The Importance of Plant Based Proteins and Omega 3′s to Stay Healthy
Kevin: We’re talking about protein and amino acids right now. So I had one question about a plant-based source of protein. A lot of people who are on this call may or may not be vegan and a lot of them don’t necessarily want to eat meat or have that sort of protein. What are your thoughts on plant-based proteins? What do you think are some of the better ones?
Jonny: Well, let me give full disclosure. I’m not a vegan or vegetarian. I find that a very difficult way to live and I am not convinced that that is necessarily the best way for our species to exist. I have all the concerns that many of the people on the call have about the quality of the protein that we eat and about factory farming for animals and the cruelty and not to mention the steroids and antibiotics and growth hormones and all of that other stuff in the milk that I’m eating. I certainly don’t recommend not to anyone, but I do think that in the long run the human species does a little bit with some animal products in our diet. Maybe it’s once a week. Maybe for some metabolic types or some genetic types it’s three times a day.
The human species has adapted to many different types of diets, but one diet it has not adapted to is the high processed food, high sugar diet. That’s across the board, so you’ll see the Bantu of South Africa, who do very well on an 80% carbohydrate diet and you’ll see the Inuit, that used to be called the Eskimo in Greenland and in Alaska who eat virtually nothing but whale blubber and seal meat, because vegetables don’t even grow up there and they do very, very well. None of them eat sugar and none of them eat stuff with a barcode, so I think that there is a wide range of diets that we can adapt to, but I do think that even the longest lived people the world may eat very little meat, but they eat a little bit of it. It’s certainly not the supermarket meat we’re talking about. It’s usually grass fed or free range or pasture fed and healthy cows and happy cows that live on pasture.
So I’m not someone who has a lot of personal experience with a vegan diet. My metabolic type is not suited for that. I do think we’d all benefit by having more raw foods in our diet. 20% or 50% the exact number, I don’t know. It’s going to vary for different people, but we all want some raw fruits and vegetables in our diet. No question about it, these kinds of things. I think that even people who are on a high- protein diet, even people who are following Atkins should eat more vegetables. I think across the board we all would benefit from more vegetables in our diet. This is not contradictory to a higher protein, higher fat diet. We need more vegetables in our diet across the board. I would say that that’s true.
Now that said, how do we get best quality protein if we don’t want to eat any animal or fish-based food and the answer is I don’t know. The inconvenient truth, if you will, is that vegetable protein and plant-based protein is not the same quality. It just isn’t. You can’t get your B12 from plant-based diets. I understand that the vegan and the raw food people believe differently, but that’s not just my opinion. It’s pretty much been documented. It’s in the Encyclopedia of Dietary Supplementation that’s put out by a blue ribbon committee. B12 is just not there. It’s not absorbable. It’s not available, but the iron that’s and plant food is not the same quality as in animal foods. Can we manage with a plant-based diet or with an exclusively plant-based diet? We can and sometimes it’s a very healthy thing to do as a detox or as a temporary strategy to balance the acid diet that many of us have been on to help cure some diseases. It think it can be very valuable, but in the long range year in year out without any fish in the diet, without any eggs, without any whey protein I think it’s very, very tough. Beans have protein in them. Many of the vegetable sources are just lacking in an amino acid or two. Their amino acid profile is just not quite as good. Can we manage? Sure we can.
My recommendation to people who want to follow that kind of diet is you maybe just bend the rules a little bit and have some fish. You’re just not going to get omega threes from plant foods and that includes flaxseed and I’m a big supporter of flaxseed. It’s not the same. There are two omega threes that are found in fish. The body doesn’t convert them very well. You need that EPA and DHA. They’re essential for health. They’re essential for the brain, for the cardiovascular system. So I think that if there was a way that you could live with some small amount of fish in the diet or some amount of eggs from happy chickens, free range chickens or a little bit of whey protein I think that that would be a very good balance to a vegan diet or to a diet that is largely vegan, if not 100% vegan.
Kevin: Yeah and the omega-3 question was my next one. What is happening with flax oil and why is it not assimilated?
Jonny: Assimilated is fine. Here’s the problem. There are three Omega three fatty acids in the world. Three. I’m not going to try to spell them, but they’re alpha-linolenic acid, ALA is one. The other two are eicosapentaenoic acid, EPA and the other one is docosahexaenoic acid, DHA. So to call them by their nicknames, it’s ALA, DHA and EPA. ALA is found in flaxseed. The other two are found in fish. The body technically can take the ALA found in flaxseed and out of that make the two that are found in fish, the complete form to come out of the box in the fish, but it doesn’t do a good job. In fact, it does a lousy job. The most you’re going to get is about 10% conversion.
Now, why do we care? Because the real health benefits come from those two that are found pre-made in fish, the EPA and DHA. That’s where the real action is. Those are the ones that are found in the developing fetus’s brain is DHA. Those are the ones that have been found to improve mood. Those are the ones that are found to lower blood pressure. These are important omega threes. Now, it doesn’t mean that the ALA in flaxseed isn’t important. It has a lot of anti-inflammatory properties of its own. There are lignins in flax.
There are phytochemicals and flax and flax as a food is a fabulous food, not just because of the omega threes, but because it has fiber and it has all kinds of other stuff in it, but if you’re hoping to get your EPA and DHA, those other two omega threes, the ones that come out of the box in salmon or sardines, if you’re hoping to get that from flax you’re going to have to take an awful lot of flaxseed oil, because all you can really count on converting to the EPA and DHA is about 5% to 10% of the amount of flax. Now, if you’re having two big tablespoons of flaxseed oil a day, or three, that might be enough. Even 5% or 10% of that converting is going to be fine, but most people aren’t doing that, so I really strongly feel that the real action, the real health benefits are in the EPA and DHA and most people would be better off just taking them preformed out of the box either with fish oil, fish oil supplements or fish itself. You just can’t count on the body to make them out of the flaxseed will.
Kevin Gianni the host of Renegade Health Show – a fun and informative daily health show that is changing the perception of health across the world. His is an internationally known health advocate, author, and film consultant. He has helped thousands and thousands of people in over 21 countries though online health teleseminars about abundance, optimum health and longevity. He is also the creator and co-author of “The Busy Person’s Fitness Solution”
Medical Doctor Richard DiCenso Discusses Whole Person Therapy
In this article, Richard DiCenso shares on the unique Matrix Assessment Profile. Richard DiCenso is a doctor, author and leading authority on whole person therapy and author of Exploring A New Way of Thinking.
Kevin: Well, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got from being a medical doctor to finding this book, Beyond Medicine, that there was more out there than what we think.
Richard: Well, part of my frustration was in my training, because I went from discipline to discipline to discipline over a period of years and it included everything from medicine to chiropractic to forensics to acupuncture to trauma rehabilitation, human biochemistry and nutrition and what I found is that every discipline was that there was a formula to a recipe approach and when I started looking at people with symptoms and looking at the different disciplines I found that each discipline had their own approach to the same symptoms, but none of the disciplines attempted to identify the cause of the symptoms and that’s when I stepped back from all the disciplines and started to look at what is it that all of these symptoms have in common and in the final analysis in its simplest form, I found that all symptoms are simply symptoms, that they are just the net result of an imbalance, or deficiency that’s progress over a period of time to exhibit itself as symptoms and in a worst-case scenario, a diagnosable the thieves.
Kevin: So for instance, fibromyalgia is a symptom of –
Richard: Some imbalance or deficiency. It can be a different one for each person. That’s interesting part of it, because if there were a simple cause-and-effect, we’d have it already and there would be a cure.
Kevin: Okay.
Richard: It is a name for a group of symptoms that a number of people are experiencing. They come in complaining of the same thing, so they’ve narrowed it down to being diagnosable. If you have, I think, it’s 18 tender points of different parts of the body then you get the diagnosis fibromyalgia, which means what?
Kevin: I don’t know.
Richard: Right and that’s what I’m saying is that’s how a lot of medicine is conducted, is they’re telling you what they’re telling them, using a different word.
Kevin: Got you.
Richard: So my elbow hurts and so if you’ve got arthritis. You got tendinitis. You’ve got degenerative or rheumatoid arthritis. You have whatever, but basically they’re going to use a word that means what it is that you’re telling them without really describing what’s caused what you’re experiencing and therefore, if you can’t identify a cause, you can’t affect a cure.
Kevin: So it’s kind of like making up words.
Richard: It’s a lot like making up words. It’s very similar to what the pharmaceutical companies do with the ad agencies in New York. One of my clients has a large advertising agency in New York and 20% of his business is from pharmaceutical companies and his job is to come up with a name for a drug that they discovered that relieves certain groups of symptoms and so they sit in a brainstorming session for a few days and they come up with something that is catchy and can have an acronym associated with it that rolls off the tongue that people can remember and basically it’s we’ve got a new pill now and we need a disease to go with it.
Kevin: Wow. So how do you go backwards from a symptom to the actual imbalance?
Richard: That’s a great point and I’m a simple guy in the final analysis. So I had to come up with a simple process that I could understand and communicate so that the people I’m working with could become proactive in the process, instead of just looking to me for the answer and kind of help me find the answer. So the answer to your question in a sentence is always start where you are. So that’s the beauty of the Matrix Assessment Profile, which is a protocol that I’ve developed over a period of years based on research produced by NASA to monitor the health of the Apollo astronauts and the Matrix Assessment Profile means that we’re assessing the matrix. Now, I don’t want to do the same things with the words here that these doctors are doing with these diagnoses. So there’s a method to the madness and there’s a reason behind this name. So an assessment of the matrix means that we’re looking at more than just the symptoms that you’re describing to me. We’re looking at the potential causes for that symptom or group of symptoms within the human matrix, which is composed of structural, biochemical and a cycle of emotional or virtual realm that all interacts 24/7 to produce the experiences we have in life and so the Matrix Assessment Profile is an assessment of all of those realms. What do you do for a living? What kind of stress are you experiencing? What do you eat? What percentage of your diet is raw? How often do you eat out? How much water do you drink? Do you take supplements? How much sleep you get? What kind of spiritual beliefs do you have? These are all things that will contextually interact to produce symptoms as part of the human matrix.
Kevin: So the matrix is all the different things that are around you. Let me ask you this question. Is the matrix outside of you, or inside of you, or is it is a combination of all of that?
Richard: It’s very similar to the concept of zero point energy. It’s the creative and life-sustaining force that contributes to the expression of everything in existence and maintains everything in existence. So the answer is that it’s both inside and out.
Kevin: Okay. That’s pretty cool. Now, you’ve seen over your time different elements that contribute to physical symptoms.
Richard: Yes.
Kevin: What are some of those? I know some of them are listed in your book. Can we just run over one or two or three of them?
Richard: Obviously, if you are in an automobile accident and you experience physical pain, then the cause-and-effect is relatively straightforward, although the reason for the accident may not be as easy to understand, but we won’t go there yet. That’s part of another realm, but then you experience physical symptoms and particularly if you don’t know why you’re experiencing them then, that’s where we start with the analysis, is where you’re experiencing the symptoms. So I’m experiencing physical pain. We look at the physical structure. It can be associated with repetitive movements, prolonged positional stress. It can be associated with a nutritional deficiency, or it could be associated with some kind of cycle or emotional imbalance or inconsistency that expresses itself as a physical symptom. For instance, a child that doesn’t want to go to school, because he’s being bullied gets this horrendous stomach ache and they take him to the doctor and they can’t find anything, but they put him on bed rest and it becomes a recurrent experience, a physical experience and then over time it is identified and dealt with, it will lead to other forms of behavior and other physical experiences and things are just going to be unsolvable, because they’re looking in the wrong place for the source of the physical pain or discomfort or symptoms.
Kevin: Wow. That’s an incredible explanation of how it all works. How do you assess that, though, with modern or conventional medicine?
Richard: Well, once again, you always rule out the obvious. So most of the people who come to me have already been through all the conventional analysis and there are two ways to use conventional medicine at this point in trying to determine what’s causing those symptoms. One is to have the test done, because you don’t want to miss anything obvious, like a virus or IBS or irritable bowel syndrome, or celiac spruce. Some of the organic dysfunctions that can produce similar functions, you don’t want to miss those. Once you’ve had the test done and their negative, the next that the process is to look at those tests and see if they come back normal, are there elements within those results that are high normal and low normal, because these are just as powerful to a tool in terms of determining a pattern in the process of developing an imbalance in the process of developing a deficiency in the process of developing by looking at highs and lows in related chemistries and then if that’s there, then we use that as an initial tool to start normalizing biochemistry. If that’s not there, then next step in the process is let me look at the Matrix. Let me look at the relationship between the child and the parents. Let me talk with a child. Let me ask some very explicit questions to the child that seem like I’m having a dialogue, but they’re really designed to elicit responses that would be consistent with an imbalance in the emotional realm, so that I can either implement some treatment myself or recommend a course of treatment with a child psychologist or someone that might be more skilled in one or more of the areas that I’m not. So my role isn’t necessarily to solve the problem of the symptoms, but to solve the problem, which may involve other people that I need to interface with professionally.
Kevin: Have you found that nutritional deficiencies can cause emotional behavior and emotional reactions?
Richard: About 80% of the emotional symptoms that I see have a nutritional basis.
Kevin: Wow.
Richard: So it’s huge.
Kevin: When the nutritional deficiency is addressed, then that goes away?
Richard: Yes, because again, you’re dealing with a symptom that appears to be emotional and if you treat it with pharmaceuticals, you treat with therapy and it doesn’t get any better and you’re missing the obvious, which is nutritional imbalance or deficiency, then you’ve served no purpose.
Kevin: Wow.
Richard: So think about it this way, Kevin. One of the issues we have in this country is that the soil is depleted of vital nutrients. The last senate document I saw said that there were only three minerals left in the soil in this country and so if the nutrients aren’t in soil, they’re not in the food and if they’re not the food, they’re not in the diet. If they’re not in the diet, they’re not in the body and the body was designed to operate in function on all of these nutrients. So it’s a supply and demand problem. If the demands are that the lungs keep pumping and oxygen is delivered to the cells and the bowels move and the heart pumps blood and all of the other systems work the way they were designed and there are not enough raw materials to go round, the body has to begin to compromise function and prioritize the use of the raw materials that are available, which then sets up a whole chain of events over a period of time based on a law of accumulation, which means it that if something is done repetitively of a period of time, there’s going to be a reaction to that given the fact that there is an insufficient supply to meet the demand for that function.
Kevin: It sounds so logical.
Richard: It is.
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Kevin Gianni the host of “Renegade Health Show” – a fun and informative daily health show that is changing the perception of health across the world. His is an internationally known health advocate, author, and film consultant. He has helped thousands and thousands of people in over 21 countries though online health teleseminars on The Healthiest Year of Your Life. He is also the creator and co-author of “The Busy Person’s Fitness Solution”
Communication Style, Meeting the Personality Style of Those You Speak To
If you match your communication style with the personality style of those you speak to, you can improve your communication skills. To do so, you need to understand the personality and behavioral styles of the audience. What are the personality styles?
The most common break down is into four types. Using the CAPS principle, people will tend to be dominant in one of the four types, Controller, Analyst, Promoter, Supporter.
Controllers, also known as Drivers seldom listen to others around them, focusing on the task at hand. They tend to only need to know ‘what,’ usually can figure out how and why. So when speaking to them, they will tend to only need to know “What is the job to be done.”
Promoters tend to not like isolation and will tend to vie for attention. They will tend to exaggerate and or leave out facts and details. To best reach their personality, a speaker needs to address “Why the job needs to be done.”
Supporters are the worker bee of an organization. They tend to yield rather than deal with a possible confrontation. Have the ability to blend into any situation well. They may appear wishy-washy at times. One common trait is a difficulty with making firm decisions. Many are music, poetry, and art lovers. They will appreciate the ‘what’ and why of the job to be done being explained. However their biggest need is “How to do the Job to be done.”
The Analyst is a logical, and detail oriented person. They will tend to withdraw themselves and quietly gather information rather than make a quick decision. To make a decision without all the facts can be difficult. They tend to be the accountants and engineers. You may note tendencies toward being highly critical in this group. They will also tend to be pessimistic in nature. They are very perceptive. To reach them will require giving what, why, how, and when regarding the job to be done.
Personality styles are ways people act or react in given circumstances. People will tend to change and even adapt depending on the situation and their purpose. A controller could turn into a totally subservient supporter when faced with a health care crisis with in the family. A supporter could turn into a controller if a lack of quality health care is perceived.
It is necessary to mirror the personality style with the type of communication.
To establish rapport with the different personality styles
1. Determine the tendency of your own personality.
2. Determine the personality style of those being spoken to.
3. Increase or decrease the qualities within your self to match those you are speaking to.
When Speaking to an Audience
If speaking to an audience, try to speak to each of the personality styles. This can be done by matching your communication style to the personality or listening styles of those in your audience.
How Can You Know?
How can you know which types you’re talking to? Think of the audience globally. Are they managers, employees, business people or local residents? The purpose of the talk should give some clue to the motivation for those coming to hearing it. Within that motivation, consider which personality type would typically be interested.
Then focus your speaking to match their listening and personality style. You can try to reach all four but focus the greatest effort to reach the dominant personality of the group.
Try This
If you frequently give speeches and in your one on one communication, occasionally leave out or decrease your coverage of one of the four “What, Why, How, When” and look at what kind of feed back you get and consider the personality types that are giving it.
One occasion I gave a lecture focused toward controllers. My highest praise came from a Pharmaceutical rep. I received almost no feedback from the supporters.
The next time speaking to the same group, I focused on the supporters and got rave reviews from them to have the controllers tell me it was a bit boring.
Observe the compliments and complaints at the end and the personality types that they come from. This will be a good indicator of your speech and communication strength and weaknesses.
Once you know how to reach the various types you can adjust your communication style to reach the entire audience. By learning to reach the four types, you will be able to attain speech mastery. more importantly, you will attain rapport with your audience, be they one or one thousand.
Jonathan Steele, RN is a nurse, artist, freelance public speaker, webmaster and host of http://www.speechmastery.com/ If you would like to see a more comprehensive list of the personality qualities of the four types of listeners go to http://www.speechmastery.com/communication-style.html
Hip Resurfacing
Hip resurfacing is very near and dear to my heart and hip – left hip to be exact. I am the proud owner of a BHR (Birmingham Hip Resurfacing) that I received in March 2006. My left hip had osteoarthritis for about ten years. My activities during those ten years began to decrease until my main recreation was sitting in my comfy, recliner chair. Having a bone on bone hip joint will bring your life to a complete standstill. Young or old, male or female – bone on bone pain can not be ignored. The pain will be present when you walk, stand, sit and even when you try to sleep. Sleep is impossible without pain killers as is most of your life.
In the past there has been only one solution to replace a painful, arthritic hip, a total hip replacement or THR. A THR meant that part of your femur bone would be cut off and drilled to accept a long stem ball replacement device that is pounded into what is left of your femur bone. Then if you ever need a revision in the future, what is left of your femur bone must be broken apart to remove the old stem. A Hip Resurfacing with a BHR is bone conserving. The top ball of your femur bone is shaped to accept a cap that protects the femur. Then a cup is placed in your acetabulum as a bearing for the cap on your femur. This makes a metal on metal bearing that protects the painful old hip joint. If a revision is ever required in the future, the complete femur bone is still in place to allow a THR.
Hip resurfacing, unlike the old fashioned THR of the past, requires no restrictions to your activities. There is almost no chance of dislocation. Many athletes have had hip resurfacings and returned to the sports they love. If you or someone you know has a painful hip that needs to be replaced, be sure to learn about Hip Resurfacing before accepting an old fashioned THR.
The FDA approved Birmingham Hip Resurfacing in the US last May 2006. Over 60,000 people world wide have BHR’s and many more are learning about the new procedure. Doctors overseas have been performing hip resurfacing for almost fifteen years. Katie Ellis received one of the first BHRs in 1991 from Mr. McMinn, the inventor of the BHR in the UK.
The BHR approved by the FDA in May of 2006 is quite different than the older, hemi-resurfacing of the past. Hemi-resurfacing did not place a cup in the acetabulum of the hip, it only placed a cap on the femur bone and this resulted in a metal on bone joint that often became painful and required a revision.
If you are young and active, be sure to ask your doctor about hip resurfacing. If he/she does not seem to know about the new option, find a doctor in your area that does hip resurfacing. There have been many active people in their late sixties and even seventies that have had hip resurfacing. Be sure to ask questions of your doctor and do research so you don’t end up with an old fashioned small ball THR that will restrict your activities and increase the possibility of a dislocation.
Surface Hippy Website – A Patient to Patient Guide to Hip Resurfacing
Hip Resurfacing News
Athletes Hip Resurfacing Stories
Pre-Retirement Planning – Secrets to Economic Health
If you have just started working and earning money, your parents telling you to save for your retirement will sound ridiculous. After all you are young and you have the rest of your life to save money for retirement; that’s what you think. But listen to your parents; planning your retirement is not a waste of time. It is in fact the best way to utilize your time and save your money. Most people will brush off this ‘save early’ mantra, but those who are smart will recognize the need to do some pre-retirement planning.
The concept of pre-retirement planning is easy.
You save money now because you won’t be earning money later. Most people do not understand the urgency of pre-retirement planning. These are the same people who will be seen later in life living in a small low rent apartments and working at odd jobs to support themselves. Living this hard life when you are a senior is not pleasant. Avoid this situation by just saving a little now and living comfortably later.
1. Start of your pre-retirement planning by actually formulating a plan.
Sit down with a pen and paper and note down important details. Start with some financial information; the most important being medical needs. When you are old, you will need medical aid and this is expensive. You will need to save money to support your medical expenses. But how much medical aid will you need and how much it would cost you are difficult to assess. Get in touch with a financial planner who will work out some average cost of health care that will help you determine how much you need to save.
2. Another aspect of pre-retirement planning is your living cost.
This can be determined by figuring out your standard and cost of living. Do you want to continue living in the same big house as now? Remember as you grow old, maintaining a large house and its expenses become cumbersome. You can either choose to live in a smaller house or live in an apartment in one of the many retirement villages that are springing up. These retirement villages are ideal for people who need some help as they grow older. Some people would also like to live in a mobile home; this is perfect for those who were too busy working to travel. Once you have retired you can do all the traveling you want. These decisions will help you understand how much you need to save and what kind of finances you need to maintain for your pre-retirement planning.
3. Pre-retirement planning requires dedication and responsibility towards your finances.
The best way to start off your plan is to write out the plan and formulate a budget. The next important step after making the plan is to adhere by it. Start by putting small amounts of money every month in long-term savings funds. Get in touch with financial planners who will guide you in the best way and make sure your money and investments grow with you. Save small sums of money. Most of the younger generation prefers to spend their money on things they want like cars, clothes and country clubs. But you will only know the importance of this move when you are old and retired.
© 2008 Anna D. Banks, GCDF
Anna D. Banks, a passionate advocate for baby boomers in exploring their priorities, planning and setting goals for the next stage of their lives. Assisting her clients to attract and build a professional and personal life consistent with their values is not just a goal of Anna’s, it’s her passion. Her diverse work experience in business, education and financial services enables her to help the diverse population of baby-boomers with their life, career, and personal finance coaching needs. Anna is currently Adjunct Faculty at Essex County College, where she teaches Career Development & Management.
Author’s Note:
Do you have any questions about career development or lifestyle changes for Baby Boomers, which you think others, like you, would want to know the answers? Please place a post on http://www.annabanks.com or email your questions to me at Anna@AnnaBanks.com
Nine Factors Influencing Your Health
Your health depends upon your age, the environment, your behavior, your lifestyle, physical work, training and exercise, your senses, your eating habits, your social habits and your social situation. These are interdependent, some of them interacting.
Together they form the main part of topics that will be covered in The Travel To Health Newsletter coming soon.
1.Age
We expect our health to grow worse while we become older. The experience teaches us this as a fact and what we have learned in school does not contradict the expectation. Would it still be possible to stop the aging or at least slow it down? Many experts leave such options open. We will therefore scrutinize their claims to find out what appears to be probable, possible or less likely. A former Swedish Cross Country Champion used to say – and still says – “Nothing is impossible”.
2.Environment
Our expected life length depends very much of where we live. People in poor areas have in average shorter life time then people in richer areas. The death reason in the poor areas is mainly related to the poverty itself, on the contrary wealthy people die of well-being related diseases. Allergy is common in wealthy areas in the same town where it does not occur at all in the same proportions in poor areas. There is a lot to be learned from extreme differences in living environment, we will drill into what.
3.Behavior.
Drugs, criminality, violence does not promote health but on the contrary being a victim of crime, living with an alcoholic or violent person can be just as ruining for a life.
4.Lifestyle.
The modern society with double-working parents, children with numerous leisure time activities causes stress and split up days for the whole family. There is not time for rest and recovery for too many of us. We end having a whole range of diseases originating from this lifestyle.
If we do not manage to handle the situation can this on the other hand lead to loss of the employment, economic problems, house foreclosure etc.
5.Physical work, exercise and training
A physical work is training in itself, but can if too one- sided wear you down.
Exercise and training help us to cope with an intensive life, which is positive but can also enhance the stress itself. Different modes of exercise are favorable to address or prevent various problems. Some leisure sports as golf are quite time consuming, which formerly led to that golfers used to be fairly old. It is best for a traditional family if both wife and husband play, but there are still quite a lot of golf widows around, at least here in Sweden.
6.Senses
It is of course a very big handicap, if you are blind, deaf or dumb. But even less severe problems with senses have a thorough impact upon our health. Reduced hearing is something you pay dearly in your social life. Reduced sights exclude you from driving a car. You are not likely to be a successful professional marketer, if your speech is poor. Such limitations can on the other hand be overcome.
7.Eating habits
The fall of the food pyramid and the diet circle has created a multiple choice of food gurus with different ideas of how our eating habits should be to give best possible odds for healthy life.
It is also certain that we totally have lost control of what we eat. The situation reminds me of the sausage dealer, who on his death bed whispered the best and most important advice he could give to his very best friend: “Eat never sausage!” Most people interpret this story: The dying old man alone knew what ingredients the sausage consisted of and advised strongly against eating it. That is exactly our relation to the food we eat. We believe that we know what we eat but some components in the food should horrify many of us, were we aware of them. Not all such ingredients are subject to any control but the manufacturers.
8.Social habits
The possibility to live in a peaceful and friendly surrounding has a strong influence on our health, the contrary leads to the opposite.
Mobbing is a growing problem in schools. Some working places suffer from archaic structures and others have a too strongly competitive spirit leaving no room for human feelings and recovery after fulfilled efforts.
9.Social situation
New types of home life are created as heterosexual pairs are mixed with homosexual ones and the number of singles increase. The latter especially is sometimes a lonely alternative, which may or may not be self chosen.
You will benefit, If you consider those nine factors and how they affect your life, and one good way to do so is to subscribe to The Travel To Health Newsletter. We will ask you to help us find out upon which factors to focus mainly.
Kurt E.J. Mattsson is the creator of The Travel To Health Newsletter in which you will learn about how your health can be improved by various actions you can take yourself.
Come in get informed at:
http://www.thetraveltohealth.com
Going Through an Accident When Seriously Hurt on the Job
No one likes to think about what will happen if they are seriously hurt on the job, but in the back of our minds we all know that serious accidents do happen especially in construction work. Considerable time and effort is put into accident prevention (which is a good thing that benefits everyone) but very little is done to inform workers what to expect if they do sustain a serious work related injury. This is what I learned over the past 35 years.
What happens after the 911 call
For the worker and his family there is just one thing that occupies their thoughts and actions: “Please God let him live”. Family and friends rush to the hospital and begin the long vigil.
It is very different for those who have an economic stake in how the accident happened: the employer, the liability and compensation insurance companies, general and sub- contractors, and the owners of the project. Their representatives are mobilized immediately. It starts with the next call after 911. Construction managers are instructed to immediately inform the chief safety officer or insurance representative so they can assume control from that point on. This was the time line in one such case: the employer filed its formal notice of accident with its insurance company 1 hour and 3 minutes after the worker was run over by a truck. 59 minutes later a claims adjuster was assigned the case. 23 minutes after that, the safety coordinator was on his way to the hospital to gather medical information. 2hr and 29 minutes later the safety officer reported to the claims adjuster that the worker was undergoing a 12 -13 hr operation. By days end, the insurance company was working out how much money this accident was going to cost them. Unfortunately the line in the sand is drawn as soon as the company begins its investigation.
Keep in mind that insurance companies are in business to earn profits for their shareholders. The less they pay out in claims the greater their profits are. Good insurance company employees always seek to increase the company profits. This frequently leads to a situation where the worker is treated as an adversary who is attempting to wrongfully collect benefits.
All insurance companies belong to an organization called the Insurance Services Organizations (ISO); a central database where every claim for insurance benefits that has ever been made, by anyone, no matter how it occurred or who was at fault. One claims adjuster proudly testified that the very first thing he did upon being assigned a new case involving a woman who was severely injured when a truck crossed over the center line and struck her head on, was to send for an ISO report. He stated that the information is used to determine if someone (in this case the injured woman), is the kind of person who is likely to abuse the system. In this insurance company, there was a corporate mentality that everyone is presumed to be filing a fraudulent claim until proven otherwise.
Once an injury occurs, the primary goal of these trained company representatives quickly goes from accident prevention to damage control. First the accident scene is secured and preserved for their accident investigators. Co-workers and all other witnesses are sequestered, interviewed and statements are recorded. Frequently, only the statements of witnesses favorable to the company’s position are recorded while those witnesses who are less favorable are minimized or even ignored in the official reports.
When OSHA shows up, the witnesses are not available to be interviewed by the government inspector. Many excuses are given for their absence from “they no longer work on this job” to “all our employee witnesses were sent for psychological counseling.” The OSHA investigator often gets access only to the employees who maintain allegiance to the company position.
Things are lost, like the worker’s hard hat or safety harness, critical evidence such as the ladder or scaffold that collapsed are misplaced during the post accident turmoil. Co-employees are instructed not to speak to anyone about the accident, often with the subtle indication that their continued employment is at stake. Even the injured worker’s closest friends must now act cautiously out of fear for their jobs.
Once the facts are uncovered the company professionals put just the right kind of spin on their official version of what happened. In one recent case, where a laborer stationed on the ground was electrocuted when a crane operator maneuvered his crane too close to a high voltage line, the employer’s representative informed the police and hospital that the worker must have been struck by lightening from a passing storm. Once the statement was made it was repeated dozens of times in conversations with hospital personnel, police and OSHA all done with the design to support of a future legal defense. Another was to suggest that the accident happened because the worker positioned himself in the “kill zone” when in fact the worker’s foreman decided the location where the workers were to be stationed.
One way to help protect against this one sided investigation is to designate a trusted, level headed, friend or family member to act as the injured worker’s point person until professional help is retained. This frees up the family so they can attend to the wellbeing of the injured worker while the ongoing task of dealing with all the practical issues are attended to, such as supplying necessary information to police agencies, OSHA, and insurance companies, dealing with hospital and compensation forms, getting the necessary information to file for worker’s compensation benefits, speaking to witnesses who come to the hospital to visit the injured worker before the employer interferes with their willingness to speak about the accident, and most importantly preventing the spread of non essential information about the worker, his family, and other personal matters that have nothing to do with the accident or injuries. The point person can take other simple measures which may prove to be extremely helpful at a latter time such as requesting names of all potential witnesses to the accident from police and co-workers, asking for as much detailed information about what happened, taking some basic photos of the accident scene and tracking down all personal items of the injured worker such as his work gloves, hard hat, safety belt, and even the worker’s boots and clothing which may have been left on the job site or removed from the worker in the ambulance or emergency room.
The day after the accident
Insurance companies are also given access to confidential medical information that they are not entitled to. In one case, within 24 hours of sustaining a life threatening injury, the insurance company solicited the patients roommate to act as an inside informant supplying the company with information he overheard the doctors and nurses discussing about the patient’s injuries, care and treatment.
More often, a simple telephone call from an insurance representative to the hospital, with the introduction “I am with the insurance company that represents the injured worker and I need some information to process the medical bills” opens up a direct line of communication. The fact is some of these calls may not be from anyone who has a right to confidential medical information. To prevent this type of unauthorized communications, the hospital should be placed on notice not to speak about the patient’s care and treatment to anyone who does not present a proper written authorization from the patient.
The near term recovery period
Hospital care is expensive and therefore there is a great economic interest in discharging the patient from the hospital as soon as possible. As a patient you have the absolute right to participate in your discharge planning and must take advantage of this opportunity to prevent a premature discharge or be subject to an inadequate discharge plan. Ask questions and demand answers that you can understand about what the injuries are, what treatment is necessary and how the treatment is to be provided.
When a serious accident occurs doctors must decide what to treat first. The process of deciding the order of treatment is called triage. The patient’s most important needs are addressed first followed by care and treatment for the non life threatening injuries. When the injuries are identified medical specialist are then called in to treat the patient for each specific condition. This treatment by different medical specialist can often lead to injuries that are never documented or treated in the hospital. For example a worker who was injured in a scaffold collapse may have had severe neck and back injuries which require complete bed rest. A fracture of the foot went undiagnosed in the hospital because the patient was on complete bed rest and he was not allowed to walk until several weeks later. That is when the patient first realized there was something wrong with his foot. Another example is the patient who suffers a “closed head injury” which occurs when the brain strikes the inside of the skull causing injury as happens when a person suffers a concussion. This injury may lead to the patient’s inability to concentrate, slow speech patters, delays in the ability to respond verbally, inability to recall the names of simple basic objects, forgetfulness, difficulty reading and comprehending what has been read, or loss of short term memory. Because the patient is preoccupied with the more obvious injuries, the subtle effects of a closed head injury may not be noticed until several months after the accident. To insure proper documentation of these injuries and to be eligible for payment of medical care and treatment, the patient must be a self advocate. Contact your primary care physician and explain the symptoms you notice as soon as possible. The quicker the condition is treated the better off the patient is and the sooner the bills will be processed. Keep in mind that telling one of the specialists about a newly discovered injury may get you no where if the injury is not something that specialist treats. You need to speak with your primary care doctor, even if he has not treated you for any of the work related injuries. He will act as you general doctor and get you to the correct doctor for treatment even if it is a compensation related injury.
In the long term
Insurance companies who are facing long term compensation payouts to injured workers often consider themselves as being victimized by the worker and therefore justified in pursuing a course of action designed to get the worker off the compensation rolls no matter by what means. In one situation, where the worker had been determined to have sustained a total permanent disability from his work related accident, I discovered the claims supervisor for the insurance company had admonished her staff handling of the injured worker’s claim stating “I don’t think it is true that there is nothing you can do. If the claimant is non-compliant with treatment(smoking cessation, causing PT & MDs to refuse to treat him, etc.), you should be able to petition the Board to terminate benefits, I know that you will not get the Board to terminate, and this is not really the goal. However it may be a sufficient threat to convince the claimant that he must co-operate in the treatment of his injury. Please discuss this with counsel right away and let me know the outcome of that discussion.” This is a good example of how a severely injured employee goes from the status of a protected worker to being portrayed as an opportunist who is milking the system.
Yet another situation revealed the following interchange between an insurance supervisor who learned that the injured worker went to the insurance compensation doctor for an exam but failed to bring his artificial leg along. She reported “I got the IME report back for [injured worker]. First note is that the little snip didn’t bring his prosthetic leg.” This was upsetting to the supervisor because she wanted the doctor to find that the worker had learned to use his leg and therefore he might be found to no longer be disabled. In response to this, the person directly handling the claim replied: “I just called [injured worker] at home. Woke him up (don’t I feel bad!):I asked him why he didn’t bring his leg and he stated that it was because it wasn’t human and it wasn’t a part of him, I advised that I would have to set another exam because he didn’t bring it and he said that it didn’t indicate anywhere on the paper work to bring the prosthetic with him and he wasn’t a mind reader.”
Remember, when a worker is badly hurt on the job someone will always be stuck with cost of the medical care and treatment and help with the lost wages. It might be the worker’s compensation company, a liability insurance company, your private health insurance company, Medicaid, Medicare or the owner of the property. Someone will have to pay and the cost will be high. When large sums of money are at stake, “for profit” companies will do what they have to protect themselves. You need to do the same for your well being and that of your family.
Syracuse car accident while working lawyers have helped many seriously injured people and grieving families in the upstate New York area since 1987. If you or a loved one was injured in a motor vehicle accident in the upstate New York area, contact Powers & Santola to schedule a free initial consultation at our Syracuse or Albany law office.
Why Doctors Need More Education About the End of Life
We have come to expect great acts of skill, wisdom and compassion from our medical professionals. We expect our doctors and nurses to battle against death for us, and we expect them to win over and over again, time after time. We expect them to never let us die. They don’t want us to ever die, either.
This blindly hopeful denial of death is bringing our medical system, its institutions and the quality of life we hold so high dangerously close to the edge of annihilation as the emotional, psychological and economic costs associated with treatment at the end of life are drowning us. We have to do better.
In 1969 Dr. Elizabeth Kuber-Ross wrote her seminal work, “On Death and Dying” in which she identified a generalized lack of understanding and recognition of dying and death in our hospitals. Forty years later not all of the 131 medical schools in the United States offer courses on pain and symptom management and dying, and none require their students to take those classes. Just half of US medical schools teach their students how to deliver bad news.
The practitioners who guide us to death’s door are not taught to recognize advancing death or ways to talk about it with us. Instead of empowering our doctors to prepare us for our inevitable deaths, we send them out to practice without the education and skills to support us at the most challenging time in our lives, during our inevitable deaths.
We need to be teaching our doctors that death is a process, not a single event. Their lack of understanding this makes death sneak up on us, even when it’s as big as an elephant standing in the middle of our living room. We have come to believe that we die suddenly, even after suffering long illnesses or living into very, very old age with multiple chronic diseases. We often hear loved ones say, “He always got better, and we thought he’d get better this time. We didn’t expect him to die.”
Pushing Denial
Another consequence is that medical technology and modern chemistry have pushed the limits of human life beyond our wildest dreams, also pushing our denial of death to new heights. Natural death is facing extinction. We want our doctors to do everything to keep us alive, even when doing everything takes the living out of life, demands suffering of us, and burdens loved ones with helplessly witnessing our prolonged dying.
The result: we die alone in hospitals and nursing homes, not in our homes surrounded by loved ones. We die after receiving aggressive, invasive treatments that are often futile. We die after someone-often a stunned family member-is asked to make a decision to refuse, limit or withdraw a medical treatment, usually with no advance planning or instruction from us. We die after ethics committees have weighed conflicts and navigated the route to a decision. We die too often alone, unprepared and afraid.
The financial cost of dying is now adversely effecting our quality of life, with estimates showing between 25 and 30 percent of Medicare’s more than 0 billion annual budget goes to care for patients in their final year of life because our doctors want to do everything for us-and to us-even when that means tethering us to machines, forcing us to live in institutions until our functional bodies are exhausted from complete organ failure. In 2007, 61.2% of all bankruptcies filed were due to medical debt.
Not only are doctors taught little about recognizing, predicting or discussing the dying process, they are taught even less about the spiritual component so elemental to caring for us. It is death that fires the connection to who we are and what life means to us. It is death that inspires us to be better people. When we deny death we are deprived of the transformative spiritual experience it provides the dying and those who love them.
Earlier Hospice Care
Because our doctors are not trained to recognize and acknowledge the process of dying, or to understand when to introduce palliative care, they are referring patients to the specialized care of hospice all too late, not until the very end of life, if at all. This delay deprives both the patient and loved ones of the time to adequately prepare for death-and the time to say goodbye with any sense of peace.
Denying death creates widespread misunderstanding about the holistic care offered by hospice providers when hospice care improves quality of life, can actually extend life, cares not only for a person’s physical well-being but also the emotional, spiritual, and psychological needs of the person for six months or longer-and it embraces the whole family along with the patient. We make hospice a last resort, instead of a last reward.
Lack of communication with our doctors about death is no longer justifiable. It is imperative that we talk about dying with a doctor every time a new medical crisis arrives. It is essential that they have the skill to ask us how we feel and what we think about our death, and what kind of care we want-and don’t want.
We should expect that our medical professionals are all taught sufficient skills to identify the dying process and techniques to discuss it with care and compassion. We have to insist that our healthcare system pays doctors for the time they take to talk with us about the most important decisions in our lives. If we cannot go to our doctors to talk about death, to whom can we go? Our lawyers?
We should expect that the professionals who care for us want to help us prepare for a good death. That means helping us achieve death in a place we choose, being treated with dignity and respect, having any pain managed well, being surrounded and cared for by people who love us. We all need the time to say, I love you, I’m sorry, forgive me, thank you before we leave this life.
End-of-Life Learning
What would our deaths be like if every doctor and nurse were required to pass an exam about death and the process of dying? What if hospitals had End-Of-Life Learning Centers where specifically trained medical professionals would be available to help us with advance healthcare planning while we were healthy, and at every turning point in our health? These centers could offer courses on dying and death to all the staff in the hospital and in the doctors’ offices, to private counselors, to anyone in the community who wanted to know.
What if Spiritual care personnel would be housed in this learning center to teach local pastors about end of life care so they could shepherd their flocks through it? What if the Center offered caregiver support, grief counseling, self-help groups? What if the Center trained and certified guides and doulas, midwives to the dying so no one died alone, unless they wanted to? What if palliative care and hospice providers were available for consultation and offered educational opportunities through the center?
What if this was a place where we could take away the fears of dying? What if we knew we would not die alone or in pain because our medical professionals were there for us, listening to us, knowing what dying is, giving us comfort? How would our quality of life, our quality of death and our relationship with the medical professionals who serve us change if we supported the end-of-life and made the experience positive? After all, every life is required to end. What if we wanted to make every ending a good one?
Loretta Downs, MA
Founder
Chrysalis End-of-Life Inspirations
http://www.endoflifeinspirations.com
By Loretta Downs
Hospital Newspaper July 2010 Consultants Corner (print versions)
Loretta Downs is a speaker, writer and consultant on end-of-life issues.
For over 25 years Loretta has companioned AIDS patients, friends, family, hospice patients, and nursing home residents through the end of life. She retired from a successful career as a sales executive in the home fashion industry and founded Chrysalis End-of-Life Inspirations to advocate for nursing homes and hospitals to provide private rooms for keeping vigil with the dying, Chrysalis Rooms.
She earned her Masters Degree in Gerontology at 60, is President of the Chicago End-of-Life Care Coalition, a Metta Institute Certified End-of-Life Care Practitioner and Certified Advance Care Planning Facilitator. She is a member of the Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center ethics committee, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, the American Society on Aging, and the Society for the Arts in Health Care.
7 Healing Tips – Navigate the Health Care System
Are you sick? Are you having trouble getting well? 7 tips to help you navigate the health care system and heal are: you heal your self, manage your own case, do your own research, make a healing plan, keep records, include complimentary/alternative healing services and attitude. When illness strikes, it is devastating physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. You present yourself to the health care system and you are at their mercy. Medicine in the USA is great for things like trauma from an auto accident. We can work miracles. We can bring folks back from a heart attack or acute congestive heart failure. We don’t do well with prevention. Most medical treatments of chronic conditions are just symptom management. Treatment often involves multiple doctors from a variety of specialties, and they often don’t talk to each other.
All healing is self healing. No one heals you, you heal yourself. Our bodies are wonderful in that given the chance; it will do everything in its power to heal. The practitioner just sets the stage for your healing. This may be in the form of the operating room, or medication, or therapy.
Nobody is managing your case., if you have a complicated case and many doctors. So with the aid of your primary doctor, self manage your case. The doctor, therapist, healer are consultant to you, the patient. They are some of the experts that you will consult for information that can help you heal. You get to take their expert information and make the choice to go that route or not go that route.
Do your own research. Learn about your disease, medications, treatments, and alternative or complimentary services. If you can’t do that, have a family member or friend do the research for you. Remember, you are the one that makes the choices that will help you. The internet and the library can be a great place to start.
Make a healing plan, work your plan and be willing to adjust as needed. When I was having my children, I choose to study the Bradley Method, rather than Lamaze. In the course, I learned to set up a birthing plan. The “plan” was my ideal birth experience. Neither birth went totally according to “the plan”. Life doesn’t go according “to plan.” We plan, God Laughs. However, both births were wonderful experiences, I learned a lot about myself and they were “all natural.” The plan helped me to remember my goals even if the route meandered around a bit. Make a healing plan, it is worth the effort.
Keep logs and records of you medicines, treatments, and responses, what worked what didn’t.
Consider incorporating complimentary healing modalities in your treatment plan. They can decrease anxiety, stress, and side effects from medical treatments. They often increase sense of peace and well being. They will help you through the process. Some complimentary healing modalities include energy healing, essential oils, and magnets.
Attitude is the one thing you have control over. Keep a positive attitude. A positive attitude is your best chance of better outcome. It is difficult to be positive when you are in pain and not feeling well. Do the best you can to distract your mind from your current illness and pain. You can pray, watch TV or a movie (funny is best), and focus on somebody else for a while. Think positive, uplifting thoughts.
Are you curious about the ways you can help heal yourself? For more information about complimentary healing, I invite you to check out: http://healthworksenergyhealing.com/
Facts About Colloidal Silver
Alternative medicine and conventional medicine have always had different approaches regarding the restoration of human health. There is a wide range of medicines that are promoted by the alternative medicine and that are not yet fully accepted by the conservatory specialists – and this is the case of colloidal silver.
Colloidal silver is intensely promoted by the alternative medicine, which is trying to prove the fact that this colloid can be considered an actual antibiotic. But why are some of the representatives of conventional medicine against this substance? Their arguments are connected with the fact that, when great amounts of colloidal silver are consumed or when the patients use colloidal silver with high concentrations, this supplement has certain adverse effects. This might be true, since only certain doses and concentrations are considered healthy and, just like in the case of other types of medicines (be it the case of conventional or alternative medicines), an overdose or a high concentration might be toxic. In addition, both health care providers and patients must be careful regarding the size of the silver particles, since large particles might lead to potential negative effects. Considering these facts, it can be confirmed that, if taken as prescribed and indicated, colloidal silver does not lead to unpleasant and unhealthy results.
Furthermore, the facts remain the same: if colloidal silver is consumed (it is usually found in water purifiers), it has the capacity of enabling a certain enzyme – this particular enzyme is the one that assures the “air” or, better said, the “breathing” of the pathogen cells. This is precisely why, in the presence of colloidal silver, the pathogen cells are capable to breathe and, as a result, they die in a short while. Since the pathogen cells are the only ones which contain this specific enzyme, the colloidal silver does not affect the friendly bacteria or the healthy tissues. Moreover, the silver itself is eliminated from the human organism in a matter of days, it does not deposit in the organism, nor does it form compounds with other substances. The latter fact is essential, since there are some products which are based on ionic, not colloidal silver. While the ionic ones are capable of reacting with other substances and forming compounds, the colloidal substance does not have the same property and, therefore, it is eliminated from the organism, without creating further problems.
Peter Salazar’s source for quality supplements is http://www.utopiasilver.com.
To go directly to this product go here: http://utopiasilver.com/products/silver
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