“It’s going to be great when (fill in the blank).”
Not true. This common deception has us ignoring the present (the only place where we have any influence) in favor of trying to live in the future. This creates a way of being that either puts us on the sidelines; killing time waiting for the future to arrive, or causes us to rush headlong past unsmelled roses, bulldozing our way into the future.
Just remember that you’ll be taking you with you into the future.
Your dissatisfaction with the present will most likely produce an unsatisfying future. Read more
As we all now, the year ends next Wednesday at 4pm. Sure, the calendar goes on, but we’ve all checked out; any aspirations of health have been replaced with visions of sugar plum (shots) and mini-crab cakes dancing in our heads. On Jan 2 we all crawl out of our eggnog induced haze and wonder what happened while celebrating the abrupt death of our resolutions with a trip to the Chinese food buffet.
So why weight (intentional pun)? Get proactive; to help, here’s my Holiday survival guide:
All disease is the result from stress and how our body interacts with that stress. Be it physical stress, chemical stress or emotional stress. Just as being exposed to nutrition-less food, toxins and pollutants affects our bodies, emotional stress affects us too. One of the most powerful emotional stressors is fear. The largest purveyor being 24 hour news; ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’ The fear and anxiety created (often symptomitized by ‘the need to know’) by watching, listening or reading “the news”- which is nothing more than sensationalism-causes a chemical reaction in your brain; much like that of nicotine, to which you become addicted; think adrenaline rush. The muckrakers are no different from tobacco companies. Read more
DHEA is a hormone that serves as precursor to male and female sex hormones. DHEA levels are low in some people with anorexia, type 2 diabetes (non-insulin dependent diabetes) and a host of other disorders. DHEA levels may also be depleted by a number of drugs, including insulin, corticosteroids, opiates and especially hormonal birth control. High levels of physical, emotional and psychological stress also lowers DHEA concentrations.
Get more exercise. How many times have we heard that? What exactly does that mean? Years ago I sat on an incline bike at 24 Hour Fitness in Pasadena, TX listening to a 300+ 50+ year old smoker complaining to his equally pre-disposed buddy that his doctor told him to get more exercise and that the afore-mentioned pending cardiac arrest was aghast when his doctor told him that being able to bench press over 200lbs didn’t count. Read more
Swine flu, part deux.
Like the proverbial bad penny, Swine flu, or H1N1 just won’t seem to go away. Let me re-phrase, the media’s obsession and government’s over-reaction with the swine flu won’t go away. I can understand the media, it’s all about selling more papers (figuratively speaking, no one reads newspapers anymore). Fear mongering equals high ratings. The government? Who knows, maybe they’re trying to divert us away from the fact that they’re hiding the bodies of little green men shot down over New Mexico.
Just this past week down in Ann Arundel County, 17 HS football players were taken to the hospital due to heat related illness; all 17 at the same time, not a cumulative count. Now that I’m old enough to say: “kids these days,” I have to say, kids these days are a little weak. I did 2 a days under the blistering South Texas sun under stifling coastal humidity, and we never passed out. Now the truth is the blame falls with the coach. He should have noticed something was wrong when that many boys are getting sick; but that is actually beside the point itself. Read more
There’s been lot’s of talk about using preventative measures to lower health care costs during all this reform hoop-la. I’m here to tell you “their” idea of prevention won’t save anything, and will cost extra, because it’s not prevention at all but just being proactive. Heart disease: “they” say early testing and monitoring is cheaper than by-pass. It is, but stress tests, MRA’s and angio-grams cost $10K each and then your avg cholesterol medication is about another 7 grand a year. It’s cheaper for the insurance company for you to have a heart attack and die, that’s called hedging your bet. Read more
I. End the corn subsidy. Corn is processed into corn syrup, a highly inflammatory, high but empty calorie goo that makes us fat and promotes disease. It also alters the histology and biochemistry of the animals that eat it; which in turn alters the biochemistry and histology of us meat eaters. Cows should be eating grass. Corn makes them bigger and is cheaper because of the subsidy. Take the money and put it to health care, and the increased cost will force farmers to raise healthier meats.
II. Tax fast food, prepared, processed and junk foods that all tend to be cheaper than healthy foods. Read more
About 6 months ago I quit paying alot of attention to the news. I still listen to NPR, watch Stewart and Colbert and read homepage headlines; but I’m not super-engaged. So what I’m saying is, I’m not really that sure what is going on with health care reform, except it isn’t really going. I do know that no one is even really talking about health care reform, but health care finance reform (and not really doing much with that either).
I’ll hear on TV all the time that here in the US we don’t have a health care system, but a sick care system. It isn’t even that. We run a symptom care system. Read more