Life is Healthy

I'm still feeling crappy, so I thought I would share something that really makes me smile.

I met Claudia at the 2009 Conference for Young Women Affected By Breast Cancer. Every time I saw her, she was wearing a very different and very funky hat.

This one, made from coffee filters was one of my favourites:




When Claudia was diagnosed with breast cancer, she launched the She Arts Project: "a collaboration with 30+ Artists with photographs from Meg Luther Lindholm."

The photographs eventually became part of an travelling exhibit. You can see more of them here.

I love this kind of thing.

With all this talk about 'Swine Flu' I thought it only right to share with you a remedy that has just been released in the UK.

They are currently working on an OINKMENT which you can apply too. If you do however notice any symptoms please call a HAMBULANCE immediately.
Swine flu symptoms are stuttering like p-p-p-p-p-porky p-p-p-p-ig. My best friend says he has swine flu, but I think he's telling PORKIES.

Apparently please do not contact the hospitals for advice, there is a problem with the phonelines and all you will get is CRACKLING

There are reports from the religious sectors saying: The APORKALYPSE is finally here!

My advice: I say STY put and don't travel.

Why is it that the first thing we try to do after killing a pig is to cure it?

In more sensational news: who says pigs cant fly? I heard a pig flu in Mexico recently.
In other news: Disney HQ bans the “Three Little Pigs” movie as a precaution

In recent years we have experienced 'Mad cow disease', Salmonella and Bird flu - makes you wonder what's next, answers on a postcard.

*disclaimer : this is a joke please do NOT attempt to purchase this item or others like it.

Just for giggles, I need a laugh.
I know I shouldn't laugh at a fellow magician but this is classic!

When the warm weather calls for ventilation, and the AC leaves you with a sniffle and a sky-high bill from ConEd, it's time to search for an alternative. Introducing the Borg Pedestal Tower Fan - it's slim, sexy, discreet, and purs like a cat.

I carried the Borg fan for 10 blocks, and it was completely worth the hassle. No lie - I had sweet dreams all night long after falling asleep under the soft natural breeze. It's hard to explain, but the short 5 hours I gave myself, felt like a solid 8. I woke up feeling relaxed, and most importantly breezy. This is the coolest reason to drop $50...

One of the ironies about blogging about weight gain, loss and maintenance is that nearly two-thirds of the world’s population is underfed.

• Right now, more than 500 million people are living in "absolute poverty" and more than 15 million children die of hunger every year.

A nurse friend of mine sent me an e-mail a few weeks ago with a very interesting observation:

On the unit I work on we get lots of babies who have "short gut syndrome" due to a variety of causes who have to be on parenteral nutrition to supplement their nutrition while their GI system grows and hopefully heals fast enough. The big problem (among many) with TPN (total parenteral nutrition) is that it destroys the liver and kids get horribly jaundiced (which also causes brain damage) and often they die of liver failure or need a liver transplant before their GI system grows enough to take them off TPN.

Boston Children's has done some amazing work showing that this is largely due to the fact that the lipids part of the TPN was a soybean based oil so they started using Omegaven instead which is a fish oil based IV lipid solution. So far the results have been amazing and reversed the damage in lots of kids livers and prevented it in those started on Omegaven at birth.

"I am not systematic at all when it comes to religion. I just love life. And I'm not judgmental. And I'm a vegetarian." ~ Erykah Badu

Just do you, and do it well. Even if everything around you is out of control, don't compromise - not even for a second.

The damages to ecological systems from overconsumption of water are illustrated in this world map (yellow represents low impacts, navy high impacts).
Figure 3, PFISTER ET AL.



LCA's finally measure water consumption
Catherine Cooney
Environ. Sci. Technol., Article ASAP
DOI: 10.1021/es901078v
Publication Date (Web): April 22, 2009
Copyright © 2009 American Chemical Society

Despite water’s significance, modeling how freshwater consumption for drinking, industrial manufacturing, and agriculture has affected ecosystems, human health, and the depletion of nonrenewable freshwater resources has been overlooked. In a new ES&T study (DOI 10.1021/es802423e), researchers take the traditional life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach one huge step beyond current practices with a model that incorporates water consumption.LCA models were created to address problems in industrialized nations, and most of these countries don’t experience human-health risks due to water scarcity, the authors note. Recently, researchers have started to use LCA models to manage diminishing resources in developing countries. To incorporate water consumption into the LCA process, Stephan Pfister, Annette Koehler, and Stefanie Hellweg at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich’s (ETH Zurich’s) Institute of Environmental Engineering started from scratch: they created units of measure for water consumption that are compatible with the many values for energy and resource use that appear in an internationally recognized LCA method. “For water use, this hadn’t been done, ever,” says Hellweg, who is a professor of ecological systems design at ETH Zurich.

For example, the team interpreted a well-known value established by the World Health Organization in LCA models and applied it to water use. The disability-adjusted life year is a value that expresses the number of years a person's life will be shortened as a result of disease or premature death. The team also adapted an indicator applied to address ecosystem impacts and known as PDF (potentially disappeared fraction of species) to express how water impacts species.LCAs routinely rely on aggregated data to represent large areas. But the ecological impacts of water use depend on regional factors, such as freshwater availability, water infrastructure, rainfall, and consumption patterns at a specific location. The team used a geographic information system to gather regional data and divided large rivers, such as the Nile and the Mississippi, into subcatchments. “The watershed level is more appropriate for the assessment, because hydrological processes are connected within watersheds,” Pfister says.

In the paper, Pfister and colleagues demonstrate their model with a case study of a process that is water-intensive worldwide: cotton production. They began with data from the “virtual water” database developed by researchers in The Netherlands. A relatively new idea, virtual water describes the amount of water that evaporates during agricultural use. Specifically, the database is an inventory of the water consumed for agricultural use for many crops in most countries.The team found that the impacts from water consumption in the cotton industry vary according to country: Egypt’s water supply experiences the highest level of damage (77%) from cotton production, whereas Brazil experiences the lowest level of damage (0%), followed by the U.S. (4%).

The model’s focus on the resulting damage to ecosystems and human health is somewhat controversial among LCA practitioners in general, some modelers told ES&T. Many U.S. researchers tend to stick to LCAs that create resource-use inventories but that don’t measure ecological or human-health impacts, notes Christopher Weber of Carnegie Mellon University. Referring to the new ES&T study, Weber says: “There is a great deal of uncertainty in their inventory, and there is still disagreement over many of the definitions they use.” Modelers in the U.S. also shy away from incorporating water into LCAs because there is a shortage of water data in this country, explains Chris Hendrickson, also of Carnegie Mellon. More data are available for the EU, and for areas with water scarcity, such as in Israel, Hendrickson says.

Nonetheless, the study demonstrates a huge range of work, Weber says. “I absolutely think that [the] method they are using is a good one,” he says. “It’s good to take the next step and to turn water use into something that can be used to compare it to something else, such as toxic releases or CO2.”Pfister says that within the LCA community, work has been done to clearly define the terms related to water use. “Our method directly uses those definitions,” he adds.

Despite the uncertainties inherent in all LCAs, the researchers are confident that this approach, as well as the assumptions they make in this study, will compare favorably with other LCA methods. The group members say that they hope their work will be used by businesses and governments that are searching for ways to protect diminishing water resources. Some nonbinding declarations in the EU suggest that consumer goods show LCA information on product labels, and many companies are beginning to conduct LCAs, Pfister says.Determining water use “has really become popular in the last year,” Hellweg says. “But companies are not really looking at what happens afterwards, and they are all looking at water use in an aggrandized area,” she adds. “I really hope that businesses take this one more step and incorporate the differences of water use in Egypt compared with water use in a wet country such as Switzerland,” Hellweg says.
_______________
It is good to finally see life cycle assessments being done for water use. The impact of water use on our ecosystems should be of chief concern in every area of the world as water is the one resource we cannot live without.

More water is wasted(and polluted) in industry, yet they are not accountable for the water they use. And even though these assessments are not ironclad based on changing factors over time, they at least give a good idea of what is being used, wasted, and how best to conserve water in different regions of the world experiencing different effects regarding that usage due to population, population growth, deforestation, agriculture, and now chiefly, climate change which is precipitating drought and melting glaciers more rapidly which absolutely effects the life cycle of water and all that depend on it.

It is time to take our use of water much more seriously. It is the lynchpin of our survival on this plaent and if we are to have any success at all in preserving our planet for ourselves and those to come, how we manage water is essential to that success and preservation.

I am wiped.

I had a CT scan at 7:15 this morning (and we got back late from family adventures in Toronto), so of course I didn't sleep last night, worrying about over-sleeping (as it turned out I had made a mistake setting the alarm but I woke up anyway) and of course about some horrible mass that could be growing on my innards (I have no reason to anticipate bad news but this never stops me from being anxious).

S. and D. were BOTH home today with different viruses picked up over the week end. One is hacking and coughing and sneezing and one has a stomach bug. My immune system feels very threatened.

I am so tired that I'm hysterical and letting my inner hypochondriac run wild (I am half-convinced I have swine flu).

So, instead of words of wisdom, I give you some other wise women's words:



I first saw this video at the conference I went to recently, for women with advanced breast cancer, when Living Beyond Breast Cancer unveiled it there. With several women in the video present for the viewing (and several others represented were women I met in Dallas).

It was very, very moving.

I was talking to my friend Nicole today and she told me she'd seen the video online. I cried again today when I watched it. It also makes me realize that nothing I have to say on living with metastatic breast cancer is remotely original.

Watch it. These women are more inspiring then Susan Boyle.

Seriously.

Tomorrow is a chemo day. Hope to be writing again by Wednesday.

Well, I injured my back over the weekend. It's not real bad, but if I turn toward the right or try to bend over, the pain is stabbing. Anyway, I'll work through it.

I had the girls all weekend. It was quite a time. We're working on the "May I please have another" whatever? Rather than "Gimme some more." Wow. Spoiling them was easy. Un-spoiling them is going to be hard.

I guess I don't need to say that I didn't make it to the gym this morning. I will get back tomorrow and do some mild stretching exercises.

OK. That's it for now.

Dear Early Learning Centre

My son loves playing with his Early Learning Centre Noah’s ark set. Well done on pursuing that religious angle in these increasingly secular days! He is only 19 months old, but I have already explained to him how this toy celebrates the death of everyone on earth bar one family. He loves it! I expect that in years to come there will be some awkward questions about how big the ark would have had to have been, how Noah could have stopped the carnivores eating the herbivores, and how he could have saved the humble woodworm at all without the Ark ending up looking like Swiss cheese. But for now we are just having fun playing!

I do have one question for you though: I am not David Attenborough or anything, but even I can see that in your ark Noah has quite clearly saved two male lions. Look – they both have manes:

The lion is perhaps the species in which it is easiest to differentiate between the male and the female. It’s not like it’s one of those penguins that even zookeepers can’t tell apart unless they’ve got one anaesthetised in an operating theatre. I thought perhaps that there had been a mistake at the factory and that somewhere else in the country another small child was playing with a Noah’s ark containing two lionesses. But no, the picture on the box clearly shows two male lions:



Are these lions gay? Because I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what the Bible thinks about that. (It’s actually a bit contradictory – vacillating between loving everyone and stoning them to death with little middle ground along the lines of “I quite like Graham Norton in small doses and what they all do behind closed doors is up to them”.) But more importantly, how was Noah planning on continuing the world's population of lions with a couple of bummers? Was he going to try cloning them? Because I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what the Bible thinks about that. (It actually doesn’t mention it, unless it’s buried amongst all those rules in Leviticus about not wearing clothes made from different materials or planting different crops next to each other. The closest I can find is “Do not mate different kinds of animals” (Leviticus 19:18), which is kind of the exact opposite of cloning, so maybe God is in favour of it? I don’t know, but it’s a moot point anyway, as it's doubtful the technology would have been available to Noah, whose main area of expertise was carpentry.)

One more question: what kind of animal are these? The box just lists the contents as a rather non-specific “12 x animal shapes”.

Like I said, I’m not David Attenborough or anything, but given that the other animals on what I am increasingly beginning to believe was just a floating fairy tale are lions, elephants, giraffes, camels and rhinoceroses, I was expecting something a 19-month old would be able to instantly recognise. We think they look like guinea pigs, but they’re the same size as the rhinos! Maybe if you made guinea pigs to scale they would represent a choking hazard, but at their current dimensions I think they will scare my son when it comes to choosing his first pet. If you’re looking for another animal with a distinctive silhouette, what about the kangaroo? (Though this might throw up a few awkward questions about Australia not having been discovered at the time of the Great Flood.)

Yours, for the time being, faithfully

Mr S Vincent

Yesterday was the first bike ride of the season. Unlike Finding Radiance Lori who biked 30 miles yesterday (you go, girl!), I did a mere 15 miles in just under an hour. But it was 15 miles of sheer delight.

Larry dug the bikes out from the corner of the garage, put air in my bike tires and asked me to take it out for a quick test ride. Larry’s three inches taller than me, but I have the “big bike” because my legs are twice as long as his. OK, maybe not twice as long, but when I ride his bike, I eat my knees.

When I got back, Larry loaded the bikes on the bike rack. (I would have helped…but…you know…I was busy documenting our first ride. Yeah, that’s it. Busy documenting our first ride.)

It’s sad that we have to drive a half hour to get to the nearest bike trail. There’s a rails-to-trails circuit in the county next to ours, but Podunkville has yet to adopt a trail system. Anytime someone tries, land owners get all up in arms and some even scatter nails on the old railroad paths. Yeah, we bike riders are a scary bunch, aren’t we?

I was so happy to see the parking lot completely full. Larry and I (well, Larry) unloaded the bikes and we hopped on our favorite section of trail.

I’m always amazed by the types of people we encounter on the bike trails. Young, old, families. From men with tattoos and facial hair wearing beaters and jeans to old men wearing golf pants and brown socks, women wearing hats with plastic flowers to women decked out in $500 spandex outfits, kids on tricycles, parents pulling carts…they’re all out on the trails and most are friendly and versed in bike etiquette. You always have those few, usually the walkers for some reason, who don’t understand that when a biker yells out “passing left” it means you have to move your ass over and stop taking up three-quarters of the trail.

This is the first bridge of many we ride over. Below is Sandy Creek.
Next we have to ride through the tunnel. I realize I live in the Appalachian Mountains and in order for railroads to work around here, they needed to go through and not up or around, the hills, but still, it’s not natural for human beings to pass through a mountain. Not to mention mountain tunnels are creepy. And cold. And dark. And this is the short one! There’s a one-mile tunnel on a different trail that I haven’t garnered the nerve to ride through yet. It’s on my to-do list this summer, though. You can’t see from end to end because of a bend so a flashlight is a must. I’ll pack a few extras, just to be sure.

Anyway, the best part of this trail is the Belmar Bridge across the Allegheny River.

Here’s Larry chasing my (used) Kleenex that flew out of my hands when I stopped to take a photo. Now that’s love.

Another creek, another trout fisherman.

This railroad car sits in the middle of nowhere. It makes me wonder what it must have been like to be a train passenger back in the 19th century and seeing these remote woods and streams for the first time.

Usually we’ll see a snake warming itself on one of the bridges, but not this time. We heard some type of kestrel, though, along with a hundred other type of birds. Do you see the two yellow stakes sticking out of the concrete at the end of the bridge? I call Larry “Frasier” whenever we have to pass between them. Remember that episode of “Frasier” in which Frasier and Niles learn to ride bicycles and Frasier keeps running into trees and mailboxes? Larry’s drawn to those yellow posts like a magnet.

Here I am at the end of the bike ride. Sweaty but happy. I was feeling kinda down when we started, a little achy, a little sorry for myself. Not entirely sure why. But the bike trail is a magic path that always leads me to a happy place.

The REALIZE Band-C has the same clinically proven high-volume, low-pressure system as the original REALIZE Band, but in addition to its new design, it has a 14 percent greater stoma adjustment range to accommodate larger patients. The REALIZE Band-C has a width of 23 mm, making it the widest gastric band available potentially reducing the risk of band slippage.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and The American Society on Aging appraisal that 60 - 70% of Americans over the age of 65 will charge some anatomy of abiding care. Back we are healthy, it is adamantine to contemplate an ailing future. Retirement planning conjures up images of fun, alleviation and campaign to alien locations. Continued appellation affliction is...... depressing.

Director General for Animal Husbandry of the Ministry of Agriculture (Direktur Jenderal Peternakan Departemen Pertanian), Tjeppy D. Soedjana ensure that Indonesia safe from the spread of swine flu that is now infecting Mexico and The United States.

The reason, Indonesia does not have a transportation relationship of pork and its derivative products from both countries. "Thus, the possibility of the spread of swine flu in Indonesia is very small,"said Tjeppy, when contacted by Tempo, Saturday (25 / 4).

However,Ministry of Agriculture remains cautious this new plague with preparing various anticipation. Such as setting up rules and guidelines to respond to emergency situations, human resources, diagnostic lab infrastructure, and the quarantine.

Another Anticipating form such as controling the livestock will also be done by the Executive of the Technical Unit (Unit Pelaksana Teknis) Directorate General of Animal Husbandry, including giving special attention to foreign tourists from Mexico and the United States by the Ministry of Agriculture Quarantine Agency. "Because they can act as a carrier of disease," said Cheppy.

Directorate General of Animal Husbandry has formed a team to conduct meetings and coordinate the anticipation with Directorate General for Disease Control and Environment Sanitation, Department of Health and National Quarantine related to the outbreaks. "Because, in the case of Indonesia, pigs can also be contagious avian influenza (bird flu)," said Tjeppy.

Hello and welcome. This blog is about using alternative health methods to treat various complaints and diseases. The human body is very complex, so please check with your GP first.
Alternative health offers a variety of ways in which the body can help itself to recover from all types of illness.
I have included a range of remedies including help for cancer, heart disease, and a longevity formula.



5-HTP Is an Amino Acid, that may help to promote the brain chemical Serotonin, and thus producing a mood enhancer, and help for people with anxiety and depression. 5-HTP is made from the grains of the African plant Griffonia simplicifolia.

So who may need 5-HTP? Anyone who seeks to improve his or her mood, behavior,suppress appetite, or help insomnia may benefit from taking 5-HTP. Symptoms of low levels of serotonin include depression, obesity, carbohydrate craving, bulimia, insomnia, narcolepsy, sleep apnea, migraine headaches, tension headaches, chronic daily headaches, premenstrual syndrome, and fibromyalgia.
5-HTP is best taken between meals, for the best effects.



RED CLOVER. Red clover is a wild plant that is used for grazing cattle and other animals. You can buy Red Clover seeds from a number websites online.It is a perennial herb that commonly grows wild in meadows throughout Europe and Asia, and has now been naturalized to grow in North America. The red flowers at the end of the branched stems are usually dried for therapeutic use.
It has a number of medicinal uses, although at this stage more research may need to be done.
Red Clover can help to treat a number of conditions. Traditionally, these have included cancer, whooping cough, respiratory problems, and skin inflammations, such as psoriasis and eczema.

Hope for Cancer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV67he70YJI

This is a video clip which you may find interesting, but again please seek advice before doing anything.

Vitamin B3 is made up of niacin (nicotinic acid) and its amide, niacinamide, and can be found in many foods, including yeast, meat, fish, milk, eggs, green vegetables, and cereal grains. Dietary tryptophan is also converted to niacin in the body. Vitamin B3 is often found in combination with other B vitamins including thiamine, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, cyanocobalamin, and folic acid.

When I was a child I would watch Zorro, it was corny but it was entertaining. It always ended with a cliff hanger - Zorro was just about to die when the end of the show came.
When the following week came around I would rush to see how he survived, only to see that some kind of Twilight Zone had intervened and now he was two minutes prior to his death and able to escape with ease. BAH!

I am a big fan of Smallville and really looked at it with some hope. I liked the corny references to the superman films and Clarks life and even spotting the 'in' jokes. The first season was weak, entertaining but weak almost everyweek so Meteor infected super badguy. However I could see promise the lead characters playing Clark Kent and Lex Luthor were strong.

It did indeed improve with time and I really got into some of the episodes; which they could have develoed further - Justice League. Sadly though they opted for simplier stories and too many Kryptonite infected freaks for my liking.
As time went by the acting became better and the budget improved and they kept teasing us as Clark's powers came into being. Everyone is still waiting to see him fly. Yes, he has, but not really. As Clark had seen his cousin fly and other Kryptonians he would be tempted to at least try... ...surely!

Anyway my point was not about flying but about the fact that everyweek it leaves you thinking that the next episode is the 'ONE'. The big one where things really happen, flying, revealed idenetities or the big match between good and evil. Sadly everyweek just like with Zorro, they seem to forget where they left off and a new plot line has developed.

To be honest since the writers of season 1-7 left the following season 8 is extremely weak!
To top it all off Lex Luthor quit during the end of season 7, so no more Lex even though they keep refering to Lex in season 8.

I for one am looking forward to this season coming to an end; which it is with Clark and Doomsday facing off - and about time too!

Dr. Edward Mellanby's book Nutrition and Disease contains a chapter titled "Nutrition and Infection". It begins:

There is general agreement among medical men that the susceptibility of mankind to many types of infection is closely related to the state of nutrition. The difficulty arises, when closer examination is given to this general proposition, as to what constitutes good and bad nutrition, and the problem is not rendered easier by recent advances in nutritional science.

The high incidence of bronchitis, pneumonia, tropical ulcers and phthisis among the Kikuyu tribe who live on a diet mainly of cereals as compared with the low incidence of these diseases among their neighbours the Masai who live on meat, milk and raw blood (Orr and Gilks), probably has a similar or related nutritional explanation. The differences in distribution of infective disease found by these workers in the two tribes are most impressive. Thus in the cereal-eating tribe, bronchitis and pneumonia accounted for 31 per cent of all cases of sickness, tropical ulcers for 33 per cent, and phthisis for 6 per cent. The corresponding figures for the meat, milk and raw blood tribe were 4 per cent, 3 per cent and 1 per cent.

The morbidity rate in the puerperium using the [British Medical Association] standard was 1.1 per cent in the vitamin group and 4.7 in the control group, a difference of 3.6 per cent which is twice the standard error (1.4), and therefore statistically significant.

...all patients received when possible a diet rich not only in vitamin A but also of high biological quality. This diet included much milk, eggs, green vegetables, etc., as well as the vitamin A supplement. For controls we had to use the cases treated in previous years by the same obstetricians and gynecologists as the test cases.

It is probable that, as in the case of vitamin D and rickets, the question is not simple and that it will ultimately be found that vitamin A works in harmony with some dietetic factors, such as milk proteins and other proteins of high biological value, to promote resistance of mucous membranes and epithelial cells to invasion by micro-organisms, while other factors such as cereals, antagonise its influence. The effect of increasing the green vegetable and reducing the cereal intake on the resistance of herbivorous animals to infection is undoubted (Glenny and Allen, Boock and Trevan) and may well indicate a reaction in which the increased carotene of the vegetable plays only a part, but an important part.