clutter bombards the mind with excessive stimuli, which forces the brain to work overtime. It signals to the brain that there’s always something else that needs to be done, which is mentally exhausting.” Declutter Your Brain

She offers these tips:

• Write it down. Choose a tool—it can be an online tool, an app, or even a pad of paper—and think of it as a storage device for all those bits and pieces of information that you need to remember.
• Keep a journal. A journal allows you to download the inner chatter that’s constantly interrupting your thought process when you’re trying to get important things done.
• Let go of the past. Most people keep a large cabinet of mental drawers stored in the back of their minds. These drawers are filled with mistakes they’ve made, opportunities they’ve missed, people they’ve hurt, past grievances, and so on. Take the time to go through those mental drawers and discard memories of the past that are not serving you well and are just cluttering up your current life.
• Stop multi-tasking. The mental equivalent of clearing off the kitchen table is to choose a certain amount of time that you’re going to devote exclusively to one important task. During that time push all mental clutter to the side and focus all of your attention on the task at hand. Declutter Your Brain
• Limit the amount of information coming in. Set a limit on the amount of time that you’re going to spend on social media sites or browsing the internet. Unsubscribe from any blogs and cancel any magazine subscriptions that are not contributing to your quality of life or your well-being. Make sure that the opinions that you pay attention to come from well-regarded individuals with relevant credentials. Decide what information is relevant to you and disregard everything else.
• Be decisive. If you put off making decisions, your brain will soon be overflowing with all of the decisions that you need to make. The solution is to be decisive. For simple decisions, follow an approach such as the one recommended by Benjamin Franklin: create a pros-and-cons list. When you need to make more important and complex decisions, apply a more thorough approach, such as the WRAP Method recommended by the Heath brothers in their book, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work.
• Put routine decisions on auto-pilot. Small, routine tasks can occupy a lot of brain space. Get as many small, routine tasks as you can out of your head by setting them on automatic. Declutter Your Brain
• Nothing creates as much brain clutter as an endless to-do list. Accept that you can’t do it all, and choose to focus on the things which are most important to you. Make a short list of your top priorities, and make sure that the bulk of your brain space is devoted to the things on that list.
• Learn to meditate. When you learn how to place all of your attention on one thing—such as your breath–, all other thoughts disappear. It’s almost the equivalent of taking your mind through a car wash, and having useless and unnecessary thoughts washed away.

In a recent article for Forbes, Noma Nazish tackles the subject head on, and comes up with a lot of the same conclusions. She reminds us, “Just like our cabinets and cupboards, our minds too need tidying up from time to time. Getting rid of all that non-essential mental baggage is crucial to stay focused, motivated and productive.”

Some more tips from Nazish are:

• Set priorities. Prepare a list of your top priorities and make sure that your actions and the decisions you take reflect the priorities you set. The next step is to create an action plan to meet those set goals and to work on how you want to divide your time to focus on each item on that list.
• Deep breathing is a simple yet effective technique to clear your mind, induce tranquility and elevate your mood instantly. It lowers the heart rate and blood pressure and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system which helps your body relax. Other than being a stress-reliever, breathing exercises also promote concentration and strengthen your immunity system.
• Share your thoughts. Talking to a loved one about how you feel is a great way to release pent-up emotions. Sharing your thoughts with others can also help you look at things from a fresh perspective which can help you think more clearly and make better decisions.

Simple advice, yet it could be a life changer. Try to carve out a little quality time for yourself in the process.

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Each of us has a unique DNA, creating predispositions, inherited characteristics and susceptibilities. Why then, should we expect a uniform approach to therapies and treatments?

That may have been the case, until now. We are looking at a future where our medical treatments will be tailored to work with our personal makeup. Dr. Mostafa Hassan, Managing Partner of Hassan Healthcare, brought us up to date on this.

Why is personalized medicine receiving so much publicity these days?

In 2003, the landmark Human Genome Project was completed. It took 13 years at a cost of USD 3 billion for a single strand of DNA to be decoded. The era of personalized medicine had finally begun.

In 2013, genetic testing and personalized medicine received a lot of publicity when the actress Angelina Jolie announced that she had a specific genetic mutation in the BRCA1/2 gene which gave her a 70% chance of developing breast cancer. She decided to take the step of carrying out a prophylactic double mastectomy; surgically removing her breasts to prevent the cancer from occurring.

Over the past decade, our understanding of the link between genetic factors and disease has grown at an exponential rate. With new technologies, data, and expertise, we are able to offer more tailored solutions to people’s healthcare needs. Moving away from a “one size fits all” approach to medicine, to a more personalized effective way in dealing with disease.

With a better understanding of personalized medicine and genetic risks, preventative medicine has become more effective, where we are able to prevent disease from ever occurring rather than treat a disease once it has taken hold. This can be done with a better sense of awareness of your risks to disease and a personalized modification to your lifestyle, diet and other mitigating factors.

Do you think it will be the standard approach in the future?

I have no doubt that personalized medicine will be standard practice in the near future. Three questions need to be answered before a new medical technology is applied. Is it more efficacious? Is it safe, and is it more cost effective? I believe that we are very close in approaching safe, effective and economical methods of personalized medicine. For example, as I mentioned previously, the cost of sequencing a whole DNA in 2003 was USD 3 billion, but as of today you can sequence a whole DNA for as little as USD 500! And I believe that very soon we will be able to do it for a fraction of that.

One technology that Hassan Healthcare is developing for the Egyptian market in partnership with Clinprime is that of remote patient monitoring. This is where a patient is able to update his/her doctor from home about vital clinical parameters such as blood pressure or sugar levels which can be uploaded through the phone. The doctor is then able to monitor these parameters over long periods of time and form a more accurate picture of the patient’s health. Research has shown that this form of monitoring can help patients achieve much better health goals.

Personalized medicine will be a standard part of the healthcare process in preventing, diagnosing and managing disease. I believe that it will allow us to offer more effective and equitable healthcare services to people as well as save a lot of the unnecessary costs that go into treatments.

What sets it apart from routine therapies and treatments?

Personalized medicine is a more effective approach to treatment. Consider a person with diabetes. There used to be a standard “trial and error” approach to treating this condition where a person first tries one drug and its efficacy and tolerability is assessed. If it is not effective or the patient is having bad side effects, then another drug is tried and the same process is carried out.

In personalized medicine, we recognize that not everyone responds to a treatment in the same way. We can offer tests from the beginning of treatment to determine which medicines will be most effective.

This can be done through genetic testing where some people have the genetic predispositions to be high or low metabolizers of certain drugs. So knowledge of a person’s tendencies can guide a doctor on which drug to choose in the beginning, thus save time in reaching an effective treatment plan.

What is involved in creating a personalized medical profile?

Personalized medicine takes a more wholesome approach to treatment. Many aspects need to be taken into account such as age, sex, genetic factors, diet, lifestyle, and even socio-economic status. It is an approach that aims to tailor treatment to best serve the needs of a specific patient rather than develop treatment protocols that, on average work, but might not work for everybody.

What tests need to be carried out and what does each one show?

Since each person or case is different, there is no standard approach to investigation although many tests will be commonly used in personalized medicine. These include genetic testing, health/cancer screening, and remote patient monitoring. Each test can give a more detailed idea of a patient’s health profile.

How can a family physician apply the information received when treating a patient?

Family physicians are doctors who know the patients best. Ideally, they have been seeing them for a very long time and have a good idea of their medical history as well as other factors such as whether a patient is married and has kids.

That is why family physicians can be the front line of personalized medicine, where all information gathered can be kept with him/her, and the family physician can make wholesome decisions regarding a patient’s health plans. For example, if a family doctor sees that a person had a genetic test which revealed the patient has a high likelihood of developing prostate cancer, the family doctor should then carry out the necessary screening tests such as prostate exams and PSA tests at the appropriate time.

Another example would be a diabetic who is using remote patient monitoring of his glucose levels and sees that the patient has had months of bad glycemic control, then he/she should be referred to a specialist to offer better treatment.

Which are the most common diseases that benefit from a person having made these tests?

Much media attention has been turned towards cancer, which is an important healthcare concern, but there are many other diseases that cause as much or even more deaths such as heart disease, chronic lung diseases, stroke, and cerebrovascular disease.

I would also add that personalized medicine has an important role in chronic diseases, conditions such as diabetes or emphysema where a patient may suffer for many years and need numerous visits to the doctor or clinic for help. A personalized approach may be effective in easing the suffering by adjusting the healthcare plan to that patient. A family can be counselled about a genetic condition that runs in the family, and can seek help with many aspects such as family planning.

A Final Word

One big concern in genetic testing is data privacy and the safe storage of such personal information. Who “owns” the data? Is it the patient or is it the genetic testing company? Can the genetic testing company share this information with third parties? There is also the question of who this information should be shared with.

Many of these ethical questions are still being debated and discussed in the medical community, and I’m sure with the advancement in medical sciences, many other questions will emerge.

Time to Talk Heart With Dr. Ahmed Afifi and Dr. Ahmed ElGuindy